To condition? Or not to condition?

Well... I mean the air, of course! Baltimore is in the midst of a serious heat wave. The overnight lows have been in the high 80s all week.

So far I've got a small fan and a big Vornado fan and that's about it. And a lot of hatches. And the occasional merciful breeze.

Now, I could buy one of those air conditioners pictured to the left there... I had one last year. It sits on one of the hatches and hangs inside. I borrowed it from the sailing center I used to work for.

But that is not an option this year -- the borrowing, I mean. Now the pros of one of these is that it's actually liveable in the cabin during the day. The cons? Slightly more numerous. The unit is fairly heavy and difficult to maneuver, which makes sailing a pain. My boat is not big enough to sail with that thing sitting on one of the hatches -- and it's not terribly sturdy, so if the boat was going to heel, I would worry about it falling off. Also, last year the cotton cover that came with it was not the right size/fabric to cover my hatch opening and not have rain come in. Slightly less than awesome.

Up until now I've been working about 50 hours a week and commuting about 16 hours a week and spending some weekends away. So it really hasn't been that bad. The overnight lows have been enough to sustain me.

But in this record heat wave I'm torn. There's to be another heat wave next week.

And can you imagine what will happen to me if it rains and I have to close all my hatches?

Readers, this is a true conundrum. I need your thoughts.

The 50th post -- where does the time go?

Spring is here and I find myself with an entirely new dilemma for my 50th post at Diary of a Liveaboard -- lack of time.

In the past, I held jobs that allowed for time to work on the boat. Jobs that weren't at least an hour away. Jobs that... well... weren't paid by the hour solely for the purpose of making me feel guilty about not working them. 

So after four months of unemployment this winter, I elected to take a 32-hour-a-week secretary job at a church an hour away and a supplemental job as a copy-editor for a Capitol Hill publication in Washington, D.C. -- an hour in the opposite direction. 

And I had to buy a new car, which only makes me want to work more (in my copious spare time I am copy-editing a book that the Capitol Hill publication I work with publishes every two years). 

So I now face dilemma that boat owners the world over must also face: I have no time to work on my boat! It's just killing me! I'm keeping up with the cleaning for the most part. That's no so bad. But measuring the floor for parquet? Putting the sails back on? Scrubbing the boat? Painting the bottom? 

I just don't know! How do you other boat owners find time to do all of this? I think I'll have some free weekends in May. I hope I have some free weekends in May. But jeez. For the time being all I see is the marina launching boats and painting bottoms and generally being industrious.

I guess one solution is to pay the marina to paint the boat bottom and scrape the barnacles and replace the floor. But pay someone to do something I could do myself? I just don't know about that.

So, fellow boat people, what are your solutions to this distressing dilemma? Where do you find the time?!

We're (not) gonna need a bigger boat (yet)...

So my dad has been dreaming a lot lately about a new boat, apparently. I got an e-mail Friday with the subject heading, "Wanna Catalina?"

... Particularly nice one. And six feet nine inches headroom in the cabin. http://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/18334

I figure Misty plus a 65,000 loan with a 600 pmt at 5.75% would pay off in 13 years. With 700 pmt, 10.5 years. With 1000 pmt, 6.75 yrs.

As long as you live on it, even if only on weekends, the interest is tax deductible, so at 700 a month, uh, 3612 is tax ded. If your tax rate is 15% The first year pmts total 8400 but take 542 off that for the tax saving and the first year acquisition cost is less than 8000.

Lots cheaper than a house, and LOTS cheaper than a mortgage.

Now where can we find the 700/month.

Maybe not yet, but someday. There are always deals like this boat somewhere. In this one we could sail to the islands.

- dad –

And two days later

(with names changed to protect the innocent)

...

…and wouldn’t it be fun bringing it down from Massachusetts? (I’m not nuts: we’d take the canal and skip going around Cape Cod to seeward.

It’s probably got a shower inside as well as the one in the cockpit. Most boats with radar do, I think.

I could get the old crew together. I’m sure blank and blank would go, and we could fill out with blank and one or two others. Five or six would be perfect. You’d be Skipper and Second Cook. Wow. I can’t wait.

(Misty + 15 years of $352 pmts.) $20,444.76 in tax deductions on top of all the good living and great cruising.

There will always be a deal like this around. This one looks good.

