Kathryn’s Voyage Blog

Publish Date: Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Location: Sarasota, Florida
Coordinates: 27° 20.036′ N 82° 32.814′ W

Hi all! Please excuse the long delay between my first Q&A blog and this one. I took advantage of being “close” to Texas (at least as close as we’ve been this year) to take Ayla on an extended driving trip to my home state. It was a great opportunity to visit aunts, uncles and cousins she hasn’t seen in years. Cruising along the Interstate at 70 mph is really different than cruising along at 7 knots. 🙂 Here are the questions we’ll tackle today:

1. Is it tough not having a routine due to the changing ports?
2. Do you feel like you spend enough time at most ports or are you always having to get somewhere else?
3. Do you get frustrated with weather delays?
4. Is it challenging keeping the holding tank emptied?

• The day always begins with a check of the weather. While the coffee is brewing we are either online (when available) or tuned into the weather station on our VHF radio. The days adventure is almost always determined by current and predicted weather.
• Plans are finalized over coffee based on the weather forecast. If we are cruising, we’ve usually already planned our route, loaded the charts into the navigational software, and picked a departure time based on tides, distance, sea state, available light etc…
• Whether we get underway or are staying in port, breakfast is made and enjoyed together followed by  “morning clean-up” where beds gets made and the boat is generally made spiffy for the day (or made secure for being underway).
• Homeschool is always next on the agenda. Ayla likes to take care of it first thing in the morning. While Ayla is doing home school, Dave and I are taking care of other projects (cruising, planning, email, blogs, video editing, boat maintenance, etc…).
• Exercise depends on what’s going on that day. I’ll address this in more detail in a separate blog regarding health and exercise.
• We try to have school and other projects done by noon, so we can have lunch and then be off to explore our new port-of-call. If we’re at anchor, we generally try to be back to the boat by sunset.  If we’re at a marina/dock we are more flexible.
• Our evenings aboard are some of our best times. The events of the day are reviewed and discussed for new insights and learnings over dinner. Time is then spent preparing for the next day’s cruise or adventure (including a detailed weather analysis). When projects are done and time permits, we love to play games, watch a movie or read.

Obviously this is simplified and certainly there is a lot of fluidity to these plans depending on length of cruising day, weather, location etc. The first few months of active cruising were exhausting to me as everything was so new. However, within a couple of months we fell into a natural rhythm that seems as smooth to me now as the ebb and flow of the tides.

Do you feel like you spend enough time at most ports or are you always having to get somewhere else?
Hmmm…tough question. It all depends on your cruising objective – do you want to see a variety of different locations or do you want to explore one particular area in depth?  There are some cruisers who go to a single location and spend the entire season there. Of these cruisers, some  will pick the same place year after year, while others will pick a different place each year. Still others are called to keeping moving and enjoy a variety of places. There is no right or wrong, and all approaches have advantages and disadvantages. The best part is, it’s your plan, so you get to pick what feels right. Our objectives were to:

1. Gain significant boat handling experience and “shake down” our boat in a variety of conditions while close to North America so we could speak the language should we get into trouble or need assistance/parts.
2. Test our ability to cruise new locations, explore areas and capture our journey to share with others at the pace we would be cruising if we are able to complete our around the world plan.
3. Take advantage of our time on the water to explore different types of cruising from open ocean passages to inland waterways and locks, from remote island isolation to busy big city ports.

There is no doubt this was an aggressive plan but it worked for us. We were thrilled with the experience and perspective we gained in cruising over 10,000 nautical miles in about 14 months. Tired at times but very happy.

We learned a ton about ourselves and what we liked best, which will be critical in planning the next portion of our journey. Every person’s experience, needs and comfort levels will be different, so it’s critical to experience a variety of cruising environments and travel methodologies to see what works best for you. For us, we like to mix it up a bit, but for the most part we prefer to spend at least 2 to 5 nights in a location so we can get a feel for the local rhythm. Then we are happy to cruise 48 to 72 hours straight to get to another location where we can spend an extended period of time again. Sometimes this style of cruising simply won’t work, for instance in the St. Lawerence River (Quebec Province) our cruising days were determined by the daily 18-foot tidal shifts.

In retrospect, one of the reasons we had such a great experience is that we had clear goals we wanted to achieve with a general plan of how to accomplish them, however we were willing to be VERY flexible along the way. We had a one year cruising plan broken down by geographical areas, with our daily cruising schedule (in spreadsheet format) planned in rolling two month increments, and then within that schedule we had tremendous flexibility based on weather and new opportunities that presented themselves. There is this wonderful, and at times challenging, balance of good planning juxtaposed against not holding on too tight to what you have planned.

Do you get frustrated with weather delays?
Yes, yes and yes…that was a unanimous answer. One of my biggest “ah-ha’s” of this last year was just how much the weather dictates our schedule. I certainly knew it was important, but I had no idea the extent to which it could change a schedule, not just from a timing standpoint but also the need to modify locations for docking or anchoring. Weather rules the sea, at least it sure seems that way to me.

When we used to sit in Boulder and dream about this adventure, I read about the importance of waiting for the right weather window. Somehow I had in my head that weather windows came in one- or two-day chunks. I had no idea that they could come in week- or month-long chunks. There are cruisers who never made it over to the Bahamas last winter because they could not catch the right window.

Safety and the desire to cross oceans were the two main reasons we bought our Nordhavn. However, it’s important to remember even with a great, safe, and wonderful boat you are still infinitesimal to the power of the ocean and weather. We have our most precious gift, our daughter, aboard so we are very cautious about the weather.

The 14 months we were cruising saw some pretty unusual weather. Many of the places we visited experienced the coldest, windiest fall, winter, summer or spring (depending on when we were there) in history. There were even two hurricanes in one week in the Canadian Maritimes this summer while we were in the area. Friends have taken to calling us the “Bad Weather Besemer’s”, while members of our family have suggested we can fund our journey by showing town councils our weather history and having them pay us not to come to their towns. 🙂

In the end, it’s all part of the journey. We try hard not to hold on too tight. We watch the weather closely and go when we can. Sometimes we leave early, sometimes we leave late, sometimes we skip whole sections of our planned journey because we are behind, but no matter where we are, we are always together and appreciate the opportunity to be on such a grand adventure.

Is it challenging keeping the holding tank emptied?
Not really. Once we figured out the size of our holding tank and the amount of water per flush, a couple of simple calculations let us know about how often we needed to pump out (about every five days). We found it fairly easy to plan a stop for pump outs when cruising inland or coastal waters.

The bigger challenge was the quality of pump out facilities and their equipment. There is quite a range between antiquated equipment which we can be difficult and slow to use, to modern machines that take about a minute or two.  We ultimately purchased a pump-out hose attachment specific for our tank, which is much easier than trying to get the various sizes we found along the way to fit. Be sure and keep plenty of quarters on hand, as many of the do-it-yourself facilities use quarters.

Up Next…
Whew!  Did anyone actually get to the end of this post? If you did I would appreciate your feedback on format.  When I have a long answer, should I only tackle one question per post, or do you like having similar topic questions grouped together?

Up next…dangers on the water. Until then, keep the water on the outside. 🙂