Blogger Help for New Readers and Call to all for Life Saving Donations

Hello New Reader! (If you are a long-time reader, skip this next paragraph)

If you are not familiar with blogger, then you may be confused by the posts you are seeing.  Blogger shows the most recent blogs first.  I wish I knew of an easy way to read a blog chronologically.  If you have come to my blog because we talked about Egypt or international teaching, and you wanted to know more, then I recommend that you start at the beginning and read this backwards starting from the 2016 posts. For reference, we were in Egypt from 2016-2019 and I was much more consistent about blogging at that time.

Help Needed:

The Children of the Exumas need you!

Shockingly, on many of the family islands in The Bahamas, children do not own lifejackets, nor do they learn how to swim, and yet, they often are transported to school by boat.  On a recent ride to school, a mother and her child fell out of the boat and nearly drowned.  No one on the boat had a lifejacket, and few were able to swim or even do a survival float.  Our friends on S/V Beachscape, Dave and Kim Leverich, want to change that.  They are looking for donations of new or slightly used lifejackets for children to be taken to the Exumas next season.They have also pledged swim lessons for any children who would like to learn to swim.  In order to accomplish this, this summer they will also be taking classes to become Red Cross certified Water Safety Instructors.  They are also looking for anyone who would like to pledge their time to help the children learn to swim.

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If you can donate lifejackets, or plan to be in the Exumas next season and can help with swim lessons, please let us know!  You can contact me at svupbound@gmail.com or you can contact Dave and Kim through their website at https://www.sailawaywithussc.com/

Our plan is to be back in the Exumas next December/January, so we can help transport some of the lifejacket donations. Kim and Dave will transport the majority of donations and will recruit other cruisers who can transport donations.

Water Conservation

This post is about water, specifically, about how potable water is a very valuable and limited resource when living on a boat.  It seems counter-intuitive that water is a limited resource while living surrounded by water, but it is true.  Our boat carries two tanks of water. One holds 240 liters, the other holds 300 liters of water ( about 142.6 gallons).  Since we very rarely stay at marinas, most of the time we fill our water tanks with a hose when we stop to get diesel. We don't have to get diesel very often, so we try to make our water last 3-4 weeks.  In the USA and all the developed countries, water is readily available, generally safe, and free at fuel stations.  We have a "water key" that accesses the tanks through the deck.  With a hose, we can generally fill our tanks in 20-30 minutes.  Sometimes, due to not enough depth at the docks for our boat,  we have had to dinghy ashore and fill jerry cans with water.  This method can take us 2-3 hours to fill our tanks.  In the USA and Europe, we generally trust the water sources to be safe, but when we aren't sure, or if the taste of the water isn't to our liking, we use a variety of filters on the hose.  We use a particle filter when we are unsure if the water has anything that can cause us to get sick, a charcoal to take out impurities and make the water taste better, and we also use a chlorine filter as an added layer of protection.  Our kitchen faucet has yet another particle filter.  We also carry a few extra gallons of bottled water just incase our tanks started leaking. 

This all means we have to stay pretty conscious of how much water we have and how much we are using. 

Showers. When we are in a safe place to swim, we can "shower" every day on our swim platform, only using water from our tank to quickly rinse off.  Otherwise, we only shower about 2 times a week, even when it is hot and humid.  And, by shower, I don't mean a nice, soaking, 20 minute shower.  Oh, no!  You get wet, turn off the water, lather up, shampoo, etc, then turn the water on to rinse.  That's it! Would we like to take showers more often?  Do we miss long showers? Absolutely! But, we get used to just freshening up with a washcloth instead, and we think about our life on the boat as a microcosm of the reality of the Earth's supply of fresh water. If we all spent more time thinking about using only the water we NEED, not what we WANT, we could protect this limited resource.  In case you did not know, only 3% of the water on Earth is fresh water. Of that, only 1.2% is available for drinking. Here  is a short NASA video about the issue. https://youtu.be/4HSFKwho7MQ