I’d like 36 feet rather than 34. Think coastal! Think Hilton Head, the Outer Banks, Block Island, and Florida. The Gulf! – Tampico! Vera Cruz! Campeche! Cancun! (well, we could skip Cancun, its touristy) I know! Playa del Carmen and a hike into Yucatan! Then back. If the weather gets schnooker, we go up the ICW to Coinjock, out into the Sounds, across the Noble Neuse, and on to Norfolk

If we got adventurous, put Havana after Playa del Carmen! Then Miami and up the ICW to Charleston or Jacksonville, counting alligators all the way, and go on to Savannah in the ditch or sail. Next Myrtle Beach. Wilmington, Norfolk, and up the Bay.

‘Course we could just go to Hilton Head or the OB and back. Then next to Block Island or Maine. Mom would fly there and we’d all go to LL Bean.

Me, I’ve always wanted to transit the Panama canal. Baha! San Diego! Santa Barbara! Monterey and Carmel! San Jose, and through the Golden Gate! Seattle? Vancouver? Ketchican (sp?)? the North Pole? Baffin Bay? (not sure you can do that from the NP) Across the Great Lakes to the Erie Canal? And on home. We just circumnavigated the United States!

‘Course we could be satisfied with the Delmarva peninsula.

My response:

I have no desire to make any more payments until A) I get better pay or B) I pay off my car.

He's starting to scare me, readers. All this talk of bigger boats and loans is making me nervous. It's 35 degrees outside and I think I'm sweating...

The arrival of an old friend...

Well, folks, today is the first day of spring, and I could not be any more giddy. (Well, maybe if it was 70 degrees outside and I had an old-fashioned Baltimore snowball in my hand...)

This was my first real winter aboard. I made it through the entire winter (with an occasional night at my parents' house or a friend's house) on Misty Rose -- and I lived to tell the tale! Last winter I wussed out and spent almost two months at my parents' house with blizzards and sickness. But this year, I managed to make it through. I didn't fall in and become a victim of the dreaded ice. No, readers, I made it with an electric blanket, two West Marine heaters, a down blaket, a faux Snuggie, some hiking socks and fleece pants, countless cups of tea and the kindness of the staff at Tidewater, who moved me to the sheltered dock close to the bathrooms for the duration.

Baltimore is starting to get warm, and you boaters out there know what that means -- work time!

Projects planned for my spring haulout include: replacing the floor inside the cabin salon, painting the bottom, painting the non-skid portions of the deck, re-varnishing the door boards, caulking the port holes, replacing some lines and cleats that aren't working well and, of course, going sailing!

Jeez, I'm tired just thinking about it all. Maybe we should stay with this whole winter thing for a couple more weeks...

Ice Part 2...

Ahoy there, bloggers! Well I've been diligently Dust Busting salt off my cabin floor, drawing up plans for spring work, working on my curtains and working on driving my dad nuts. It's all a lot of work, and it doesn't leave much time for blogging.

However, there was one more grain of wisdom about ice in marinas that I wanted to offer: Leave your swim ladder down.

I was perusing another liveaboard blog the other day and I realized that I am not the only person terrified of falling off the seawall or slipping on ice on the dock and falling in.

People have died falling in the water in winter and being unable to pull themselves out.

This has been a source of terror for me since I fell off the dock at the sailing center one January. At the time I was wearing a full foul weather suit, a fleece, sweatpants, sneakers, hiking socks a lifejacket and gloves. I stepped on a rotten piece of dock, lost my balance and fell straight into the water. With all that clothing on, I couldn't manage to pull myself onto the dock. Luckily, I had been sailing with my cousins and my dad and they pulled me out of the water.

Ever since then I've been scared that it will happen when I'm alone. To the point that I occasionally dream about falling in the water.

The simple solution? Leave your swim ladder down. If you, or someone else, falls in, at least the swim ladder will be there.

Other safety tips for not falling in? Don't pee off the back of your boat or the dock (a couple of years ago someone died that way). Always salt the ice on the dock. Maintain three points of contact on deck.

I guess this is a more serious entry than I normally write, but this is definitely something that freaks me out -- and it hadn't even occurred to me until recently to put my swim ladder down. So, folks, here's hoping you put your swim ladder down and stay safe for the rest of winter.

Ice in the harbor...

People ask me all the time about keeping warm on the boat. All. The. Time. I don't mind, for the most part. Except when people flat out tell me I'm crazy. Which only happens two or three times a week, so it's all good.

And people wonder why I don't frequently tell people right away that I live aboard.

Anyway, one of the most frequently made assumptions about where I live (in the outer harbor in Baltimore) is that the water doesn't ice over.

Au contraire, readers, au contraire. It ices over constantly. It's been a cold, cold winter for the Chesapeake Bay, as evidenced by a huge fish kill of Spot.

