Where in the world are we?

Or, how to track our location...

Thanks to the addition of an Automatic Identification System (AIS) to our boat, you can now sit on a perfectly flat surface and find out exactly where we are rocking and rolling.

The system was designed to pool locations of vessels traveling in similar geographic areas so they'll be aware of potential traffic hazards. Accessing detailed information on all large ships (name, size, destination, heading, speed and GPS coordinates) is more than just a diversion to pass the time on watch; the system computes how far away a ship will be when it passes ours, and how long it will take to arrive at that closest point. Since the AIS can "see" farther than radar, there's plenty of time for both vessels to make minor course adjustments if necessary to create a safer passing distance. 

Though it's no substitute for vigilance, our AIS has already proven itself to be very useful. But the fun part of it is the side benefit: all you have to do is go to http://www.vesselfinder.com/?mmsi=367525340, and a map will appear showing our location! You'll know exactly where in the world we are.

The AIS screen at night (this vessel is definitely not a threat!)

FAQ's

We get a lot of questions about this adventure, so I thought I'd post responses to those most frequently asked:

How do you provision for such a long trip?
That's not as difficult as it sounds, especially since we have been stocking the boat for increasingly longer trips for years. Boats are cleverly designed with all kinds of storage spaces, so they hold more than they look like they could!

Art has loaded up on spare parts for just about everything, including the hardware to put those parts to use, and has an extensive supply of tools. I have lots of staples on board at all times (beans, rice, pasta, etc.), then pick up fresh meat and produce at the last minute. I simply work from more perishable to less perishable items (chicken before sausages, broccoli before peppers). Art catches plenty of fish by dragging a line from the back of the boat, and I grow sprouts. It's amazing how many different salads can be made from cabbages, carrots and onions, which seem to last forever--and with an array of spices, herbs, oils and vinegars, we never eat the same meal twice on the same long passage!

How do you cook?
Using propane fuel, we have a 3-burner stove with a small oven in the galley--it can swing back & forth so it's always level, even when the boat is not--and a BBQ attached to the stern rail. (There's even a little propane fireplace for chilly nights, though we don't cook on it and we don't expect to use it much on this trip!) There is a relatively small refrigerator, and a tiny freezer--but since I started cruising with just an icebox, those seem sufficient.

What about water?
Second Wind holds 140 gallons of fresh water. We're very frugal when washing dishes, and we just take sponge baths when we're under way. When we're at anchor or becalmed on the ocean, we soap up and jump in the water!
Art will be installing a watermaker when we're in San Diego that will convert salt water to fresh. While we'll still conserve water, we will be able to have showers more often (ah, such luxury!).

What powers the boat?
Primarily wind, some diesel fuel, and a lot of muscles for pulling lines.
Unless they are very large, boats can't carry enough fuel to drive across oceans, so of course we depend on the wind in the sails to do most of the work. Fortunately what got us started sailing in the first place was the pleasure of using wind to move a boat, and that pleasure hasn't diminished! Fast or slow, one way or the other, we get where we want to go.
There is a 50 hp Perkins engine for calmer days; we also turn on the engine to recharge the batteries. Boats are DC powered (we have six house batteries and one starter battery), but we have an inverter that can convert DC to AC power if we need to have "regular" electricity. (So no, there's no microwave, but an electric drill--which works better than a cordless--is an option if need be!) We don't have a generator, but we do have a high-powered alternator to boost the batteries and three solar panels, so we've never lacked energy (at least not that kind!).

Do you get bored?
No.

What do you do all day?
Enjoy the water. Read a novel. Talk to crew mates. Enjoy crew mates' company without needing to talk. Enjoy the water. Cook, eat, nap. Read about something nautical (celestial navigation or 12-volt batteries or upcoming landfalls; we have a library on board). Write a journal.  Enjoy the water. Plot the boat's current position, check the weather, make navigation decisions. Play an instrument (we have a ukulele, guitar and violin available). Fix whatever broke recently, or maintain something so it won't break. Observe, immerse, reflect. Enjoy the water.

What do you do at night?
We keep sailing! No anchor chain can go 3 miles deep and we want to arrive at our destination without using up too much fuel/food, so we don't stop. Someone is always awake; at least one person is on duty (called "on watch") at all times. Everyone on board takes turns at this.

