Staying put for the duration

Ko Olina Marina, Kapolei, HI, 31-MAR-2019 — The marina is where all the tourists come for whale watching trips and swimming with dolphins, for deep sea fishing charters and to spot turtles swimming among the docks. All of that is closed. The marina has settled down to a quiet neighborhood.

We meet our neighbors, speak, stand on the dock and socialize, but for Jennifer and me it is different: we don’t ask people to come on board Caro Babbo. I feel guilty not doing so. Although the people I newly meet don’t know that this is something I do… I, in fact, feel I must do… I feel guilt as if I have insulted them.

I know this is heritage: my Italian-American background mixed with Long Island. The American dating milestone was always lost on me: meeting the family. Every girl and woman I ever dated and probably ever knew came by the family. It wasn’t anything special. I brought everyone I knew by the house. I thought everyone did.

Not bringing people on board feels like a failure.

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Boat projects continue, though slowly. I’m not sure if it is a motivation issue or the knowledge that we’re not leaving soon.

The only current option is heading to one’s home country. The US for us.

I had been expecting a flotilla of boats from French Polynesia to arrive by now, but on reflection they are probably a week or more away.

Safari Explorer, who we know from SE Alaska, is here. Boats crewed by foreign nationals are empty as those people headed home. The marina is quieter.

I continue to try to get into a productive schedule. There are only a couple of required major boat tasks left and then the several hundred optional tasks that follow.

The major boat tasks are: replacing some diesel fuel-return hoses, and installing the second bilge pump, which will require refastening all the hoses and cabling that run through the bilge.*

Here are some highights of our life here:

• Our friend Steve Dracott, who we met in Radio Bay in Hilo, set sail last week for Vancouver. He is Canadian. His spouse, Margy, had been visiting for a few weeks. The winds looked good, though it is quite early in the season.
  
  In our new technology world, Steve stays in daily contact. The ride has been bumpy and wet. His very heavy boat does not make good way to windward and he is on a close reach, perhaps even close hauled. The heavy weather is supposed to lighten to ten knots or so, which is the minimum his vessel will move in.

• Jennifer and I bought a small ice maker, following the lead of our friends Jill and Abe, who are living aboard in Port Townsend. When we had thought we would live aboard in Seattle for a year, I had envisioned having a dorm refrigerator and a microwave, in addition to our stove. Here, loaded for offshore cruising, there is no room for either. The icemaker lives in the cockpit. I dump the ice into the ice box, so we can keep fresh produce, meat and fish, if we want.

• Desk work feels less like work than doing physical labor; reading, even for research, feels less so, but all need to be done.

• I need to get my Master’s license finished up. I am missing a drug test and signatures on my logs. Today, I have sworn to myself that I will work on those.

• The highlight of the last week was having a tooth go bad and ”extracted,” which I have never had done before. The MD that pulled the tooth gave me a 20% discount for being 65 and having no dental insurance. Will wonders never cease?

• The boom has been repaired and reinstalled – almost. The pop rivets holding the gooseneck to the boom still need to be installed – my pop rivet tool was destroyed by salt water when a locker flooded two years ago. I’ll buy another today.

An always a joyous occasion presents itself this week: an order to Fisheries Supply. Even with shipping, it is less than West Marine here in Hawaii and has a much better selection. At West Marine one pays for immediacy, which is a fair trade to my way of thinking. The order will include new lines for reefing, boom vang and more soft shackles, an electric fan for Jennifer, some wire rope for the life line gates and the hardware to match (thimbles, nico press collars, etc.), a solar-powered exhaust fan for the galley and probably lots more. This is a new American Express billing period, after all.

We can follow the weather patterns via the weather software we have on board. We see that Steve should be fine.

In general, the weather here is mild. Cloudy some days. Showers are common, but not an everyday event.

We’re developing friendships and borrowing bicycles for errands. The beaches are all closed as are the walking paths along the beaches nearby. But, while the golf course is officially closed, it has become the park that everyone in the surrounding planned neighborhood uses.

Like most places, some people will pass within three or four feet of each other, others step off the path to maintain much more than a six foot distance.

Jennifer and I generally read rather than watch videos. I have a TV addiction, but we have started watching some. We once watched a wonderful and novel (there’s that word) icelandic murder mystery years ago and have been searching for something equal to it ever since.

There is humor in the actual Icelandic murder count, I think less than one per year, versus the blood letting by the alternate, made-for-tv, universe. Long shots of the volcanoes really capture us.

It is a quiet time, alone with Jennifer, being together and contemplating… nothing in particular or perhaps, better said, contemplating everything, especially those things that there hasn’t been the time to contemplate before.

Stay well, be safe. Write to us, or call.**

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*The bilge on Caro Babbo is ten inches wide by about 24 inches long and holds a few gallons. Its purpose is provide a place for the propeller shaft to run. It is beyond crowded with hoses and cables.

**I’m fascinated by the continual movement to the next big (well marketed) thing. Zoom is it. I’ve been through Go-To-Meeting, Skype, FB messenger, WhatsApp and here we are now with Zoom. Except for WhatsApp’s very good encryption, I don’t see much functional difference among any of them, just the next shiny object with a large marketing budget.