It's difficult to see in this picture. I took it standing in the cockpit, facing out over the stern. I left the swim ladder in the picture so that you could see that it is in focus. The lines and ripples in the water are pieces of ice. (I had a surprisingly difficult time trying to capture the ice in a picture, so bear with me here.)

The marina where I live now doesn't have bubblers. A bubbler is a common piece of equipment in the Chesapeake Bay region and my marina in Washington, D.C., had them, as did my the marina in Pasadena, Md. Marinas use them to aerate the water around a dock. If ice freezes around pilings, the pressure can move the pilings. Marinas are always quite insistent that the bubblers are for the benefit of the dock and not the benefit of your boat -- liability issue I guess -- so some people buy them for their boats. I think this is a bit of a waste of money in the Bay.

Since I'm not in the Inner Harbor, the ice doesn't get too thick here. It gets just thick enough for ducks to sit on, but not so thick that it can't be easily broken with a stone. Not that I've tried that.

This brings me to the No. 1 rule for ice in marinas: Never break the ice around your boat.

You might ask why.

Well, I'll tell you.

Broken ice is quite sharp and can damage your hull if it's broken -- at least it will scratch a fiberglass hull and can even leave gouges. A lot of new boaters think they should break the ice -- this is wrong. Any good marina will send you lots of e-mails over the winter urging you to please, for God's sake, DO NOT BREAK THE ICE.

Living on the Potomac in D.C., the water iced over and stayed iced for most of the winter. My boat was fine.

Now I will admit, the sound of ice breaking at night or cracking against the hull in high wind is disturbing. But you must resist the urge to break the ice. Your boat (and your wallet) will thank you for it...

NOTE: If you live in a place where the ice builds up, buying a bubbler may be for you. For me, it's not necessary. The water doesn't ice over very thick here because the Bay is tidal and I live very close to open water.

A merry Christmas for Misty...

Well Christmas has come and gone and Misty got everything she asked for.

A thorough cleaning.

An electric blanket.

A Kindle.

Wait... I think those last two might have been for me.

The only problem I'm having now is getting out from under my electric blanket (where I like to read my Kindle) to actually do anything worth blogging about. I'll get on that. After the new year.

Merry Christmas, readers! And a happy new year!

The social life...

Instead of writing about winterizing, like I probably should, I've decided instead to write about life in the marina. I didn't take any pictures of winterizing the engine anyway. I was too busy trying to remember all the steps.

So life in the marina.

Yesterday I was hanging out and running errands with my friend Andrew. He had some days off left to take before the end of the year and so we decided to get together and run errands, see friends, do some boat work and go climbing. We come back to the marina from West Marine and Costco and lunch with Andrew's brother, Mark, of the famous MarkandChristine duo. And what do we see at the marina? Why, two people sitting at the picnic table, smoking cigarettes and having coffee!

I jump out of the car to introduce myself. The marina staff is on a two-week vacation and I'm a little more starved for human interaction than I usually am.

"Hi! Do you live here? I'm Allie. I live in that little boat," I say, pointing. "I've been just dying to meet some of the other liveaboards here. I knew there were some, but I haven't met any yet."

I said this all in one breath.

It took a moment for the new couple to digest what I had just said and get up to shake hands.

They, too, seemed a little starved for company.

We engaged in a discussion about space heaters. They examined the one I had just purchased from the West Marine. We discussed the relative merits of West Marine-brand space heaters versus hardware store space heaters versus propane heaters.

And then, in the truly attention-starved manner of all liveaboards I've ever met in winter, we exchanged phone numbers and a promise to meet up that night over a bottle of rum.

The social norms in a marina are not complex. They are based mostly in a desire to meet someone -- anyone -- other than whomever lives in the boat with you. And liveaboards like me who live alone? Forget about it. We're all dying for discussion with something other than a duck.

People come in and out all the time because they travel the world, or the Bay, or they're visiting for a week. Whatever it is. So you meet someone in the boat yard and just end up hanging out. There was a guy in my marina this summer who has since gone to the Caribbean. I let him borrow my hose and he, in turn, checked on me during storms and invited me over for wine and chips. Never mind that he had a daughter my age. We had a grand time discussing charts and navigation. Then there was another guy over the summer who liked to sit on his deck chair next to my boat and chit-chat about boat prices. Once, when I went to get my mail, an older couple, despairing of their taxi ever arriving asked me for a ride to the Inner Harbor. When I lived in Washington, D.C., there were always people I'd met in the bathroom or the laundry room dropping by for a drink or a chat.