Washing dishes.  In our kitchen, we have two faucets.  One brings up sea water by pushing on a foot pump. For a long time, Gary felt it was safe to use the sea water to wash our dishes.  It probably is when away from land, and if the dishes were always rinsed in fresh water and we always remembered to give them a bleach water spray.  However, that was not always the case and twice I got very, very ill while living on the boat. One time I ended up in the emergency room, very sick, unable to eat or drink anything and very dehydrated.  I don't know for sure if it was the practice of using sea water to wash our dishes or not, but since we switched to fresh water from our tanks only, I have not gotten sick.  However, using precious fresh water to do dishes means we have to be ultra-conservative when we do dishes.  I use a bowl as a basin so I can use less water and still feel like the water is deep enough to clean the dishes.  We try to only use Dawn dish soap because our sink water goes directly out of our boat, not into a tank.  We put the cleaned dishes in the small side of the sink, spray them with the bottle of bleach water, then when the sink is almost full, we use the spray handle to quickly rinse them.  In this way, we can do all the dishes for the day with less than a gallon of water.  

Doing Laundry: Usually we splurge and find a laundry mat that's close enough to walk to, but there are times when we need to do laundry onboard. Again, we try to be very water-conscious.  We used to use buckets on the back deck, but this lifestyle provides more than enough sun, so now I do the laundry in the kitchen sink when nevessary.

And, we have plenty of lines to hang our laundry on.

Sailing Life- First crew

           A thoughtful retirement gift from my Gladstone colleagues now graces the wall of UPBound.

Our daughter Cassandra and her long-time boyfriend, Blake, joined us for our Maiden Voyage.

 

Cassandra learning the ropes.

                                                             Blake as Helsman

Our crew arrived in Italy for our maiden voyage aboard S/V UP Bound.

  But, before I begin.... Did I mention the inspiration for our boat name?  If you’re not from the state of Michigan, you might not have noticed that Michigan has 2 parts- 2 peninsulas.  By definition, a peninsula is an area of land surrounded on 3 sides by water. Most people are familiar with the southern half, shaped like a mitten.  However, there is a northern half (well, perhaps third) that is surrounded by Lake Superior to the north, Lake Michigan to the south, and Lake Huron and the St. Mary’s seaway to the east and it is connected to Wisconsin on the west, and accessed from lower Michigan by the Mackinac Bridge, a suspension bridge longer and more beautiful than the Golden Gate Bridge.  Populated by miles of state and federal forests, it is an outdoorsman’s paradise.  Because it has more trees than people, this northern peninsula is often forgotten about by people in the lower peninsula as well as by people in other states,  so the people that live in this northern peninsula have formed a strong identity with the region.  The people call themselves “Yoopers” and the region is called the U.P. for “Upper Peninsula”.  Our plan was always to sail back to the U.P., with plans to arrive the summer of 2020 for Laura’s parents’ 65th wedding anniversary, her class reunion, and to give rides to family and friends.  Thus, the name “UP Bound” was born.  (We all know how 2020 turned out...more on sailing during a pandemic later)

We were finally ready to cast off.  “Ready” is relative.  As mentioned, we didn’t know how to read our chart plotter because it was entirely in a different language.  

This photo shows how our charts looked AFTER Blake managed to get it in English!

While Gary had taken sailing classes a year prior, none of the rest of us had any training, and I guess Captain Gary believes in the pedagogy of John Dewey - learn by doing.  It wasn’t until we were approaching the docks that Gary would say “Get the fenders ready”.  Really?  What are “fenders” and how do we “get them ready”?  We learned that fenders are the soft things I called “buoys” and they get attached to the “fence” (later I learned the fence was called “lifelines”) on the boat by a double half-hitch with a lock. Fortunately, I knew what a locking double half-hitch was, thanks to our decade of leading a Boy Scout troop!  At the same time, we had to get the lines (ropes) attached to the cleats in the stern (back). (Again, there is a whole technique to this that we learned AFTER we had screwed it up!) In the Mediterranean, you back into the docks. Very often no one was there to help you, so one crew member had to leap onto the dock, holding one of the lines.  This was a hard “No” from  Cassandra and me, who were quite nervous about getting on and off the boat even when it was securely tied to the dock. Luckily, Blake is quite athletic and took it all in stride. (Literally).  Once tied to stern, we then needed to use a boat hook to grab a line hanging in the water from the dock.  These are appropriately named “Slime Lines”.  These lines go towards your bow and are attached to a heavy weight on the bottom way in front of your bow. You tie these lines on each side of your bow, keeping your boat from going side to side. This type of docking is possible because most of the Mediterranean has very, very small tides.

