Sailing: "The art of getting wet and becoming ill while going nowhere at great expense"

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Photo: washing machine and glamorous operator

CRUISING - THE GLAMOROUS LIFE ?
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Let us dispel a couple of myths now, especially if we have given the impression that this live-aboard life of ours is glamorous. We are not complaining, but there are a few drawbacks to the cruising life.
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. First, the constant motion, rockin’ and rollin" most of the time, sailing, on the anchor, even in a marina. Sure we have quiet nights once in a while, but boats float on a fluid. Ferries, freighter, power boaters and jet-skiiers all keep that fluid – well, fluid. We lurch when we walk in our confined space below, and we lurch to keep the land still when we go ashore with our sea legs...
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Shower time! ...Then there is the daily showering routine. A pump-up garden sprayer is our shower – painted black and placed in a plastic bag to be heated in the sun. Even if we swim, we must rinse off the salt water, with nearby fellow cruisers watching our soapy antics. We long for never-ending hot showers; occasionally they can be purchased at friendly marinas, but day-to-day it is the deck routine for us. Our next boat will come with a shower!
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Using the marine toilet (the head)... Not a push and flush operation. You must pump and pump and pump (by hand) your business away. Occasionally it gets clogged, and you must wait and try again later. If anything, ANYTHING that has not passed through your body first somehow gets down the head, the valves will stop working, and some poor sucker (Brian) must take it apart and remove the obstruction. One of the worst jobs invented.

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The salt water that unavoidably gets over absolutely everything must be rinsed and wiped off frequently with fresh water. It attracts more moisture and can be quite corrosive. Keeping up with that is a daily battle, not to mention the sand that also gets tracked in...

Getting the daily water: ...Water at anchor is a precious resource. It has to be paid for - costs vary, but usually on average about 5 cents a litre. And it can be a time consuming procedure getting it. Jerry jugs have to be taken ashore, filled, lugged to the dinghy, taken back to the boat, lugged up on deck and siphoned into the tanks. So, we think twice about what we use. Making sure the purchased water is clean is an obvious step, and sterilizing the drinking water tank once in a while is a must. Buying bottled water (for drinking) seems a better solution, but far more expensive, and you still have to lug, then store all those bottles...
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Laundry Days: still come on a sailboat - trouble is, no washing machine. But we have a large stainless steel bucket and a toilet plunger that works well utilizing human energy. Rinse cycle, wash cycle, then another rinse, lots of time and then hopefully sunshine and a breeze to finish the job. Then, it´s off in the dinghy to get more water to replace used for washing. It is great to wear fewer clothes and to even possess fewer clothes, but they do have to be washed sometime - it is easy to tell the cruisers who are fed up with washing by their clothes. Occasionally we are lucky enough find a laundromat or decide our washing machine operator needs a break - especially for towels and sheets. Lugging the full laundry bag - stares from the locals - we are fleeced of $20 in tokens or coins...and no, we do not iron anything!
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Even just clambering in and out of the dinghy to get ashore as we get older, heavier and less supple hurts on good day...
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The anxiety factor is always present. A short list of nagging questions: Will the engine start? Will the engine quit at a crucial time? What if we hit another boat? What if we get hit - is the other boat insured? Where are we right now? Is that fog ahead? Are those storm clouds? Did you see that lightning? These strong winds were not forecast, were they? Has the GPS hung up on us again? Doesn´t that reef look awfully close? Are the rigging lines tight enough? Has the anchor set properly? Will the anchor drag in these high winds? Is that boat draggin down on us? Can you see our boat anywhere?Are all the dock lines secure? Are our lines chafing? Did you turn the propane gas off? Are those sharks or dolphins? Is that freighter on a collision course with us? Will Hurricane Nasty veer away from us? Did you lock the dinghy to the dock? Weren´t the charges for this marina lowered last year...
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Then there is transportation - or lack of it...not having the convenience of a car. Public transportation we have found is usually convenient – buses and trains are cheaper by far than auto running costs, depreciation, insurance. But first you have to find stations, then obtain and then adhere to schedules. Lots of waiting time. A shared taxi or rental van once in a while is a nice change (and necesary late at night). However, we must say a word about our bicycles which we would not be without. After having several different bikes we ended up purchasing good quality full sized mountain bikes. They are a nuisance to store but they get us everywhere and help keep us fit. Very worthwhile.
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Cleaning the hull... must be done regularly as the build-up of marine life forms its own little ecosystem of barnacles, weed, krill, small fish, tube worms - we have had it all. Warmer tropical waters are the quickest to turn a hull into a dragster (literally), but even cooler waters can swiftly produce interesting growth. The anchor chain is also susceptible and the top three metres must be cleaned as regularly as the hull. Then, if the bottom chain has been resting on the bottom of a thick, clinging, stinky, muddy bay, it is a slow messy job to haul up the likewise polluted anchor to clean it...
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Pulling up the anchor: Most cruisers have an electric windlass; we have the aerobic type. Some days when re-anchoring is required, quite a physical workout is gained wrestling again with 50 metres of heavy chain and a 20 Kg anchor. And you read about cleaning the stinky mud aff the chain as it comes up...
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Meal times we do enjoy and we look forward to preparing and experimenting with culturally different foods. We have fresh fruit for breakfast every day with Deborah´s home-made yoghurt and granola. Dinners at night always include a large salad and most often barbequed something or other with bbqed potatoes. We have even made bread on the bbq - and we did make bread a lot in the Caribbean; in Europe the bread is delicious so why bother. Our galley is quite adequate -a small Eno two-burner propane stove with an oven serves us well; a double sink with pressure cold water, a recently new small 12 volt refrigerator (no freezer), plus oodles of cupboard and storage space. We rarely use canned food, preferring to shop daily for fresh when we can, and we can do some pretty gourmet stuff when the mood strikes. We are not fishermen (fisherpersons) so the number of fish we have caught and eaten could be counted easily on the fingers of just half a hand. Lobster is expensive anywhere, but once in a while...

