Come SailAway ~ Sailboat Living

Leaving Marco Island

2010-04-09T08:49:00.000-07:00

We had a nice ride up from Marco yesterday. Weather has been great is rainy today. Majestic Dream needed a wash down anyway. We are on mooring ball 53. Probably for 3 weeks or 4 maybe. Haul out is schedule for mid May. We will be leaving the boat on the hard near Fort Myers this summer. Great time for someone to purchase her and get ready for a winter sail to the Bahamas or Carribbean! We are ready to go trawler shopping after 42 years of sailing.

See our listing at http://www.contemporaryyachts.com/vagabondcentral.htm

Here she sits near off shore near Key Largo and Rodriguez Key, Florida.

I am looking forward to a summer of golf in Michigan. Keep you posted.

Moving Day

2010-04-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter from Majestic Dream anchored of the city marina in Marco Island. April 1st was moving day. Came up the Shark River. Will be here a few days to meet some old friends and then on to Ft Meyers Beach next week one day. Depends on the weather man.

Not all Play - keeping that teak pretty

2010-04-04T21:05:00.000-07:00

Cool February weather provided a good tie to update the varnish aboard out 47 Foot Vagabond. Look in Good! Captain Don and son-in-law, wooden boat builder (kayaks..dinghies, prams.. of BrassWind Boatworks, Fremont, MI) Richard Lincoln varnished the entire boat the 3rd week in February with time left over to play in Key West for a day.

Sea Food Festival is almost here.. Marathon Key

2010-03-10T20:57:00.000-08:00

We spent the better part of Saturday afternoon at the Marathon City Park enjoying gospel music. several churches in the are have small bands and entertain for about hour by each church. Some good, some not so good.

The sun has been shinning so if you fine a spot with no wind it's very pleasant.

The last two weeks my daughter and sometime, first mate (when Linda jumps ship to avoid the long trip down the intercoastal waterway) Sheree and her husband Lincoln were here. More photos and updates from that trip coming soon.

Next week end is the annual Sea Food festival. So Yawl Come!!

Have a great Sunday!

Don and Linda

Lost Post - Leaving Miami Post Superbowl - From February 13

2010-03-10T20:50:00.001-08:00

Well we all get our turn in the barrel so to speak, east coast west coast and last evening here in Miami. Winds were around 50 knots for a short while with walls of rain. Fortunately we stay put on our anchor as did our close neighbors. Then it calm down around midnight and got a good nights sleep. But this morning it was only 52 degrees. BRRRR!

Looks good to head towards Marathon tomorrow with a stop off Key Largo.

Have a great day, Don and Linda

Settling in at Boot Key Harbor

2010-02-18T13:51:00.000-08:00

We moved into the main harbor today, thank goodness, very rolly outside Boot Key Harbor. Still at anchor, but it's cheap.
Many boats are waiting for the "window" to go somewhere!

Don and Linda

Superbowl for Sailors

2010-02-04T10:29:00.000-08:00

We are moored towards the South Beach end of the inner harbor in Miami. It is just a short ride in our dinghy up a little canal where we can tie up near the Supermarket and then walk down towards the shopping on Lincoln or to the Beach.

Yesterday we walked the beach where all the action is for the parties for the super bowl weekend. Lots going on plus lots of people. Drinks are 5 bucks and up. Weather is going to be good for the game. If you watch CBS morning show, the Loews Hotel seems to be the center of that program on Ocean drive.

Here is our view coming by Miami on another trip.

Several concerts tomorrow that we got free tickets to. Not sure it's our kind of music, but like someone said it's free.

The 3 big blimps fly over head, Direct TV, Goodyear and Met Life.

Have a great day!!!

Captain Don

Enjoying the beautiful harbor by Miami Yacht Club

2010-01-20T07:33:00.000-08:00

Now anchored off the Miami Yacht Club. This is the view from our anchorage. Will be here for a while, at least until the week end and after the next cold front.

Finally got our outboard running again after using the web site just answers to get some expert advice and help,

Our friends on the sail boat Harmony are close by in case we have further problems. Going to visit Parrot Jungle on Thursday which should be special. Thanks to friends of Sheree, thank you!

Last night was as calm as it can get to sleeping was good. been that way for a couple of nights now.

Today is a walk on the beaches of South beach, need the exercise to keep the blood flowing.

Have a great day.

Don

SailAway Hosting Launched by the sailor to host website or your Blog

2010-01-15T07:59:00.000-08:00

After much thought on how I could support my sailing habit with my writing about sailing and combine it with my web design business I have launched SailAway Hosting by changing my online Hosting and Domains Services company site to SailAway Hosting ~ set your sails and leave the worry to us.

4th times a charm?

2008-04-15T18:41:00.000-07:00

Picture coming soon...

Large black and orange tubes followed the shore of the waterway strung by barrels and marked by buoys with no obvious sign of what they were for until we saw the first barge spewing water and sand. Dredging. The barge had a large sign that said “all traffic” with an arrow pointing left meaning all should go to port which we did. The pipeline continued like a rope put down by small children to follow back home if they got lost. Eventually reports by radio told of boats running aground by a barge; not a good sign.