Our boat is using the Med mooring system here in Castro, Italy. Blake valiantly leapt to the dock to tie us up. Unfortunately, our swim ladder had not been properly stowed and let loose as he jumped, nearly sending him into the water! Scary moment.

   A marina full of boats, all using the Med mooring system.  They do not have finger docks like in the US.

This metal ramp, currently lashed to our lifelines, was a necessity in the Mediterranean where the dock was often too far from the back of the boat to safely get on and off.  We would “walk the plank” off the boat.  The jerry cans in front of the lifelines carry extra fuel and water.  Most long-distance cruising boats carry jerry cans on deck. 

Pulling out of Taranto Harbor at 5:30am on June 8, 2019.  This harbor was full of ocean going vessels on mooring balls with long lines, but we couldn’t see them until we were within meters.  We had the original radar, but we didn’t know how to use it yet!  This photo also shows the original hard-bottom dingy. What you can’t see, is the duct tape that is attaching the pontoons to the bottom. We had a cheaper, fully inflatable dinghy tender in a bag below deck, incase this one failed us.

This type of learn-by-doing pedagogy is not really my cup-of-tea because it involves a lot of stress, anxiety, and may or may not have also involved loud voices. And, obviously,  docking and navigating were only some of the lessons we learned.

Washing clothes onboard is a little different than at “home”.  We were thankful for the beautiful weather!

Between these “lessons”, we had some amazing times!

Not knowing how to read distances or speed on our instruments, we decided to sail around the heel of Italy, stopping whenever we felt like it, and we’d go as far as we could in the time that we had.  The hearts mark our voyage.

We loved places where we could pull-up alongside instead of Med mooring.  We also loved all the free docking in Italy!  This was taken in Brindisi.

There are so many great stories to tell from our first 3 weeks! I think I will wait and tell them in my next blog since this one is getting a little long.

In the meantime, remember....

The Next Chapter, otherwise Known as The Sailing Life

 Now that we had our boat, we had to prepare
her for an ocean crossing.  Gary moved aboard shortly after purchase in November of 2018, and I joined him for a few days in January, 2019, following our Christmas back in the US.  This is what we saw out our bedroom portlight when we woke up that first morning.  In SOUTHERN Italy!  The place came to a standstill.

 

We were staying in the water at the Dadarrio Boatyard. Michaela, our broker, continued to help us navigate our way through not only life as sailboat owners, but also helped us navigate our way through the Italian culture.  She called to let us know that everything was shut down due to the snow.  We asked how often Southern Italy gets snow- she told us only once every 3-4 years.  Guess we were just lucky....or not?!

Did I mention that the boat has no heat? Fortunately, the previous owner had left a small space heater for us, and Gary had purchased a comforter for our bed, and we had brought a heavy denim quilt with us that Gary’s mom made, so we didn’t exactly freeze.

Gary got around by renting cars from Rome for 30 Euros a week.  Unfortunately, every 2 weeks, they required him to drive back to Rome and “re-rent” the car for another 2 weeks. This took 10 hours, round trip.   Eventually, we figured out he could fly into Brindisi instead of Rome, and rent the car from there for the same amount from a much nicer rental car business.  Gary tells me I should write a separate blog post about all his rental car experiences in Italy!

The plan was for Gary to spend January through June working on the boat, flying back to Egypt once a month or so to see me and “reset” his Visa.  Everything about that last sentence turned out to be naive and wrong!  More on that later.

