Sailing and the Bus

My wife told me about a friend of hers who is teaching people how to ride the bus. I thought to myself, "How silly, how hard can it be." I found out that my sheltered suburban life had a huge hole in it. I bought a month pass for the system and found out that the bus system in Grand Rapids is complex. Some busses run all week, while other skip Sunday or Saturday. They run different routes depending on the hour of the day. If you do not have the guide with you forget it. I find myself sitting on the bus feeling conspicously wealthy. I have the only Ipod in sight. My backpack is huge. I wear gold rings. It is amazing to me how many people do not ride the bus. We as a family are learning how to ride the bus! It sounds silly to say but you really have to learn the system, where all the stops are and where you can go and when. Someday when I go to school in Vancouver, BC I think this will pay off. Or the day we find ourselves in Istanbul trying to figure out their system knowing ours first should help. I hope. We figure that having a sailboat and using public transportation when on land go hand in hand.

The Bus- 904

One thing i know for sure, it's cold. And wow Christmas is coming fast. Another thing i know for sure is that on-line shopping is the best way to shop; quick and easy.

The family and I (our crew) are all trying to figure out how to save and conserve our money for our voyage. We have discovered the Grand Rapids bus system and sold a car. There is a whole other life out there on the bus, bringing a new adventure for each of us since we all have a bus route to each of our jobs. Supper time among other conversation usually includes some sort of interesting happening from accordian entertainment to a man digging for gold oblivious to comments of the other riders.

It seems that stereotypes are quickly made by all. If you ride the bus you are either black, a college student, Grand Rapids Public School student, white trash, poor, homeless or some sort of factory worker. At work at (St. Mary's hospital) my co-workers seem to feel sorry and unsure of my reasons for riding the bus, thinking that i am a little off.

In the time it takes to warm up the truck, scrape the snow off, i am already half way home (2 miles away) on the bike or the bus, not to mention that its hard on the truck. And oh ya, my truck is still not even warm when I get home.

People who ride the bus assume that you are broke. When asked by a homeless 30 year old how much i make, to whom i answered wisely "enough," assumed that i didn't make that much or i wouldn't be riding the bus.

I usually have very interesting interactions at the stop where i wait for the bus after work. It also happens to be in an area where all the homeless shelters are. Being a white young female alone at 8:00pm bring suspicion my direction. People passing by assume that i always have money to spare for food for them. One girl was quite surprised when i gave her yogurt left over from my lunch. One man offered me his "warm car to sit in" while i waited, later to come and talk with me to see what i was all about. This area is patroled by the GRPD. It never fails that i get strange looks from them. Rolland thinks that they think i am a prostitute under cover. Who knows.

The bus system is a great thing, why is it that here in Grand Rapids everyone needs to ride thier car? True, the bus is at times inconvient and a hassle if you are used to relying on the car. It also takes much planning to ride the bus, can't just zoom off where you want.

I enjoy the bus and meeting new people. There is a sense of community among the regulars who look out after one another.

The real first day - 927

Ok, some members of my sailing team have reminded me that the first time we went sailing was actually a week before the November 17 freeze. The first time we went sailing we had my old Hiawatha 3.6 outboard motor on the back of the boat. We hoisted the mast up and were motoring out of the channel while trying to figure out what all these ropes were for when the trusty 50 year old outboard started screaming. I quick ran from the mast to the motor and shut it down. The lower end of the outboard had stripped out and was no longer moving the boat. Now the embarrasing part - we hadn't purchased an anchor yet. We had no sails up yet, no motor, and no anchor. The wind blew us into a shallow part of the lake and we were stuck. No swimming either, this was the week before November 17. No radio either. Out comes the cell phone to call the coast guard. Yes, our first sail out we had to be towed by the coast guard. They didn't notice I didn't have an anchor. They did give me a ticket for not having the square throwable life preserver, even though I had two preservers for everyone in the boat and were all wearing one. My wife just reminded me that I also almost got knocked out by the boom (appropriate name) while trying to rig the sails after our keel got stuck and the boat was swinging wildly side to side. According to her I was in a daze, non responsive after allegedly being hit. I don't remember it. Ok, enough about that.

