Springtime in Michigan

Well, I certainly know that we're no longer aboard Creeky (or Madrigal for that matter), but I can't just leave the blog. I suppose we have named the blog poorly since it doesn't translate well to land-life, but hey it could be worse, right?

Dirt dwelling has been quite the adventure for us. We've had a lot of changes in a short period of time.

Where to begin?

Ah. Well first. I'll start way back with the story of Creeky. Boy, we loved that boat. We really did. We thought living aboard Creeky would solve most of our problems. More space! More time together! As soon as we moved aboard, we realized that yes, we had more space but we most certainly didn't have more time together. Justin's every waking moment at home was fixing up the boat. My waking moments were spent trying to wrangle Ivy away from him so that she wouldn't get hurt. Ivy's waking moments were of frustration, understandably. She didn't understand why Justin was so close but wouldn't hold him. She was frustrated being cooped up in the boat and unable to run and play. Taking her outside to the park was just not enough. She chased all the dogs at the dog park, no matter what size they were. She was just a little too small for the slides that she really wanted to go down at the park.

But the big problem in our lives that we had been trying to fix for years - family. Family was too damn far away. Ivy was getting bigger with each passing day, and the weekly "visits" on video chat were becoming more and more depressing instead of exciting. 95% of the time we couldn't even get a good enough internet signal to make it worth it. Visits home were never long enough. Our families live 7 hours apart from each other, so we had tried every way to visit both families - driving the distance in a quick day, taking a bus, flying from one airport to the other. All were painful because they took an entire day out of our vacation time (not to mention the two days on either end of our trip to fly from Boston to Michigan). A week's vacation suddenly turned into 4 days, and 4 days split between two families was depressing.

So. Just as we had done with moving to Boston, we took a huge crazy leap into the unknown and Justin quit his job, we left Creeky in her spot at Constitution, and we up and moved back to Michigan.

We had indexing to help us get through a few months, and we gave indexing a shot to be our one and only source of income. Justin's parents gave us a place to stay until we sorted out our lives, and mine had us for a few weeks as well.

Indexing took off quite well, but it was a lot of work, and not too different than work on Creeky. Ivy saw that we were always around but could never play with one or the other of us while we worked. Justin wasn't happy with working from home, which came as no surprise to us.

Job hunting began. In a matter of two or three weeks, Justin had applied to roughly 50-60 jobs in Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. Nearly all of the jobs would be no more than a 3 or 4 hour ride from both our families.

Within two weeks, Justin was interviewing at companies, and a week later he had a couple of job offers.

One of the jobs he applied to was something special - an apprentice boat building position at Van Dam Boats. The position was exactly halfway in between our families. The area of Michigan was perfect. The nearest town (Petoskey) was where we had really started dating, eight years ago.

The position itself was perfect, but we had found it just a day after the posting had expired. Justin called on it anyway, and the owner told him to go ahead and send in his resume anyway. Justin spent all day writing his cover letter. It was heartfelt and honest. It made me cry, hah.

The very next day, he received an e-mail. Would he come interview?

When he got there, he found out that hundreds had applied. They interviewed five. The position would be a four year apprenticeship with the hopes that he'd stay on board for many years to come. Perfect. Justin came home with tales of the beautiful rolling hills, the mounds and mounds of snow, the friendly atmosphere. We held our breaths in anticipation.

Initially we thought he didn't get the job. I cried again. I'd gotten so excited about Petoskey, about the romanticism of Justin working on boats. And, I was pregnant, so that wasn't helping my emotions. Hah.

He'd been offered two more jobs too, so we packed up a few weeks worth of our things to go look for apartments and visit my family while we were up there. As we got into the car to drive north, Justin got the e-mail from Van Dam. They wanted to hire him on. Holy shit.

To make a long story short, Justin accepted the position and has been working there for the last two months. He loves it. The work is hard and laborious. He comes home with raw, cracked fingers. His hair is never the same shade anymore. He's had blue ears a few times now. But he loves it. It's a job he's proud of and a great company to work for.

The job required a 30 day probationary period, so we lived in a motel for a month. It was really nice, honestly. It was nice to get some time as just a family again. After a few months of living with our families, we needed time to reconnect. The space wasn't an issue - the room was larger than any boat we'd ever lived on together.

Three weeks ago, we finally found our house. It's freaking enormous. We honestly were just looking for something with 2-3 bedrooms, but the house came up on Craigslist and the price was right and it came with 10 acres of land. The house itself was totally scuzzy and coincidentally, the guy was moving out of his house to go live on a boat, so he was leaving us all of his things. Couches, computers, chairs, dishes, you name it. We suddenly had doubles and triples of things that we only needed one of.

The keys!

After a lot of help from our parents, the house is looking great.