Gary’s quite mechanical.  He once tore our house furnace apart.  I mean, completely apart.  I arrived home from work, opened the garage door, and found our garage full of tables filled with hundreds of little pieces of our furnace!  I didn’t know they had so many parts.  He put it back together and it worked better than ever.

I tell you this so you understand what a surprise it was to hear that Gary struggled to get anything done on the boat. Here he is in the engine room learning about the diesel engine, the filters, the water intakes to cool the engine, and all of the other systems that are in there that I know nothing about...

In the USA, you search websites for what you need to buy, find the place with the best price, order it, and it gets shipped to you, right?  Not the case in Italy.  Gary planned to do the ordering and installing himself.  Here is the only thing he was able to order and install himself.

Yes, the two television sets!  He bought them at a mall. But, anything boat related was impossible to find or buy online!  He was getting so frustrated.  Michaela and a guy at the boatyard kept asking him if he needed anything.  In our American minds, we figured that they would tack on a profit if we asked them to get us anything, and they would then want to install it, too.  But, Gary eventually gave up trying to order a generator, and he knew he needed that professionally installed...so, using Google translate, he got it ordered through the boatyard.  Much to our surprise, the boatyard SUBTRACTED money from the bill.  Since we weren’t EU citizens, they were able to subtract the VAT tax for us.  They also gave us additional discounts for having the work done by them. It worked out to be cheaper to have them order everything we needed than to try to buy things on our own.  Unfortunately, it took us over a month and a half of precious time before we figured this out!

We had a list of things we wanted to get done. Gary prioritized all things having to do with entertainment televisions first, then things for SCUBA diving- the generator and compressor. I prioritized practical things like solar power and a water maker and learning about the electronics for navigation.  I was still working full-time in Egypt, so in June when we pulled away from the dock for the first time, we were ready to SCUBA, but we couldn’t read our navigation charts to know where we were going!

Fortunately, we had two really smart crew members join us for our first three weeks who were better at figuring out the electronic navigation equipment.   More about our first crew in the next blog...

Is this larger font easier to read?  Do you like the larger photos, or does it slow down the loading of the blog?  When I wrote this blog, I chose the large font for the whole thing, but when I look at the blog after it is published, the font appears to be all different sizes.  I have no idea why. Does it look that way on your device?  Any feedback or advice is appreciated!

The Next Chapter, cont- The Search Continues

During a long weekend in early October, we made arrangements with brokers to see 4 different Beneteau Center Cockpit sailboats that were listed for sale in Italy.  We had a packed agenda and had to stay on schedule.  Although we were very close to Pisa and Venice, sadly we didn’t have time to stop and visit.

We did get to make a quick stop in Pompeii, or Pompeo as it is called in Italy.  This ancient city was destroyed by an eruption from Mt. Vesuvius, the bodies of people and animals and buildings were covered in ash, preserving their position in their last moments.  This statue is one example.  Viewing this city from outside the gates, we knew this was a place we needed to return when we had more time.

On our agenda, a well-used Beneteau with a totally remodeled salon with a couch and no navigation desk or salon closet, a blue Beneteau owned by a broker who was looking to maximize his profits, a 44 foot Beneteau owned by a lonely old man, and a 42 foot Beneteau that had only been used 1 month a year, had no updates or modifications, was taken out of the water and stored 11 months a year, and had unmarked woodwork.

Having fallen in love with that first boat we saw (in last post), we really loved the 44 Beneteau owned by the older gentleman.  He spoke no English, we spoke no Italian, but as soon as we got to his boat, it was obvious he was taking us for a ride.  We had barely made it out of the marina when he gestured for Gary to take the helm and just like that, he disappeared into the galley.  We could hear him banging around. Soon he came back upstairs with a plate of freshly slice prouchetto, cheese, crackers, and wine.  He talked the whole time with us not understanding a word.  It was a beautiful day.  He walked on the back deck and threw out a couple of fishing lines.  An hour later, he reeled them in and we headed back.  The whole experience made me think this guy was recently widowed and was very lonely.  I don't really remember the tour of his boat, but I am sure we looked it over very well because this was the boat we decided to make an offer on.  My suspicions were confirmed when the broker called back to tell us that he wasn't ready to sell until he found a new boat to buy!

