Just one more day...

Here we are, still on the hard. It's been a long and arduous journey to get where we are now...

Ok, maybe I'm being a bit dramatic. I blame the heat. It's been roasty toasty since we got here (upper 90s, 100s, etc.) which means the average temperature in the boat during the day has also been upper 90s, 100s, and even 105 on Wednesday. Turns out, I'm a baby when it comes to this kind of heat without having the option of going swimming.

sanding sanding sanding...

blisters ground out and drying in the heat...

Good news though - we are bottom painted and ready to go back in the water! In fact, we were ready to go in this morning but (as our luck seems to have it) the workers aren't here today. This worked out fairly well, as I have a load of work to do and it gave me all day to work on it and Justin cleaned up the boat which is very nice.

Friends are a fabulous thing, and Mike (aboard Gaia) returned from his 621 day cruise a few days ago and was kind enough to help Justin paint the bottom of the boat on Wednesday. In his ever adventurous behavior, he attempted to sail here with his newly aquired sunfish, but realized he might never make it here in time as the winds weren't in his favor. He instead took the ferry from Boston to Quincy and it's a short 1 mile walk from the ferry stop to the boat yard that we're in. The painting was quick and we were free to hang out, have some nachos, and just enjoy the evening. It's very nice to have Mike back in town.

Gaia in Boston Harbor

Oh! Speaking of Mike...

We hung out with him for the 4th of July. We didn't really have any plans aside from "let's hang out with Mike." So we went to Gaia and decided to go visit our friend Mark up the Charles river for the big fireworks. We wanted to let the blisters on the hull air out a bit anyway, so it was a great day to take off and have some fun.

Long story short - we found Mark and climbed aboard. There was a ton of food...tasty food. We were settling in for the fireworks when suddenly there was a knock on the hull from ~6 kayakers and canoers, asking if they could raft up to us. What a funny thing, yet not entirely surprising. I think there were at least 17 or 18 people that ended up climbing aboard (with baked goods, no less...they were prepared!) and hung out with us for the fireworks. A good time was had by all, and as soon as the fireworks ended we all climbed back in the dinghy and spent the night on Gaia. Willie was with us too - he loved the dinghy, hated the fireworks. I think overall, he was happy to have gone :)

A few of the canoers and kayakers.

Didn't get a chance to take photos of the finished bottom yet. That'll be the next post!

On Freedom

You know, anytime somebody titles a piece of writing with "On Something" it is going to be an overblown, self-loving, pompous piece of work. This may be true, but I can't resist the title anyhow. :) That said, I really wanted to write up a little piece on freedom in regards to what it means to Jenny and me in terms of cruising, sailing, and living aboard. It is a very important part of our lives and our goals. Visiting our friend Mike, a full time cruiser, in the Virgin Islands for a week really changed the way we look at things.

Part 1: Financial Freedom -

I'll have to start at the beginning and hope that I can use a bit of a story format to convey my thoughts in a remotely intelligible manner. Once, I had a house. I had a mortgage. I was broke. Incessantly. I had to work nonstop to make house and car payments and although I may have wanted to move, I couldn't. I couldn't move about the city even. All my friends in apartments had moved to the other side of town and I had to drive across town to get home every day. That sucked, but there were worse things in life, like bad housing markets. My house was small, but entirely remodeled and very pretty inside and out; however, it was in Lansing Michigan amidst closing car factories and slumping economic times well before the rest of the nation caught up. When I got divorced I wanted to move and to go to grad school, which had always been my intent anyhow. I couldn't. The house would not sell in such a market. I HAD to stay and pay for a house I did not like. I couldn't move the house or myself. There were no better jobs in town. When Jenny came along personal life got better and eventually we had decided to rent my house out and move to Boston, on a boat. I LOVED the idea. Moving across town when I want to will become an option. Moving to a new city will become an option, whenever I want. This was my ideal vision.

