“This is What We Do.”

I’ve been obsessed with the ocean since before my teens, but it was my Uncle Dick who “infected” me with the love of sailing. I took the official ASA courses later on in adulthood, but it was my uncle & aunt (“Captain Grunk” & “First Mate Cookie,” as they have ever-after been known to us) who invited my sister & me on a series of sailing trips in our teens and early 20’s—first on Lake Michigan, then the Florida Keys, the British Virgin Islands, the USVI—and it was he, in those weeks aboard, who taught me to sail. Imbued me with a reverence for the craft (the Calling?) of sailing… an abiding respect for the dangers and their accompanying rules of safety… and an understanding that there’s a lot of grit beneath the ‘picturesque.’ Things that need maintenance, things that go wrong, things that add up to expenses… “A boat is a hole in the water, into which you throw all your money,” he told me. Grinning.

To other people, that’s a one-liner, or a solid reason NOT to buy a boat. To someone like my Uncle Dick—someone like me—it’s a self-evident doctrine. Of COURSE you throw your money into her. She’s the reason to HAVE money. Reverently, gratefully, like a Hawaiian offering fruit and flower leis at the volcano-crater of his goddess, I now invest in my boat.

Everyone tells you that things will ‘go wrong’ with a boat. Yep. They will. But to me, that’s like saying “If you have kids, they might give you troubles.” Um, yes! Duh—of course they will. I wanted the kids anyway, and I don’t regret them for a heartbeat. Yes, things will ‘go wrong’ with a boat. It’s part of the package. (And the package is still amazing.)

My Sponsor repeats a saying, when things ‘go wrong’ with my Plans in life (since I am a capital-P-Planner)… She says: “If you want to make God laugh… Make plans!”

But just as the money-in-the-water adage doesn’t deter me from having a boat, making-God-laugh doesn’t deter me from having plans. In both cases, Awareness and Acceptance are required. (I still Plan. I’ve just learned that Plans also require a good Planner to adapt them!) Awareness, Acceptance, & Adapting: that’s my strategy these days. And of course this applies to boating as well. (You know where this is going, don’t you?)

We took off last week for a (delayed) ‘long weekend’ (our ‘weekends’ generally occurring in the middle of the week) to spend both of our birthdays on the boat. I turned 49, and a couple days later Jon turned 60—ON OUR BOAT. I can’t describe the full awesomeness of that fact. (Call myself a writer—but I can’t.)

Although…

The birthdays-visit didn’t pan out as Planned. (Yup, here it comes.) We hoped to take her out for a night or two ‘on the hook’ (anchored) somewhere nearby. Stretch our sailing-legs, in a manner of speaking, with a low-key ‘maiden voyage.’ (We’d moved her, on our previous visit, from our ‘guest slip’ to her permanent moorage—and doodled about a bit in the bay—but we didn’t count that as a voyage, exactly.)

Instead, we discovered that the holding tank (that’s sewage-holding, for those of you unfamiliar) had sprung a crack, and the ‘water’ seeping below our floorboards sported a distinctly ‘outhouse’ smell.

Actually, I should back up: Before we even left town, literally as we finished filling up the car to hit the road, we discovered that the brakes needed to be replaced. Jon rounded up his many tools and went to work for an hour or so. When I reported our delay to my mother—watching him work and adding that I’ve realized competence is really sexy—she replied: “You’re going to laugh REALLY hard when you see Jon’s birthday present!”

But back to the boat. Before Jon could work on the tank, we had to pump out the poop—and although our marina has a mobile service two days a week, we weren’t there for either of those days. We’d have to take her over to the fuel dock to pump her out there instead.

If you read my earlier post (On Docking, On Keels, On Seamonsters), you know how I feel about docking (stressful!—especially in a full-keel boat, which Far Reach IS).

I may have done a little dance in my spot at the helm, when we pulled out of our slip perfectly smoothly, Jon striding alongside with the final dockline and jumping aboard the bow at the last minute. (“Whatever else happens,” I’d told him nervously, “Be sure you get ON the boat! I’m really not ready to dock SOLO to pick you back up!”)

