one thing that surprised me about our recently sail up the coast was how small our footprint was (relatively speaking). ideally it would have been effectively nil except for the demands of society and why it is an ultimate dream for us to be able to detach from shorebound responsibilities.
i'll explain. we sailed as far as we could in the 9 days that tracy had off. i was determined that we would make the most of sailing - we live on a sailboat after all. if the wind didn't blow we stayed put; i didn't want to spend my days motoring. we did pretty good, one day we ended up motoring for a few hours as the wind deposited us in the middle of trincomali channel and then died, and did the same thing on the last day on the way home. it was blowing like hell out of sydney and we had a double reef in the main, wind over 25 knots and then nothing. we used the tide each day, and the wind was fantastic every other time we went out.
still the small window we had did contribute to the amount of fuel burned, especially the three and a half hours motoring that last day.
the point to all this is that for the nine days of vacation we consumed about 45 litres of fuel, and 1/2 of that was burnt just getting in and out of anchorages. the thing to remember is that this is the total of commercial energy we consumed. between the motoring and our solar panels we always had plenty of power. we never went below 1/4 of our reserve capacity, even when we spent two days in silva bay.
when one factors in the energy spent daily in the average household of two, including fossil fuels, our consumption was a tiny blip. In fact, i would love to go right off the grid and just live off solar and wind, but given where we live it isn't possible. in the summer and parts of the shoulder season perhaps, but in winter it is just too cold up here and that's the big issue of canada and the energy we consume - heat in winter. there is no way that alternative energy sources could keep this boat warm.
we could just use propane heat in the furnace but it's not designed for 24/7 use and that would be expensive - and prove nothing. i would rather plug in and use hydro. if we lived in warmer climes it would be totally feasible.

the other sweet thing was that our vacation was incredibly cheap and yet beautiful and exciting. like i said the sailing was fantastic and most days we had to reef the main. we spent maybe 60 bucks on fuel, and the rest (bars, moorage) was totally elective. but we could have done the 9 days spending under $100.00. as it was we spent a few hundred, but two people, 9 days vacation, and check out the photos.
it's one of the fantastic aspects of liveaboarding  - taking your home with you on vacation.

we just got back from a 9-day sail through the gulf islands and up the coast. i was hoping to make jervis inlet but 9 days just isn't enough time, not when you don't want to motor. when you go with the wind you discover she's a high-maintenance  bitch. like today. we've barely burned any fuel because of this ethos of mine -you're on a sailboat so sail. a lot of folks can't be bothered and i don't get it but i'm not in their shoes. did i say we barely burned any fuel? that was before today. we were screaming along doing more than 7 knots in the gusts when the wind just died. left us in the middle of haro strait; no anchorages to be found. so we fired up the diesel and rumbled along for like three damn hours. augh. i guess we burned about 30 litres of fuel, which isn't that bad for 9 days and at least 250 nautical miles of cruising.

but as for the title of this insert, what i noticed on this trip was the absolute DEARTH of stinkpots out there this year. in other years we constantly had to dodge the wakes of people going hell bent for leather to god knows where. sailboats were in the minority. this year almost all we saw were sailboats. tons of 'em. the occasional powerboat here and there, but only occasionally, and i only had one experience where i cursed some twit who blasted by us leaving a trough in the ocean that a freighter would be ashamed to leave behind. Only once did i complain about engine noise echoing over the water, and that was the coast guard. in most anchorages we stayed in the ration was like 1/3 to 2/3 in favour of sailboats.

i like sailing with sailboats around. they are quiet. they go slow. and by-and-large sailors seem to know what they are doing. i've never had something untoward happen to me with another sailboat; it always seems to be the stinkpotters who cause trouble.
on this trip some unfortunate fellow ran his power cruiser onto some rocks and took out a prop and rudder. some folks in their dinghies decided to give him a hand and pulled him off, dropping him right in front of us, in a ten-knot wind. by the time he got his anchor worked out he was like a couple of metres in front of us, me letting out anchor chain like demon. of course that meant that until he was towed out we couldn't leave either, not with him sitting on our anchor.

of the few power vessels i did see, more than half were american, which is surprising. it's not like they were all huge, expensive yachts (although the big ones were always yankee). some were quite modest. and yet their skippers paid for the fuel to come up here. or maybe as was discussed in an earlier post they keep their boats at sydney.