 

After six years, these are very, very exciting to us.

We're really happy with the house, and the more we explore the land around our ten acres, the more in love we are with it. There's potentially an option to buy and we're hoping that it all works out for us to do so.

And still, we look at boats.

Because we still like to be as self-sufficient as possible.

Pickerel Lake. Literally minutes away from our house.

Petoskey State Park. The beach where Justin and I fell in love.

Behind our house.

So, it's been a wonderful move for us. We've seen family a lot since moving to the house. It's a 3 1/2 hour trip for both sides of the family, but only 1 1/2 hour for my brother and his family! 3 1/2 is still a tad far, but Justin has 3 day weekends so that helps immensely.

Ivy and cousin Eli in the back yard.

We couldn't be happier.

In the Woods

The boaters reading our blog might not understand it, but I can't stress how much I've missed being out in the woods. It's been wonderful being back in Michigan, getting outside in the peace and quiet every day. 

 

 I'm not sure the future of our blog, but for now I'll try to update every so often until I decide what to do. I have a few more boat related posts to make regarding Creeky, so we'll be around for awhile longer at least. If this blog doesn't continue, I'll be starting a new one and posting the link here. I understand that dirt-dweller blogs can be pretty boring to liveaboards, but who knows, maybe we'll surprise you with our new adventures.

A little photo gallery of what we've been up to

how did we not update you all?

I realize that I had a draft of a post from November that never got sent. Huh.

Life has changed for us. Drastically. So without further ado, here is what I meant to post months ago:

If I had the time, I'd write and explain in detail exactly what's going on in our lives. If I had the time, I'd have written a month ago. If I had time, I'd have written a myriad of posts in between this one and the last...

But that's not how it works.

Life as a work-at-home mama means that life is busy, all the time. It means that posting on the blog is something I do when I'm procrastinating work. It means that the post I make is sup-par.

So, as brief as I'm able - we're moving back to Michigan. We grew up there, we love it there. We miss our families.

Michigan means: Our business continues on, better than ever. Without this, we'd have given up on our business entirely.

Michigan means: family. So much family.

Michigan means: No more boat life, at least for now. We love it, but we need to go home for now.

Michigan means: So many things. We'll miss our friends. So much. It's been incredible on the East Coast and I'm not sure we'll ever find a group of friends quite like the ones we have here. It was unexpected, but incredible. It's going to be the most difficult part of moving, without a doubt. We're planning on not having a going away party, because we're not sure if we can handle the sadness.

And hopefully, Michigan means: a life less hectic. Less cluttered. We've been so insanely busy for the last two years. It makes my mind spin. I don't know how we've kept up with as much stuff as we have without going insane. Boat life makes everything 10x harder. Showers, laundry, dog walking, you name it. It's all insanely difficult when you live on a boat. For awhile it doesn't matter so much, but then a kid comes along and things that were 10x harder become 100x harder. Really. I am so excited for simple showers, simple laundry, simple dog walks. Simple sleep. Simple living.

So there it is. We're moving in two weeks, so I don't expect to post much before then. Hopefully once we move I'll have more time, but I'm not so sure that time will be all spent posting on the blog...I want to play my guitar. I want to start woodworking. I want to give Ivy more time. I want to spend more time with family.

Hopefully soon, I can at least post some photos. It's been a long, long time.

Hurricane Sandy

Impressive map of Sandy, courtesy of Google.  That's one big storm.

Just a quick update to let everyone know we are just fine after Sandy.  We were planning to stay aboard Creeky for the entire storm due to being docked in a nice protected inner slip, but the marina decided to do a mandatory evacuation of all liveaboards on Sunday morning around 11:00am.  Most of us just went to the Marriott next door which was giving a discount special for all us boat refugees.  We got to watch from the comfort of the windows above and the whole marina fared pretty well.  A bit of torn canvas and some chafed rigging, but nothing too dramatic.  Here are a few pictures just for fun.

Looking up at the boathouse from our winter slip.  Nice and eerie looking pre-storm.

We've been booted out.  It was a good call.

Looking down from the hotel windows.  Creeky is the shiny white deck there in the middle.

Ivy loved the opportunity to mingle and make friends with our boat refugee friends.

Mama and Baby exhausted the next morning.

All went well and it basically ended up being a good reason to take a day off at a hotel and enjoy the company of our friends, even if we were all nervously watching out the window and bracing for impact.

Soon we'll start posting some more updates about life on Creeky and all the progress we are making toward a nice comfortable home!  Also, today is Halloween which means it is Willie's 5th birthday!  Happy Birthday Willie.

Willie!

Happy Halloween everyone:

Launch!

