Category Archives: living aboard

Never Say Never

Posted on by under living aboard

Ha! I said that I could never understand how people could sleep on a boat with their bed wet and in the midst of drips. I remember it well. I really could NOT understand this. Well, now I do.

I slept very well, thank you, in a WET bed. I simply laid a series of plastic trash bags on top of the huge wet area in the middle of the bed, put towels on top of that…David and I got in bed and slept soundly after the winds died down last night at 2 am. The wet bed came from me not setting up the plastic correctly in my little hammock (see post about drip here) and the sideways blowing of rain against the chart house wall. I fixed the plastic and all was good. When a new spot began to drip right over my pillow as the winds pushed the water right through some unknown little crack in the chart house wall, without even thinking about it twice, I grabbed a specialized bit of plastic and absorbent cloth from the bathroom (um…better known as a feminine napkin), taped it in place with packing tape, smiled and went to sleep.

So, how could I NOT strip down the bed and simply just decide to lay down and sleep? Well, there was a bit of logic to it. At least in the first three reasons–One, if I stripped the bed I’d have had to find a place to hang up the sheets to dry–there was no such place as I had clothes hanging up drying in all the usual spots. Second, I’d have had to get out the back up “emergency” clean sheets–this was NO emergency. Third reason–all the other beds/places to lay down are crammed full of stuff right now and it would take alot of work and un-organizing things to make it possible for both David and I to sleep anywhere but our bed. And finally, the most important reason of all–I was exhausted.

The mattress is dry; the sheets have been drying all day 🙂 and life is back to normal more or less. Well…there is that funny little bit of absorbent and plastic taped to the beam over my pillow…

Back to Wind-in-the-Rigging Stories

Posted on by under living aboard, Weather

Have you who are cruisers noted how frequently the winds comes up at all the wrong times? Forgetting about winds that arise when you’re entering the anchorage, tight harbor or marina slip, there’s also the winds that typically arise once you’ve left the boat for several hours ashore.

That’s what happened yesterday. We left the boat in late morning with 10 knots of breeze and the National Weather Service (NWS) predicting rising winds in the high teens and gusts to 25. Well, silly me, I didn’t have our hand held vhf on as I ran errands about town and, even sillier, didn’t use the Internet access on my cel phone to keep track of the NWS weather statements for our area. So, when we exited a restaurant with friends at 8:00 pm, we were really surprised to see winds so strong we could hardly walk to the car! And, for the hecklers who may be lurking here, that had nothing to do with drinking!

We drove anxiously back to the boat’s location without too much worry since the she is tied alongside a courtesy dock rather than at anchor or tightly fit into a slip. The only problem with the location is that the marina’s wave attenuation system was removed and the hold ups in contracts and permits meant the new one not installed yet. Every storm beats the poor boats docked there relentlessly. With the winds coming from the Southeast, the couple miles of fetch across a big bay (to the East) would be allowing waves and surge right into the marina and everything would be rocking and rolling.

The winds were pushing the boat away from the dock rather than onto it. We arrived, added a couple of lines and changed a few things. It did take me a while to gage the timing so that I could stretch/leap across to the boat at the right moment of surge. I HATE those situations when the boat is 5 feet from the pier and you’re freezing cold and shivering and wondering how you’re going to get your leg to reach out a foot–much less the distance required by the situation! It is those times that I wonder “why am I doing this?”

Ah, once aboard, everything was fine other than the fact that my nice clean dress pants and dress coat were soaked in the heavy salt spray. Not just this time, but every time I put on something especially nice, I find my self kneeling on the deck securing something in a downpour thinking that I might as well not ever “dress up.” This is my excuse for looking like a homeless person most of the time–and I’m sticking to it!

The weather stayed nasty until about 2 am. Late evening and night winds were steady around 30 knots and little spells at 40 knots with a couple spurious gusts higher.

After turning on the marine VHF radio, I quickly heard that a Gale Warning had been issued at 1pm (about an hour after we left the boat in the late morning) with the associated higher winds to last until the following morning 7 am. I don’t know if my lesson learned is to not dress up–or to keep my portable radio tuned into channel 16.

Weather, Taxi Cabs, and thru-Flights

Posted on by under anchoring, living aboard

When we lived in Washington, DC I always planned my flights based on the combination of what time of day the Metro began running and how late I was willing to arrive at my destination city. Now things have changed a bit. In addition to making sure we can get transportation/parking at the right times, we now keep track of the weather to make sure we won’t be rowing in from the boat in a high wind or rainy weather. It all plays in. The weather info, being more-or-less last minute only works for us if we’re on flexible tickets or else we row in “early” like say–11 pm the night before a morning flight just to keep out of the rainy 3:30 am weather.

Since our schedule is much more flexible than it used to be, we often fly using Southwest Airlines buddy passes. These are free, space available passes that we can obtain via my brother, Brad, or David’s brother-in-law, Rusty, who both work for Southwest Airlines. My brother has worked there since the mid-1980’s but I never had the time to actually fly “space-a” because I was always in a hurry! Now that I can afford the time to slide back the schedule a bit, I’m finding that I’m able to actually use those wonderful and free passes from time-to-time.

We flew to DC in January using the passes and we’ll do so again next week. While I check the flights to see how full they are, I note that often the empty flights are the ones that leave early, early in the morning–like say 6:30 am. That’s great on the other end, arriving at BWI airport at a decent hour. However, it’s killer on this end. I think I’ve whined about this before, but I’ll do it again: Since we leave Mahdee on a mooring at Fiddlers’ Cove when we travel, it means if the weather is good, we’re rowing the Tinker to shore at 3:30 or so in the morning so we have time to row to the Fiddler’s guest dock, deflate the dingy, rinse the salt water off of it, find a dock cart, lug the dingy in the dock cart up to the car, stash it in the car and then drive the 40 minutes (with no traffic) to the parking lot on Shelter Island we leave the car in while we’re out of town. On that end, David drops me and the luggage at the airport before dropping the car in our “favorite” parking lot. Lucky us, we personally know the homeless fellow who’s been living (and working) out of his van in that parking lot for the past decade or so–way before we arrived on the scene. He keeps an eye on the car for us when we leave it there whether we’re in town with Mahdee anchoring or if we’re traveling far away. The day before our air travel, we arrange for a cab company to pick David up in front of the lot at 5:15 am and while David is getting his 15 minute ride to the airport, I’m getting us checked in so we’re “on the list” of standby passengers and hopefully the first ones on the list for the day. Luckily, San Diego-ans like to sleep in, so all’s generally good.

The last time we flew out, the cab driver was this wonderful and cheerful fellow exactly on time. That’s really unusual here and early in the morning especially. I guess San Diego cab drivers are no different than the rest of the sleepy city. The cab driver, Luiz, loves early morning work. Therefore, we’ve got his card for use from here on out on those early morning flights.

I suppose we really have been in San Diego way too long–we have a favorite cabby, we know the trustworthy homeless people, we have favorite places to go and things to do here. Favorite anchorages and views from the boat. Definitely time for change!

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