it seems obvious to me that the price of gas has had a very positive effect on our waters. i regret the impact it must be having on marinas and such, but to have great stretches of the gulf islands dotted only with white sails is a tremendous improvement to the mayhem that we've all considered normal, especially around the busier anchorages.

here's a fun shot of entering naniamo harbour...

i know i said i was gonna shut things down here. but the weird thing is that that didn't change my traffic stats. nice to know that i'm not required to write on my own blog.

my kids and i went up to kelowna to help my morn get her place ready to sell; she's gonna do the smart thing and sell just before the market goes *poof*. in fact it's already dropped a few points over the last few months. insiders suggest that prices are artificially high by about 20-25%, driven by real estate speculators. that should be about the amount it will drop over the next little while.

after the dust clears she'll find a place to rent until the market corrects.

but i've been talking to my kids and the money struggles they are having. even my son who works in construction is being hit hard - last month he spent $400.00 in gas alone just to commute to his work site. accommodation and transportation costs are eating up most of his income.

i'm suggesting to the family that we go old skool and consolidate. it was the promise of capitalism that broke up family members into their own individual enclaves, and i suppose that was once affordable although socially undesirable. but for increasing numbers of people it has become untenable to have family members scattered here and there and each paying for their separate, isolated lifestyles, ones they could at least partially share.

we haven't decided yet, but my mom is thinking of moving down here and sharing a place with my daughter. maybe stu would come over as well. the kids are adamant that they don't want to live alternatively (rv/boat) but at the very least sharing a place would save everyone a lot of money while being able to support each other. and another problem with  living isolated is there is always so much stuff to deal with and take care of on your own, which translates into stress.
they don't want to liveabaord so that leaves me out and maybe tracy. maybe she would go between two homes, i don't know. i've found my nirvana and i'm not giving it up.

it is possible that the ongoing, massive failure of capitalism (we ain't even there yet) would have a bright side- sure we'll own less, but just maybe we'll have our communities and families back. how did we ever get the idea that things are better than people? oh wait, yeah, advertising, assorted medias, government policies...

tracy and i are seriously considering going further in simplifying our lives by getting rid of cellphones and cars. there is a fantastic car share co-op in victoria and cycling makes getting around a snap. no repairs, insurance, gas parking, accidents, thefts and hit and runs and break-ins. we just got a whopping cell phone bill for $380.00 for the three phones because i had a lot of phone business i had to take care of and it pushed my minutes into the stratosphere. i would have used skype but it's been acting up lately. i might try a dedicated voip phone system. funny, i can't recall the last time i got a call on my cell that required me to get it while i was away from home. i only got my first cell in 2000; somehow i survived before then. in fact, i just read in the g&m that only about 2/3 of canadians own cellphones. most of the remaining 1/3 live in sask and the yukon.
being a retired hipster this will be a real break from my past. i mean, i should be lining up to buy an iphone right? but unfrtunately no matter how hip i was, what things have translated into is big money for flashy toys to show how cool you are, nobody needs a $600 phone plus exhorbitant monthly charges. it's tha cache thing. which is worth about as much as the sludge i pump out of my holding tank.
frankly, owning a hoodride has a hell of a lot more meaning and provides an actual political statement compareed to the chinese manufacturered toys of self importance. if you don't know the meaning of hoodride, look it up-it's so cool.

my hoodride:

sweet 1968 vw single cab pickup, first year bay window vw,  original dealer logo, lowered with american alloy wheels. paint is crap. it turns heads everwhere and poeple constantly come up to me to tell me how cool my rig is. and no ubiquitous toy phone - i built this fucker outta two trucks. guys can blow 100 grand ona sweet-ass mercedes or bmw and nobody notices it. but this cheap old truck is what makes people smile and point. it's for sale btw, $10,000 and i'll lose money even at that price. nothing to do with a hoodride, just how things worked out.


i would also like to find out if i can get a break on my power if we switched to our solar panels in the summer; it would be nice to get further off the grid. right now we pay $50.00 a month for power and yet have less living space than almost everyone else at the dock, so we are subsidizing them. not a big deal, but i would like to find a way of opting out if i want to.

as canoe cove marine doesn't see fit to fix the damage they did to my engine i'm going through insurance, and they can haul them into the courthouse. but i have to figger out how to get satan outta his hole. there is no hatch to take off to expose him, so he kinda has to slide back into the salon and then be lifted out, maybe with the boom. if i'm very lucky i will be able to to replace said rear crankshaft seal without pulling the engine. but the v-drive and tranny have to come out. fortunately, the insurance co will pay me my going rate to do the work.

btw, i got an email from cbc asking about my floating commune idea; i'll have to get back to them. should be interesting...

more good news is that apple is giving me a brand new laptop to replace this one. although i've got two years worth of use out of this macbook, it had several warranteed problems with it because it was new technology. early-adopter syndrome they call it. anyway, to make amends they are giving me a new one complete with upgraded 2 gigs of ram, 160 gig harddrive and upgraded processor and an upgraded dvd burner superdrive. not bad. i doubt any other manufacturer would stand behind their product in such a way. good for apple.