First Sailing Voyage - Day 932

I will always remember the date November 17. It was the day that our family sailed together on our own boat for the first time. We froze. The waves were forcast to be 2-3 feet, we got 5-7 instead. 5-7 feet is no problem on our present boat. Our little 22 Ensenada trailerabole was overwhelmed. The waves went right over the cockpit. Everything on the boat leaked. The hatch, the centerboard trunk, the cockpit drains; everything. Every single piece of clothing was soaked with 44 degree (F) water. The sail was wet half way up the mast. We sailed for 22 miles and arrived in Grand Haven, MI exhausted. We tied up at a marina (free: not a soul in sight) and got a room at a bed and breakfast and ran their dryer all night long getting our clothing dried out. Everybody (except me) got seasick. The next day we motored back - Lake Michigan was a sheet of glass. Not a wisp of wind to be found. Ahhh. . . the memories. My family still went out sailing with me the next Spring. My wife is still married to me. I have got it good.

This is our dream boat - Day 934

Shrinky Dink Sailboat and Varnish - Day 935

Went out to our sailboat to check on it while the wind gusted to 45 knots. It was an amazing cacophony of sound to hear the wind rushing through the rigging of hundreds of sailboats. If you looked up, you could almost imagine that you were sailing. This year we had the shrinky dink people put a door in our plastic cover so that we could get inside during the winter. This weekend we pulled all of the wood out of the interior to varnish piece by piece in the basement over the winter. If you do not enjoy varnishing things then you need to buy a boat made in the last decade. Every boat made earlier than about 1985 has little varnished wood pieces everywhere. Varnish is like the little protective piece of plastic that comes on the screen of your calculator when you buy it - temporary. If you want your wood to look like anything and boat to be worth anything then you are going to have to get used to varnishing. Fortunately I enjoy varnishing things, which is odd because I hate painting things with a passion. I think that it is because I enjoy wood, especially teak.

Liferafts - Day 941

Many vessels are found, often years later, floating after being abandoned with liferaft and crew missing. I am not saying that not carrying a liferaft is an option, but the only way I am getting into it is if I have to step up to get into it. Just imagine that you are in a boat getting beaten up by 35 foot waves and you have been bailing water with a five gallon bucket for hours and the wind is only getting louder. Then the mast breaks. There is your liferaft calling out to you. The liferaft requires no looking after on your part. It is a nice womb to curl up in and forget about all your worries. The only problem is that people in liferafts have a very small chance of survival. Estimates vary, but most are around a one in three chance of survival in the open ocean. I will take the sailboat thank you very much.

The things the glossy sailing magazines don't tell you - Day 947

I had huge buck teeth. I spent many many hours at the orthodontist office enraptured, mouth open, looking at some of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Stacks and stacks of sailing magazines with sailboats slicing the water with immense power, yet delicate and peaceful at the same time. Everything in the magazine is beautiful, even the rigging is like jewelry. Later I subscribed to a few (5) sailing magazines. Even more beautiful things. Then you get the boat. You find out about all the things they don't tell you in the magazines. Flies, seasickness, sunburn, cramped, constant repairs, small beds, lack of privacy these are a few of my favorite things. Sailing is all of these things and more. In my buck teeth days I loved the machinery of sailing. In my boat owning days, the machinery means less and less. It is the relationships that make the boat, not the things the magazines show you. The flies bring you together.

