Transitioning

We’ve been home for several weeks, and the transition from seafaring back to life on land with all its reconnecting has been, shall we say, “interesting.” 

The transition from southern summer weather to North Pacific conditions was, as you already knew, kind of wet.

Dirty weather in the North Pacific.

Atypical wind direction but typical wind speed forecast for the coast.

But when the weather’s decent up here in the Pacific Northwest, it’s not just good, it’s glorious. 

Siren's pub on a fine day.

Coming home to Port Townsend, with its camaraderie, its forests of wooden masts, and its people who love to sail (and share with visitors) beauties like the venerable, engineless, 110 year-old Ziska, was exactly what we wanted to do.

Ziska's interior with new owner Gabriel Sky.

Seeing beautiful schooners like the lovely Alcyone under sail is also not unusual around here.  It’s good to be home.  

For transitioning sailors, Port Townsend is a good place, because it’s expected that sailors come and go.  Transitions are no biggie, because that’s how we live.  Plus, what other town do you know of where the local police hand out flying pig pins?

Still, despite the excellent homecoming, the first two weeks were rather strange.  First there was what I call “reconnecting syndrome.”  Fascinating things, these electronic gizmos.

Then there was “still on watch syndrome.” Each night I’d wake up around 2:00 am and think, huh?  Where… oh, that’s right, we’re not at sea.  Great, I’m wide awake, NOW what do I do?  The saltwater half of my mind would start the nightly litany:  Okay, up and at ‘em!  Gotta get the navigation done for the next leg, gotta check the forecast, we don’t want to miss the weather window, gotta write in the log and get ready to go to on watch! 

This was, of course, ironic, because normally by 2:00 am, my watch would be half over, and waking up into such irony meant an hour or two of pondering the tug-of-war nattering on between the landlubber and seafarer halves of my mind.  It should be obvious that you’re home, I would tell myself.  Oh sure, like that worked.

So, to while away the time I’d drowsily search for traces of guilt for having overslept 2 hours of my watch while Jim was also soundly asleep.  Guilt, ah yes… wait, WHAT?  We’re BOTH asleep?  Who’s on watch?  OMIGOD!  What’s happening out there?  A couple of times I actually got up and went to look out the window.  No whales were seen in the street.  The surface of the road was unruffled by wind.  If we’d had a house log, I would’ve written in it.

Then the landlubbing half of my mind would say:  Ha ha, very funny!  The house isn’t dragging, you’re not gonna get run down by a bigger house, and best of all, the bed is steady and still!  How d’ya like them apples? 

The seafaring half would reply:  Not much.  Then again, it’s actually pretty nice. 

The landlubbing half would say:  Well, I like it here.  A LOT.  And we’re staying for awhile, if you don’t mind.

The seafaring half merely harrumphed.  But slowly, slowly, the seafaring half retreated from its nightly vigil, until a full night’s sleep became possible. 

God is my... 

That’s when the second stage of transitioning to life on land began.  The sense that, while a full night’s snorefest was to be expected, any sense of permanence was neither believable nor trustworthy.  The house was surely temporary, right?  We’d be moving back to the boat soon, uh-huh.  This was solved in a few days by the reappearance into the house, of familiar furniture and belongings.  That stage was brief. 

Sand castle at Ilwaco.

But the oddest and longest transition phase came from the sense that after being at sea, where sensory input is somewhat limited and controlled compared to land, we were now in a gigantic, frenetic candy shop of distraction, where everyone was running around happy as puppies on a big sugar buzz. 

Land-life is so full of distractions—things to see and do, comings and goings, people to meet and talk to—that for about two weeks my head turned so often it felt like I was getting whiplash, and my mind was barely able to summon the attention span of even a gnat. 

Crikey!  Even the dinghies have dinghies!

And then the seafaring half of my brain came roaring back, because we went to that annual three-day high called the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival, where 200 gorgeous varnished painted beauties lined the docks, and happiness wafted through the air, and really, who could worry about short attention spans in a setting like that?  Certainly not us.  Shanties were sung, pirate cannons were fired, hearty shouts rang, friends were met, and boats were admired.  To see some spectacular images of the festival and the boats under sail, check out photographer Jeff Eichen’s web site here.  Sockdolager is in photo #54 of 72. 