Eddie Vedder & Rahat Fateh Ali Khan "the Long Road"

I got this email recently. i'm very glad something is being done with the old girl. i even watched in amazement as smoke started pumping out of her stack the other morning. nothing moved but it seemed they got engines going (or something was on fire?).

Hello!
 
Was on your site, very cool!!
 
Thought you folks might find this interesting, living in the Victoria Harbour about the SS Beaver at Fishermen's Wharf.
 
After four years, and about a million dollars, a lot of hard work, sweat and tears, we all are very passionate in bringing back The 136' SS Beaver in all her grace and glory.
 
Our Mission, is to create History, Community and Fun. Our goal this summer, is to reintroduce The SS Beaver back to Canada and it's rich heritage, to recapture Canada's interest in this beautiful vessel, and we are doing it at a great time too, with all our exciting events happening in the City of Victoria, BC-150, Tall Ships Festival, History Bites, Classic Boat Festival and so many more, with future plans in cruising to Vancouver for the 2010 Games.
 
"The "SS Beaver" is a fantastic opportunity right now in British Columbia's sesquicentennial year.
As you know, The original "Beaver" was at the reading of the proclamation of the joining of the two colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia in 1858 and in 2008 our "SS Beaver" wants to be  viewed as an asset that all British Columbians, Canadians and World visitors can call on as a vehicle to provide space and transportation for social, business, family and government events. Emphasis will be placed on the vessel and its place in BC history as a former Canadian Navy vessel notwithstanding its connection to the original SS Beaver and the huge community building that took place around that ships' efforts.

Our focus over the next four years will be to offer the services of the "SS Beaver" as a Dockside and Cruising charter vessel in and around Victoria Harbour with on-board catering, entertainment, gift shop and historical  tours of the ship. A major change of focus will be to offer group events only, there will be no walk-on traffic except for the tours. The groups will arrange their own liquor license for each event and carry their own event liability insurance. We will supply the fully qualified bar staff and management.

Our theme will be the history of the "Beaver", both in its original and its current format because there is a great wealth of knowledge to be drawn on and disseminated about both vessels. We hope to establish and maintain links to all the relevant BC and Cascadian  museums and affinity groups, and offer on-board space to them for the display of relevant artifacts. We also want to include references to the  First Nations peoples who in the 1800's welcomed the SS Beaver into many harbours up and down the coast including the local Songhees, Esquimalt and many others.
 
We here onboard the "SS Beaver" take our social responsibility seriously and wish to donate a percentage of our sales to worthy causes including the homeless and youth programs. Next year, we are hoping to have onboard history classes, educating elementary school children in our Canadian history and how The SS Beaver took its place in history. I am personally considering myself doing this in period captains inform for the kids, it would be fun, and they would remember for a life time.

What is even more exciting is that we will be putting in place a plan to establish a foundation fed from the revenues of the operations of the SS Beaver. This foundation  will be dedicated to creating a fund for the building and operation of a full size replica of the original SS Beaver in its sailing format to be built right here on Vancouver Island using local labour and wooden ship building expertise."
 
 The SS Beaver been getting a lot of media attention recently, We have been all over the TV, Radio, News Papers, and getting support from our community and from other groups in bringing her back. We all having so much fun, and we are booking events, and the buzz is on, about the SS Beaver, Check out our site www.SSBeaver.ca .
 