Our trip included some beautiful sites along the way that we would return to at a later date.

We drove a lot, stopping when we got tired. One time, we stopped in a small town a ways off the main route and got a hotel room.  Most Italians outside of Rome do not learn much English.  We've been told it has to do with their contentious history with the Brits.  Anyway, the hotel was quite empty, though it had a large garden for outdoor weddings and a fancy dining room where we enjoyed a full European-style buffet breakfast (meaning, mostly carbs!  Breads and sweets of many varieties, cheese, and thinly sliced meats. No eggs, pancakes, cereal, etc). Only one other person was in this whole dining area, but our American English caught his ear.  We learned that he and his sister, both Americans, had flown back to settle their parents estate.  It was such a small, out of the way town, he wondered how, and why we had decided to stay there for the night.  He was quite shocked that we were there.  We were equally shocked to find that the only other person in the whole dining room was also American!

When we got to the farthest southern spot, we reached the only boat we would tour that was "on the hard".  The broker here, at D'addario Yacht Sales, spoke in broken English.  She got a ladder and we climbed aboard this 2003 Beneteau Oceanic Center Cockpit clipper sailboat.  The wood shined.  The stove and oven appeared to have never been used.  The downside was that this boat would need so many things to make it into a cruising boat...new canvas for starters, solar, a solar arch, new batteries, updated electronics...the list went on.  

But, as it turned out, this was the boat for us.

Michaela, our broker, was young and new to selling boats.  She took a long time to return emails- until we learned that she took all the emails to a friend to translate them into Italian,then to help her write a reply in English.  We started using Google translate to send her emails in Italian.  The replies came much quicker.

Buying a boat in Italy wasn't exactly straight forward and easy. We got lucky in many ways. The surveyor we had hired in Trieste we learned was one of the best in Italy. He had done us such a favor on the first boat, charging us only a very small fee, that we decided to fly him down to survey this boat.  It passed with flying colors!  He also told us he was very impressed with our broker. He told us she was new and seemed to be wanting to do her best for us. He felt she was very honest and a hard-worker.  And, she did work hard for us. She gave us rides to various government buildings, translated for us, figured out how we could get the Italian documents translated into English so we could register our boat with the US Coast Guard, helped us to get copies of the VAT paid documents (European taxes paid proof), etc, etc.  

Did we save any money by buying our boat in Italy?  It's hard to say, but probably not.  

The next step was to figure out how to purchase things for the boat- but I will leave that for another post.

Here we are, celebrating being boat owners with a Leffe...

           

                   Thanks for reading! Would love to hear your questions and comments!

 

The Next Chapter, cont- From the beginning. Buying a boat in Italy

In March of 2018, we were back in Michigan for Spring Break.  We had a list of our wants and needs for a boat and we were actively looking on the internet for the “right” boat.  Ideally, we wanted a boat that had already sailed the world because it would already be set up with all those things we needed.  We wanted at least two bedrooms (called cabins or berths on a boat) and two bathrooms (called heads). I love me a good bath, so a bathtub was on my “if I can dream” list.  

 

Significantly, major hurricanes passed through the Bahamas and Caribbean the previous year, wrecking many sailboats, so we were advised that prices of boats in the US and Caribbean had gone way up.  It made sense to us, then, to look in the Mediterranean for our boat.

     I had signed up for a “Women Who Sail the Med” Facebook group in order to get more comfortable with the idea of sailing. One day during spring break a woman advertised her boat. They were a family of four with two young girls. They were going to be completing their circumnavigation in the Med in July and wanted people to be aware that they were looking for a buyer. This boat checked all our boxes, was in our price range, AND had a bathtub!  We emailed them to find out when we could see it, and it turned out that they were in the Red Sea, in EGYPT!  What were the odds?  It seemed like fate.

