It’s been about three weeks since our last post and when we hit the two week mark our oldest son — the one who said no one would read our blog — asked if we were still alive and happy. Apparently, despite our frequent phone calls, our blog has become his barometer for our well-being. The truth is, we’ve been quite busy.
We have continued to explore new trails on St.John including, most recently, the Leinster Bay Trail and the Europa Bay trail, while revisiting some of our favorite hikes such as the short Yawzi Point trail and the more challenging Ram Head trail. With steep Rocky Mountains that create natural vistas, we are rewarded at the end of our efforts (see Zack’s postscript to our last post to read more about that) with magnificent views of the surrounding bays and islands, often catching a peek of S/V Che Figata at rest. Seeing her from afar is a little like an out of body experience, allowing us to be an voyeur on our own lives and giving us an even greater appreciation for where we are.
We’ve also continued to snorkel and have found some really good spots in Saltpond Bay and Leinster Bay with fabulous coral formations serving as a home to almost every Caribbean reef fish you see in the guide books. Following Jill’s attack, the Triggerfish which we once considered elusive, now appears to be everywhere and though we find them to be among the most beautiful of the tropical fish native to the USVI we have learned to keep a respectful distance when diving down for a closer look.
And, finally, we’ve done some actual sailing. Given the the short distance between bays on St. John and the need to pick up moorings in the most desirable mooring fields during the “changing of the guard” (aka when the chartered yachts leave the mooring field to find a new location for the day, generally between 9:30 and 10:30 every morning) there’s less actual sailing than we would like. In part motivated by a recent guest who loves to sail, on a few days when the winds were favorable we took our chances on a mooring and sailed during the day. These moments remind us why we’ve chosen to see the world via a mode of transportation that moves from point A to point B, often circuitously, at just under 10 miles per hour on a good day. There is a sense of freedom and a connection with nature that envelops you while sailing, creating a euphoria difficult to replicate any other way.
But that summary, while fully true, doesn’t really capture what we’ve been doing for the last three weeks. Which made us think about the most frequently asked questions posed to us — including “What do you do all day? Don’t you get bored?” — so we decided to capture them here as a way of satisfying those curious while also chronicling the more mundane aspects of our new life. So here we go:
What do you do all day? Don’t you get bored?
While we acknowledge that are days are much more leisurely than when we were working full time, ours days are busy. On a very pleasant note, in the morning we actually sit down to enjoy breakfast together (avocado toast is Jill’s specialty) and read the news. Following that, some days we take a long hike or swim to a special snorkel spot. And, of course, the sunsets are magnificent down here and watching them together with a cocktail (often Jill’s killer G&Ts) has become a very special part of our day.
But, as we’ve said before, there is a lot of cleaning and maintenance aboard a sailboat. The hull and deck gets dirty from the constant salt spray, we get algae growth along the water line and the stainless begins to tarnish. Just doing a full polish of the stainless — and we have a lot of it on our boat — can take half a day. We need to keep up with the cleaning on a weekly basis or the chore would get to big and difficult for the two of us the easily handle. And, beside, we are proud of S/V Che Figata and want to keep her in near bristol condition.
There are a myriad of other projects that keep us busy — some on a smaller scale and some on a large scale. On the smaller scale, we recently undertook the chore of untangling the 50 amp power line that feeds into the Cablemaster. This 50 amp electric cord is what connects us to shore power. The Cablemaster, a power reel, stores the cord and deploys it with the touch of a button (right). Over time, from going in and out of the boat via the Cablemaster, the power cord becomes twisted. Really twisted. Imagine sixteen pretzels all intertwined together and you will be close. You are all familiar with the electric cords you have at home for your appliances, how those cords get twisted over time and how you have to hold one end and swirl until the cord is totally unkinked. Imagine what it would be like if those cords were 30 feet long, weighed about 35 pounds, were about the thickness of a thin wrist and were fed into a mechanical device (the Cablemaster) that thwarts the ability to twist and turn the cable. In other words, there is really no loose end which is pretty critical to the untangling process. It is unruly to say the least and makes the task of untwisting like a cross between solving an puzzle and wrestling an alligator. It took us about an hour to complete the job — and we got a full body workout in the process.