 
Cheers for now...
Jonathan Henriksen
 

all i can add is good luck to them.


other news


i've recently begun volunteer work for a way cool non-profit org called innovative communities.org
what this org does is bring together people from all over the world to work on projects for the disadvantaged. what's unique about this is that it is totally online and virtual - no offices.  we bring together experts and money and solutions to bring about real change on the ground. because of this unique structure and the fact that we are 100% volunteer run, our overhead is only 5%, meaning 95% of allocated funds go to projects. For iniatiatives in the developing world  it's 100%!

we are also 100% transparent and our accounts are online. oh, and we're not talking a few pennies here -we have assets in the millions.

currently our website is ghastly (ironic for an online org) and that's the first thing i'm dealing with. our new look should be launched shortly.

as part of this, here's an email i sent to our prez -

 i think there is a housing opportunity that isn't being accessed. one could approach it from a variety of ways, but the least expensive is what i'll put forward first.

there are a great many very large wooden boats out there that are going for very little money because the costs of maintenance makes them uneconomical commercially. there is quite a bit of public moorage space in victoria that is managed by the harbour authority. it seems to me that one untapped social housing alternative would be to acquire one of these large vessels and use them as communal housing.
because of course you do not have the kind of space available that you have with say, an apartment, the housing would have to be communal. members would get their own "bedroom", but living space would be shared. this could be simply low-cost communal housing or perhaps a transition home, a home for single moms and their kids, that kind of thing.
 
i'm sure that the harbour authority could waive moorage fees (once you convinced them about the merits of the scheme), and acquiring a boat for free (maybe something in the 100 foot range) would be quite possible, so the only costs would be renovations, upgrades and so forth.
the harbour authority also charges a flat fee of 40.00/month for power, regardless of vessel size.

fortunately you wouldn't have to make the vessel seaworthy, which would be very costly; a boat moored to a dock is very different and falls under far fewer regulations than one that sails under it's own power.

one of the joys of this kind of thing is that I don't think you have to worry about zoning. there are very, very few regs governing who can live aboard and where. you could distribute vessels around wherever liveaboards are allowed. there are a few large boats here that do have groups of people living on them, but they still just pay the same amount for moorage and power regardless of how many people live there.

alternatively, you could do the same by building or acquiring a floathome. the upside of this is that you get a more traditional kind of home, the downside is that there are much fewer options available for moorage.

because real estate is such a factor in social housing, and floating housing bypasses this expense, it might be something to think about.

another final benefit is that what are the chances that marginalised people will ever get to live in waterfront accommodations?

nathaniel


and there's this video...


cool, huh? i'm glad i'm not aboard. can you imagine being on the car deck? or anywhere else for that matter. how do they keep people from falling all over the place? seatbelts?


Sunset Time?

another thing is that i'm ending this blog. i would still keep it up as an online reference for other folks who wonder what the liveaboard life is like (from my perspective), but i'm not sure i have much more to add. they say it takes a year to adapt and by gum they were right. now it's just life. a very sweet priviliged life, but just life nonetheless. i suspect it will just be more of the same - the occasional disaster, adventure, and a cool, inexpensive way to pass one's days.

the tendency is to just let things fade out but i don't like to do it that way. i get a fair  amount of traffic here and i don't want to leave my readers hanging, wondering if it'll keep going or what. better to just say i've said my say (on this topic) and maybe start another one.

i hope i've encouraged folks who are sitting on the fence to move to this lifestyle. it's fun, it's sustainable, and it's inexpensive. what more could you ask for?
 

I got this and i'm putting it here so i can respond...

Well, Nathaniel, you've taken one of the possible easy routes out by driving a wedge between the supposed domains of religion and of science and then asserting that they operate on the basis of different paradigms. But they're equally just paradigms or models, a way of looking at things. When you say "ideas of spirituality and knowledge of the physical world are completely separate things" I think of many people for whom they are one and the same--for whom the sacred is the physical world. And sometimes scientific claims sound to me suspiciously like religious ones.
Many religious matters can be tested scientifically. For instance, suppose someone claims that meditation calms them down or that people with a religious faith face death with more ease or are more altruistic. Those statements would all be testable.
Wallace Stevens said, "The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else." Yann Martel in Life of Pi is saying something similar. But it depends on how much credence you want to give to the dominant scientific paradigm and its exclusive claims to "truth."

i assert the difference because of the ontologies of the paradigms and because culturally that is how they are perceived; the majority would not point to a rock and say there is god. if everyone approached the "models" as just one more way of approaching what we call reality, there would be no problem. the difficulty arises because politics and social power is involved, and at the very least the arguments from both sides should be grounded in the ontologies of their belief systems, and admit their resultant limitations. actually, if they did so (which is waht i was arguing for) there would be no argument.

simply put, science is an "isomorphism" between theory and the empirical; a guy has a theory and tests the theory against empirical observations; it is both mind and matter, ideas and measures. it no more encapsulates all of reality than the dregs in the bottom of a teacup, but within it's own frame of reference it seems to do a good job.