I must admit it was entertaining to watch the other sailboats and power boats try to maneuver around the next barge, until it was our turn.

The barge captain repeatedly announced on channel 79 that if you kept your boat as close as possible to his barge and then cut hard right in front of him you would have 12 feet of water. This barge was an intimidating looking obstacle consisting of a large barge, several smaller boats attached and floating with it. On top of the barge was all kinds of equipment and towers to dredge the waterway by sucking up tons and tons of sand. The pipes kept the sand moving way back down to the other barge where the sand could be deposited in a place it would safely not drift back to fill undo all the work that had been done.

A sailboat, a trawler, a large motor yacht and even a small fishing boat soon discovered that there was only 3 to 4 feet of water just to the west of the barge and less to the north of it. All this time the barge sways back and forth on the power of its bellowing diesel engines, hard to port then back to starboard sucking the sand from the bottom with each 25 to 30 foot swing. When a boat would come to pass they would swing hard to the right (starboard) and wait for the smaller vessel to try to pass.

You may wonder, dear reader, how it is that we were there for so long to watch so many other boats run aground? Our sailing vessel, Majestic Dream ran aground on our approach to the barge. We followed their advice and stayed to their left which drove our keel into the mud along the left side of the waterway during an extra low tied. We dropped our anchor out in the channel a ways to keep us from heading further towards the shore and shallow water when the tied would come back in and the wind and current would want to push us further into the shallow water.

We waited several hours, cooked a nice lunch and monitored the chaos in front of us. I took a few videos as boats got stuck and then maneuvered to get off the hard.

Finally it was our turn. The tide was in enough that we were able to float free as we pulled our boat towards our anchor mechanically. Most sailing vessels over 40 feet have an electrical device, called a windlass, that winds the chain in and out. It can be used at times like a winch.

We motored passed the barge, made our turn to the right and prepared to smile and wave in success at the barge tender. We stopped suddenly just in front of the barge as we hit what felt like hump on the bottom of the waterway. Our bow rose up as the keel settled into the mud right in front of the barge. No amount of turning the wheel from left to right would wiggle her free. The noise from the barge was deafening. We could barely hear the radio communication from the barge tender even with the handset pinned to our ear. Very soon is was dark out.

When darkness comes on the waterway the shore seems to recede with the darkness though it is still an unseen hazard. Red and green nuns and bouys, as the markers strageically placed along the way to guide us are called dissapear. Without a radar system tied into a lap top below decks it is nearly impossible to see the next marker. It is easy to miss a mark when panning with a flashlight. We were looking forward to moving freely again however the darkness would present other dangers. The barge works 24 hours a day so even after dark it is well lit with 2 large halogen “bug eyes” shining out in front of them.

I could not help but wonder why they did not have a better system set up to help maneuvers boats around the barge. The cost to Wilco Dredging must have been significant every time they had to stop dredging and wait for boats to get free. We kept them from dredging for more than one half hour. The barge company is not allowed to help pull anyone free with their small tug. They have incurred too many lawsuits over damage to vessels they have tried to help.

The small tug operates a depth sounder. The two bulky baby faced men operating the small tug looked like twins, or at least brothers with their goatees, ball caps and Carharts in the near dark as they pulled along side our boat to check in with us since radio communication was nearly impossible with all the noise. First they announced that there was 8 ½ feet where they floated just 10 feet to our right. Then 7 ½ then right in front of us 6 feet 1” to 6 feet 3 ‘. We draw almost 6 feet. To our left was only 4 feet of water and 2 feet farther over.

Eventually after many tiring turns to the wheel we moved freely forward steering to the right seeking the 8 foot deep water.

We waived our goodbyes as we went on towards our next peril; the dark channel before us. Since this bend in the waterway has been silting in for several years the markers get moved often to accommodate the moving landscape below the surface.

As we continued on our way it became apparent that the tall palm tree, towering over the rest along the shoreline, was keeping up with us. We were aground again. It was not until after we realized this that we discovered 3 temporary markers to the right of us. We had taken an angle along the waterway that was probably last years channel. We were too far to the left of the current channel. It was now about 10:30 at night. High Tide which would offer another foot of water was not until 12 midnight. After some attemps to break free once again we put our anchor out to keep us closer to the channel should be start moving again.

Third times a charm. (look up saying – must have been referring to something else). 3 times the captain, my father Don a seasoned sailor, got into the dinghy, moved to the bow, loaded the anchor on board and 50 feet of chain and transported all of this out towards the channel. 3 times I ran the windlass and tried to pull the boat free. It was slow going and often hard to tell if we were actually moving up on it. I said a few Hail Mary’s and believed in the 3rd times a charm promise. Nope. I inquired what the alternative was. We could call Sea Tow. They would come and charge $2.00 a foot plus some other fees and it would be about $750 for a boat this size to be puled 50 feet into the channel. For members you can get about 1 free tow a year but but owners generally save this courtesy for times when there is a true emergency. Running aground in mud is not as dangerous as running aground on the rocks or floating at see with an engine that quit running. As I watched the currents madly swirling the surface water over the shallows behind us I further inquired what happens if we just sit tight? I was told that as the tide went out over the next 6 hours and 20 minutes we would continue to heel over on our side as our keel rested in the mud at an unlovable angle.

