People – Page 7 – Caro Babbo

Where is Jennifer’s Car and When are we leaving?

Lee’s Landing, Lake Union, Seattle, WA, 14-Aug-2019 – A fast status as we’re finishing up getting ready to leave.

There is a heavy and unrelenting feeling of pressure to get everything done, but as I sit to write this fast and hurried post, I realize that there are five days to go and there is no need to feel this pressure. Everything on critical path is easily accomplished. Yes, the list is unending, but that it is because it is a boat, just like a house, there is always more to do.

Better in the living

More than a week has passed since I wrote this. Jennifer has returned to Seattle, and I have been head down working on what needs to be done before we leave and what I’d like to be done before we leave.

DL1077 ATL-SEA twenty minutes outside of Atlanta, 20-JUL-2019 – As an adult, I’ve always lived a double life, or more. A life in one city, a second or third in another. It has been a life out of a movie sometimes: I worked at a movie studio, fell for a Russian I met there and followed her to Paris; I was profiled in a magazine and worked in dozens of countries; I owned that same model sports car that James Bond drove, but it was always a life better in the telling than the living. Long distance relationships seem to be more about pain and heartbreak than anything else, life on the road is exciting and tiring and forbids other parts of life.

Taking a few minutes to play Hooky

Lee’s Landing, Lake Union, Seattle, WA, 7-MAY-2019 – Tests for my Master’s (Captain’s) license start tomorrow evening. I’ll take a few minutes to play hooky and tell you about the experience before the reckoning.

I row to class in our Portland Pudgy each afternoon, a little after 5pm and then home at 9:30. The row is around 50 minutes, five or ten minutes longer than walking, but if I paid attention to where I am rowing, it might be the same or less. When rowing, I only see where I have been, rather than where I will be.

At night, I will see only three or fewer boats on the lake on my row home.

Lake Union and the PNW boating community is as much my home, as any I have had. I think of the three places I’ve lived where I would run into I people I knew: As a young adult on Long Island, I would always meet people I knew at Smith-Haven Mall. As a slightly older, young adult in New York’s west village, and now sailing here.

Hilary Has died.

At 7:42 pm, Atlanta time, Jennifer sent a text: ‘‘30 breaths per minute, hard, normal is 12-15.’’ At 7:54pm, ‘‘37 bpm.’’

Lake Union, Seattle, WA, 5:30 am PT, 12-Apr-2019 – At 6:03 am this morning, Atlanta time, with Jennifer holding her hand, Hilary drew her last breath and breathed no more.

Her passing was as Jennifer has hoped, peaceful and quiet. Jennifer was with her and Hilary was not afraid.

Life is a Mangle

7-APR-2019, Port Townsend, WA – Contranym – a word that is its own opposite. The noun mangle and verb mangle are life at the moment. A mangle is a machine with rollers that smooth cloth. I think of them as the wringer rollers on a washing machine, or the machines that iron sheets in a hotel. The verb is to destroy usually by twisting and cutting.

Hilary is dying. It blots out much of what I intended to write about.

She stood in front of the temple and spread herself upon the wind, thinner and thinner, until only the wind remained.
Apollo referring to Hera in Star Trek episode 33, Who Mourns for Adonis

Hilary, Spelling and the Camino; GPS, the Bahamas, and when will we ever get home to Caro Babbo.

Decatur, GA, 19-FEB-2019 – At times I’ve written that the true subject of this blog is Hilary.

Dyna and husband John at the 2019 Atlanta Orthographic Spelling Bee.

I received this email from Dyna Kohler, the Doyenne of the Atlanta Orthographic Spelling Bee. Dyna saw a picture of our dinghy, the Hilary Hoffmann stored on Caro Babbo’s foredeck.

I am really dumbfounded now to learn Hilary’s full name. Hilary Hoffman, did she walk the Camino in Spain in 2003? If so, I met her.…

John Riley

Decatur, GA, 24-Jan-2019 – Jennifer and I flew from Seattle to Atlanta yesterday. We had traveled by bus and ferry from Port Townsend to Caro Babbo, on Lake Union, the day before.

Owning Caro Babbo introduces us to a greater cross section of the world than anything I have ever done.

We meet people who have bought new power boats for millions of dollars and people living on derelict sailboats that will never move again without a tow. Unlike doing business in New York or the third world where the mega-wealthy and the destitute live side-by-side, sailing Caro Babbo, we do not merely see the spectrum of wealth and social standing, we spend time with the socio-eco spectrum of mankind.

I lived in NYC during the dark Abe Beam years. The city was at its nadir: murders were around four per day. It was dangerous time, and a time to learn about people and gain street smarts.

Lady K nearly sinks, and a Saturday morning reflection

Port Townsend, WA, 5-JAN-2019 – It’s ten after seven on this Saturday Morning. It’s dark and won’t be light for another while. I’m trying to think where have we spent that last few winters such that I am surprised it is dark.

I remember winter sailing from Lake Union the first year we had Caro Babbo. We left the dock at 6.30; it was very dark.

This morning I have a bit of panic: I don’t know what to work on. For a moment, I had a ‘‘I’m retired’’ panic. What do I do with my time? I’m not head down in a house to be sold, I’m not literally head down in a boat bilge.

Work has translated into physically doing something. And I don’t have anything physically to do.

The great refuge is email and the web. An email from Darrel Walters suggests I watch a video of a Canadian pleasure boat sinking in the Bahamas. Their nightmare lasts ninety minutes and all is well at the end, but it makes me look at Caro Babbo in the light of their calamity.

Back in the PNW

Back in Port Townsend, after an overnight on Caro Babbo, we return to a water leak at the PT house.

Port Townsend, WA, 30-DEC-2018 – It’s 4 am. I haven’t made the complete transition to west coast time.

It is a fitting morning to be in Port Townsend. The wind howls and buffets Jennifer’s house here, while Caro Babbo sleeps 30 miles away, across Puget Sound, safe in her slip on Lake Union

On Land

Decatur GA, 20-Oct-2018 – The most pleasurable difference, between sailing and being on the dock at Lee’s landing in Seattle, is unlimited water and unlimited power. Granted, the water comes in 25 gallon slugs, but with the unlimited electricity it means that the water is hot.