By John – Page 4 – Caro Babbo

The Long Dark Tea Time of the Sail

Rocky Point, New York, April 4th, 2021, Easter Sunday – Winter has passed, the snow here in New York is long gone and Maxi 95 owners in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe are putting their boats in the water.

Preparing this house for rent has taken longer than any similar project I have worked on, and is coming up on four times longer than I had planned. I hadn’t planned to be away from Jennifer this long, I hadn’t planned to spend this large percentage of my remaining life here, doing this.

Looking forward, looking aft: who was I, who am I, who will I become

Port Townsend Washington, 20 November 2020 – On Monday, the day after tomorrow, I’ll fly to Atlanta to work on my house there.

I’ll be flying on an Alaska Airlines buddy pass, courtesy of Grayson on X-Wing.

My life has changed. I’ve become so integrated into the sailing community that people don’t have last names anymore, just the name of the vessel they sail on.* It’s very much like the German or Dutch von or the French du, or even how Italian names came into existence as the place where they are from, my original surname, Giuliano, from the province of Giulia, which is no longer inside the Italian borders.

In giving me these buddy passes, Grayson told me I had to fly dressed appropriately, no ripped jeans.

After six days in Dutch, we head east again.

Written on my birthday. Two days prior, two fishing boats left Dutch Harbor, and Jennifer and I climbed to higher ground, all of us waiting for a tsunami.

Dutch Harbor, AK, USA, 24-JUL-2020 – It is my birthday today. I’ve come to the conclusion there is no such thing as a day off. Here in Dutch Harbor, we have had a full social life and will take tonight for just Jennifer and me. We’ll go to Angelina’s, which has an amazing Mexican menu. We’ll eat some small plates, I think, and drink some beer.

Living on Discovery Dock with us in the Bob Moss International small boat harbor are Anja and Thomas on Robusta and Ola* and Michael on Crystal.

Plastic

Traveling to where there are no people, one sees new things, and things anew.

Port Townsend, WA, 11-NOV-2020 – Our first landfall in Alaska was Hot Springs Cove, Inanudak bay, Umnak Island, Aleutians on the Bering Sea side.

The crossing had been uneventful, with good weather the entire way. There were no major equipment failures, and by using our windvane for most of the trip, the sounds were of wind, water against the hull, and the propeller, driven by the streaming water.

Commercial grade gear

‘‘Until something breaks’’ is the watch phrase of all sailors.

Homer, AK, 9-Sep-2020 – We’ve been reading, watching, and talking about equipment failures. A typical ocean crossing is 15 to 35 days. On every boat, things break during a crossing. It’s something sailors have come to expect and prepare for. I’ve also come to realize we, as sailors, expect this very expensive equipment to fail after a very short duty cycle.

In small harbors, where we hang around with commercial fishing boats, I try to envision a commercial vessel living with the meantime between failure (MTBF) measured in days of service. The bits and pieces of their boats are up to the task and not generally pretty: Stainless steel in some places, aluminum in others, and galvanized steel wherever that makes the most sense. We rarely see full-chain anchor rodes.

Life in Homer

Labor Day Weekend 2020, Homer, AK – Homer is not what we expect. Alaskans tell us, uniformly, that Homer is the Port Townsend (where Jennifer has a house) of Alaska. We feel blind, because we don’t see it.

Caro Babbo Sleeps, John Doesn’t

Port Townsend, WA, 1-OCT-2020 – In Homer, AK, Caro Babbo, resting on stacked wooden squares called cribs, winterized, locked and watched over, sleeps. I on the other hand toss and turn. Dryland, people, culture, and COVID are difficult transitions.

Give me a few minutes to catch you up.

Back in Port Towsend, so much has changed in the US

Port Townsend, WA, 1-OCT-2020 — We spent a few days sleeping aboard, winterizing Caro Babbo, then drove our rental car† back to Anchorage airport and flew to Seattle’s SEATAC.

I can’t sleep well since we have been back: anxiety dreams. Recent dreams have been about missing meetings and other things from my business life. These dreams are, instead, generally about Caro Babbo being on the hard and improperly winterized.

But, I know it is also withdrawal and the social pressures I feel being around people.

Seldovia Dreams

Seldovia, AK, 31-Aug-2020 — Jennifer brought us here to Seldovia to wait out weather. We arrived Friday for weather taking place out by the Barren Islands, Islands we’d passed between under power because there was no wind.

Saturday, through VHF radio weather reports, we learned that it was blowing 40 knots out there, but here in Seldovia it was calm. It seems, in times like this, there’s no reason to be tucked away in a small harbor. But there is, of course.

Our last anchorage; I do not look like a tadpole

Port Chatham, AK, 27-AUG-2020 — This is the last time we will anchor on this trip. Everything is mixed: Melancholia at having this long adventure end, and impatience to move on.

The day before yesterday and the day before that stick in the mind as embodying so much of an Alaska cruiser’s life. We motored and motored around a point from one anchorage to another: four hours, some of it dodging rocks and kelp. Much with no wind and some with wind that would have required beating to windward. Continue reading “Our last anchorage; I do not look like a tadpole”