We were tired, we were covered in rusty “mud” created by the chain mixing with the mud and water. The bow of the boat was slathered in red mud. The lifelines near the windlass were slimy with it. Each time we had dropped the anchor and retrieved it the mud would come on board as the chain dropped down into its special compartment under the bow. Several times the chain would pile on top of itself and cause a jam at they opening; the windlass would stop working immediately. Being unpracticed at this game I thought I had broken it by trying to get it to keep working not realizing it was jammed. Thankfully it started running again once the chain was cleared away.

I am certain you have deciphered alternatives I have just shared with you which may lead you to suggest that the fourth time’s a charm? Back into the dinghy Don went, followed by the anchor and twice as much chain. I was getting good at feeding it out by this time and hoped that our success might be measured with success.

The dinghy was maneuvered farther out into the channel this time. Once back on board Majestic Dream’s engine was put into forward once again and I started “taking in” the chain hoping we were moving toward the anchor which you will for a while until the final tug releases it.

We were met with success at 12:30 in the morning just as the tied was about to change directions and run back to the ocean. We moved out into the channel and found a spot in 20 feet of water where we could anchor just at the edge, hopefully the fisherman would have had plenty of coffee before venturing out the next morning and not run into us as they day dreamed about the morning’s catch.

I took the first watch while Don slept, caught up on some computer work, read a little and ate too much chocolate; my reward for all the hard work. He told me, before retiring for a few hours, that the tide would quietly turn the boat 180 degrees in the next hour, the chain might clank against the bow as it tried to catch up.

By this time the water was calm, the wind had gone down and we floated gently back and forth. I watched the lights on shore filter back and forth through the small round portal in the main salon. Surrounded by beautiful hand carved teak as I sat at the captains table and once again “safe” at anchor I waited for this auspicious event. I had never knowingly experienced this changing of the guard.

All was quiet except for a subtle noise at the stern where I imagined the rudder being pushed by the tide, lowly moaning as it the 50,000 pound boat started to turn in the channel. As the lights on the shore moved I would periodically climb up the companionway stairs and peak outside making sure the channel markers were where I had left them. The moment the boat turned was rather like a moment in a Pirates of the Carribean movie when all is quiet and then something mysterious happens but you are not sure exactly what and then there she is, the Black Pearl appearing out of no where. All we did was change direction in the channel. I made sure we had enough room to stay in the deep water until time for a watch change.

The last thing I heard Don say as I drifted off to sleep was that he hoped there would be no barges coming this way in the morning.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

Megabyte

2008-04-05T19:45:00.000-07:00

I saw a boat today that was probably 60’ long perhaps made by Hatteras, all white and powerful looking ready for day of ocean cruising along the coast of Ft. Lauderdale heading for Miami for lunch on South Beach. Its name was Megabyte.

5 minutes before I saw a boat that was over 100 feet, a dark liquid charcoal in color with lots of radar and other equipment looking like a streamlined ocean going tank, ready for an Atlantic crossing. I could not see the name on its stern. It must have been Gigabyte.

Here are the other boat names I noticed today along the Intercoastal Waterway:

Marlin My Darlin, Top Dawg, Mon Cheri, Discovery, Commotion, Lian Xing Hu, Coastal Princess, Fascination, Thalassa, Reverie, Lady Sheriden, Avalon, Dreamer, Pay Down and our own Majestic Dream. Check back for new names collected this trip!

Seasick or Lovesick?

2008-04-05T19:44:00.000-07:00

Most sailors will tell you they usually don’t get seasick. This is probably because years before many of those that did get sea sick stopped sailing.

There are others, like my Mother Linda, who still sail, still get sea sick who are married to someone who is married to the sea. I find myself wondering how many people endure seasickness for love? How many confused the butterflies they felt in their stomach on that first romantic sail together with love?

We Got to be a Sailboat Today

2008-04-05T19:39:00.000-07:00

That is a mariner’s term for we did not have to run the motor. The wind cooperated as we left the Port of Miami or Mee Ammy as some call it.

I cannot say that the waves were as cooperative. When the waves are peaking taller than the stern of your boat one does not generally deem that cooperation. This can be scary for some fun for others. I fall in to the “others” category. My favorite place on the boat as a child was sitting on the pulpit riding the waves.

The waves were big rolling swells. Some would catch you and run under the boat from the stern popping up under the bow or port side, feeling a little like a roller coaster but more subtle. Not that these waves could be considered subtle. They capped and crowned with white whenever they felt like it. The water was a deep sapphire blue. The white caps like diamonds in contrast to the water. As the crowns rolled back against the side of the wave you could see through the cerulean crest and then it would lay out on top of the water creating a new blue painting as the white diamonds magically turned to foam swirling into the light blue and then disappeared suddenly into the sapphire depths as the next wave came on. My digital camera does not do the water justice when it is moving this fast.

