Mandy's update

It is time for me to add to the blog again... While we are under way I can think of all kinds of things to say, but once I am here in front of the computer, they all escape me.

Everything seems to be going quite well. The boat finally got dried out in Vancouver after being tied up at the Graebel's without any heat in it for a few weeks. And it helps that the weather is perfect: warm and dry. It is just now beginning to feel as homey as it did when I lived on it. I think the dryness factor plays big.

I hadn't expected to have an internet connection after Vancouver until I fly back to Seattle a week from Monday, so I had considerable work to get done there. This trip is supposed to be more than doing work from exotic places, but I can accept if that is occasionally required. After all, I do think it is probably more fun to sustain a career from a boat than from the office. Who knows, maybe this will end up being a trial run of something like that!

I'm reading the book "Seasoned by Salt" by a semi-retired husband and wife who cruised the east coast of the US and to the Caribbean and back, and I am jealous that they can take their time going places and staying places. They have ten months, we only have two, and our two months are broken up by my Seattle obligation two and a half weeks in. Yet I take comfort that this couple felt just as unprepared upon departure as I think we did. And we are getting to do it 20 years earlier in life than they did, so the trade-off is okay. Scott is always handing me books about sailing to read. He used to give me scary ones where boats sunk or people died or other catastrophic things happened. I think he wanted me to feel the same necessity of preparedness that the book instilled in him. But, to me, it just made sailing scarier, and the disasters more inevitable, no matter the amount of preparation. So now he gives me happier stories with smaller lessons. I was surprised tonight that shortly after my book made me giggle out loud, his book, "Fatal Storm" made him laugh out loud as well. Maybe I just don't see the books the same way. He has since finished that book and started reading "Fastnet, Force 10" which is supposed to be even deadlier. Strange guy, that Scott.

Today's trip up to Secret Cove was beautiful, and Vancouver was beautiful, and all-in-all, it isn't hard to see why we're doing this. I don't think either of us had any mission to find ourselves or many of the other reasons people seem to take trips like this. I think we both just really wanted to go sailing. I remember the day the trip was decided (well not the date), but we were at the boat, working on it as usual, with no trips planned. On that day it seemed that all of our boat time would be spent maintaining and never going anywhere. My dad had passed away a couple of months earlier and I now had nothing tying me to quick contacts or airplanes. A conversation went something like this:

"So, let's just plan to go to Alaska."
"Okay."
"When?"
"It's too late to plan a trip for this year."
"Let's go next year."
"Okay."

And it really was that easy to decide. For two people who never seem to agree on anything at a first go, it seemed destined to work out. We fretted most about what to do with our kitty, Rosie, for a few months, until Don graciously agreed to cat-sit/house-sit. (Thanks again, Don!)

I suppose I did hope to glean a little more insight into what makes Scott tick. Since he talks so little, it seems easier to just watch him to understand him than go by what he says. So far the only thing I learned is that, after all this time we've been together, he would have preferred I use both seasoning packets if I prepare 2 packages of Ramen instead of just one. Without this trip, I may have never known. Why did he never tell me before? That is still a mystery. Maybe in a few more weeks I'll have unlocked that one as well.

We have eaten food other than Ramen. I cooked up some of the freeze-dried beef stroganof that was a gift from the Graebels upon our crossing over into Canada. To borrow a word from Terry, that stuff is "spooky". You boil water, then turn off the heat and add some chunky powder, and 10 minutes later you have some pretty tasty beef stroganof. Where did the beef come from? Weird.

With any luck, we won't find ourselves grounded from not tying an extra line to shore, and in the morning we'll be off again. Adding the additional line would have meant the pain-in-the-butt job of inflating and then deflating the dinghy. Scott did think about swimming the 50-60 feet to shore, which I would have found tremendously amusing, but he decided not to. I caught a picture of him while he was looking over the bow pondering it. The wind is very light and there won't be current here and even low tide is only 3 feet below high tide today, so we really should be fine. It is the cutest danged spot to be anchored though!