Religion, which is human spirituality made political, is wholly theory based. it is complex, metaphorical, allegorical, and attemps to define the non-empirical. because the subject of concern (god) is not empirical or directly observable, the theoretical postulates do not attempt to justify themselves through observation; i.e. there is no empirical way to disprove the hypothesis that jesus is the son of god. those that devised these theologies had no interest in proving their assertions because arguably, they knew what they were doing was polemic; they were attempting to discuss something none of the formulators had ever seen or experienced themselves. religious material can and should be seen more as art.
this has become corrupted over time until we have individuals attempting to impose the empirical upon this art, and therefore lend it the power and credibility of - science.

of course before science people often used theological explanations for observed events, but observed events only very loosely informed the theology. and that's another difference between the paradigms - in science you go back and forth between the observed and the theory, adjusting the latter to more eloquently explain what is being observed. theologies persist despite all physical evidence against them. it doesn't mean they are "incorrect" within their own frame of reference, but it does mean that they cannot rationally or appropriately be used to explain the physical world.

in response to the above comment, the examples he gave might be thought of as spritual in nature but they are not part of a theology that attemps to define god, whch is what i'm discussing here.

as far as beliefs that see the physical world as sacred, i think these ideas still hold. you may claim that the rocks have a spirit, but that is still the realm of pure theory because it isn't testable. the rock itself might be testable, but the hypothesis invokes god, which is not. as i said above, by definition religions deal with non-testable subjects. this is very important, because the purpose of spirituality/religion, is to grapple with questions for which there may be no answer through other means, including empiricism. while i would not want to walk on a bridge built by faith, i also wouldn't want a world view only informed by what is measureable and testable.

here's an excellent briefing on the subject, although it doesn't deal with the epistemology (philosophy of knowledge). it really is such an annoying subject, because so much rides on this cultural debate and yet neither paradigm has anything to do with each other, much less contradict their respective assertions. it's comparing apples and shrews.
let's get it straight, people. it's  simple: science has NOTHING to say about religious matters. in fact it CANNOT comment at all on anything that is not falsifiable through replicated experiment.  science can ONLY falsify hypothesis on empirical data. end of story. that's it. period. ANYTHING that is beyond physical measurement cannot be tested scientifically and exists outside of the domain of science. in many ways the scientific method is a very limited (albeit powerful) tool for testing reality.

science has risen as the dominant epistemological paradigm because it is so effective at decoding the fundamentals of the material world, which translates easily and quickly into the marketplace. it is no secret that capitalism, science, and the middle class all emerged at roughly the same point in history. science has taught us how to control the physical world for production and profit.

whatever one's views on god, i doubt many would assert that any godhead is a physical, tangible object, and if not, science remains mute. unfortunately you have folks from the science/rational side who get it wrong by arguing against god, as if the material record proves or disproves the existence of a higher being. i remember one professor telling me that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". that quote was in relation to limnology, but it applies to anything that science is concerned about. and no scientist worth his salt would dare claim that science knows or is even capable of grasping everything. scientific knowledge only grows according to the imaginations of those who devise hypothesis; if you don't think of a brilliant idea, you can't test it. do we think we have had all the brilliant ideas?

for myself, ideas of spirituality and knowledge of the physical world are completely separate things and coexist as easily as my understanding of flemish art and benthic ecology. which is actually quite reassuring.

i won't bother debating biblical literalism because that one is immutable to any kind of reasoned discourse. you can quite rationally debate god, but it collapses here because there are no rules, just ideology. if you want to think god lives in the clouds, so be it. or that adam and eve were real folks and one day archaeologists will discover the site of the original eden.
like Karl Giberson says, that's just intellectual laziness, and normally it would be a harmless paradigm, but that kind of thinking is coupled with an intensely hungry desire for power.

and that is the real kernel of the problem. it is my belief that the core tenet of christianity is love. add a good dose of scepticism, lots of humility, compassion, empathy, curiosity and probably most importantly self-reflection, and you are probably getting close. this has nothing to do with absolute thinking, which biblical literalism most certainly is. and throughout history absolute thinking has always been the slippery road to hell. ironic, isn't it?

tall ships entering the harbour. although it was rather cool and drizzly i decided to hop in the dinghy and meet them as they came in.