Wow, I know it's been a while since we've blogged, but I think you'll all understand why when you see just what we've been up to lately.  Our new home, Creeky, is finally in the water!  No less, we have already moved aboard.  She still has no mast and the engine isn't hooked up, but she's got a toilet, rudimentary electricity, some fun carpet, some cushions and mattresses, and just enough love to make it a wonderful home.  We are VERY happy to be aboard.

Here is a photo of Ivy enjoying some crackers and cartoon in her new home.

Here is how the story goes.  We scheduled to launch September 15th, but just a few days before the launch I discovered some nasty issues with our stuffing box.  It is an odd Scandinavian stuffing box manufactured by West Mekan.  It is a very good system, just not exactly well known here, so it was hard to find info or diagrams of the thing.  This PDF from the West Mekan site was about all I had to go on.  The oil based box was leaking the oil out and down the sterntube.  That obviously means it won't hold water on the outside and thus our launch was delayed.  A few days of digging around and I figured out which seal was installed incorrectly (oops).  After a lot of panic and cursing we were able to reschedule for October 5th (a cheaper day in boating world anyhow, so maybe the delay was a good thing).

Cleared for takeoff

At 10am on the 5th Barden's boat movers showed up with their big trailer and started loading her up.  Man what a site.  That boat has been sitting in that dirty stinky junkyard of a boatyard in Quincy MA for two years now.  I spent almost every single day this summer in that place and most of summer 2011 as well.  One of the yard workers quipped to me that he was sad to see the boat go because he would lose his privacy that was being provided by that big full keel along the fence.  har har.

Loading on the trailer

OVERSIZE LOAD:  yeah, no kidding.

I have to say that most of this boat wouldn't have been possible without the overwhelming support and help from my friend Dave Nelson.  Dave is the guy (along with his other half Christine) who bought the Fitzcarraldo from us a few years ago.  Not only did he loan the Fitz back to us so that we'd have a home until Creeky could launch, but he came down to help with various large projects throughout the summer.  His boat knowledge has been super helpful and we are both entirely grateful for his help.  That said, Dave was on his way down to help oversee and add moral support to the launching ceremonies.  He met us at the yard and he drove chase car while I led the caravan over to Marina Bay in North Quincy where the launch was scheduled for roughly noon.  Along the way, he managed to get a few good shots of the boat going down the road.

Neato.

Jenny and Ivy were already at Marina Bay awaiting our arrival.  We got lucky with Ivy and she fell asleep in her stroller just as the boat arrived, so Jenny was able to take pictures without too much baby distraction.  A screamy kiddo could have added tenfold to the already high nerve levels.  We were both very thankful for a sleepy Ivy.  Anyhow, words can't describe the nerves, the excitement, the stress, the worry... this boat is all we have.  All the money we've ever been able to save in the world, and it is our home and we were about to chuck the thing into the ocean to hope it floats...... If this process were to fail, we'd probably scrap it or sell it for a minimum and move on with our lives in a different direction.  There is no boatbuilding fund left, we couldn't afford to keep it another season on the hard, this was an all or nothing effort.  So here's how that went:

Passed out just in time for the big event.

In the slings: 15 tons exactly.

Our neighbors who drove Jenny over stayed to watch.

The Marina Bay crew offered to touch up some bottom paint.

Quadruple inspections all around.

It seems like there are some pictures missing here in the middle because the actual launch process is all video.  Our internet has been sketchy so it hasn't uploaded.  I'll place the video here when we get it.

Still in the slings but we are below decks checking every hull penetration.

Dave and I, still inspecting, but it all looks good.  Gave Jenny the thumbs up right about here.

After a short tow tow, our first arrival at a dock!

Me, trying not to look like I am about to puke from nervousness.

Creeky against the grey foggy Boston sky.

Beautiful.

Still snoozin.

Time for the Ceremony, SeaGlass riesling, perfect.  

We each had a glass and poured one over the side for Creeky.  

Feet.

Wakey wakey, look at your new home!

Ivy immediately takes the helm, but little does she know it isn't hooked up.

There is more to the story as there were minor issues and some nervous moments, but all is well.  She seems to float pretty darn straight, though a bit high in the bow.  I still have no ground tackle aboard, which is 400+ pounds all told.  The ground tackle combined with the rig, which is forward of center, should just about even things out.  I'll likely have to raise the waterline a couple inches next time she's out of the water, but that's no big deal.  At least it's straight and I think that's pretty good considering the lack of drawings or designs I had to go on.  She keeps the water out, and she keeps us dry and warm.  That's what counts.

In the meantime, we towed Creeky over to our trusty old Constitution Marina where we will again be spending the winter, and perhaps even next summer.  This gives us some time to breathe and some time to relax.  We can install the engine and step the rig on our own time.  From here on out, things look good.

And as i type this, Ivy is comfy in Creeky, watching Charlotte's Web.