Things that sneak up on you - 948

What weighs 20,000 tons, is 1000 feet long, travels at 20 Knots and sneaks up on you? Freighters. You wouldn't think something that looks like it isn't even moving when you are on shore could sneak up on you when you are sailing, but it has happened several times to me. Freighters often don't see you, and even if they are looking for you on radar you are invisible. I at first found it impossible to believe that sailboats are inherently difficult to spot on radar, but I have had enough encounters with these behemoth vessels to believe it. Apparently a 40 foot piece of aluminum mast does not reflect radar well because it is rounded, and the Fiberglas hull is even worse. The only solution to this is to keep a good watch, but they still sneak up on you. A sailor in the Atlantic caught sight of a freighter just as it sliced the front of her boat where her 12 year old son was sleeping. This kind of thing scares me. I have timed several freighters from when I could see them during the day at horizon to when they passed me. It takes 20 minutes. The problem is that they sneak up on you from behind because they are traveling four times as fast as you are and they are for most purposes silent on all but the calmest day. I am going to buy some kind of timer that goes off every five minutes so that the person at helm can prairie dog and look around. 20 minutes isn't very much time on a sailboat.

Choosing a Boat - Day 949

There are thousands of different makers of sailing vessels. All of them were built with a different purpose in mind. This makes for mind boggling choice fatigue.
Sailboats are:
1. Expensive
2. Expensive
3. Expensive
Picking the wrong boat for the task, be it cruising, racing or daysailing, will lead to misery. The fun part is that you really don't know the boat until you own it for a couple of years. This is one of the reasons that the saying "the best day of a sailors life is the day he buys his boat and the day he sells her" is so popular. It is absolutely crucial that a cruising family pick the right boat. This means that you have to look at many many boats and talk their owners into going for a sea trial.
Fortunately I love doing this. I hate looking at houses, I hate owning a house. I love looking at boats. My favorite phrase saying about boats is this:
Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing…nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t, whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else,or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular…

Impossible odds - Day 950

I spent the last four days in Daytona Beach, Florida on a business trip. This is a dangerous place for a sailboat person. I just wanted to take a quick peek at one sailboat. I visited a marina at random, walked into a brokers office at random, he picked a boat to view based on my desire to see a bluewater boat and I ended up meeting the people who had my slip in Port Sheldon, MI. This is an impossible coincidence, meaning that it isn't. My brain still cannot comprehend the odds. I fell in love with the boat.

Three Days - 955

I can't take it anymore. Three days ago my life was sucked from the water and placed on a hard cold steel platform. The platform doesn't move for seven months. Seven cold months. I am on day three with the boat out and I don't know how I am going to make it a WHOLE FREEZING WINTER without sailing. The Great Lakes are awesome - for about three months of the year. I need to go someplace where I can sail more months of the year, like Vancouver. New Zealand! Sailing in Michigan is many many months of reading about sailing. Paracay Books must make a killing off of sailors trying to get their fix out of a book. Tomorrow I leave for Daytona, FL. on a business trip. I am going to spend the last day trying to bum a ride on a boat. If you are in the vicinity of Daytona and you see a untanned person looking hungrily at boats, grab him and administer sailing immediately.

Working together - Day 957

All I really want is to pull in the same direction with a team of people who trust each other. This is what I desire at work. This is what I desire at home. Nothing feels worse than a group of people working against each other. Mistrust, doubt, and selfishness run rampant. The cool sweet balm of life is working in a team that trusts you and forgives you and seeks to work with you. Love, peace, patience, gentleness, and self control reign in these situations. These times are rare. My best friends are the ones that work with me, who know and anticipate my next move. My best friends are the ones who don't seek to take me down when I mess up, but who seek to build me up.
This is why I sail: To work with a team.
When the team works, Sailing is wonderful.
When the team does not work, Sailing is painful.
A good day of sailing has nothing to do with the weather.