What do you mean by "on watch"?
To make sure the boat stays headed in the right direction and avoids unlikely yet possible hazards (like hitting a large floating object, or being overrun by a freighter), someone has to be responsible for the helm (= steering wheel) at all times. With a boat our size, only one person needs to be on watch, and others are just occasionally needed on deck for sail changes (the saying "all hands on deck" can still be appropriate!).

The helmsman is responsible for steering: sometimes hand steering, and more often monitoring the windvane steering system (or autopilot if there is no wind and we're motoring). Additional responsibilities include...well, watching: watch the sails, watch the waves, watch the wind, watch the instruments (compass, AIS, radar, barometer)--anything that could affect the boat and therefore require some action.

The off-watch crew's primary responsibility is to get rested (sleep can be hard to come by, especially when seas are rough; waves hitting the boat sound very loud in the cabin down below). Katelinn's mantra to crew members on her tall ships is to "clean something, fix something, learn something" , and that is also applicable for us. At sea the boat is everyone's home, owners or not, and is therefore everyone's responsibility to keep in good condition.

What is a watch schedule like?

Different boats and crews opt for different schedules. For a typical three-person crew, the most common pattern is 12-4, 4-8, 8-12; each person is on duty for two 4-hour shifts per day. (This is also common on larger vessels as well, though they have more people on duty at a time.)

We had four people on board when we went to Kauai and back, and each person being on duty for 3 hours and off for 9 felt fine (12-3, 3-6, 6-9, 9-12). With just three people for this trip's passages, however, we were concerned about the 4-hour stretches feeling very long in the middle of the night, so we tried this:

Midnight-0200    Nancie

0200-0400           Art

0400-0600           Nicole

0600-0900           Nancie

0900-1200           Art

1200-1500           Nicole

1500-1800           Nancie

1800-2100           Art

2100-Midnight    Nicole

Each person had to be on duty three times per day rather than two, but the 2-hour stretches in the night felt manageable. We're likely to opt for this rotation on other long passages, if it suits future crew as well.

How do you know where to go?

Navigation has been around for centuries, it's just getting easier. We do have a chartplotter that came with the boat (older but works) which has a screen in the cockpit that displays electronic data like charts, position and speed. It's useful, especially for setting coastal courses and catching the effects of current (called set and drift) quickly. 

That said, we are old school (classical musicians, right?), so we genuinely enjoy navigating and plotting our progress on paper charts. With at least three separate sources of GPS positioning on board, we do have redundancy (= backups, and backups for the backups), but knowing where you are without need for electronics--even if it's never necessary--is a useful skill. To that end, we are reviewing the celestial navigation principles that Katelinn taught us, and thanks to David Ingalls loaning us his sextants, we plan to be reasonably proficient at that art before we head across the Pacific.

What about weather?

Someone once said "there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes"--so if you're well prepared, you can handle anything. As part of preparation, all sailors monitor the weather very carefully. In addition to an addiction to checking the barometer, we are learning more about reading signals from cloud types and sea states. Primarily, though, we receive forecasts from NOAA.

Near the coast, the NOAA channels are easily accessible on our VHF radio, but offshore is trickier. We have a single sideband radio (SSB) that can send and receive signals from very far away, and we can pick up voice broadcasts of weather reports that way. Sometimes those are hard to hear, however, so the next step is receiving written forecasts and/or pictures of weather maps (portraying symbols for wind speed & direction, wave height & direction, barometric pressure at sea level, and barometric pressure at the jet stream). One of my huge pre-trip frustrations was getting Second Wind's electronic components to work together well enough to receive this information and display it on my computer. I won't bore anyone with the details, but so far neither I nor a marine electrician has been able to get the system up and running. Hopefully I can get this resolved in San Diego (while Art's installing the watermaker!); otherwise, long-distance voice forecasts will have to suffice. 

How will you communicate with people back home?

No, we don't have internet, and there are no cell towers in the middle of the ocean. 

Some boats have large satellite domes for internet access, but we'd have to sell another house to outfit ourselves that lavishly. An increasing number of boaters have satellite phones; though we wouldn't need to sell a house for one of those, the new phones and rate plans are still out of our price range. We did purchase an old used sat phone for emergencies; like the life raft, we hope to never need it!

I got my ham radio license last fall, so once the SSB + modem + my computer start talking to each other, I can send and receive short email messages while on board (plus get those handy weather images). For the most part, though, we will be off the grid, and content ourselves with communication via regular email (nancielinnshaw@gmail.com) while we are in port. There's wifi everywhere these days, so I'm not worried about losing touch!