Upon returning to Egypt, we made arrangements to have a driver bring us to their location in Hurghada so we could see the boat.  It was better than we imagined. These parents, being ultra protective of their young daughters, had two of everything incase one thing went out.  They had two radars, two autopilots, two chartplotters, and parts to rebuild every system.  The boat was well-equipped with solar, water-maker, etc. It even had 3 cabins, so one could be used as a garage. It seemed to good to be true.

                              This picture was taken in Hurghada where we 

                              looked at the boat. We couldn’t find any other 

                              pictures from that day.

We kept in contact with the family for the next few months and Gary made arrangements to meet them in Italy at the end of July for a “survey”.  This is basically a complete inspection by an expert in boats.  We had no doubt that we would own this Beneteau Oceanis 44 by the end of July. It seemed ideal.

In July, Gary flew from Michigan to Italy.  I had booked him 2 weeks in an Airbnb to give him time to complete the deal before he would be able to move aboard.  He brought his bike over so he’d have transportation.  

                         Cute, reasonably priced Airbnb. Gary loved it!

love 

 

We were so excited, the family so relieved to have a buyer. 

If you have been on our boat, or if you’ve followed our journey, you may be asking, “But, UPBound isn’t a 44 foot, 3 cabin Beneteau? What happened?”

This “dream boat” had a problem.  

In an effort to make it “perfect” and as safe as possible for his daughters, the owner had decided to have a whole new hull put on it, in Croatia.  He noticed what he thought was an osmosis bubble, and some unscrupulous business people had taken advantage of his lack of knowledge and convinced him it would be best to tear the whole bottom off the boat and rebuild it.  Except, Croatia has NO regulations on the boat repair businesses.  The family pulled into port, full of emotion at just having completed an amazing adventure. Gary was there to greet them. Their boat was pulled out of the water for the inspection, and immediately the whole hull began to bubble.  Our inspector explained to them and to us that the people in Croatia had failed to put the hull on correctly, totally skipping a layer of epoxy. He estimated this boat would have sunk within 2 years.  

This picture shows the damage from the moisture that penetrated the fiberglass

We were heartbroken, but this young couple was devastated.  Likely they had spent the majority of their life’s savings on this boat and adventure, only to end on such a sad and sour note.  

A new hull could be put on the boat, but this would take a lot of time and cost a lot of money, and still not be guaranteed to last very long, so we walked away.

After that, Gary enjoyed a lazy, solo beach vacation in Italy, then returned to Egypt early to welcome the new Schutz staff and give them tours around Alexandria.

                                            Trieste, Italy  This is where he flew in to Italy.

                   Gary was able to ride his bike from his Airbnb to visit this uniquely walled city.

                                                 Palmanova, Italy

                                          But, he spent most of his time at this huge beach.  Grado, Italy

 

 

The Next Chapter - Life Aboard a 42 foot sailboat

 April 26, 2021 

In June of 2019, my job in Egypt was complete. This blog so far 

has been a testament to just how much we learned in just 3 years of living abroad. As first-time expats, everything was a learning opportunity.   We grew and changed quickly.  While living in and learning about another culture, we also learned much more about our own country and culture.  Because we lived in a commune-type situation, living with many of the same people we worked with, often even in the same building as our classroom, we grew personally and socially.  These new diverse set of friends, from all regions of the US as well as several different countries, taught us to see things from a variety of perspectives. As we were afforded many opportunities to travel, we were constantly improving our understanding of geography, history, culture, not to mention we got really good at knowing how to plan and book affordable and interesting vacations in a hurry. 

So, in June, we said our goodbyes to friends in Egypt and moved aboard S/V UPBound in Italy. S/V stands for “Sailing Vessel”.  That was just one of the thousands of things I would learn within the first few months. As newbie sailors, we had a very, very steep learning curve.  

One of our first tasks was to come up with a new name for our boat because, after all, we had no idea how to pronounce her old name “Orifiamma”.