We circled around so we could point into the wind as we approached the fuel dock, letting the wind act as a natural ‘brake’ as we pulled up to the dock. During our previous visit’s maneuvers, we’d decided docking would go much more smoothly if we could hear each other rather than relying on hand signals. Jon’s observations, shared after the fact, would have been much more useful in the moment!—but with 40 feet and a stiff breeze between us, not to mention facing the other way, it was impossible for him to make himself heard.

This time we tried out a pair of Bluetooth headsets and kept an open phone call while we docked… While we docked SO smoothly! (So proud of ourselves! And of course, trying at the same time to act a little nonchalant.) The guys at the fuel dock—who see boats all day long—praised her lines and asked about her full keel. I no doubt beamed as foolishly as a hormone-addled new mom.

We went went out for a bit more doodling around the bay, and talked about putting up sails, but by this point I had to PEE. And we had no working toilet aboard. So we went in for our final maneuver: swapping fenders and docklines to the starboard side and preparing to dock in our own slip again. We’d done this once before, but last time our neighbors had been there and stepped onto the dock so we could throw our lines to them—as courteous sailors do for one another—making it much easier to pull her in, and to a stop. This time the dock was empty, so it would be our first time docking with no assistance; Jon would have to jump to the dock with the bow line before the boat was actually in position. Those headsets are a game-changer, though! He was able to nudge and guide me from the bow, and we pulled in like a dream. More dancing at the helm!

All that accomplished, we could begin on the problem of tackling our leaking holding tank. Fast-forward a day and a half (a LONG day and half—in particular for Jon—the ‘day’ of which was his birthday!) and we have a brand-new holding tank AND all-new plumbing into and out of it. And of course we’d thrown some more money into that hole in the water.

Our very own hole-in-the-water, which becomes cozier and homier with each visit as we continue to move in and fix her up.

And why (you ask) do we so willingly—reverently, even—approach that hole-in-the-water with gifts of our time and money?

I’ll tell you: because it’s a MAGICAL hole in the water. Despite spending our time with the crap-pot instead of the crab-pot as I’d Planned, we wanted more. Our time aboard ranged from satisfying to sublime (with—it must be said—some severe spikes of frustration for Jon… but I never met a better problem-solving ‘Fixer’ in my life).

Our slip is at the outside edge of the marina (next best thing to open water), so we rock to sleep on the swells from Commencement Bay. One evening we watched from our deck as the wooden sailing ship Lady Washington pulled up to the public docks just across from us. (You might recognize her as the Interceptor in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’…)

I climbed the mast (barefoot) to look out at Mount Rainier wreathed in the mauves of sunrise.

We had our first-ever ‘company’ over—a new friend from the docks—to share Jon’s home-baked Dutch apple pie.

Jon got to return the courtesy of catching a dockline for our surgeon-neighbor (our dock’s “Doc,” as Jon calls him), when he returned from a few nights on the hook.

We watched half a dozen pulsing jellyfish from the dock as we drank our morning coffee.

I organized all the ship’s papers and instruction-manuals into accordion folders, and got myself all set up at my writing-desk-slash-Navigation-Station. (If you don’t think that fits among the ‘satisfying and sublime,’ you don’t know any Planners.)

We listened to the ‘boat playlist’ I’ve been curating on my phone—Enya, Jack Johnson, the Fisherman’s Friends—on our newly installed bluetooth marine speakers.

I hung sea glass at the cabin windows, and curtains at the doorways.

And even if we didn’t get sails up, we got OUT ON THE WATER.

We crewed together successfully, and docked beautifully, despite a stiff breeze and current, and our own newness to the boat. Bliss, euphoria, dancing at the helm!

Midway through his birthday, Jon took a break from his plumbing-work and sewage-swabbing to open my mom’s present: a shirt that says, “This is what I do. I FIX THINGS & I know things.”

She was right—we laughed really hard!

Awareness, Acceptance, Adapting, and FIXING. (And some dancing at the helm.)

This is what we do.