Working Aboard

Here we are in late July and I'm finally back to working again.

I did one project in May, when Ivy was going through the worst of her colic. It. Was. Hard. I finished up the work, but decided it was too early to take anything else so I took another month off.

Ivy is 4 months old today, and with that comes a few wonderful things - a happier baby and regular(ish) naps. She is full of smiles. She takes a couple of naps a day now and while I can't always rely on them, for the most part I can get a few things done again.

Work is going surprisingly well with having her around. I know that it will be forever changing as she grows, but at the moment I can work while she's eating or napping. Since I know I have limited time, I am really focused on the task at hand.

That being said - sometimes she just won't fall asleep in bed, so I put her in the Ergo carrier and let her sleep on me. It makes everything a bit more difficult, but doable. Whatever it takes, right?

Crappy picture of Ivy strapped to the front of me while I index a book.

settling in

We are finally beginning to feel settled in. I worked some long hours the last couple days and the commute started to feel normal. Then, when I got home, I felt like I was 'home'. I didn't realize it until today, when I had the day off (we went shopping for Jenny's 28th birthday :) and we after we got home and made dinner I realized how normal it felt to be here. It's really fun living on a boat. Moving our house around is exciting. I like it.

And tonight we are all cozy around the fire on a rainy night. I'm messing about on the computer while Jenny does some indexing. Yep. Home.

Oh, and there is whisky involved.

Strawberries, Exploring Weymouth, and Sugar Wine

Well well. What a neat little place we live in. We've been exploring our new neighborhood and have been finding some gems! We came across a farm stand yesterday that had fruits and veggies galore, along with plants for purchase. We found a small corner that had a few things discounted so we got an enormous bag of strawberries for 99 cents.

The largest appliance we own is a food dehydrator, which we just can't seem to part with. It has made us many tasty batches of beef jerky and has given us abundant dried fruits that store well for an incredibly long time. It turns out dried strawberries are amazing. We filled the thing up and voila! tasty treats.



There's a cute little park really close by that we've been taking Willie to. It's hilly, and sometimes a dog trots her way over from the other side of the road to bark at us and sniff Willie. We call her Beefcake.

Beefcake.

The park.

Indexing has been a gift and has allowed me so much more time in my life. I've actually not had a book to work on in a little over a week (ok, that's a little scary) but I've been working hard at revamping the website (it's going to look GOOD), organizing lots of little things, and contacting a ton of publishers. Today was by far the best day for responses, so I'm feeling really good about things. I'm lined up for two projects at the moment (one isn't for a few months, but at least it's something) and I work with enough publishers quite regularly that I'm not really that concerned. But still, I'm putting full-time hours (or just about) and because I don't have to commute (or index when I get home from a full-time job) I've been granted gobs of time to enjoy life again. I take the time to hang out with the mutt, I've been cleaning, and I've been reading for pleasure. Seriously! I can't remember the last time I read a book just to read it. Amazing.

And hobbies. Justin and I have been picking up hobbies again! Because I was so busy working and indexing (and he was indexing too), we really had to stop focusing on so many things and we simply worked, minimally cleaned, etc.

So, we finally took a couple of hours out of our day to pick up the Alaskan Bootlegger's Guide (that we spoke of here) and we took good ole Leon's advice and started with the simplest wine we could make - Sugar Wine. He says "You can even drink this stuff, but don't expect to impress your true love with it during a romantic candlelight dinner." As you can see in the pictures below, this is really bottom shelf stuff we're making. We used bread yeast, for goodness sake. But who cares, we're not selling it and it's more for enjoyment than it is for anything else. It was nice to have the time to carefully sterilize everything and do things the right way (as right as you can with sugar wine, haha).

Somewhere along the way, Justin decided it was best to keep his hair out of his face.

Anyway, we're really enjoying ourselves here. It's starting to feel like home already. We're still one of the only boats here, but I expect that a lot of people will be coming in this weekend to snuggle into their new summer homes.

living on a boat during the flood season

It's terrible that we haven't updated our blog since April 5th. I am utterly embarrassed by this! We had gone for such a long stretch of updating so regularly and then spring rolls around and we act as though we're out enjoying the sunshine, finding better things to do than blog. Well shame on us. We promise we'll stay inside more often so that the blog does not go neglected.

The reality is, we're swamped. Indexing, getting ready to leave the library, preparing our boat for a new marina, and yes, enjoying the sunshine.

The weather in Boston has been more or less perfect, aside from two terrible instances of flooding. A lot of towns around us are recovering. We're still just bobbing along happily, while people deal with damaged basements, flooded yards, flooded streets, etc. This all started about a month ago and people are still recovering. The Boston Globe has some photos posted here.

Everyone continues to compliment Justin on the deck work. We'll need to take the time to post about that one. I've taken photos throughout the process so hopefully it will be a helpful post for those of you who are considering doing this. I'm sure there will be more time soon.

It feels wonderful to have the shrink wrap off. Willie loves it, and is doing a (more or less) great job of staying on board, even when his favorite people or puppies walk by. He sure does enjoy the sunshine, and it's hard to keep him inside on a nice sunny day. He just wants to lay out there and watch people stroll by while he rests in the sunniest spot on deck.



Anyhow, we will post more as soon as we're able. Sadly, I can't make any promises as to when that will be. I am devoting my time to indexing this incredibly interesting book on circumpolar regions. Very cool. Oh yeah, and I still have two weeks left at the library. Justin has been taking advantage of overtime at the museum, so we're lucky to see each other during the day lately. Tonight I'll be going to bed long before he gets home. Speaking of which, it's past my bedtime now. Goodnight.