Why are you doing this?

A. If you have to ask, we can't explain it to you.

B. Look at the second entry on this blog.

It Takes a Village

At this point I would like to thank a lot of people who pitched in, and without whom we wouldn't have been able to depart on time. We're very self-sufficient and were reluctant to ask for assistance, but at the last minute, help was needed--and many friends, old and new, came to the rescue.
It takes a village to raise a child, as the saying goes, and it took a village to launch us.

When we moved out of the Bellevue house for good, we were scheduled to turn the keys over to the new owners at 1:00 p.m.--and we moved the last box out of the garage at 12:55! It if hadn't been for neighbor Scott Jones, who took some runs to the dump and did some last-minute yard work; and Maggie Hsu, who temporarily stored our patio furniture--we wouldn't have made it. And my orchestra teaching colleague, David Drassal, was a hero! He came over with his pickup truck several times, delivering things to the dump or the storage unit or Goodwill or wherver they needed to go.

Jeremy and Stephanie Stubson gave up a day to move our remaining furniture and boxes to the storage unit, and Arline Borella was a great meal provider and moral support.

Nicole & Derek replacing zincs

Both before and after we moved to the boat, my cousin Jim Van der Veen was immensely helpful with errands (including delivering packages to us at Elliot Bay Marina that had been mailed to him, since we no longer had a mailing address). Nicole Schaffer and Derek Fukuda helped with several projects on the boat, both in Elliott Bay and in Anacortes.

Once again David Drassal responded to an SOS, this time by transporting our sailing dinghy (which we can't take on this trip) to Derek's house. There's not enough thanks--or enough beer--than can repay that debt!

We enjoyed a couple of Open Boat gatherings, and Christine Zomorodian and her partner Mike were instrumental in their success.

And to the community at B Dock (Elliot Bay Marina): what a heartening experience, to deepen older friendships and forge new ones in such a short time! We were bonded by our interests and experiences--our love for sailing and water, and the sacrifices we all chose to make this life viable. Lanham & Melinda and Marcus, your time & expertise were absolutely invaluable (as well as FUN!). Ed & Amy's great company and meals were always a delight, and John & Carol's moral support meant so much. Having all of you show up to bid us Bon Voyage couldn't have been more joyful!

Corrine & Larry in Anacortes

B Dock + crew families

Speaking of Bon Voyage: a shoutout to our dear friends Larry and Corrine Stubson. They pulled off some last-minute heroics, too--like schlepping a trunk full of stuff we decided wouldn't fit on the boat after all back to Oregon, and letting Art drive their car to Vancouver BC (!) in order to swap a part for the Hydrovane steering system. But best of all was just having them there, driving all the way to Anacortes from southern Oregon, when we finally cast off the dock lines for the last time.

Last but definitely not least, my sister Cheryl Wertheimer is acting on our behalf, taking care of all the pesky business that crops up on land. There was much more remaining correspondence than I expected, and she's been valiant in attending to all of it.

So to our village, the very deepest gratitude. We love you all!

Dressed in overalls

The first morning we woke up on the boat after we moved out of the house was exhilarating! Though we'd awakened on Second Wind countless times before and she already felt like home, now she was all we had--our only home, our "real" home. Though we won't be vagabonds forever, it truly felt like the first day of the rest of our lives.
Reality hit soon, however.

One of my favorite quotes is that most people don't recognize opportunity when it knocks, because it shows up at the door dressed in overalls and looking like work.

As soon as the milestone of shedding house/cars/possessions was completed, we had to get right back to work--this time on boat projects. The sale of the house enabled us to purchase the big-ticket items we needed (or at least wanted) for a journey of this magnitude: a Hydrovane wind steering system, a watermaker, a new SSB (single sideband) radio, an AIS (described in a later post), a more dependable radar, plus plenty of "smaller" items (e.g. a handheld floating VHF radio). Of course, all of those toys had to be installed--in addition to many other maintenance projects (new batteries, transmission issues, creating safe storage space for a large array of tools, etc.).

Murphy moved on to the boat with us, and everything--everything--had significant obstacles to completion. We overspent our prep budget by a large amount (which we think we can compensate for by living nearly free on the ocean and at anchor)--but even more disturbing was that we were up against a deadline. We needed to head out the Strait of Juan de Fuca by early September at the latest, or else face potentially severe weather off the Washington and Oregon coasts.