On Wednesday and Thursday, Jim helped deliver the 99 year-old wooden motorboat Glory Be from Seattle to Port Townsend, where she took her place in the show.  She has an amazing history.

The 99 year-old Glory Be.

On Friday, the first festival day, we attended lectures, toured boats and had more joyful reunions.

The Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival

On Saturday we crewed aboard the lovely schooner Grail, to race with the gracious and hilarious Smith family against other floating wooden acres of gaff and staysail perfection.  We didn’t win, but who cares? 

Schooner Grail, racing.  That's Jim at the bow and me sitting on the taffrail.  Photo credit:  Jeff Eichen.

That evening was spent aboard the 1909 Arts and Crafts-era MV Lotus, a 92-foot Edwardian cruiser where tea parties are given every Sunday and you can enjoy a nightcap at the tiled fireplace on chilly evenings before heading for your own private stateroom.  While aboard Lotus we were introduced to Steve Stone, a filmmaker from Off Center Harbor in Maine.  Well, that turned into something mucho fun!  Steve decided on the spot to make a film about us and Sockdolager, and what we’d done to get her ready for the voyage.  Woah!  More on this shortly.

On Sunday we took Bill and Cath Connor from Boulder, Colorado (old friends of Jim’s) out to sail in the Festival’s final event:  the Sunday afternoon Sail-By.  Imagine a river of sails—from 130-foot schooners to catboats, ketches, cutters, yawls and lug-sail dinghies—probably a couple hundred of them, flowing around and around the bay in a big circle, in a light breeze, on a bluebird day.  Our flags flapped gaily and we could not stop grinning.  Crews shouted greetings across the water, a friend on another boat played her bagpipes, and laughter rang from shore to shore.  

The lovely La Boheme.

Kaci Cronkhite sailing her storied Danish spidsgatter, Pax. 

Then, as if by invisible signal, crews waved farewell and boats began to scatter to the four winds. It was magic. Pure, happy magic.  You can watch a homemade video of it filmed from another boat here. 

Sockdolager is visible at 20 seconds, 2 minutes and about 4.5 minutes. Look for the flags a-flyin'. 

On Monday and Tuesday we were stars.  Steve came down to the boat and filmed her from stem to stern, on deck and below, while Jim and I took turns talking about the custom improvements, the preparations for sea, and a few things we’ve learned.  Steve was so intrigued about our retired shipwright friend Leif Knutsen, who’d helped us “upside down-proof” the boat and create ingenious storage solutions (see “Fiddly Bits”) that he went over and made a movie about Leif, too.  Steve got so much material from us that he said it may take two fifteen-minute films to cover it all.  We don’t know when the first film will be ready, but we’ll announce it on this blog. 

Schooner Zodiac sails close by.

And now the seafaring half of my mind is happy, as is the landlubberly half.  I am well into the book project about our voyage, and though it’s great fun to write, I’m still going to take the proper time and not rush it.  Jim, who will soon be posting a statistical summary of the voyage, is also beginning our garage conversion project, where he’ll build a workshop for himself and a writing studio for me.  We’ve been sailing three times in five days, and out on the water even more.  I guess that’s not too bad for a transition.

Popeye and Olive Oil in the pilothouse of a fishing boat.

An Exuberant Homecoming

Sockdolager comes home!  Photo credit:  Bob Triggs 

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that home is “Where we love.”  That would perfectly describe how it felt to come home to Port Townsend, Washington, where word spread like electrical voltage among our friends along the waterfront that Sockdolager’s emergence from the fog bank over the Strait of Juan de Fuca was imminent.  We were just as eager to see them as they were to see us.

Broadband radar: our new eyes in fog and rain.

All day we’d steamed along in fog and rain, the first precipitation in more than a month.  In the photo above, Jim watches our new broadband radar, which shows things we can’t see in the busy murk, like big outbound ships that swerve out of their usual lane to drop off pilots, and the breakwater at Dungeness Spit. 