the nina above is my favourite. incredible to think that people crossed the atlantic in a little tub like this in the 15th century.




the fellow in the red canoe earned a bellow from a cop boat for getting distracted by a camera and accidentally blocking traffic. there were as many cops out there as tall ships.









when i saw this i had an eerie vision of what it must have looked like a hundred and fifty years ago when these kinds of ships first showed up in the harbour.




i'll admit it: i have a passion for these old ships (at least the designs are old, most are modern replicas). i think they are graceful and beautiful. but i think it also best to approach them with the same critical eye as you would an old cathedral - gorgeous, humbling, and yet monuments to tyranny. while wind has carried world trade for thousands of years, more recently, ships like these transported 18 million african slaves to america. much closer to home, the hiada  were reduced to a tenth of their population by the smallpox these ships carried. and of course there is the over-all genocide of indigenous peoples throughout africa, australia, north america and many other parts of the world due to colonisation made possible by the world's navies. i wonder if the local first nations cheer so lustily at the sight of one.

even aboard the vessels themselves, the seamen who worked them lived lives like chattel, especially the pressed legions aboard british navy ships. floggings, hangings, the press - and yet the hms bounty is notorious because of a mutiny, not the brutal treatment of her enslaved men. this is part of the truth that is masked by the beauty of these ships.

for my part i am very glad that these ships are now reduced to simple forms of grace and seamanship, divorced from their often barbaric history.

i have been having computer problems yet again. that's what you get when you adopt new technology. the good news is that it looks like apple will be sending me a new replacement - not bad after two years worth of use of my current machine.

the weather here in victoria has been absolutely superb. fantastic local beer, warm winds, fresh barbeque'd salmon right here off the dock, we're going sailing tomorrow - sometimes life really is like a beer commercial and it absolutely doesn't get any better than this. there are days like today when i can't believe how privileged we are and i wonder how can anyone deserve such abundance and beauty.

i'm trying to figger out some hard numbers on our energy footprint, and it's a real bear. even finding some average household numbers for this part of the world is difficult. best i could find is an average in alberta of 600,000 watt-hrs per month. that's averaging all months and all housing types.  a very good number for a small apartment would be around 100,000 watt-hrs/month. that's with the best appliances, programmed thermostat, unplugging electronics etc.

aboard fainleog we have little of that stuff - no dishwasher (except me) only a computer and car stereo that runs in the background, a fridge that draws about 60 watts when it's running, 10 and 20 watts 12 volt halogen lights, and a 5 gal hot water heater (1500 watts). heating water and living space uses up about 99% of our energy needs. even our stove is gas which is very efficient and a 20 lb bottle last for months when we don't use it for space heating. when we have been on the hook, we draw about 70 watts when the fridge is cycled on. imagine your entire home running on the power of a single light bulb.
of course in the winter we run 2250 watts for space heating and i have no idea how much energy goes into that small hot water tank (far more would be lost through convection and radiation than comes out our taps). i don't know how many watt-hrs the average bc home uses for residential heating. i do not that my utility bills for our last home were almost 300.00 month for hydro and gas combined.
if nothing else we know that we have a great lifestyle and yet a low impact one as well.

i've also gotten into the cycling bug and living so close to everything i haven't used the truck all week. so damn the expensive gas. it's a great life.

one drawback to having moved out to fisherman's wharf is that it is quite a bit colder out here compared to the inner harbour - the air temp can be three-four degrees colder, it's windier, and i swear that the ocean is colder as well. with july on the horizon i pulled out our large 1500 watt heater and replaced it with the small 750 watt jobby that we use in the v-berth in the winter. big mistake. every night we've been forced to fire up our dickenson propane "fireplace" to take the chill off. i don't believe we used our heater last summer, certainly not every night. but the floor gets really cold, with the water hovering around 11 degrees and once the sun sets we have to fire up something and 750 watts of heat just isn't adequate. i was going to line the sole with insulation for next winter, but i might have to do it sooner than i thought.

tracy only gets another week off this year and as it's been a very tough spring on us (our daughter has had some severe health issues, forcing her to go on disability), i'm thinking someplace hot would be just the ticket. probably the okanagon and spend a few weeks crisping on some beach. we have very fond memories of osoyoos as we went there camping many summers when the kids were little fantastic place for sailing hobie cats as it can be a very windy lake, and the water is incredibly warm.