We got be a sailboat, in this fashion for twenty miles today as we moved north to Ft. Lauderdale to spend the night anchored in Lake Sylvia, small inner harbor among the beautiful Mediterranean style homes with their red clay roofs.

Dolphins Under the Bow

2007-02-07T18:43:00.001-08:00

It is eight months since my last Blog tale. I am once again aboard the sailing vessel Majestic Dream. Today I had the sheer joy of watching dolphins race along with our boat. This trip we started out in Ft. Lauderdale. My husband and my mother made this trip. If you read some of my earlier posts you will see that I made the trip from West Pam Beach to the far end of the Chesapeake Bay in the spring with my father and a friend of his. My husband, Lincoln made the trip from the Chesapeake to the southern tip of Georgia in October with my father. My parents continued the trip down the coast and we have both joined up with them this week.

We are anchored in Miami harbor tonight enjoying the lights of the homes in this little inner harbor and those of the hi rises to our north and south. On our way down to today we were joined by a pod of dolphins. I spent the first 10 minutes trying to get a picture of them as one or two swam along side of us. The water was so clear I could see them rushing along a foot or more under the surface. It is hard to get a photo as they come up for air with the digital due to the timing. I saw one head up toward the bow and decided to go up their to try and get a picture of him as I looked back the length of the boat.

As I approached the bow I looked down to the port side of the boat and saw what I thought was 2 dolphins running along side of us. I bent down to take a photo and was astounded to see 4 then 5 dolphins racing just inches ahead of the bow, a times one would drop off below the boat and then rejoin the group. I took a lot of photos. I laughed, talked to the dolphins and was so amazed at how they played.. I was also amazed at how they could swim so close to the underbelly of the boat without being hit by it. I guess our speed of 6.5 knots (about 6 miles per hour) was not hard for them to manage. Later I realized I should have take video of their game. We cannot always be prepared for every adventure though we can certainly enjoy it when the moment comes. Each time we learn something new, enhance our lives with the journey and know what we will do the next time knowing that if even if the next time does not come we will be prepared. Most importantly the moment was exquisite. Running with the dolphins I felt as if I truly was walking the waves with them.

Boat Babies | Anchored in Life

2006-05-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

The last eleven posts were stories from my sailing trip from Florida to Maryland on the Intercoastal Waterway. All journeys seem to transition; they are like a pomegranate, wonderful kernels of the bitter and the sweet. I am back in Michigan on the hard. I still have my sea legs...the ground is not rocking as some people experience when they first get off the boat. I was sharing that observation with my cousin and I commented that maybe, because I was such a "boat baby", meaning that I had grown up on boats, I did not notice much difference on the water or on the hard (anyplace not on the water). He replied that we are all boat babies from our days in the womb.

I mentioned I had learned how to properly anchor a boat in my post about the thirty one plus things I learned on my trip. Someday I plan to live on a boat so this information will come in handy. Each day as we found a welcoming harbor to spend the night in I would go up on the bow with my Dad and he would ask me how many feet of anchor chain we needed to put out to be secure for the night based on the depth of the water. We also planned ahead and pulled forward of the boats nearby so that when we dropped back on our anchors there would still be enough room to swing on the anchor line as the winds and tides changed without hitting the boats next to us or behind us.

The day before I left the boat I signed the guest book kept on Majestic Dream. I wanted to say something special to my Dad and to thank him for the wonderful time with him. As I was writing some special sentiments to him I also thanked him for teaching me how to anchor the boat. As I was writing I realized that planning for anchoring a boat was a good analogy for planning for life, I feel that from now on not only will I be anchored safely when I am in charge on a boat, but I feel that after this trip, I will be anchored in life better than I was before the journey. Thanks Dad!

31 Things I Learned This Trip | How Stuff Works

2006-05-12T20:05:00.000-07:00

I have been boating since I was about three and I have been sail boating since I was twelve. This trip has been like the old adage, “you learn something new everyday.” Or one of my mottos: you should learn something new everyday. I started making a list of what I have learned about how to do things while living aboard the sailing yacht, Majestic Dream. It also includes some of my observations about how stuff works on the water, in the water and on the boat. I came up with thirty-one things, I am sure there were more. That is why I took lots of photographs on this trip….

Shrimp snap, yes there are snapping shrimp. At first we thought they were just tiny shrimp that swam around eating from the bottom of the boat at night. The noise was very loud and it sounded like there were thousands of them. And, you can hide a submarine from enemy radar with the help of these snapping shrimp! I looked it up on the Internet. The shrimp are a special kind that come out of the mud at night to eat. This part is true. The snapping noise is because they have one large claw that catches a bubble of air in it and when they open the claw to grab their food the bubble pops, and there you have it snapping shrimp.

There are things on a boat that I never knew you had to clean like lifelines. For the land lubbers, life lines are wire cables coated with heavy white plastic, sort of like thick clothesline. Tannic water, sunscreen, sweat and other dirt discolor them. A scotchbrite pad and some simple green combined with a lot of scrubbing makes them bright and white again.

