General and Miscellaneous

Christmas is near, Jennifer is leaving, friends are coming and I start to think about boats and boating.

Port Townsend, 8-Dec-2023 — Tuesday, I’ll go down to Gig Harbor and install two additional solar panels on John Riley’s boat, this will give 320 watts, which is roughly what I have on Caro Babbo. Instead of two one hundreds, he’ll have four fifties to aim as he wants, in addition to the 130 on the dodger. It’s cold here and cloudy, there hasn’t been any sun in a few days and his house battery has died. I’ll buy him a new deep-cycle house battery for Christmas.

It is Christmas, at least for me. I’ve started shopping…on line… and figuring out money. I’ve spent a lot more this year than I had intended. I’ve helped friends, and have family to attend to. Jennifer is off to Berlin and Flora may come to visit for a day or two (or perhaps a week or two). My stepdaughter Samantha arrives on the 21^st, with all the attendant flurry that accompanies her, as well as her boyfriend.

I’m still here

Port Townsend, WA 16-NOV-2023 – I’ve lost my sense of time: the unique feeling of how many days passed, or when something happened in the past, has left me. I attribute it to the stroke, but who knows? Like Billy Pilgrim, I’m adrift in time.

We’re going!

Port Townsend, WA, 19-JUN-2023 –We met with my cardiologist yesterday… Yes, I’ve said it, my cardiologist. I now have a cardiologist for the rest of my life, and who knows what other doctors, but that’s the way it is. It’s better than the reverse.

…We met with my cardiologist yesterday who told me everything is fine as far as going on the boat, and getting away from things. I do have Afib, and I seem to be constantly in Afib.

I’m changing

Port Townsend, 12-JUN-2023 – I’m changing. I think I’m changing back to whom I was; I am different. I know I feel the same things I used to feel, but I’m different.

Since the stroke, there have been changes in me. In the early days, the days would pass by without really an end to them. They were somehow continuous. Eventually, that stopped, but even now days don’t have the strong breaks that they used to. I seem to sleep heavier.

We’re ready.

Port Townsend, WA, 26-May-2023 – We bought tickets to go to Anchorage. We’ll fly up on the 26th of June and return in early September.

Jennifer will fly up the same day as me, which didn’t really click until I spoke to an old high school friend, Roberta Guzzone. Jennifer is flying up with me on those dates, she’ll be with me for two weeks while I get the boat ready to go into the water because she wants to be around me in case something happens. It’s an odd feeling.

I did a teleconference with a nurse practitioner at Harborview Medical Center. The nurse practitioner is from the stroke facility. I am, it seems, completely recovered from the stroke. I know that’s not completely true because I have a slight lisp when I say certain words that have an S in them. It’s not anything anyone else notices but I can.

Allegro, non-troppo

Written before the excitement, which does nothing to change the larger directions we are all chasing.

Port Townsend, 3-MAY-2023 – It’s been a heck of a year since we returned from Caro Babbo last fall.

I’m back from almost 3 weeks of bouncing around Europe seeing old true and good friends. Just before I left I started to feel the pressure of tasks to be accomplished before Caro Babbo can go in the water. I set all of that aside, other than to book my flight, then jetted around Western Europe seeing friends. It wasn’t a return to an old life, we’ve all more or less left that life. Franz, with another 10 years before he wants to call it quits, has decided he’s had enough of the newspaper industry and being a CEO. He starting a new venture with a new love and exploiting an untapped Italian market for which there are government monies looking for a place to go.

Ann is still in Paris having left Dublin 40 years ago. She’s called it quits and lives the Parisian life of leisure and magazines. Elena flew down from Moscow, she’s a travel writer, we traveled for a week around Milan and Lake Garda: travel if you can with a travel writer. I don’t need to say more.

One, Two, Three Strokes, you’re out at the ol’ ball game.

Port Townsend, WA, 8-May-2023 – Today feels like it is the end of the day that happened. But it’s not. That day was six days ago.

I remember sleeping much closer to Jennifer than I normally did, she was comfortable and quite warm. She had her hand on me, across my shoulders, then it felt a little uncomfortable. I also felt I needed to go to the bathroom.

Jennifer’d been gone for days, and I had been gone for weeks prior to that, so we hadn’t seen each other much in the last two months. It was nice to have her near, and very comforting that she should put her arm around me when she was sleeping. I scooted over leftward to the edge of the bed. She must’ve been closer than I thought because I could still feel her hand on me.

Summer 2022 prep starts NOW.

30-MAR-2022, Phoenix Arizona, USA – The preparation and crush to prepare for this summer sailing starts. It is no different than last year. The amount of work I expect that will need to be done before Caro Babbo can go in the water is much less than last year. But the number of non-boating tasks and leisure things that we are trying to get done before I fly to Alaska is an order of magnitude larger.

Caro Babbo Sleeps

Mitte, Berlin, German, 13-SEP-2021 – The return to Homer was smooth and uneventful. We sailed when we could, three times, perhaps. Each time Caro Babbo coming into her own, sailing faster than I remember, reaching hull speed easily. This may be because we were in fairly protected waters each time, but most likely we had current helping us.

For the entire trip, we saw only three other sailboats. The first was a marina-mate from Ko’Olina marina on Oahu. Yes, it is a small world.

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.