It was definitely a social media homecoming, because from my phone I could post things like “Point Wilson just sighted through the fog!”  Our friends Val and Mike Phimister called:  “WHERE ARE YOU?”  Eagle-eyed Kaci Cronkhite spotted us first from her vantage point at Fort Worden. “I see you out there in the fog!” she wrote on her Facebook page, posting the photo below, and word spread that we’d been spotted.  Facebook erupted in Woo-Hoos as Anna Quinn suggested that everyone meet at Sirens Pub at 5pm. Oh boy!

Sockdolager coming in through the fog at Point Wilson.  Photo credit: Kaci Cronkhite 

When Northwesterners go without rain for too long, they get a little out of sorts.  All that sunshine, and it was evidently the first full month of July in 70 years with no rain, begins to play with the mind.  Normally, a sunny day comes after a period of cement skies and rain, and can be enjoyed guilt-free because everyone feels they’ve earned it.  But a whole month of bluebird days can cause a slight to moderate discomfiture to the psyche.  Northwesterners are moodier than Southern Californians; we need rain, not just for the landscape but for our very souls.  We like cement skies.  So, to be coming home on the only rainy day in many weeks felt especially celebratory.  “Oh! You brought the rain with you!” would be, on such a day, high praise in these parts.

Getting closer! Kaci posted this photo on Facebook to update everyone that we were rounding the buoy.

Home has also been called “A place where you can scratch any place you itch.” (Henry Ainsley.)  If that’s true, then to a wandering sailor, the entire planet would qualify as “home.” As it should.  A perspective like that makes you think and act as if your back yard, what you're supposed to take care of and be responsible for, is not just what's platted on a local tax map.  One could also say it as Anatole France did:  “Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.”  

Approaching Point Hudson.  Photo credit:  Bob Triggs

We spotted Kaci and another friend, Bob Triggs, grinning and hollering and waving greetings from the beach.  We grinned and hollered and waved right back. And then, quietly and without fanfare, there stood Leif Knutsen, taking photos from the end of the long pier.  Big smiles all around.  Though we knew friends were waiting at the Boat Haven Marina, we could not resist a little spin into Point Hudson, a victory lap of sorts, to wave and pay a little homage, if you will, to Carol Hasse’s Port Townsend Sail Loft and Brion TossYacht Riggers.  

Sockdolager with soggy flags a'flyin'.  Photo credit:  Bob Triggs

After nearly 11,000 miles, Sockdolager’s sails and rigging still work flawlessly, and these dear friends at Point Hudson, along with rigger Bob Doyle in Everett, were as much a part of our voyage as reassurance can be on a dark and windy night. 

Sockdolager enters Point Hudson for her victory lap.  Photo credit: Leif Knutsen

In true Port Townsend fashion, the Sail Loft crew was hanging out the windows whooping, Brion Toss was applauding from the ramp, and Ace Spragg and friends were whistling from the Maritime Center’s balcony.  The whole harbor erupted in cheers, and puzzled onlookers quickly asked what the hoopla was about.

Point Hudson victory lap.  Photo credit:  Ace Spragg

Point Hudson-waves, whoops and cheers.  Photo credit:  Kaci Cronkhite

Time to head for our slip at Boat Haven.  We figured correctly that friends had called the harbormaster to find out what slip we’d been assigned, but another surprise was waiting as we turned the corner. 

Coming into Boat Haven. We recognize friends we weren't expecting!  Photo credit:  Don Marken

Sailing friends Don and Karla Marken had come all the way from Anacortes to take our docklines.  Wanderers like us, they divide their time between sailing a 20-foot Flicka during summer and an apartment in Mexico in winter.  We pulled into our slip and they took and tied up our lines. Big hugs all around.

Docking.  Photo credit:  Don Marken

Don handed me a bottle of champagne, Jim said, “No need for glasses!” and popped the cork.  We passed the bottle around like it was pirate rum. 

Jim with Karla and Don Marken, about a minute after we docked.

Suddenly, a beautiful drumming and singing began from the foredeck of a nearby boat, and we turned toward it as a Native American Elder, who is a dear friend of ours, sang us home.  We stood transfixed.  I do believe singing like that has the power to realign the stars.