Boats and marinas, however, cost money. Significant amounts thereof. The saving grace is that a liveable boat can be bought for cheap money. Our first boat, the Fitzcarraldo, was a powerboat which cost $10k in really rough shape. We overpaid a bit, but it was exactly where we wanted it (I had no idea how to drive a boat at the time) and it was convenient to buy from a seller who was friendly and helpful. Soon we realized the limitations of a powerboat and within a year we bought our Ericson sailboat from a friend who was in a hurry to get rid of one. Madrigal only cost us $6500 as a sale price. We lost a fair bit of money on the Fitz and had to roll it all into a loan of about $14k for both boats, cost of having 2 boats for a while, haulouts, surveys, etc... What it all came down to, was a little bit of that freedom we sought had been lost to debt and job tethers. Jenny is working constantly. I work part time, but have to go to school as well. The marina is expensive, and we've had a boat loan (personal loan) to boot. In the meantime, the market took a dive, I lost my renters, and we decided to just let my house be foreclosed and go back to the bank. A house I had paid $58k for in 2003 sold for $15k in 2009. Ouch. But we have been VERY happy with that decision. We both hate credit, and have sworn off new loans as terrible ideas. What it all boils down to is that the same week we went to visit Mike in the Virgin Islands is when we finally paid off our boat loan. We've also found a cheaper marina within distance of our jobs for next summer. And a beautiful little quiet marina at that, with better access to the somewhat remote Boston Harbor Islands.

So things are looking up financially, which is key to cruising. Cruising under debt is next to impossible without high paying work-from-home jobs. We have student loans, but those are small and we've been paying on them all the while. We should be able to pay those while cruising as long as our Jigsaw Indexing company keeps growing as well as it has been lately. We also get some income from small archaeology jobs that I do on the side and from ad revenue on various websites and blogs we keep up, much like this one.

Madrigal, at $6500 for a purchase price, was not and is not in cruising condition. We've put a ton into her, and she is much closer to being ready. By next year at the latest we should feel more than comfortable as far as the boat is concerned. We need a new sail or two, some new rigging, and better ground tackle, at the least before we can go and go safely. That should be roughly doable.

So as it stands, we may have finally achieved enough financial freedom to be able to think about cruising in the next year or two. It is a wonderful feeling. Accomplished and prideful, but it also keeps us respectful to all those who have already been able to leave and knowing how hard they had to work at it.

Part 2: Political Freedom -

Politics and freedom are touchy topics when placed together and viewed critically. I'll try not to say too much on here, so as not to offend anyone with my anarcho-libertarian-capitalist-pig-dog-freemarket-Austrian school economic views. But this article by Lew Rockwell is a good starter.

Basically, my own country scares the daylights out of me more and more with every passing day. I've never seen anything like it. Unending war. The federal reserve prints money out of thin air like there is no tomorrow. The US Dollar is most obviously being inflated away. George Bush started a regimen of stripping away liberties and imposing 'Homeland Security' forces in a very startling and scary kind of way. It has fascism and national socialism written all over it and I sure don't see Obama rolling any of that back. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean this in an America-bashing kind of way. Our founding fathers, the drafters of the Constitution, founded a very good thing. I've been happy growing up here, but the more we kill random people in foreign countries because we have some obscure fear of 'terrorism' the more it scares me. I see much of our original country eroding away. And really, the economics of it all is my biggest fear. I do think the dollar has a limited time on this earth, and the economic crash that is looming on our horizon will be dreadful. Having a sailboat, having our own solar and wind power (which we don't have yet, but hope for soon), having our own means of transportation via the coasts of the world is a great freedom to know that we have. I keep a blog at http://economicsynthesis.blogspot.com/ with an ongoing critique from a few individuals of our current situation regarding economics and freedom.

In the end, freedom and the concepts thereof, are big factors in our life. Spending a week in the islands with a full time cruiser was kind of life changing. We'd stop at a new anchorage, he'd look around and say, "hmm.. . I like this, maybe I'll live here for a few weeks." He works from home, at his own pace, and makes enough to live and enjoy himself, but lives within his means all the while. It is a good way to avoid excess expenses, absurd prices of city living, and all the rest that goes with life on land and a full time overly ambitious "career". We want to live simply, live within our own means, and live on the ocean. Wherever we want. Free.