Amazing things you find out about people on a Sailboat- Day 960

Usually when you meet a person for the first time you are meeting them in an surroundings that they are used to being in. A party, for instance, is designed with elements that bring people together like food and drink and comfortable surroundings. When you meet someone there you get to see the person that they are trying to be. A sailing experience tends to strip away the nice veneer that people put up in front of each other. I have watched grown adults melt like children, and I have seen children rise to the task and act like adults. Seasickness is one of the more interesting side effects of sailing. I am convinced that seasickness is completely a thing that happens in your head. If you think you are going to get seasick, you most likely will. It is less likely for the skipper or the person at the helm to get seasick because in those positions you will feel like you are in control. I have been seasick only once in my life. It was a day that I felt a member of my crew was doubting me, and I wasn't at the helm. I was utterly amazed at how debilitating seasickness is. I have observed that the people that come on our boat who trust me and our crew and listen to what we tell them to do are less likely to get seasick. The ones who get sick are the ones who don't take the medicine and don't listen to the pre-trip briefing. Sailing requires that you work with other people. Sailing requires that you listen to a chain of command. If you don't work with others and listen, bad things happen. When someone comes on the boat, we get to find out who they really are. The fear of seasickness and waves tend to take all the pretense out of a person. Sailing is the anti-party. It is the place where I get to really meet the person, not the persona.

Sailing in too much wind, too little wind, or from the wrong direction - Day 962

The rules of Sailing are as follows: You have too much wind, to little wind, or it is from the wrong direction. If you are going to like sailing you pretty much have to enjoy each of these three modes of sailing. I enjoy all three, the third only if I am not trying to make a schedule. (Another rule from sailing - no making schedules.) They are all part of the challenge that makes it fun. If you find yourself repeating the trifecta mantra of too much, too little, or wrong direction there is a name for you: Powerboater. Yes, a twin engine system is in your future. You will enjoy filling your diesel tanks while proclaiming with pride that you used to have a sailboat and now you don't need to bother with the wind. There is a huge divide between the powerboat community and the sailboat community. Here is why. It is a light air day and I have spent the last half hour getting my sails set up just right and getting the boat moving. Along comes Mr. Powerboater who sees a sailboat as something to investigate, but not slow down for. Mr. Powerboater blows by me at 45 knots. I am forced to turn into his wake or get soaked and start trimming all over again.
This is why I listen to my VHF radio so closely. I have towed three of these smokers in after their engine has failed. Nothing makes me happier than towing a powerboat in from three miles out - at 4 knots.
One sailboat: 20 grand.
VHF radio: 200 dollars.
Towing a powerboater who completely depends on his engine: Priceless.

What do you really know how to do? - Day 963

He was late because the tow truck took a long time to come and change his tire. Not because the spare or the jack was missing, not because the spare was flat. He was late because he did not know how. Huh? This got me to thinking. What do I really know how to do? The short answer is not very much, but a whole lot more than many. My brother and law is a dairy farmer. He understands crops, planting, animals. I would starve if my life depended on my ability to raise my own food. There is something wrong with that in my mind. Ask yourself, what do you really know how to do? Isaac Asimov wrote three books together called the Foundation trilogy. In these stories a galactic empire has ruled for two thousand years, but in the end the empire decays because nobody can repair the basic infrastructure of life like power plants and transportation. My own job is becoming specialized. As automobiles become complex, fewer techs actually can diagnose them. Cars become more reliable and the number of technicians go down every year even while the number of vehicles on the road go up. As the number of techs go down, the number of qualified techs is going down faster. Customer service overall is down.
As yourself, what do you really know? If your car stops, could you get it going? Your dad could. If the power went off, could you survive?

Never before have so many known so little about so much.

A grease fire in a Burger King in London shuts down Heathrow airport. The economy lost millions. A single grease fire.

A power disruption starts a cascade of power disruptions and the entire east coast of the USA is shut down. People react like it is the end of the world.

It just seems that as we "progress" we now have grown men who cant change a tire, fix a broken front door, grow a crop. We have become so specialized we are as a culture very thin in our general knowledge. Virtual reality is more interesting I guess. What does it say when the typical 20 something can get to the fifth level of his video game, but doesn't know how to check his coolant? I don't think it is progress when the typical person from a century ago had a greater knowledge base than what I see now. We just know our celebrities better.

I love sailing for this fact - you had better know your basics or you will quickly get into trouble. You have to know weather, astronomy, navigation, the difference between good drinking water and bad, international laws, radar, engine repair, electrical repair, and safety. In short, when you are on a boat more than 20 miles from shore you are on your own. No towing company or Plumber to call. You are it.

Just the way it should be.

