One of the joys of our adventurous lifestyle is meeting new and interesting people. That usually occurs in the local Laundromat. I met Roe, Emma and Owen just after their arrival at the marina. They had come through a bit of nasty weather and landed at our peaceful doorstep with a lot of laundry. The laundry room here is air conditioned, and thus conducive to long conversations while folding clothes.

We have a soft spot in our hearts for people who ditch Normal and live dangerously. These three “Kiwis” as we dubbed them—although only Owen is a native of New Zealand—are just that. Owen, owner and captain of s/v Dulcinea, is an experienced sailor, but Roe (pronounced “Roo”) and Emma are just along for the wild ride. They’re still on the part of the learning curve where you call the specialized gear on a boat “that thing-a-ma-jigger.” But they’re learning fast, and they can keep an eye on the horizon, GPS and the autopilot. What else do you need from crew?

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They became friends partly because our children lack age-appropriate playmates in the marina and rely on adults that still act like children to toss them into the pool and other such nonsense. But in the times I caught up with them sans children, we had long conversations about life on planet earth, maps, tectonic plates, racism, religion, politics, child-rearing, and other more serious topics. It’s so refreshing to get another perspective on America; sometimes we can’t see ourselves unless we step back and see the reflection from another perspective. I hope the time we spent together was mutually beneficial.

Today, after a couple of false starts, the three Kiwis and a spare crewmember sailed off into the horizon. They are headed toward Mexico at the moment, but ultimately home to New Zealand via the Panama Canal. We will be following their progress at www.milkrun.co.nz and living vicariously as they cross the great Pacific with their gnome Gary in tow. We will all miss their company, but perhaps the children more than anyone. Good playmates are few and far between. 

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To Owen, Emma and Roe: we wish you fair winds and following seas. We’ll be praying for your safety at sea and look forward to watching the documentary that will make you all millionaires!  Maybe we’ll see you in New Zealand someday…

We brought Rachel home this week to the boat on Thursday, and she took her first dinghy ride today (we visited friends on our old dock). We are happily settling into a “new normal” and the children have welcomed the new sibling with ease and grace. All are eager to help and think that baby sneezes are about the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. Who doesn’t? She definitely adds a sweetness to our home—and is such a calm and peaceful baby. Maybe we will have a low-key kid yet. There’s always hope.

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There are a few moms I’d like to thank this week for making it happen. Many thanks go to my mom, for giving birth to me and, consequently, her grandchildren—what a miracle that inside the tiny body of a baby girl is not one, but potentially two generations. Also, Mom came up for a quick visit and gave me a lift home to the boat. To my mother-in-law, who made my “babymoon” possible. We escaped to the quiet and peaceful environs of her house to recuperate and enjoy snuggling, learning to nurse and sleep at night, resting, visiting with old friends, and luxuriating in long baths (a rare treat). Also, she had been to the store and bought all of my favorite foods. To my good friends, Susan, Tarin and Vicki, who spent a long 24 hours waiting for Rachel to show up. They provided companionship and support when I needed it, and I couldn’t ask for a better group of women to pray a baby into this world! To my midwife Harmony, a mom herself, who went above and beyond the call of duty and let me labor the way I needed to in a relaxed environment, and even cooked me breakfast the morning after. To my sisters, Sascha, Tennille, and Robin, who are right there with me in the trenches of motherhood, slogging through all the difficulties from diapering to disciplining. To my favorite grandma, Pearl, who passed away several years ago, and gave my daughter a good name-sake. To all the moms in my life: I love you all and wish you a very happy Mother’s Day.

It’s hard to believe we’ve been back at the dock for a month now. I must say that it hasn’t been a hard one, either. The comforts of land life mitigate the losses of beauty and freedom inherent to cruising. Of course we miss seeing the sunrise and sunset over a clear horizon, the quiet of an anchorage, the daily treks to the beach for “recess” and a hundred other small things that make cruising such a pleasure. But being able to step off the boat (eight months pregnant, mind you) and drive an air-conditioned vehicle to Publix to load up on relatively-inexpensive organic food somehow makes up for it. We have enjoyed visits with all the family that we haven’t seen since last spring and almost got caught up with all our friends. When it gets hot on the boat in the afternoons, I take the children to the local Planetarium or the Public Library across the street (insert sigh of happiness here). Plus there are our favorite local hangouts that give the chef a night off, which she seems to need more and more as the due date approaches.

That said, there are some subtle changes that make me pause in my reflections. Why, for example, do we suddenly live by a clock-imposed schedule instead of a natural schedule? We used to be up (and down) with the sun, eat when we were hungry and never feel guilty if we were “late” for some daily activity. All of a sudden, we are staying up late, waking up late, and feeling some kind of pressure about it, especially after daylight savings kicked in and made everything an hour “late.” Really, who cares if breakfast is at 8:30 or 9:30? All the normal things are happening in the normal order, but that clock suddenly has the power to make me feel stressed out. I barely even looked at the clock when we were cruising.

And then, last night, it started raining cats and dogs in the middle of the night and I woke up feeling confused. It took me a few dazed moments to realize that that booming sound was thunder, and the sparkles on the window were raindrops, and that the wind was causing us to actually move in our slip. That got me thinking, when is the last time we looked at a weather forecast? We used to live and die by them.