I'm no sociologist, but I think it's something to do with the prospect of getting to talk about something you love -- with someone who hasn't just spent a long period of time confined to a small space with you.

So what I'm trying to say is that inviting someone you just met to your home isn't strange at all and I eagerly accepted.

Around 8, I got the call and went over.

Now, what I have neglected to mention is that one of my main points of attraction to these people, besides companionship, was the fact that they have pets.

Not just any pets.

They have two cats -- and a pet squirrel.

So we sat up until 2 a.m. playing with their pets and drinking tea with rum and eating cake.

Life in the marina? It's really not so bad.

Misty gets naked...

After watching a neighbor's roller-furled jib flog itself to shreds last week, I decided it was time to take my own sails off the boat.

I enlisted the help of my ever-happy-to-help friend Andrew. Hi, Andrew! (He agreed to help AND to let me take pictures for my blog -- what a sport!)

Anyway, I was a little uncertain about taking the sails off by myself. Mostly because it is shockingly difficult to brick up sails (i.e. fold them into brick-like blocks) on the dock by yourself. And by that I mean that I don't think I could do it since the marina is so exposed to wind. It would have to be a really calm day.

Now, where was I? Oh yes. Flogging jib = bad. Taking sails off for winter = good.

So Andrew comes over and we start with the jib, also known as "that little sail on the bow of the boat." On Misty Rose, the jib is roller-furled, which means that it has a mechanism that rolls the sail around the a line that runs from the top of the mast to the deck so that you don't have to fold it every time you use it. Therefore, the sail must be unfurled from the forestay, dropped with the halyard, unclipped at the tack and the head, and the sheets must be untied and coiled.

Easy-peasy!

I unfurled the jib and released the halyard. We then discovered a need for pliers to get all the shackles undone. Is it just me? Or does the rest of the world have the same shackle woes as I? I pulled out my giant tool bag, which, someday, I shall photograph the contents of for you all. Tool kits of sailboats are truly strange things filled with everything from electrical tape to plumbers' wrenches to sailcloth needles and joker valves. After much rummaging, I found a suitable pair of pliers and we set about removing the sail. At this point I also remembered to take pictures.



I found some line and tied the roller furling mechanism to the base of the forestay so that, in a storm, the car attached to the halyard wouldn't work its way up to the top of the forestay. I am not actually sure if that's possible (wouldn't it just slide back down?) but the charter boat captain I work for does it on his boat, so I figure it's a solid bet.

We carried the sail off the boat to brick it up. Misty's jib is easy to brick because it has no battens (fiberglass sticks sewn into one side to help the sail stay flat).



Luckily, the marina has a very wide dock, so we were able to flake and brick on the dock and we didn't have to carry the sail to the parking lot. Andrew took the head (top) of the sail and carried it up the dock, while I stretched out the foot (bottom) of the sail.

Then we flaked it. To flake a sail, two people get on each side of the sail and pull folds of the sail toward the foot until it looks just like this:



Then you simply fold it into a brick. Misty's jib will spend the winter in the dock box.

The main sail was a little harder to handle. Since the main has battens, you have to be very careful when you flake it so be sure that the battens are exactly parallel. This is how we accomplished that:



The main is much heavier than the jib and doesn't fold up as small (battens don't bend), so we tied a neat little handle to it. I used sailor knots. Andrew insisted his were climbing knots, though I think they closely resemble sailing knots...







And voila! The finished product:



And now Misty Rose is shockingly nude... Hope she's not too cold!

Winter's quiet night...

There's something I love about the marina at night in the wintertime. There's no one around -- no one I can see anyway. If anyone is here, they're hiding inside their boats, snug against the early winter breeze that takes your breath away. It's still and silent save the usual evening sounds.

There's the bell-like ringing of lines. The rhythmic thumping of halyards and the hollow echo of masts. The gurgle of water slapping the sides of the boats, the groan of compressed fenders and the ever-so quiet noise of lines stretching against their cleats. The quiet humming of rigging in the wind is louder than the traffic of the city half a mile away.

Then there's the noise of a working port. The occasional whistle of a tug or blast of a ship's horn as she prepares to leave port. That's the comforting promise that everything is running as it should, ticking away reliably in the background, bringing salt for the snowstorms, bananas and cars and potash and a million other things.

Of course there's also the long, almost harmonious, purr of rail cars blowing horns as they carry goods away from Baltimore. It is quiet and it's nice.

There's something quiet and comforting about the marina at night -- but it's most comforting from the warm, comfortable inside of a boat that has weathered more winters in her life than I...