Cuss ya!!!!!

FINALLY we had a real shake down. No I'm not talking about when you test out the sails you just rigged. And I'm not talking about being coerced out of some cash. I'm talking about a living aboard shake down.

(Sidebar: I think I swear too much and we just watched Fantastic Mr. Fox and they say "cuss" all the time instead of an actual swear word and I am trying it out here)

Tuesday morning we left Herrington Harbour North around 11:00 and sailed south for 5.5 hours...beautiful light downwind sail with easy seas, got up to 8.2knts of speed with lazy effort trimming / sail planning. Everything worked well and other than Greg and I getting sunburned faces we had no complaints about that journey. We did accidentally sail into a restricted zone and you really don't want to do that around here with so many US Military things around...in fact right now I can see fighter jets zooming just to the south of us (US Navel Air Base). Once we realized our error, and I pressed Greg to get out of it ASAP (he's a bit more chill about rules than I am...I blame by rule following on being raised by a rule enforcing police officer and a teacher who required strict parameters to deal with 3 crazy kids). As a Canadian kid from Southwestern Ontario (aka farming community) I find all of this military muscle fairly intimidating and highly unusual. When you meet people here one of their first questions is if you serve and I swear the first time I was asked I took a second to think before I blurted something out like "well in University I served as a bartender...?" No Megan. They mean are you a veteran. So I smile graciously and say "No I haven't served"...and then congratulate myself on thinking before I speak (rare occurrence).

But I digress, back to the shake down. We have spent the last 4 days at anchor in the Solomons Islands testing out our living systems. We are heading back tomorrow (Saturday) as we are anticipating a nice 15knt South breeze to blow us back up the Chesapeake and that's primarily because we have a few big boat projects to take care of before we have my parents coming down for a visit.

While doing this shake down we sought to answer questions such as:

1) How much power are we using daily?

Answer: Approximately 10% of our battery capacity

2) How do we find dingy docks and places to put recycling and waste?

Answer: Drive the dingy around and look for signs or better yet, ask someone

3) How hard / easy / feasible is it to work without staying connected to the internet all the time

Answer: I found it reasonable to work, turned the data on and off as needed, and much easier to focus when Greg and the kids left the boat for a bit

4) How do we set up the rest of our canvas that we've never taken the time to set up (i.e. sunshades on the Bimini are key when you are swinging around facing all directions in the span of 10 minutes)

Answer: Domes and ties...HR makes the canvas situation on their boats very easy and modular. The canvas and supporting structures are modest but they are so easy to set up and take down and they get the job done with little fuss.

5) How long does it take to charge the battery using diesel?

Answer: Engine for 2 hours = 20%; Generator for 2 hours = ? Because we haven't gotten it to start yet...I'm told generators are finicky and ours has a tripped wire somewhere or some other minor thing which needs to be dealt with. However, we hope to use diesel much less when we have our solar installed.

6) How much water are we using a day?

Answer: Very very little, even with showers on board (though they are military showers I've been told...as in turn on and get wet, and turn off and soap up, turn on and rinse off and done) however, right now we aren't drinking from the tanks but when we get the purifier set up we will be and thus will use more.

And most importantly....

7) How do we like it?

Answer: LOVE IT; the kids don't want to go back to the marina...they have asked if we can just keep going :)

And what's not to love? Besides a few windlass woes (that Greg will write about separately) that are now sorted (cuss ya!), this has been so lovely and comfortable. I mean for crying out loud, when we pulled into the beautiful and calm anchorage there was one tiny boat and no one else except 3 curious deer watching us from shore, kingfishers, ospreys and bald eagles and some blue herons buzzing by the mast. It felt sort of Muskoka-y / Thousand Island-y down there and there were creeks upon creeks to explore with the dingy that are so well protected from the breeze the water is like glass. At one point we saw an osprey dive for a fish, grab a big one, only to then be attacked by a bald eagle for his prize, which he dropped and the eagle snatched in his huge talons and then flew away with the osprey chasing him….ALL ABOUT 20FT AWAY FROM THE BOAT.

The kids were LOVING their life. We had a few dinners out and explored town. They got to really make use of the Blackfin Inflatable SUP paddle board...it's so stable and big all 3 kids can sit on it and paddle around just fine. They played in the water for several hours each day...they weren't really swimming (water is a bit gross for that) but playing on the shore and basically came back as wet as if I had let them just jump in. The paddle board offered them some non-motorized freedom and independence which we all liked and appreciated.

And I can honestly say, what a bloody relief. What a relief that after all the work, stress, doubt and million other feelings and efforts we really got to finally enjoy the fruits of that labour a bit and that it was actually FUN. We were really starting to have a hard time staying positive or even really seeing what the point was after time and time again having to bail on living-aboard shake down plans for one reason or another. And the longer we put it off the more nervous we got not having “tried out” the living-away-from-a-marina aspect. I mean, if it sucked (i.e. it was more stressful, more uncomfortable, too busy or whatever) it would really be hard to be optimistic about this winter. But this little trip was the shot in the arm that Greg and I needed to tell ourselves that we are going to have a freaking great time down south! This whole big move and this massive change was made on the assumption that living on the anchor and exploring new places would be worth the work. After this week I feel like it will be. THANK CUSS!

Thank cuss the cussing shake down made us feel like all the cussing work and cussing effort will lead to a cussing great time for our family.

Boo-to-the-cussing-ya!