Gaia, Part Two

Charlotte Amelie

In November of 2008, we blogged about Gaia and her crew. While things didn't work out quite as planned and Mike is now sailing solo, he is safe and happy, anchored in a peaceful cove somewhere in the Virgin Islands.

Mike was in Boston recently, and began telling us of his thoughts of potentially sailing Gaia north, where he would resume a 9-5 job and live his life with cruising all but a memory. Of course, Justin and I took this as an open invitation to come visit Gaia while she was still happily sitting upon blue waters, basking in the sunlight and warmth of the tropics.

So, in a somewhat spontaneous motion, Justin and I purchased plane tickets to St. Thomas, where we would live with Mike for the week and get a small glimpse of what his cruising lifestyle had been all about.

In a whirlwind, we left Boston and made the hop to Puerto Rico, then onto St. Thomas from there. The 25 minute PR to USVI was the most hair raising experience we had ever encountered in flight, but the islanders were so kind as to greet us with shots of rum as we stepped off the plane.

Mike was also there to greet us, and as I gave him a hug, I noticed how sickly pale I had become with living in our bubble home over the past few months.

We arrived oceanside about 45 minutes later, and I immediately saw some fish skirting around a megayacht. The water was clear and blue, and I quickly noticed how warm it was as we dinghied to Gaia on her anchor. Sadly, it was raining when we arrived, and didn't appear as though it was going to let up any time soon. We had to grocery shop the next day, and in the meantime found some food on land, at a place called Tickles Dockside Pub. Tickles is a pirate themed bar... I don't know about you, but I can't imagine meeting a pirate named Tickles. I'm just sayin.

Aboard Gaia

Oh the rain rain rain

This plane landed so close!

The next morning it continued to rain. Part of our daily routine became making plans, then altering them as the rain refused to let up. We had planned on sailing to St. John, but instead went grocery shopping and then motored to a new anchorage on St. Thomas, where we made dinner for some fellow cruisers that Mike had met in Luperon. Keli and Stuart are aboard Beannacht, and Brian, Alicia and Louie are aboard Sarabande (they also had a friend visiting at the time). We had a wonderful evening chattering on about cruising, living aboard, sailing, and "plans". It was interesting to hear the plans of cruisers, as I often think of cruisers as not having any plans at all. Really, I'm not sure why. Regardless, Justin and I later discovered this to be the most pivital point of our whole trip, and we'll never forget about the new friends we made that night. We also are quite certain that we want to give cruising a try. We've always talked about it as if this is what we wanted to do, but we've also had our hesitations along the way for various reasons. The evening gave us a chance to realize that we're sitting in a nearly perfect position to raise the sails and go, returning only if we choose and not because we have to return to work the next morning.

Brian and Alicia's Boat

Mike has long ago mastered the Zissou Point

Love at first sight!

Betsy's Bar

The next morning, we awoke to more rain. But it was time to move on for sure. We chose Cruz Bay as our first destination on St. John, as it was fairly close and I was seasick and not wanting to go further. We found a spot near the car ferry, and there was something of a bird sanctuary situated near us - I haven't quite figured out exaclty if that's what it was, but it was spectacular indeed. The anchor dug deep, and we set off. I needed to get on land and put the sea sickness at bay. We also needed some food. After wandering the streets of the small town, we found Crazy Crackers, and realized the rain had let up just enough that we could sit outside. The food was amazing, but portions were small. We were determined to eat well, and so we went back to Gaia and made hummus! Along the way, we spotted a man atop a coconut tree, pestering the tourists.

There's a man in that tree...