Though the stress levels got quite high, it's good to note that we never took our anxieties out on each other. Instead, we couldn't have pulled this off if we weren't such good friends and helped each other out of the lowest times. No wonder most people don't ever actually leave the dock for good!

Art & Derek installing the new radar

Transmission repair

Step One: Remove the Engiine

When we were first married, Art had an old MG Midget--a classic British sports car that was charming but was often out of commission. At one point the clutch needed to be replaced, so Art dutifully prepared to do the work himself. He opened the owner's manual to the chapter entitled How To Replace The Clutch, and it read:
               Step 1: Remove the engine.
Engine removal, as you might imagine, was in a separate chapter, much lengthier than the one for clutch replacement.

Moral of story: often projects can't even be started without tackling other big projects--and this was no exception. In order to sail away for two years, we had to sell the house and almost everything in it, which required extensive remodeling (Art's primary task) and radical purging (my primary task).

It took all of the 2013-14 school year to go through four decades of accumulated Stuff. Much was given away, most of the rest was sold, and the remaining items are now in one storage unit. Art repainted the house inside and out, pulled up lots of carpet and refinished the underlying hardwood floors, tiled the kitchen and bathroom floors, installed granite countertops, replaced a lot of lighting and some appliances, and probably other upgrades I've forgotten to list. The result looked like something from a magazine; indeed, we got several high offers as soon as we put the house on the market. Mission accomplished!

I took plenty of pictures of Art on high ladders, Art cutting granite, Art sanding floors, etc.--but sad to say, I can't post them because I didn't have time to write blog entries until after we left Seattle, and the flash drives with older photos are in the storage unit. (There weren't any photos of me, but there's not much entertainment in seeing Nancie studying for her ham radio license, Nancie researching insurance options/itinieraries/electronic equipment etc., Nancie packing boxes...)

Better late than never?

My apologies to those of you who have kept checking this blog, only to find...nothing!

Pre-trip preparations were so all-consuming that I didn't have a chance to post anything (or even write anything to post).  I figured I could write once the voyage began--which I did--then upload when we got to San Diego--which I could not. Internet access was much more difficult to find than I anticipated. But better late than never, I suppose; hopefully these stories will be worth the wait!

Shout Outs!

Nothing of this magnitude gets accomplished without a great deal of help and support. We couldn't possibly acknowledge everyone who has contributed to this project (well, we could, but the list is so long most of you would stop reading it)--but we would like to give special thanks to the following people:

We owe the most to Katelinn and Camden Shaw. You each chose to follow your passion, and those choices involved a huge amount of work and sacrifice. But most of all, they required courage. How fortunate we are to have been inspired by our children to take our own leaps of courage!

Nancie thanks her parents, Nancie and Lou Linn. Many of my favorite childhood memories are of camping and hanging out around water; I know my love of living outdoors came from you! (And thanks to my siblings, Cheryl & Les & Mary, for tolerating my weirdness...no, wait, they're just as weird as I am...)

Art thanks his dad, Clarence Shaw, for teaching him the value of tenacity. Things always break, yet with imagination and perseverance, things can always be fixed. (Patience helps, and plenty of tools, but it's the refusal to give up that ultimately does the trick!)

Plenty of thanks are in order to the Newport High School orchestra students. Without you guys being as wonderful as you are, I would never have been ready to move on to the next adventure. The deep satisfaction I felt at making so much amazing music with you gave me a sense of fulfilling one great purpose--so I could now begin to fulfill a different purpose. Toward the end of the classic movie Casablanca, Rick's parting words to Elsa are "We'll always have Paris" (a beautiful shared memory). Well, we will always have Shostakovich, and Schubert, and Beethoven, and Mahler, and Barber, and Phantom, and Jupiter...

Thanks to fellow voyagers David Ingalls & Jan Lippen-Holtz,  Lanham & Melinda Deal, Andy Schwenk and Arthur Howard. The stories, insights and advice are invaluable!

We managed to get rid of most of our accumulated Stuff, but thanks to all of you storing what we kept: Bill & Marilee Grimm, Larry & Corinne Stubson, Jim & Carol Van der Veen, Chase & Christi Chang.

If you're still reading this: thank you, too! Our many friends and relatives have made a positive impact on our plans and our choices. We are grateful to you all!