Friends, Flutes, Decks and Indexing

A lot happens at the marina in spring. People come and people go. The shrink wrap inevitably gets large holes shredded out of it before it comes off for good. The air sings with sounds of saws, hammers and other various tools as people work on this project and that. Friends gather and celebrate the coming of spring.

And because of all of this, we haven't gotten the chance to update the blog as often as we have wanted. I wanted to post a few pictures now, and soon we will update with more details of what we've been up to.

Susan invited us aboard "Me Too" for a going away party.

Mind you, this is a 28' boat with 11 people on board.

Justin tries his hand at playing the flute.

What has taken all of my time is indexing. I'm a living, breathing organizing machine. I've been staying up very very late and getting up early just to finish up the next book. I'm beginning to really look forward to my new found freedom of having only indexing to worry about. I still have the rest of April at the library, so being a full time indexer is still a few weeks off.

And what has taken all of Justin's time is the deck work. He's been sanding, fiberglassing, sanding more, cleaning, power washing, and painting the decks. I'm not posting much on this one yet because we'll be making a larger post on this one as soon as we possibly can, but here's one picture in the meantime of him beginning the paint job!


Oh and in other fun news - the shrink wrap is off!! Hello spring!

Big News

Justin mentioned in the last post that we *may* have some big news to share. Indeed we do.

After much deliberation, number crunching and researching I have decided to resign from my job. I gave them my notice today. It was a very difficult decision, but in the end it was something I had to do.

Jigsaw Indexing has taken off in ways I could never have imagined, and now I am essentially working two full time jobs. It's been a stress on every aspect of my life, including my health. I just couldn't do it anymore.

We sorted out money, health insurance, and all of the other important things before making the final decision. Something had to give and when it came down to it, it was either taking on far less indexing jobs or leaving the library. It has been a great place to work (I'll never forget how excited I was to start there!), but the time has come to move on.

One of the greatest things about leaving is the incredible freedom we will have and I'm still getting used to this fact. I've decided I don't want to come up with too many assumptions on how this new life will be, but that is certain - there will be a greater amount of freedom granted to both Justin and I (and we'll get more than 1 day off together each week, which will be nice too).

I am looking forward to this new adventure in life. I am happy, sad and scared, but downright excited for this new life of ours to begin, and I can't wait to see what's in store for us.

And just to show you all how busy I've been...

A stack of pages from SOME of the books indexed over the past month or two...PHEW. Moonlighting is hard work.

Wish me luck!

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.

Jigsaw Indexing

Living aboard a boat is a quirky thing. It is not for everyone, but for some of us it is everything. For those who live this life it seems that different people enjoy the concept of "living aboard" in different ways.

On one end of the spectrum there are people who live in offshore sailboats and try their absolute hardest never to touch foot on dry land. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who live in pontoon style houseboats with no form of locomotion and simply enjoy living on the water and in the marina but otherwise live a fairly normal life.

We have, for the most part, lived somewhere in the middle but closer to the sedentary pontoon version. Our boat is not made for offshore, we have real jobs to attend, and frankly we really like our life of heading to sea whenever we can--usually on the weekends in the summer.

One has to wonder though: what would it be like to sail away for a six month journey?
In this boat, we will never know. Thus, we have already been extensively internet shopping for what may be next in our purchasing crosshairs. Fisher 37's and Westsail 42's both look rather jazzy. As do the Formosa 51's and 47's. I could ramble quite a few sailboat types (and especially pilothouse motorsailors) that I've come to enjoy gawking at, but it won't do me a lick of good until we have a bit more of an extended plan.

I present to you: www.jigsawindexing.com

This is our new baby (sorry Willie, you are no longer an only child). As of this week we are kicking off our new company Jigsaw Indexing. As part of her master's degree Jenny was trained in how to create the surprisingly complex and convoluted thing at the end of a book called an "index". We've been spending the last couple months making some business purchases and getting things set up. We are now ready to index.

How exactly does this get back to living aboard?

Fishers, Westsails, Formosas, and others are very pricey and we need to save our pennies. Jigsaw may help bring in some of those pennies. More importantly these are boats which can live at sea for extended times--even if it is just living on a mooring up the coast a bit in Salem :) We can continue our full time jobs, index as a part time business, and save those pennies til we can afford one of the aforementioned expensive watercraft. Upon purchase, we can move to a mooring (Salem or otherwise) and save a TON of money that we currently pour into paying Constitution Marina for an in-city dock slip. Thus, we can perhaps afford our new payments, and if the option presents itself in a couple years we can take leave of our land based jobs and move on to indexing full time. Then we can have the freedom to move about the seven seas at our free will--pushing us further to the other end of the spectrum I spoke of earlier.

Also, I can continue to pursue archaeology. Here in New England the contract archaeology companies need lots more help in the summers (when the ground is dig-able). In the winters we can sail south (or north or east or west I suppose) and I can put my work back into indexing again for the archaeological off-season.

Will we like that lifestyle and is it possible? I dunno, we weren't sure of our current one until we tried to make it happen. Now, we've made it here and we love it. Lots.

Moral of the story is, if you or anyone you know is publishing non-fiction books, writing them, or otherwise involved with the production thereof please contact us. justin@jigsawindexing.com should do the trick :)


(right now, we're really leaning toward the fisher 37's aftcabin version - here is some guy's site full of pics of them)

:)
Justin