It’s more fun to clean the bathroom (head) on a boat because you never know what you might see outside the portal (window). Today I saw a Navy Destroyer on the horizon. How often does that happen at home? My Father, the Captain of the sailing vessel we are on, informed me that only “you and John Stuart would care about something like that.“ I am not sure I know who John Stuart is but I have been told he is on night time TV. I plan to look him up on the Internet next. But back to cleaning, when there are no entertaining sea gulls, pelicans, ducks or destroyer ships to look at, the water itself is ever changing. Some days it smooth as glass, others four to five foot waves rolling by and on others days the wash of the water running past the sides of the boat can be quite relaxing. I also learned that when the boat is heeling, tipping way up on one side, it is easier to work on the low side. As far as the actually scrubbing goes it’s easy to rinse since the head is sometimes the shower on a boat, so the showerhead sprayer can reach everywhere and there is always a drain!

Adults over seventy seem to find great enjoyment in asking “Are we there yet?” This from the same man who, when I was child, would have been upset with me for asking, again. I thought it was funny too but for different reasons. The average day of sailing covers about seventy miles. This leads to periodic choruses of, “Are we there yet?”.

You need five feet of anchor chain for every one foot of depth to the bottom. I also learned how to set the anchor by feeding out the first fifty feet and then letting the weight of the boat tug on it before feeding out the rest.

A gypsy is the machinery that winds and unwinds the anchor chain.
Snubbers are the two lines, one to port (left side of boat) and one to starboard (right side of boat) that tie from the front chocks (sort of a handle with two points that you wrap a line around in figure eight fashion) and connect to the anchor chain with a special metal type of hook that slips over a chain link and then locks into it. The tension of the anchor will then pull on those two lines evenly instead of on the bow of the boat, with less wear and tear on the gypsy and the bow sprit.

Canned chicken can replace sausage or meatballs, in the spaghetti, when you run out of fresh meat.

Not all markers and buoys have lights on the them.

Even a fake pirate ship can be a little intimidating on a dark moonless night.

The dolphins you see in the coves, rivers and sounds of the Intercoastal Waterway do not play on top of the water as much as the ones you see at Sea World.

A telephoto lens on a camera might look like something else to a Navy gun boat patrolling their ships. It’s not advisable to point it at them.

All dial up internet is not the same. You can use certain cell phones as a modem and connect to the Internet at approximately 115,000 bps. That is twice as fast as regular dial up at home. What’s up with that? I will be researching that as well

You can catch catfish with crabs.

Seagulls will catch fish that are too heavy for them to pick up.

There is a VERY LOUD boom when the bumpers slip out between the pilings and the boat when you are at a marina at night.

The security announcement by the U. S. Coast guard are announced by repeating “Securitay, Securitay” with a long “A” instead of an long “E” as if we were in France. This one I did look up and Securite is an International Marine word. According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securite , "When a marine radio transmission begins with "Sécurité, sécurité, sécurité" pronounced 'Say-cur-i-tay', after the French word), it means that what follows is important safety information. The most common use of this is by coast radio stations before the broadcast of navigational warnings and meteorological information.It is normal practice to broadcast the Sécurité call itself on a distress and listening frequency such as VHF Channel 16 or MF 2182 kHz, and then change frequency to a working channel for the body of the messages."

If you engine fails at a draw bridge you have to call the Bridge and advise them you will be coming through under sail. This is normally not allowed. If the nearest marina is still seventy miles a way you better have enough crew on board to help maneuver the boat. A sailboat can only sail at certain angles to the wind, called tacking, and the waterway is only ninety feet wide, not always all of it deep enough to use. You will be taking a lot. Hundreds of times. Though exhausting this is much cheaper than calling Sea Tow!

Not everyone traveling by boat knows how to handle their boat.

Some power boaters are like the car that tail gates you only to make a turn in front of you. On the waterway some of them pass you fast, creating lots of wake to rock your boat, and then they will be sitting at idle at the next draw bridge which may not be opening for another half of an hour. We all wait together.

Traveling up the ICW (Intercoastal Waterway) every spring and down it to return to Florida every fall takes about two weeks by sail boat without much site seeing in the ports along the way. A vessel can trim two or three days off the trip by going out into the Ocean, weather, meaning wind and waves, permitting. There are lots of sites to see all along the ICW however. Small towns, large cities, fishing villages, Naval Bases, and for architecture you have multi-million dollar homes or palaces, ranch homes, New England style homes, New Mexico style homes, some on stilts some not, boat houses, docks of every style, with gazebos , decks with roofs and with out.

Most boaters, like most motorcyclists, wave as they pass each other. On a boat, if they do not wave they are usually mad at how you passed them.

The auto pilot is a wonderful invention. When you are on a long trip everyone can have lunch together and the boat can steer itself. When It’s really cold out you can sit to the side instead of behind the wheel and adjust your course by pushing buttons on the control panel, you never have to touch the wheel or sit out in the rain. If you are right in the middle of a good book you can let the boat steer and just look up every few minutes to check on what lays out before you, keep in mind this is only advisable when you are sailing out where there are few boats and you can see them coming from far off.