later this summer i'm planning on heading out solo for a couple of weeks. the big issue is finding a place for tracy to stay during this time. the long and the short of it is that with all the stress tracy just isn't up to going on a major cruise, even if she took the time off. unfortunately, and like many other couples i've met, sailing is where tracy and i part company. it's not that she is adventurous, but sailing is just too, well, physical. the real physical risk just isn't something that interests her, no matter how small it might be (i would argue that driving a car is more dangerous). it's all about perception. she would rather backpack across asia then sail up to the broughtons.
the issue of home really complicates it, a realisation that came clearer to me after a discussion we had. tracy has come to see our boat as home, which to her means safety, stability, refuge; the one place safe to retreat to when it all gets to much.  and that notion of home is put in jeopardy whenever we throw off our moorings.

i think we should have had that discussion before we started the liveaboard life because her notion of home is very different than mine, and frankly, incompatible with cruising and exploration by sea. for me, home really is where i hang my hat; i've made a lot of places home - including cars - and as long as i have a door to close behind me i'm content. the idea of being able to bring my home with me on explorations is something i've always loved, which is why i've enjoyed my stints living out of rvs or automobiles.
but tracy needs permanence and stability, which means her comfort zone is keeping the boat tied up at the dock.

if we had an apartment in town i know her willingness to cast off would be enormously increased. she was much more an adventurer aboard when we had our little thunderbird, even though it wasn't half the boat fainleog is. her ideal life would be to own a condo ashore and cruise with something fun and inexpensive like a catalina 27.

i said that we should have talked about this sooner, but really, how could we know?  everyone we meet loves our lifestyle, and yet very few people are willing to try it. the myth of romance is very strong regarding living aboard, but the truth is most people do want the stability of their home built on solid earth, looking the same whenever they come home, immovable and reassuring. most couldn't live out of a car, rv, or boat, because it's too tenuous, too uncertain. and i think this is especially so for most women. which is why 95% of liveaboards i've met are single men.

since the main purpose of this blog is information, i would encourage anyone contemplating this kind of lifestyle to throw out the romance and have a hard look at what home means to you. anyone can adapt to the minor discomforts of living in a small space, but it would be much, much more difficult to change a deep-seated need for stability and security. and it would be a shame to spend major $$$ for a great bluewater boat only to find that suddenly your spouse cannot leave the dock.



we recently saw the movie young people f-ing, and my recommendation is to not bother or wait until you are really bored and get the dvd when it comes out.  in my opinion the movie was dull, and not because i was hungering for booty (not that there's much in this movie either). it was promoted and reviewed as smart and quirky and insightful, but only if you are 17. the movie showcases sexual coupling between assorted (straight) individuals who look in their early thirties but are supposed to be a decade younger,  which already bodes no good for believability.  but the dialogue is very much the bland cliche of people who have not had many insights into themselves or others, which i suppose is realistic enough for most young twenty-somethings though it makes for painful watching.

and the situations that are set up are so very banal - the player who finally falls for a girl who is also a player, the exes that pretend that they no longer have feelings for each other, friends making out who turn out to have real feelings for each other, a young couple bored with each other, and roomate threesome that becomes awkward.
because these people are such superficial automatons, we really don't care what happens to them. and there is no getting to know them and so developing some empathy; we are introduced to them while they are already committed on an obvious course and i really could care less whether it worked out or not.
i didn't see any chemistry between any of these fornicating actors. mindless, empty, shallow and superficial. is that what we are supposed to believe young people's sexuality is all about?

there were a few laughs, though several young men around us thought some mildly amusing scenes were the best thing since free weed, and several girls went ooh, and aww,  and "that's so sweet" when one character gave his partner a rose on his birthday. so maybe if you're 19 the movie feels real, which is a scary thought.

we had our first boat/dock party yesterday evening. it was a hoot. the weather was as good as it gets around here, although the wind really picked up later on and eventually most of us fled for the relative warmth of the cockpit and down below. the wind and rolling was a bit disconcerting for some but comforting to others. it was by far the most people we've ever had in that cockpit - something around ten or eleven i believe, as by that time some folks had fled the weather. i've come to the conclusion that a dock/boat is really the best place to throw a party. i have to apologise to the neighbors as it was a bit crowded and hard to pass through.

we did get a visit from a young girl who lives a few docks down. the smell of barbeque'd hamburgers drew her and i invited her for supper. she sat there with the adults enjoying the party, and there was tons of great food and desserts brought by all.