More friends arrived.  Kaci handed me a bouquet of daisies, and Leif gave us the use of an old beater car for as long as we needed it.  Our friend Gordon gave us hugs and a packet of the season’s first smoked king salmon.

Val and Mike arrived at the dock in time for a chat and to drive us to Siren’s Pub, where more friends gathered to celebrate.  I had my first Siren’s burger in two years, and tried unsuccessfully to show some restraint in the enjoyment of it.  We love gourmet food, but the joys of a burger and beer are awfully good, especially at our hometown pub.

We spent the night on the boat, but Jim slipped off to the local grocery store and returned with the only thing still missing after two years.  

Ice cream NOW, Behbeh! 

The next day, with Leif’s loaner car, we began moving stuff from storage back into our little house.  I had to take this Beverly Hillbilly shot. 

The Beverly Hillbilly 

Later, our friends and fellow Dana 24 owners Carl and Patty Kirby sailed in and we enjoyed the reunion.  Jerry Fry, a local ham radio instructor, told us he had been able to listen to our Pacific crossing transmissions on the Puddle Jump Net until we were well south of the Equator!  “Then you went around the curvature of the Earth,” he said, “and I couldn’t hear you anymore.”

Nearly two weeks have passed since that beautiful homecoming.  Flocks of geese fly overhead, honking and gathering in larger numbers for the migration south.  Is autumn coming early?  To view the seasons changing from just one place will be a different pleasure. We’re living at home, now have wheels, internet, and hot running water that comes out of a pipe—holy mackerel!  The first day, I took four showers and Jim took three.  Because we could.  We will curb that shortly, but it was good.  We’ve also rediscovered hardware stores.  And bookstores. 

Though the novelty of life ashore may wane, our appreciation of its comforts never will.  Nor will the desire for more adventures under sail.  Our eyes are turned north toward British Columbia and Alaska. But first, Jim will build his workshop, and then, for me, a writing studio. We need to spend a spell of time at home before taking off again. 

There will be more posts on this blog as things of interest crop up.  For example, I’m working on several new posts, including: preparations for voyaging; a "best of" roundup; and a post on blogging and staying in touch, along with what we’ve learned as the numbers of readers of this blog have expanded; plus more ideas as they develop.  There will be articles forthcoming in Good Old Boat and 48 North magazines as well as other publications. 

There is also a book in progress.  I want it to be good, so it can’t be rushed.  

Photo Credit: Mary Bradley Marinkovich

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.”  - Lin Yutang

Home from Sea

So lovely to feel the Pacific Northwest smiling softly in a much-needed rain. Port Townsend is in view, and reunions with friends we left behind will be sweet. We'll be docked within an hour, and will write more soon.

Sent from my iPhone

The Home Stretch

Neah Bay. The northwesternmost outpost in the Lower 48. A good passage this time. After a gentle but fast 32-hour trip in which the sense of being in a night tunnel was amplified by wafts of fog lit eerily by the navigation lights, Cape Flattery materialized late this morning as a smear on the horizon, a dark presence hinting of cliffs and the edge of a continent. The outline of Tatoosh Island solidified, and soon the tide swept us past that and into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Last night I was feeling nostalgic on my midnight to four watch, thinking about people and places--especially about our Kiwi friends Alison and Stuart. Alison has been ill lately. Suddenly an overpowering smell surrounded us, like a warm wind blowing over strong fish and, well, something else: unmistakably whale breath. Then, right next to us, an enormous exhalation, the workings of its lungs clearly audible. More breaths. A pod of whales in the night, me unafraid but hoping they'd avoid our hull, which they did.

A light westerly sprang up in the morning to blow us home, and as we entered the Strait, a patch of sky cleared and the sun came out. We have left the pelicans behind and are again among eagles.

An email message from Stuart awaited us: Alison passed away last night. I will miss her friendship, wonderfully acerbic wit and sharp mind, and our thoughts and sympathies turn to Stuart. Godspeed, friends.

Tomorrow at first light we'll head east toward Port Angeles, about 50 miles away, and then we'll be only a day's sail from Port Townsend and our sweet homecoming. More will follow.