On a larger scale, about 3 weeks ago we switched slips for a more advantageous wind set up. Our first slip here at Sapphire Beach Marina had the dock to windward — meaning the 15 to 20 knot winds (sometimes more) pushed us toward the leeward side of the slip which happened to be occupied by a large power boat. (Only slight apologies for sailing terms — look them up, personal growth is a good thing). The switch required us to reengineer our dock fenders that we had rigged before. You have not heard about them because the senior writer of the blog didn’t think that anyone would be interested in how we rigged the dock to avoid scrapping the side of our beautiful black hull and, more importantly, when thinking about capturing memories through our blog she wasn’t really sure that was a memory we wanted to preserve. (Likely, we will both leave here with a touch of PTST from the experiences of getting back into our slip.) At any rate, a new dock required a new set up. We again mounted fenders on the dock itself. We also built hull-paint-protecting rub rails out of wood strips, carpet and floaty noodles cut in half. The captain thought the design was brilliant and the admiral had to agree. So now the wind pushes us into the dock and we have two large piling on our windward side that we can slide along on our external stainless rub rail.
The point is, these projects take time. A full day just to get the noodles, wood strips, carpet and screws that went into the project and nearly a full day installing. Almost every day there is something we need to do to keep everything on the boat clean and in working order or to protect our boat from damage. But then there’s the sound of the waves, the natural beauty of the islands, crystal clear warm waters and those magnificent sunsets. We are not complaining about the price of admission but only pointing out that we have plenty to do to stay fully occupied!
What’s it like spending 24/7 with your partner?
Though we get this question a lot, we think than many of you have experienced this due to COVID. The only difference for us is that we co-exist in less than 500 square feet with very narrow passageways (we are constantly bumping into each other, though Jill is convinced that most of Zack’s brushes are deliberate — a suspicion he vehemently denies) and, unlike others who share small quarters with a partner (perhaps a small NYC apartment), we can’t easily escape by taking a walk. Being on a boat surrounded by water has its limitations.
After 38 years of marriage we have had to be more deliberate about not pushing each other’s buttons, being more considerate of each other’s needs, picking our battles and to reading each other’s moods. We admit that though we are generally very compatible (you don’t survive 38 years together — 14 of which involved the raising of teenagers — and 2 job related relocations to new states without some degree of successful partnership), this is still a work in progress. That said, we’ve come a long way from when we first started sailing together and Zack would bark orders (sometimes in an overly officious way) because he thought that’s what captains do and Jill would argue (when she should have been helping with a line) because Zack didn’t say please.
How do you exercise?
This is probably one of the most frequent questions we are asked. Again, we would point to the experience of COVID that taught many that they don’t need a gym to exercise. We can do push ups, planks and aerobics right on the boat. The stainless steel rails around the boat double as great bars for stretching and strengthening exercises. It’s like having our own barre studio! As you know from our other entries, we also do lots of hiking and snorkeling including some distance snorkeling. We are always heading around the next point to see what is there. And, of course, there are days that we get a full body workout wrestling an electric cable.
Was it hard adjusting to living on a boat? What do you miss most from your former life?
As strange as this sounds, from the day we moved onto the boat full time (our 38th wedding anniversary), we felt like we always lived there. It felt so natural. In part that is probably because we prepared for this moment for a long time and we were use to spending weekends and several weeks during the summer on our boat. But we think it is deeper than that. There was a feeling of liberation. We donated or gave away many of our possession and placed some of our newer furniture and special pieces of decor in long-term storage. We sold one car and gave the other to our younger son. We took a minimalist approach to packing cloths, making sure we had just enough for all the conditions we would encounter.