it's been a tough week for us but we decided we had to go sailing today. there was a gale force wind warning for later on, although it was unclear what "later" meant. given tracy's concerns i decided to keep close to home and just practice reefing and sail handling and stuff. we started out with a single reef in the main and a partially - furled genoa, but the wind started piping up and i could only balance the boat by pulling out more headsail, which meant a 30 + degree heeling and that's with doing all i could to flatten the main and dumping the mainsheet quite a bit. we ended up with two reefs and half a jib and still had no problem doing 7 plus knots. we pounded uphill all afternoon against wind and tide and sure didn't make a hell of a lot of headway. she doesn't point with a damn with the jib having such a horrible shape (partially furled). i think i'm gonna bring my storm jib aboard for days like this.
but it was about having fun on the water on a gorgeous summer day and so how far we got didn't matter. tracy got to helm and i did all the grunting and it was wonderful. i was in a sweater and shorts and tracy was in hoodie, windbreaker, gloves, pants, toque. i guess she thought it was chilly.
it was pretty choppy out and we had some good ones come over the bow; it was the first time we've ever had water running down the windward deck.

we've adopted new technology aboard. i was tired of the at times extremely poor internet speeds we had with bbx - at one point i measured 2.5kbs, which was about the right download speed in 1985. unfortunately for unknown reasons there is little service at fisherman's wharf - telephone lines and cable are not brought to the docks so you have to wire up your own system, which would have been a lot of work and expensive. a neighbor just started up with rogers portable internet and although i had a great deal of trouble getting it fired up (tech support was very confused and they didn't know what to do about my not having a permanent address), but after two days of trying it's finally working and i get 100-200kbs with their cheapest offering at $19.00/month for the first year. that's good enough for the internet tv that i watch, which is the most bandwith hungry app i use. another neat thing about it is that when we were halfway to race rocks i checked and we still got internet.

 

tracy and i had a visit with friends last night and the subject came up about how we work together as a team when we are sailing. although there was much discussion, the short answer was "not very well". after a lot more debate i came to the conclusion that what works in a marital relationship is much less suitable for working together on the water.
tracy and i do our best to function as equals; we share power and responsibility and like all long-term couples we have worked out a way where both of us get our needs met. through most issues this has served us well, but on the water it falls apart.

like many women, tracy is an anxious sailor. this has become more pronounced as she has gotten older. concurrently, she has abdicated most of the responsibility to helming and decision making to me. but occasionally, when we are in a novel situation she will get more anxious than usual,  and like anyone else when they are nervous she wants more control of the situation. and so she argues with me on the best course of action. not surprisingly this deteriorates rather quickly as i try to explain my rationale and why i'm doing what i'm doing.

it doesn't help that she hasn't been following tides, charts, currents etc, and so doesn't know our location, our depth and all the other factors a helmsman needs to know in order to make decisions on the water. she just knows she doesn't like what she perceives and wants it changed.

being the democratic individual that i am i engage in debate with her, which doesn't help her anxiety at all, and only leads to increasingly heated argument. generally i will do what i can to make her feel more comfortable, but there have been a few times when i believe i have made incorrect choices because i'm trying to comfort her, rather than what i think is best.

 when it comes to skippering, democracy has to piss off. i believe that when you take on the responsibility of skipper, you have to become an absolute authority; there is no space afloat for committee decisions. it doesn't mean that tracy's opinion is ignored. it does mean however that her opinion is only factor among many, and ultimately the decision is mine and mine alone to make and it undermines that authority if i have to argue or explain why i'm doing something.

to the feminists out there who accuse me of sexism, let me make it clear that i would have absolutely no problem in letting her take over and be skipper any time she chooses. the thing is she doesn't want that responsibility and i can respect that. but you can't have it both ways.

i believe that exercising proper authority at the helm will in the long run reassure her when a situation is a little dicey. the more confident i am in my choices, the more she will be reassured. it will be interesting to put that theory to the test.


and speaking of authority, i saw this local artist's artwork in the t/c today. apparently he landed a contract with ford auto. i found the images disturbing. i remembered something very like it back in my art school days and went online to see what i could find. although i didn't locate quite what i was looking for, what i did find shows what i mean. the first three images are fraser's.













although there are some real stylistic differences and fraser's work is more art nouveau (totalitarian regimes tend to loathe  abstraction), the themes of power, masculine power,  are represented in similar ways. maybe all that it means is that power, or the urge to power, is itself banal.