OK, so I like the cold - Day 964

I was just checking out s/v Vagabond's website (www.vagabond.fr) I have seen hundreds of sites devoted to cruising in the Bahamas. The photos top anything I have seen on a Pacific Island. Check out some of their wintering photos. I think I want a steel hull. Insulated. Heated. I can always put another layer of clothing on. This past summer convinced me that I am not a high temperature person. There is just nothing like cold crisp air.

Cruiser Wannabe - Day 965

I have no clue. There is so much I have to learn about sailing. The other night I tried my hand at using a gnomonic chart and although I understand what it is for, I don't know how to use it. I don't want to be dependent on the GPS for great circle plotting. If you don't understand the previous sentences, don't worry because two weeks ago I didn't either. When I tell someone that I am planning on sailing around the world one of the first questions I get asked is where I learned how to sail. In past tense. I didn't learn, I am learning how to sail the only way you can - by sailing. So I am a wannabe. I hope that I never reach the point where sailing is old hat like my present job. I like not having a clue. Go ahead, ask me what I am going to do when (insert pirate attack, hurricane, broken bone, fall off boat) happens. I don't know. I read about what you are supposed to do to prepare for these things. I don't know what I am going to do because I have never had these things happen to me. I want to ask everyone else - why are you so afraid of the world? Pirates, sleeping whales and hurricanes are something to prepare for. They are not reasons to stay tied to the dock. So I ready myself for everything that I can, get training where possible and then cast off.
I took a car door apart for the latch this last week at work. Do you want to know what protects you from a side impact event? Open your closet door and look at the rod holding your shirt hangers up. Your car's door has a similar looking device. You might as well ride a motorcycle for all the protection your car gives you for a side impact situation. Now, count up all the intersections you will go through on your way to work. I go through five. Most people go through more. All it takes is one person talking on the cell to miss the red and you are dead. Now compare the chances of highway deaths to cruisers dying at sea. The insurance for the cruiser is less. The cruiser is taking less of a risk. I prefer the latter.

Leaving the life you live - Day 968

I used to work at a meat processing plant in high school. It was awful work all done at 32 degrees F. I would get soaked to the skin, underwear and all, in blood. Cold blood. And I did it for 5.75 and hour. I loved it. I was working with adults. I could work hard. The thing that made it bearable to me was the fact that I knew that I was going to only do it for the summer. Every day, everybody I worked with complained about their job at break, lunch, afternoon break and everytime the boss was out of earshot. The complaining never stopped. Ever. I haven't worked there for 18 years. I drive by there and see the same red Chevy truck that one of the guys bought brand new the summer I worked there. That man is still in that square room. He is able to see his breath all day at work. He is standing in blood. He is cutting up meat for restaurants. In a way I admire this. It is kind of a long obedience in the same direction. It is what he does. I think that in a way he kind of enjoys it, even though he complains every moment he can. I can still hear him.
I could never do it.
Working at this pace and doing what I am doing is still a very enjoyable part of my life. In fact, I am probably investing in auto repair the same or more than I ever have and could not see myself in a situation where I was not diagnosing and improving something. It is who I am. It is not, though, all I will ever be. This is what it means to me to dream. To paraphrase Brad Pitt, "I want more". Brad makes this a universal statement of every man. I am not so sure. I look around me and what I see is herds of people who want nothing to change and definitely do not want more challenge. I want to stretch and grow. Sailing is one of those things that challenges me from every side. I have to be a better leader, better navigator, better decision maker. I have to balance several conflicting needs in an adverse environment while leading a tired and seasick crew with equanimity. In short, I HAVE to be more than what I am. My brother Newton calls sailing constantly walking along the edge of a cliff. You are always on the edge. Even sitting at anchor you are in danger of dragging, fouling, sinking, getting hit or robbed. Sailing requires a diligence that pays off in the ability to go places and see things that a very few can. It is like farming in that you are making your own life, except you have freedom. The vessel that we take this trip on will be called Precipice, a cliff, the edge. If you are not living on the edge you are taking up to much space.