Though the boat itself has complex systems (part of why we are busy with maintenance — see above), the living is simple — everything is built it. It truly is like a tiny house on the water. As we shed a lot of the trapping of our very traditional professional lives, it forced us to prioritize what was important and become more comfortable with who were are knowing that we have stripped ourselves of many of the artifacts that others would use (purely because our hard-wired cognitive biases work that way) to make assumptions about us. (Of course, in full disclosure, we didn’t entirely give up some of our indulgences. We have an appliance garage on our boat that was the perfect size for our coffee/espresso machine and our water carbonator. Just because we are living on a boat doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy a good cup of joe or sparkling water.)
That is not to say that there aren’t some things we miss. We will start by saying that of course we miss our family, friends and work colleagues. This blog was designed, in part, to help keep us connected and phone calls, Zoom, FaceTime and email, though not the same as seeing someone in person, work very well. (Again, something that we all learned in this year of COVID.).
With that covered, we’d say that we both miss different things. For Jill it’s not having an income stream. Though we prepared for this moment financially, as many of you know, working and being self-sufficient is part of her DNA. To the surprise of many, including Zack, she’s adapted well into her “retirement” lifestyle. Still, she finds living off retirement savings a bit unsettling even though she knows, intellectually, it shouldn’t be. She also misses contributing in a meaningful way to the work she devoted herself to for the better part of her professional career and, particularly, the last 20 years.
Zack, a true renaissance man with many interests and talents, misses some of his former passions, particularly designing, planting and maintaining a garden. Zack transformed the back or side yard of every home we owned into a lush oasis of outdoor living space with very little grass. He would spend hours planning the design, picking the right plants based on the look he was trying to achieve and soil/climate conditions, planting and then moving everything around and transplanting. Jill is convinced that Zack’s love of landscaping not only greatly enhanced their enjoyment of each home but also played a big role when we needed to sell each house. Curb appeal makes a difference!
What didn’t you bring on board that you regret?
Surprisingly, very little! Again, we carefully planned for this moment and thought through what we would need. Jill is particularly proud of her galley. She loves to cook and in our home she had all of the standard appliances you would expect from someone that doesn’t believe in processed foods — a food processor, standup mixer, blenders, etc. She found a way to create a functional kitchen despite needing to leave most of her appliances behind and having a propane stove that she affectionately calls the EZ Bake oven. For example, an immersion blender with multiple attachments substitutes for a blender, hand mixer and food processor. If you come on board (this is really a warning), Jill will gladly give you the cook’s tour of the galley.
Still, there were some misses. Though embarrassing to say this in a blog (fortunately, we know that the quite small readership is largely comprised of family and good friends), Jill misses some stuffed animals that got left behind. She just didn’t think to pack a few small ones for the boat. Knowing Jill’s attachment (she never played with dolls growing up, it was always stuffed animals), Zack went out and bought Jill a stuffed bear that now sits high up in a nook created by a hand hold in our cabin. Similarly, we had a few “cocktail” table books that are now packed deep into storage but we wish we had with us. One, in particular, was a book comprised of photographs of Zack’s parents’ Cheoy Lee sailboat, the Teak Dragon, which his dad so beautifully restored. So many times we lamented that we couldn’t flip through that book to breath in the artistry of this gorgeous boat. You are probably seeing a common theme here. We don’t really miss things that we used in daily living but we do miss certain possession that brought on a feeling a joy. (We should have paid more attention to Marie Kondo.)
What are your future plans?
We plan to stay in the USVI for about another month. Then we will slowly make our way up to New England by way of Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas. We hope to sail New England for the summer, enjoying locations (like the coast of Maine) that we simply couldn’t reach when we were living in the area because they were too far to a field for a two week cruise. Mid Fall it will be time to head back down South, ultimately reaching St. Lucia in early January in time to participate in the 2022/2023 World ARC rally. After that, who knows!