Sent from my iPhone

The Water Is Wide

Sockdolager with flags a-flyin!

This is a shout-out to our friends and readers.   You readers whom we haven’t yet met are simply future friends. Thanks from the bottom of our hearts for all the wonderful comments and emails, and for sticking with us through high seas and low times as we crossed the Pacific.  You rock! 

About an hour before we left Cabo San Lucas, Mexico for the Marquesas in French Polynesia

As we round the upper left corner of the country and think about the 10,500 miles we’ve sailed since leaving Port Townsend in mid-July of 2011 (which does not count the 6,000 miles from New Zealand to San Francisco via container ship) it's given us the perspective that the world is both larger and smaller than it seemed when we set out.  

The case for the world feeling larger?  Seeing the endless horizon for days on end, its flatness making tactile comprehension of the earth’s roundness almost impossible.  Witnessing the darkest, starriest skies on earth, as only the mid-Pacific can give you.  Nights and nights and nights of stars, to infinity.  Not seeing one airplane, jet contrail or ship for thousands of miles.  At times we felt, literally, like a planktonic organism, alone and drifting across the vastness of the sea, self-contained in our own tiny world. 

To be at sea is to be afloat, adrift, abroad, astray, aweigh, amorphous—and at large.  We were surrounded by the majesties of light and dark, searing heat and cool breeze, sunrise, high noon and sunset, the moon in phases, the sun and clouds, lighting and darkening the sea.  Billions of years of this celestial procession have passed before us, will pass after us. We are, in comparison to that, motes of dust that settle for a time, flitting, floating, fluctuating, and then we blow away.

The case for the world feeling smaller?   The idea that we can jump on the boat in Port Townsend and sail anywhere in the world makes the world seem that much more reachable. 

About a minute after we anchored after crossing the Pacific.

We have plowed tangible wakes in our minds now; we have sensate memories all the way to New Zealand.  We have crossed the Pacific Ocean in, ya gotta be kiddin’ me, a 24-foot boat.  We have streamers of other peoples’ dreams fluttering off the taffrail, and through this blog we’ve been able to keep in close touch with friends and family.  We didn’t sail off the edge and disappear.

Sometimes the world feels larger and smaller at the same time.  Why is that?  In a word, people.  Everywhere we went, with everyone we met, we found that they’re just like us in so many ways—the universal currency of a smile works wherever you go—but they’re also different in ways that show us what we’ve lost.  The common decency of perfect strangers, for example, who climb trees to pluck fruit that they give to you with pleasure, refusing any payment from a visitor who has a thousand times more wealth than they do. Monetary wealth, that is.  I know who the real billionaires are, they’re the quiet welcoming ones living lives close to the bone, to the rhythm of the waves and tides and chirping of insects in trees, in communities like big families, like tribes, honoring the things that need and deserve to be honored.  Things that can’t be bought. That’s why the fruit is sometimes free, it’s a lesson to us Westerners who think that everything has a price.  I want to be more like them.  A lot of sailors do, I think.  A world like that lets you breathe deeper.

But when you travel on airplanes, highways, the internet, or read about giant swaths of ancient lands going under the axe, the bulldozer, the pipeline, the endless tarry spills, or the mighty Pacific having a garbage patch, you realize that the hype of corporate conceit is so big that not even the earth can hold it, and then the world feels not just smaller but also diminished.  It feels bad when you realize how it can be used up, that it is being used up, that our generation is key to the next seven, and that we might fail them.  

But then the world can feel larger again, when you realize we haven’t completely destroyed it yet, that there are things we can each do, things that aren’t just token gestures, that there are mysteries and creatures and galaxies completely unknown to science whose stories haven’t yet begun to echo, that there is probably personal growth in store that we can’t begin to imagine.  Immense things can be fragile, and fragile things can be immense.  Like this beautiful blue planet. 

May you also wander on wings, in whatever form they may be, that take you outside of yourself.

The water is wide. I cannot get o'er

And neither have I wings to fly

Give me a boat that can carry two

And both shall row my love and I.

A beach on the Tasman Sea