The Excellent Adventure

A few weeks back, I got an email forwarded from the Berkeley Parents’ Network, from a woman whose family was considering a move like ours, looking for some practical, BTDT advice about making the big leap. We chatted back and forth, and set up a day to have them come sailing.

Unlike our previous adventure with having folks aboard, this day looked to go off without a hitch! And a grand thing that was, too. It’s always bad to have the boat break when you’re pitching the lifestyle to someone. It was kinda weird to me, in that I still feel like a total boat novice, yet here I was, looking back over the last two years’ worth of adventure in getting to this spot, trying to help them hit the high spots and avoid the lows that we’d run into.

Mitzi, Eduardo, and little Mario came aboard, and immediately we all began The Grand Tour. Usually, the new-to-the-boat tour involves me showing people how the head works, where the galley is, and that kind of superbasic info. But these were wannabe liveaboards, so it was an entirely different tour. For them, the discussion of the weird cabinetry, the funky panels, the other odd “gotchas” we never would have known to look for ourselves. I warned Mitzi about the “oh, so you’ll be in charge of the galley!” class of assnine comments she’d most likely face. We talked about how weird it is that in boat culture, women are still considered largely to be obstacles to their more adventurous men. We bitched about Strictly Sail and its many limitations. Eduardo picked Jason’s brain about engines, sails, insurance, delivery, and all the stuff that was pretty much Jason’s half of our researching (we figured out early on that if we were going to have any hope of catching up to where we wanted to be, we were going to have to divide our research labors. It’s worked out well for us.)

There was a great deal of conversation about mono vs multi. Obvee, multis are not nearly so common on this coast as they are, um, pretty much everywhere else, and while they’ve got a lot going for them, for the cruising and liveaboard family, they’re an acknowledged PITA in terms of finding space for them, and getting them here without ending up bankrupt. So we talked boat culture, good financing companies, and marina politics. We also talked family culture, and the advantages of a fairly stable platform for when you’re raising small kids. We talked about lego storage.

In what is becoming our favorite activity with guests, we dodged outside the Golden Gate. One day, I will collect everyone’s “under the bridge” photos all in one place. But for as calm as it was inside the Gate, it was hoppin’ outside. Waves were around 10′, period was around 16 seconds, and it was a fabulous rollercoaster. So fabulous, in fact, that the dolphins were out playing in it too. Sadly, they’re far too shy to have posed for the camera, but take my word for it; seeing those fins was probably the highlight of my month. There is something about watching a dolphin move that just makes me gasp. Probably too many former lives as a sea creature.

Due to hanging out far too long, we ended up back to the dock significantly after dark, and they had to hustle to get Mario home for bedtime. As is often the case, I thought of all the perfect things I should have said, the pointers I should have passed along, the bits of wisdom I’d picked up here and there that I should have mentioned. And I was blown away by how much information we’ve accumulated in such a short time. It seems, when you’re totally head-down in doing it, like you haven’t learned much at all, because there is so much ground to cover. But when graced by the opportunity to stop and look back, it’s wildly encouraging to see the starting point, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off in the distance.

Tags: guests, living aboard, Sailing, Talking Story

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