Re-Entry and Reflection

Onion "stored" in our car all summer

A friend asks how we are doing in "re-entry" mode since we left -- moved off -- Cilantro just over a month ago and returned to Arizona. Physically, the transition was simple: dismantle and stow boat equipment for cross-country transport, load clothing and personal effects into a heap of duffel bags, and get on an airplane, leaving Bittersweet Landing Boatyard with the heavier decommissioning tasks. Our rural desert home was as we had left it: empty of most perishable foods, slightly dusty inside and out, surrounded by waist-high grasses, but otherwise intact. One strange discovery was a sweet onion that had apparently spent the entire Arizona summer in the car, in the uncooled garage, and was none the worse for it -- it tasted fine sliced onto salads. Left on the boat in humid Maine, however, it might not have had such a happy ending.

Adjusting back to landlubber life has been interesting. Curtis marvels at the easy availability of electricity. There are no battery banks to monitor and fret over, no calculations of how soon we'll need to hook up to shore power or run the engine. You just flip switches and pay monthly! Sue initially felt wasteful using more than two mugfuls of water to wash and rinse dishes, but she's gotten over that and now happily fills a bowl or two for the whole operation (or uses the dishwasher, that blessed thing). The electric coffeemaker is pretty slick. Taking daily showers is a distinct luxury, and indulging in a second shower after hiking or weed-whacking is OK too. The washer and dryer are located in the house instead of 15 miles away by borrowed car. And climbing into a queen-sized bed -- from either side, no less -- is a welcome end to the day.

Weather-watching from the porch in Arizona

The view from our Arizona "cockpit" is radically different from the one we enjoyed this summer: desert grasslands, mesquite trees, distant cliffs and mountains. And yet, in many ways it is not so different. Looking out on a watery landscape and staring across the desert have in common the big sky and the long view, largely unchanging except for undulations of waves and clouds or wind-swept grasses and moving shadows. Then there's the occasional surprise of a pilot whale surfacing or a bobcat crossing the property. Weather events can be observed more than 30 miles away: "Look, it's raining in Mexico," Sue likes to point out, and Curtis practices forecasting from clouds and wind on the water as well as on land. The presence or absence of wind often determines how the day will unfurl. For sailing, that's an obvious point, but for life in the desert, we also note the wind patterns, because they affect bird activity, temperature fluctuations, and the general character of the day, not to mention whether we use our outdoor shower (!).

Weather watching from the boat in the Gulf of Maine

So, besides the sailing and equipment learning curves, what else did we learn or realize? How did we survive three months of living together, 24 hours a day, in an indoor space roughly the equivalent of our bathroom and walk-in closet at home and an outdoor space that rocked and rolled and resembled a narrow, uncovered porch full of step-ups and step-downs, unforgiving toe-stubbers, head-bangers, and underfoot sections of rope?

It wasn't bad at all. Curtis only broke one toe, Sue survived a mere few days of unnerving ocean swells, and remarkably few things fell overboard. Bruises heal, scabs fall away. Salt eventually washes out of clothing. We both got a bit too much sun exposure, more than we allow ourselves in Arizona, but then, that experience led us to consider purchasing a bimini shade cover for the cockpit. We spent a lot of money on the boat, and we are still recovering from sticker shock, but a cruising friend assures us that the outlay of cash falls off dramatically once you set up your boat the way you want it. We're almost there (we think) and we hope our friend is right.

Small freezer section (at right) of refrigerator

The onboard cuisine was fine; in truth, we ate much the same meals that we eat on land, although we tended to bring less raw meat aboard due to infrequent shopping and the fact that the small freezer didn't keep food rock hard. We didn't eat as much seafood as we (and our friends) expected we might, being in Maine. Sue thinks this was due to several factors: we didn't do any fishing ourselves, we didn't have a car to shop daily for fresh seafood, and we didn't chase down lobster markets in the dinghy. Sue wasn't keen on handling lots of messy prep and clean-up in our small galley, and our chosen cruising destinations were remote islands rather than busy harbors and fishing ports, where we might have purchased ocean-going delicacies. So, if a summer of seafood gourmandizing had been our goal, we failed, but we aren't exactly moping about it.

Curtis servicing one of our winches

Sue's 2-needle wheel cover method

We got along well 99 percent of the time (of course, 33 percent of the time we were asleep), with only occasional sniping and grumpiness when the weather was hot and humid or the work was difficult and tedious. Maybe we were both too busy learning and working to focus on each other, or maybe we are just lucky to be good traveling partners. We each chose or were willing to do different jobs, such as servicing winches (Curtis) and stitching a wheel cover (Sue). There were "luxuries" we did without, such as television and a car, but we didn't miss them all that much. We were fortunate to be able to borrow a car once a week, and that turned out to be plenty. We brought along 12 DVDs and watched none of them. Creature comforts on the boat were enough for both of us, and we found pretty good (though variable) Internet access along much of midcoast Maine.

Juvenile black guillemots kept us company.

But people have asked us how we managed to get along so well in tight quarters. We're not certain ourselves, but we think that a combination of shared and overlapping interests and mutual respect are keys to compatibility. We both love birding and mammal watching. Interests that overlap -- ones that we share but to a different degree -- include weather-watching (Curtis is very keen on weather science, maybe because of his pilot training; Sue is interested but less intensely) and botany (a recent passion of Sue's; Curtis knows as much if not more but doesn't obsess about it). Unshared but mutually appreciated interests are another valuable ingredient. For us, these include:

Sue working on the blog one evening

• Cooking: Curtis is a grillmaster, but he really likes Sue's cooking and is grateful for her willingness to put something on the table every night. Even leftovers receive high praise.
• Equipment research: Over the past several years, Curtis has researched (among other things) navigation systems, autopilots, wind-speed-depth instruments, windlasses, radar, batteries and energy monitors, wind generators, solar panels, dinghies, and sail construction. Sue is very thankful for his dedication! She is always ready to listen to the research results, but if she had been the one doing it, she would have burned out quickly and bought the first and cheapest model of whatever-it-was she came across. 
• Blog writing: It must be admitted that Sue is the author of all blog posts. Curtis is happy she enjoys writing, although he was surprised to find that she couldn't just "bang out" a blog post over breakfast each day. No, Sue explained, they actually take some crafting, sometimes several days' worth. 
• Apps for iPad and iPhone: Curtis is all over these: Navigation apps, tide apps, weather apps, etc. He's always on the lookout for new ones. What's out there? Cool. What are the reviews? Great. Who's using this one? Excellent. $0.99. $9.99. $49.99. Sue's approach to apps is more of the "OK, looks useful, I'll learn it" variety. We've added an "iOS Apps We Like" list to the right-hand column on the blog; check it out.

Of course, you can't reduce personal relationships to a formula of "interests." That makes it sound as if any two people who both like to bowl, fish, or gamble would automatically be compatible on a boat, or in life. But when we ask ourselves why it is we can stand -- no, why we enjoy -- being around each other day after day, this combination of shared interests and respect for the other person's interests seems to explain a lot.

From his rock-climbing days, Curtis knows a lot about knots. Bowline-on-a-bight is one of his favorites, along with the water knot and the one-handed bowline. Sue is not as spatially gifted as he is, so she put in some hours this summer practicing a suite of basic and not-so-basic knots. Toward the end of August, she graduated to eye-splices and whipping techniques to make a spare anchor line. Curtis was suitably impressed. So there's yet another set of shared interests keeping us together: knot-tying, splices, and whippings. Hah.

Sue's eye-splice joins nylon rode to a thimble

Whipping (brown twine) to secure the eye-splice