Maxi 95 and Our Adventures
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.
Continue reading “I’m changing”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.
Continue reading “Allegro, non-troppo”Port Townsend, WA – 14-NOV-2022 – Traveling from Homer to Port Townsend was uneventful. We’ve been flying more and more the last few years, nothing like we did before I left the workforce, but we’re probably doing over 30,000 miles a year, each.
While Homer is seeing more and more private jets as the very affluent find the next place to colonize, for Jennifer and me traveling between Homer and the lower 48 involves multi-hour layovers in Anchorage. This time we got pretty lucky. Our flight left Homer at 10:15 PM arriving in Anchorage at 11 PM with a 1 AM connection to Seattle.
We took mass transit from SeaTac to Bainbridge Island and were in Port Townsend mid-day, Labor Day Monday.
Caro Babbo now has an inverted ‘‘V’’ on her skeg, which was not there when she went in the water.
When Caro Babbo came out of the water the aft lifting strap slipped further aft. Aaron, the man running the hoist, saw this and seemed to think it was okay. He has much more experience with this than I do, and I deferred to him. This may have been a mistake, as Caro Babbo now has two lines in an inverted ‘‘V’’ on her skeg, which, when we compare photographs, we see that they were not there when she went in the water.
Continue reading “Caro Babbo sleeps, John has nightmares”Port Townsend, WA, 23-Jun-2021 – In 22 days I will board a Delta Flight from SeaTac airport to Homer, Alaska changing in Anchorage. Rental cars are scarce; I will pay $125 per day for a three days rental car in Homer. In Anchorage, there are none – Jennifer and I paid $13 per day for a rental last September.
I am flying to Caro Babbo. The surge of returning has taken a long time to build in me. I once saw an interview with Norman Mailer describing the effects of using a testosterone gel. He said he hadn’t felt that way in years. Norman is long dead, but returning to Caro Babbo sharpens my senses and gives me purpose.
There is never the return to her that doesn’t have some apprehension. It is the not the uncertainty in the back of one’s mind when seeing a lover after an absence: Have things changed? Will I still be loved?
No, returning to a boat, our boat, is the apprehension of returning to a house that has been shut up: Will everything still be there? Will there be damage?
Maybe it is closer to returning to a loved exotic car. All of the above for a house, plus will it start? Can I get parts for the repairs I must make?
Unique to a boat: once I get it running, will it sink somewhere with me aboard? Will the rigging fail and Caro Babbo become dismasted?
Continue reading “Count down to Homer”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.
Continue reading “Back in Port Towsend, so much has changed in the US”Boat Haven Boatyard, Port Townsend, WA, 23-JAN-2020 – Winter time in PT is quiet. The tourists haven’t arrived, the harbor at Fort Hudson is full of boats wintering over, and the Boat Haven boat yard is full of boats being worked on.
Much of the conversation we had with other sailors about our crossing contained questions about whether, and oftentimes the assumption that, we were a full keel vessel.
Continue reading “A look at bottoms: A walk through the Boat Haven yard”Port Townsend, Wa, 18-May-2019 – Call me Almost Captain. I’ve passed all the tests, taken a Red Cross-approved first aid course, had a physical. There is only getting a TWIC card (background security check), getting a drug test and assembling 720 days of sea time, and then, with the addition of another few hundred dollars I will have a 25-ton master’s license for near coastal. Oh yeah, I also will have sailing, and assistance-towing endorsements.
This will allow me to captain, for money, power vessels up to 25 tons gross vessel weight based on volume (not displacement); the vessels will weigh, empty, much less than 25 tons. I can also master a sailing vessel of unlimited weight and get paid for towing boats that need assistance. In the US, it seems I can do all of this on non-commercial vessels, for no pay, without any license. (In other parts of the world this isn’t true: one must actually have training before doing these things.)
Continue reading “I’m your (almost) Captain. Goings on ashore.”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
Continue reading “Back in the PNW”Lake Union, Seattle, WA, USA, 30-SEP-2018 – We’re home. We arrived yesterday at 6:12pm.
It was a different arrival than in 2016. The dock was empty. No one to greet us.
The night before when we docked at Boat Haven in Port Townsend, we spoke about how many hundreds of times we have docked, how Jennifer routinely pulls into a slip with Caro Babbo inches from the dock. And so we did here.
Lord’s Pocket, AK, 14-AUG-2018 — I’m not writing as much as I’d like. To be honest, as much as I feel I should. Traveling in Caro Babbo has become life, it is not an adventure or a vacation. It is our life, or at least my life. Jennifer is feeling she has had enough of this trip and wants to return home, wherever that is now. But we are headed south and it is nice traveling.
We’ve traveled from Juneau to Baranof Warm springs, after Tenake springs, and then Cosmos Cove.
Cosmos Cove was lovely. It is wide with nothing particular to recommend it looking from a chart, but from inside it is silent with a focused view of the mountains across the strait. The trip to Cosmos had been a long 10 hour motor with mirrored water rather than the predicted 10-15 knots. We’ve been shadowed recently by two sail boats, Laiva and Balloon. We’d seen Laiva in Juneau, where it sat empty for a few days before showing signs of life. Continue reading “Port Townsend on Parade”