After about a week and a half on a boat an exercise plan becomes more important. You can start to feel pretty lazy when you cannot get ashore for a nightly walk and it’s too cold or muddy to swim. I guess you could walk around and around the boat or use your body for weight lifting off the seats.

When the Navy is doing “live” testing in one of their, not always restricted, target areas it is important to be monitoring you radio. They will be calling any vessel that is heading into their hazard pattern. Any encroachment within five hundred yards of their markers will may be considered a breach of security.

Pelicans dive bomb like a kamikaze pilot to catch tack heir dinner. They just crash right into the water. Sometimes they get a fish, sometimes they don’t, but they keep on trying, time after time. We could learn from their tenacity.

We saw some boats that were still “up on the hard” after the last hurricaine. Up on the hard can refer to the land, the shore, the boat yard, the parking lot, anything not in the water. Does that mean that, instead of being land lubbers, people who do not pursue boating are hardlanders?

On the other hand, people who make their living on the water are called “Watermen”.
Where does that leave those who make their living on the land?

Sailboats sporting a black sail have their sails made from some kind of carbon fiber. The heavy duty sails that I was familiar with, until now were made of Kevlar much like some firefighting and police equipment.

Sea Legs. I have not had to truly develop sea legs in many years. Brief sails on calm waters do not require much in the way of sea legs. Heading below decks takes on a different tack when you are traveling ten to fifteen hours a day and still need to make lunch, use the head and other normal daily activities. Walking on a boat in rough water is hard to explain. Sea legs refers to the ability to walk on a boat even in rough water when the boat is rocking, bouncing and sometimes heeled well over to one side. Walking when the boat is tipping back and forth and up and down takes planning. I had forgotten what it was like. It’s as if you need to know when to take whole steps and half step. I am not referring to the length of your stride so much as I am how high you pick up your legs and when you place them back down. Walking in that kind of sea is a lot like a dance. Sometimes you have to lean forward as if you were walking up hill to plan for the next foot placement properly, if you do not you do not have enough forward motion to complete the step. This leads to landing to hard or falling backwards. Ether of these can lead hitting your head. The walls and ceilings are not where they were when you were on flat ground. It also becomes very clear why all of the cupboard doors have exterior latches. This is not childproofing, as it might appear, this is so everything does not all out onto the floor in total chaos. Getting hit with a can of beans on bare toes is not pleasant; neither is getting hit in the head with the sharp corner of the cupboard. One door left unlatched will remind of this in a hurry.

A Ham operating station referred to as St. Jude keeps track of all the boats on the Eastern United States Waterways and out to the Bahamas. I think that their efforts, on a daily basis, are very selfless and an amazing contribution to the welfare of all the boating folks. There are specific times for each area to call and check in everyday, advising St. Jude of their boat name and location. Some days boats that could not talk to each other, due to distance, had messages relayed through St. Jude.

Swimming Elephants | Dining Dolphins

2006-05-10T19:04:00.000-07:00

Last night we anchored in a little cove, among some grassy islands, on the Pungo River. It had rained most of the day. We were cold from being out in the wind and drizzle all day , protected only by a dodger, which is like a canvas awning, with some shape to it, that covers part of the sitting area in the cockpit of the boat. It does a fine job of keeping the water directly off of you along with shading you from the hot sun on better days.

It was my night to check in by cell phone with my kids and husband back at home. On this particular night, inside the boat, we had no phone signal at all. About 9:00PM, when free minutes on my cell phone start, I put my marine fowl weather jacket back on and went up on deck to get a better signal. It had actually stopped raining but was still cold, the water was calm and the only noise I detected was from another sailboard nearby running his engine to recharge its batteries or run power for an appliance he needed to use.

As I became accustomed to the drone of his engine I heard another noise. It sounded like the noise an elephant makes when it blows through it’s trunk to clear it after a drink of water. Not a trumpet but more like the air rushing through it but with some sound form the moisture remaining in it’s breath as well. Okay, so yes, I am on the water in North Carolina not Africa. There are not elephants here… and you are probably asking yourselves why would my mind even think of that? Some of you may know that in another post I mentioned that I lived on a farm where there were elephants, for eleven years. Until the moment I stood on the bow last night, trying to identify the noise I heard, I do not think, that even I, realized how much my time with the elephants has effected how I view the world.

I laughed at myself when I figured out that the boat was surrounded by at least three dolphins dining on fish. As my eyes adjusted to the near total darkness I struggled to see them. I could hear them on both sides of the boat, as close as twenty feet at times. Once or twice I could almost see the misty air they were expelling from the blow holes on top of their bodies as they breathed before going down under the water to feed again. It helped that I had seen one, do just this, right next to our boat, in the daylight a few days before.. Most of the noise that I heard was the water moving out of their way as they surfaced and then rushing back around them as they dove down again.