LIFE "ON THE HARD" when "herself" is out of the water...

There are times when Chinook has to be lifted out and spend some time on cradles for hull repairs and other jobs that cannot be done in the water. Life “on the hard” is a hard life – “hazardous” a more accurate word. Climbing up and down a four metre ladder many times a day, breathing the boatyard dust, dirt, glass fibres and chemical odours the wind whips up. A nearby boatyard cruiser fell off scaffolding necessitating ten stitches in her scalp; our friend, while welding some stainless for us burned himself and the midnight potty trip to the boatyard loo (can’t use the on-board heads) can interesting in the dark and the rain. Traipsing around for daily purchases of resins, gloves, parts, antifouling paint, coverall suits, sandpaper, specialized tools, hardware, cann also be tiresome, time consuming and till-depleting (our till).

Cruisers "nets" are the daily radio announcements to the long-term cruising community in the anchorage or marina, given by fellow cruisers. Common items such as buy and sell, where to find..., help needed, social events, book swaps, organized trips, new arrivals and departures. They are usually very helpful and we certainly enjoy listening, making it part of the daily routine.
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And then there is seasickness, and Brian does get seasick. Feels uncomfortable, beomes dizzy, cannot eat (or drink sometimes) , is listless, cannot do the navigation stuff, hogs the steering, sleeps a lot, turns shades of green, barfs over the side until there is nothing left in his stomach - then again to make sure. Gets better after 3 -5 days...
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We fear that all of the above would have you protest: "then why are you doing this!"
Well, not that you’d completely understand, although we hope you would try to…coffee in the serenity of an early morning at anchor, watching a beautiful sunset, the new places and sights we see, the people we meet and our innumerable other new experiences make up for all of the inconveniences.
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TECHIE STUFF: power solutions - solar panels and wind generators
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We have two solar panels: Seimens 110W. From 9:00 am until 4:00 pm both units combined produce a total up to 5 – 6 amps per hour and that runs our fridge, our lights at night, and keeps the ships batteries in tip-top condition, and we hardly ever have had to run the engine to supplement our power requirements. As long as the sun is always shining, but then, do we really want to be somewhere where it isn’t?
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However, we added a wind generator Air-X when we were in Grenada. It was always on our list, just a budget item that had to wait. Of course the power output depends on how strong the wind blows, but at 15 knots of wind (most of the time in the Caribbean) we are gettting a steady 5 Amps per hour. The combination of the two sources is great, the days that are cloudy and windless are few in the places we want to be...

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Photos:
The yearly catch: 5 years, 5 fish caught...
Stuck in the engine room again ...
Daily swimming chore....
Clambering on and off the bow...