Why has it taken me nearly 2 years to write a blog about sailing?  I am not sure.  I have come up with a lot of “excuses”, each with a grain of truth, but honestly, I am not sure.

I do know that sailing and living on a boat requires a LOT of time-consuming work.  Before we sailed, we regularly watched a few sailing videos on YouTube.  Honestly, I don’t know where these You-Tubers find the time to sail, keep their boat in good working order and presentable, film, and edit.  There is always something that needs to be worked on, and, because tools are generally stored in your main living space, the whole boat gets torn apart every few days.   It’s not like we have space for organized tool boxes- nope- everything from screwdrivers to spare parts for the engine, the toilets, the cupboards, etc is loose in boxes under the seats, and you dig for everything because invariably, what you need is closest to the bottom and back of the storage area.  So, everything takes twice as long to fix on a boat as it might in a house.   No, I am not the mechanic in the boat- but I often have to help find something or another.  So, is lack of time why I haven’t written?  Probably not. 

This part of the boat is called the salon.  The table and seating is on the left, along with the television set, and the navigation station to the right.  The engine compartment is accessed under those steps. This area is also where all the tool are stored.  If you go up the steps, you are in the cockpit, where we spend most of our time when sailing.

This is our galley area.  The stove is on a gimble so the stove stays level, even if the boats is leaning.

 

Swabbing the deck

Jobs continue on land.  The bottom needs anti-foul paint every few years to prevent barnacles from growing on the bottom.

When on land, everything has to be hand carried to the boat.

  

The original mattress needed replacing

 

Before we actually sailed, I dreamed it might be all about enjoying beautiful sunsets, swimming, watching wildlife, relaxing, reading, and exploring new places and meeting new people. Plenty of topics to write about, right?  Well, sailing DOES include all of that, maybe I will eventually write up some of those stories.

The battery on my laptop died before we set sail, so all writing is now being done on my IPad.  I switched phones before we crossed the Atlantic, so early photos are saved on a hard drive with only a few put on Facebook. Newer photos are on an Android, which makes getting them on this Ipad, then onto this blog challenging for my (lack of) techy skills.  Definitely that is a contributing factor.

Other big reasons for not writing- FEAR, VULNERABILITY, and UNCERTAINTY.  Working overseas, living an expat lifestyle, traveling by plane to exotic locations was MY dream.  This much more physically demanding, one-with-nature lifestyle of sailing the world, definitely Gary’s dream.  I was quite certain we would DIE before we got to the Caribbean. The Med was NOT an easy place to learn to sail.  The wind was generally either too much, or too little.  It swirled and changed directions quickly.  I will probably write a post about wind ( but don’t hold your breath.).  

 The other challenge in the Med was finding any sense of community.  In the Med, most people are on charter boats, with friends and family, and no interest in meeting new people.  Cassandra and Blake were with us until late June. After they left, I didn’t find another English-speaking woman until mid-August. It was a very lonely time.  I love my husband, but let’s be real- a woman needs to talk to other women.  

Early on, we didn’t know how to use our instruments, we didn’t know how to determine distances, just how fast is a “knot”, what is a nautical mile, and how far could our boat sail in an hour. There was so much uncertainty about literally everything!  We had to meet our son and his wife in Barcelona September 1.  We had planned a month in Croatia to gain us some time out of the Schengen- just how long would it take us to get there?  Were we in this way over our head?  How do you write about all of these things?  

We have been back in the USA for a year now.  It has taken me a long time to process all we have experienced and learned.  We spent last summer on land. We have been living on anchor all winter.  We are currently motor-sailing in the Atlantic Ocean, along the coast of Florida.  It is my first sail since last June.  It is a beautiful day, 12-15 knots of wind.  I can honestly say I was really looking forward to sailing today and am ready to start writing about some of our adventures, the good and bad.

If you’re reading this, leave me a comment.  I’d like to know what kinds of information you are looking for and what kinds of questions you might have. Shorter, more frequent blogs, or more photos?  A blog about the worst experience we had?  Places and people or the nitty-gritty of everyday life aboard?  Looking forward to hearing from you.