I decided I would talk to them, I felt silly but no one could hear me anyway. Wild dolphins, at least these, do not come when you whistle. I stopped trying to see them and spent a few moments just listening to them. I said aloud, God this is wonderful, thank you! A few moments later as I lay quietly in my berth, trying to get warmed up under the blankets, I thought I heard a dolphins voice. I drifted off to sleep poignantly remembering the days when I use to get to swim with the elephant.

I am so thankful for all these gifts.

If you have stories about the gifts you have enjoyed please feel free to post them in the comments area of my blog. Share your journey. We are all wave walkers….

Geese Under Our Bow | Lost in Our Wake

2006-05-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

We were traveling along the Pungo River and had just entered the Fairfield Canal. The sunrise this morning gave the canal an exotic look. The white light created by the sunrise, at the Eastern most horizon, was cutoff by cloud cover. It appeared as if we were traveling towards a tunnel of light. The water was quiet and peaceful.

We are far enough into North Carolina now for the Canadian Geese to be seen. For the last several hundred miles there have not been birds that travel slowly across our path. Most are quick, active birds like the Comorants I talked about in an earlier post. Angilas, Terns, sea gulls pelicans or osprey with an occasional hawk, or eagle are also sited. It is my understanding that at other times of the year one might see more eagles and hawks.

A pair of geese were making their way , slowly paddling, across the waterway. At this point I was the only one aware this was a family of geese. I had not seen the babies until I went up on the bow. As we approached the spot where the geese were swimming it became apparent to me that we were on a collision course. My view from the bow showed this quite clearly as the boat pushed through the water creating tea colored waves from all of the tannic acid the water contained. I motioned to the man at the helm with hand signals but it was too late.

My moment of enjoyment , watching the happy geese family, was cut short by the powerful bow of the boat as it chopped through the water disturbing the geese. The parents flew up a foot or two out over the water back towards the shore to our right. The babies were unceremoniously sucked into the undertow created by the 50,000 pound sailboat as it reached them. I watched in alarm as the goslings were tipped over, swirled about and became small brown whirlpools in the water!

I felt terrible. My immediate thought was that I should have yelled to the helmsman to turn to the starboard (right ) side. Now I was responsible for the death of these little creatures by poor communication and planning. The parents, who were able to catch the surf of the wave created by the bow, swam too safety. There was no sign of the babies. I imagined them churned up by the prop of the engine.

As the parents headed toward shore, adjusting their feathers, followed by the now quiet, rolling ripples of water created by the parting slice of the boat spreading the width of the channel I figured the babies were forever lost in our wake. Just then, I saw first one little head pop up as the baby goose bobbed up out of the water. This one was followed by two more, they appeared like corks just behind their parents. They turned in unison and resumed there once again quiet journey across the waterway behind us as if nothing had happened. My human thoughts were that they must have been traumatized quickly followed by the thought that it was a lesson that would help them to not panic next time it happened., followed by my realization that this probably was not the first time they had had such an experience.

I have spent a lot of this trip thinking about listening to that inner voice, the one that tells us don’t do that, take care of that, avoid that, stop NOW! It’s the same voice we answer in our heads, and sometimes out loud even, telling ourselves we worry too much, that it will be okay, that we are overreacting, a million responses other than listening to what the inner voice says and acting upon it. I once ran over my pregnant cat because ignored the little voice that told me I had not moved her far way enough from the car. That still haunts me though I know I have been forgiven. I currently endure a severe case of whiplash that acts up when ever I use my neck to work over my head or when I slump over my computer and compress my spine. The day of the whiplash incident I was riding a young horse, who was easily startled. I had just finished ignoring the inner voice that had told me not to button only one button on the Wrangler jeans jacket I was wearing. Lots of falls from horses happen when the horn of the saddle gets hooked up inside short, improperly closed, jackets; the rider cannot sit up to regain their balance. Need I say more?

I will add that it was a very colorful fall. I can vividly remember the dirt being pushed along the grown in front of my eyeglasses in, what seemed like, slow motion. I can also remember the numb, blue fingers that followed and the amusing comments of a man who later told me he was just showing his wife all the holes in the dirt that my body had made. He said it was unbelievable since there was all that dirt moved and no blood! This was long after I had gotten back on my horse like a good cowgirl.

These little messages are often based on common sense, previous happenings, and warnings from our mothers. Many times they are that mysterious yet natural thing we call intuition. We all have but have often have rifted so far from tapping into it. It tries to surface; it struggles, like the geese had to struggle to reach the surface and get our attention. Depending on how loud or clear the voice is it may be our Angels, spiritual guides or God. Depending on the day it may be one of these or all of these. Depending on well we listen for the voice or not, it may be ignored.

In the last few years (yes you guessed it, since the fall off the horse) I have tried very hard to listen to each inner message and act upon it. Sometimes I feel like I am overdoing it, being too cautious, especially with little things like putting a dish away too close to the edge. Well, those dishes have crashed and broken often enough for me to realize there is something too this. I figure if I test my theory with the little things like dishes falling, I will be really listening when the big items come along.

