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.