The next morning, we awoke to yes...more rain. We decided that our plans for the day would be to motor to Reef Bay, a quick little jaunt from Cruz Bay. I had read about a nice hiking trail there and we all agreed that hiking in the rain would be far better than swimming in it, so off we went. Reef Bay Trail allowed us the opportunity to see much of St. John's wildlife, and it started with flocks of bats in the old sugar factory. Shortly thereafter, we saw a mongoose, who somehow failed to see us for quite some time. It was awfully amusing when he finally looked up from whatever it is that he found to be so entrancing, and you could see the fear in his eyes as he scurried off into a hole. The trail was home to many many deer, and while some sites say that they are simply white-tails, I believe they were much too small and seem to be some other breed. I may be wrong. They were friendly and unafraid - this was national forest and it appears as though they have no predators and nothing to worry about. They looked well fed and happy, and I don't think we spooked a single deer until the end of our trip. The anoles were also amusing, and one challenged Justin to push-ups. Justin knew that he had no chance of defeating this little guy, so we went on our way before he really put Justin in his place. The rain finally let up just enough for me to snap pictures, and this was the only place that we got a picture of the three of us (good thinking, Justin!) Otherwise, I was taking pictures with my camera safely enclosed in a ziplock...which made for some strange shots.

Soaking wet!

Saving my camera from the rain...

The next day, we woke up to SUN! We couldn't believe our luck, so we quickly stowed our things and sailed our way to the north end of St. John - destination: the beach. We chose Cinnamon Bay, and were not disappointed. The beaches here were beautiful, serene, and somewhat surprisingly empty. There were just enough people to make it feel like a real beach, but not enough to make it feel packed. We grabbed a mooring and instantly saw sea turtles checking out the boat. There were two large ones and later on we saw a smaller one. They were just amazing...one of my favorite parts of the entire trip. They seemed so very curious, but have such frowny faces. They're amusing and beautiful all at the same time.





We chose to walk the beach for a bit before snorkeling, and who did we see but Alicia and Kate! They were also taking advantage of the sun and took a ferry over from St. Thomas to lay in the sun. It was pretty amusing, considering the vast amount of beaches that they could have chosen. We spoke with them for a bit but didn't end up meeting back up with them before they left.

This is what it looks like on a sunny day!

The snorkeling was amazing, and I'll never forget the crazy looking worm/snake/centipede looking thing that Justin pointed out to me! It took some time to get used to breathing with a snorkel (and longer to feel comfortable hearing myself breathe), but it was well worth it. We saw lots of fish and sea life - it's amazing how colorful everything was!


We did some more snorkeling and swimming the next day too. We decided that since it was our last day, we'd try to find some civilization and a little town. We definitely didn't get to do anything too touristy, so we figured this was our chance. We also knew that this was our last chance to sail and so we really took advantage of that, and I'm glad we did. We sailed far more west than necessary, which gave us a chance to pull out Mike's spinnaker and sail with that for a good long while! It was such a peaceful sail, and none of us were the least bit seasick that day!






That evening we made it to Red Hook and the town was a bit smaller than anticipated, although Mike said it seemed huge compared to some of the places he's been in the past year! We ate Amigo's Restaurant and the food was amazing, affordable, and the servings were HUGE! Very very tasty. We went to the bar downstairs afterwards and Mike talked to the locals for some time. We also did a dock walk at the marina in town, and there were some huge Tarpon swimming in the water. We were all pretty exhausted, so we went back to the boat and called it a night.



We woke up the next morning and packed our bags. Mike was happy with his anchorage, so we decided to take a taxi back to the airport instead of sailing back to Charlotte Amelie. The taxis there are amusing - trucks with bench seats in the back. They all have handles in front of the benches for a reason, and the woman who drove us to the airport was flying around corners and we made it in record time. And I thought Boston drivers were crazy!

All in all, it was a fantastic trip. It really made us realize that we'd like to try cruising sooner than later, so we've been talking about that a LOT over the past week!

Love.

A slightly inaccurate map of the places we visited...

View Our trip to the US Virgin Islands, January 2010 in a larger map

Gaia

Our friend Mike had moved aboard a 35 foot Oday a year before we moved aboard. When we moved in he was one of the first people we met and we sailed with him that week. It was our first time ever on a sailboat. Since then, Mike met Alyssa and got engaged. He upgraded to a Pearson 424 (pictured below) and a few weeks ago they quit their jobs and went cruising. He states their destination as, "South."


They have began a cruising blog at:

http://lifeongaia.org/

I will add it to our links so it can always be found at the right of our page.

-Justin