While doing the dishes the other night, it occurred to me that we take a lot of other things for granted, too, like unlimited hot water. At anchor, I would never have wasted the amount of water doing dishes that I do now, because it comes straight out of a hose from the city water supply. I should still conserve water, but I really don’t.  And who has even looked at the battery monitor lately, let alone run the generator or kept an eye on the solar output?  All discussions about wind generators have been replaced by consultations on carpentry and upholstery. We are really getting soft. When we got hot this weekend, Jay even turned on the air-conditioner. We are officially living in a “dockominium,” insulated from the raw realities of wind and weather, the awareness of our dependence on water and power, and the sometimes frustrating experiences of daily survival. The transition to living at the dock may have been easy, but less seamless than it might seem.

Part of the charm—and the challenge—of our family is that we really don’t let anyone tell us what we should or should not do. With children, we expect immediate obedience (often for their own safety) but allow them to ask “why?” later. They also attempt difficult things and daring feats that other kids might not because someone is always telling them that they shouldn’t. Jay and I have our own rebellious streak. Without it, we would never have made it this far. The unsolicited advice we receive includes things like how we should not have five children (far too many in this day and age), and how we should not sell our house in this market, but we should be building our careers and retirement savings and not gallivanting around the planet in a boat blowing those resources.

The same goes for advice on pregnancy. Everyone has an opinion about what is appropriate behavior for a woman in my “delicate condition.” Someone stopped me in Georgetown and said they were happy to see that my being pregnant didn’t stop me from cruising. He was just trying to be nice, so I refrained from using the comeback that came to mind—that I was glad that his being old didn’t stop him!  Other activities I have been either stared at or scolded for include loading groceries into the dinghy, kayaking, hiking, snorkeling, riding my bike, sitting on a picnic table, moving a lawn chair and having half of a glass of wine.

Anyone who knows me knows there’s not much delicate about me. It doesn’t mean I don’t have limitations, or that I don’t occasionally pay for that can-do attitude. But I feel great. I have even been known to say that I like being pregnant. I can think of nothing better than this lifestyle for growing healthy babies: we eat almost everything from scratch, get plenty of sunshine and fresh air, exercise even when we’re not trying to, and generally pursue happiness and harmony. Some people just can’t handle it and feel the need to put a stop to such reckless joy. Good thing we know how to ignore good intentions.

February 20, 2011

If you can imagine the perfect day after being gone from home for a long time, that was my day yesterday. We reunited with good friends at the House of Pancakes in Marathon, spent the morning with them, then went out for pizza at our favorite local joint, the Hurricane. Jay and the kids went back to play and do laundry at our friends’ house while I headed to Publix. I nearly wept to see cantaloupes 2/$3.00, not to mention fresh berries! I didn’t even try to control myself. While we’re traveling, I try to keep everyone happy and comfortable, so I filled all requests, from animal crackers to Haagen-Dazs ice-cream bars. I even bought a couple of boxes of Kraft Mac-n-Cheese (gasp!). We can go back to our home-made, organic diet in a couple of days. It was a fun day.

After living in France for half a year during college, I know about reverse culture shock. I appreciate certain things about my homeland because I’ve been away from it, and I am likewise appalled by certain things, whether I’ve been away or not. We already know what we will miss about cruising, and what we will appreciate before we go “back out.” There’s nothing like a life of self-deprivation to make you really thankful.

Over the last few weeks as we’ve made our plans to return to Florida, I began talking to the kids about what’s coming next. Every time I mentioned the prospect of coming “home” they corrected me—“you are home!”  I guess we have really convinced them that this boat, and where their family is, is home. I had a hard time explaining what I meant by “home,” chiefly because I mean different things by it. That made me reflect on what that word really means.

In returning “home” from the Bahamas, I meant to our homeland, the U.S. “Home” in Florida for me means friends and family, the Gulf Coast where Jay and I grew up together, and even “home” to the marina where we kept our boat for two years. Yet, coming to Marathon felt like a homecoming, too. We lived there for six months, getting our feet wet, so to speak, in the cruising lifestyle. Our friends there make it feel like “home” to us. In a previous blog I talked about always feeling homesick for somewhere. They say that home is where the heart is, so if we leave a little piece of our hearts everywhere we go, then we are also always at home. That’s no small comfort in a world where so many feel disconnected.

What is planet Earth like? Imagine for a moment what it would be like to come here from another galaxy for the first time. All the movies about extraterrestrial landings here are about Martian invasions of New York City or rendez-vous in the desert. Sure, we have mountains and valleys, vast plains and deserts, huge rainforests and swamps, continents and islands. But most of planet Earth looks like the view out my galley window for the last two days. Liquid water for hundreds of miles in all directions.

I’ve begun to think it likely that if anyone ever did come here to investigate, they would arrive somewhere in the middle of an ocean and get the impression that the planet is a vast wet wasteland. Or, better, they would make the acquaintance of dolphins or whales and never even see a human city.

There are folks who never leave their hometowns, people who have never seen a beach, much less open ocean. There are scientists who know more about outer space than about what’s below the surface of 75% of their home planet. As for this sailor, I don’t think you can say that you’ve seen what the Earth is like unless you’ve been out here in the middle of liquid nowhere. It’s an immense, eerie, beautiful, mercurial world, and a very humbling experience to explore it.