Today, I almost cost three baby geese their lives because I did not act quickly or at least clearly enough. If I take steps in my life to listen harder , speak more clearly and take action when I hear that inner voice the waves created by my wake will be the softer, gentler ones that only ripple on the shoreline and caress God’s creatures, me included, instead of causing them to get lost in my wake.

I would love to hear your stories, what has have you “heard” lately? Please leave a note in the comments area if you wish. I know there are many of you noticing these kinds of things along with me.

It's Small World | Or God Winked Again

2006-05-07T05:36:00.000-07:00

Today we arrived at Wrightsville, North Carolina. A charming town that old postcards call the Atlantic City of the South. The town revolves around boating and the ocean. It has a very busy harbor surrounded by houses and "cottages". There are many boats anchored and it takes some planning to find he right spot to drop anchor. If you do not plan ahead your boat could ride up on someone else’s boat when the tide changes or the wind. Majestic Dream is 50 feet long. You have to plan for her length, plus 15 feet of anchor chain for every foot of depth in the harbor. It was 20 feet where we squeezed in between a trawler and a sailboat, who was just dropping his own anchor and a large powerboat behind us. We would need to put our anchor down, off our bow, 200 feet in front of the powerboat behind us. I am certainly glad my father, or Captain Don as he sometimes known on the boat, was here to teach me all of that because I had no idea how to plan for the anchor. We stood on the bow ready to drop "Bruce". Bruce is the name brand of a special anchor made to hold large ships at sea, our Bruce is a scaled down for smaller boats.

As we readied to drop the The Bruce, our First Mate, John, was at the helm, following the Captain's directives by hand signal. A friendly looking man stood on the bow of the nearby trawler, watching our movements as our decisions could potentially effect him if we did not plan well. Captain Don glanced over at the trawler a few times to judge distance. Than name on the bow was Delphi. Captain Don suddenly remarked, " I know that guy, I know who that guy is! Why, that is Ben's brother!".

Ben is one of friends, who was currently traveling aboard his own sailboat in Key West, Florida. Ben had suggested Don keep his eye out for his brother who was traveling on a Trawler named Delphi. The last time Captain Don knew the Delphi was Stuart, Florida. He did not expect to see him on this stretch of the trip up the Intercoastal Waterway; much less anchored right next to us!

Don called over to the man on the Delphi and said "I know your brother, Ben! He told me to watch for your boat and say hello if I saw you!" He smiled back at us as with all of the engine noise he probably only heard half of what was said.

After we were safely at anchor with the sun setting, the other boats shining silhouettes against the brightly lit sky, Don called Ben on the phone and told him he had just anchored next to his brother! Just then we heard the Delphi calling us on the radio. Ben was even able to hear him over the phone.. Acquaintances and hellos were exchanged all around.

Two days before, Don had remarked how strange it was that almost every time he thought of his friend Ben, Ben would, soon after, call on the cell phone to check in. I suggested that when that happens to me I tell the person who called me how good they are. I will say "Boy, you are good!" Of course they will always ask me why and I respond that I was just thinking about them or wishing they would call. It's a small, small world, a person could say, as they day at Disney or....you could think of it as one of the ripples that builds the waves of life....God winked at us again today!

Unfortunately we did not get to visit with Ben's brother. Usually an evening at anchor might be spent taking the dinghy over to visit a neighboring boat. Alas, our alternator had gone out on the boat as we motored past Cape Fear. Yes, just like on a car, stuff breaks! The day before it was the pumping arm for the head. The entire toilet had needed to be removed and re-plumbed. Our night in Wrightsville Harbor was spent, flash light in hand, down on our knees in the engine compartment, putting in a new alternator. Years of living on a boat will teach your to be prepared. It can be a long trip to get a new alternator. This time we were actually in a town where they might have been a Marina that carried this type of alternator but just a last week Majestic Dream was making the trip from the Bahamas to West Palm Beach. Losing the ability to run your boat when traversing through the beautiful, yet desolate reef filled waters could be treacherous.

I was reminded as I watched the men on their knees, repairing the boat, that we have many reasons to be on our knees in thankful prayer.

Sunrise | Sunset

2006-05-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

Sunrise, Sunset. I have learned on this trip that the sunsets and sunrises look a lot a like. When by boat there are not always familiar markers to help your brain denote east from west. As you watch the rich, yellow, red or orange circle of light on the horizon you know whether it is a sunset or a sunrise. I suppose that depending on the type of day or night a person was having there could be room for confusion but let us hope that does not happen to anyone to often, if ever. The sun on the water tends to take on a wavering effect as you look at it. I imagine that a similar thing happens in the desert; there is so much to reflect on. In photographs, taken in unfamiliar places, here is no way to tell if you are looking at a sunrise or a sunset, unless you remember it specifically. My unsolicited advice is take notes so when you get your film back you know what you are looking at. Maybe it does not really matter, maybe that is why the song from the musical, Fiddler on the Roof, runs through my head, "Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset". Perhaps it only matters, which it is, if you plan to frame the print and label it for display.

I am reading "Fireside" by Mary Summer Rain (Hampton Roads Publishing). She has written more than twenty books, I believe. This one is the sharing of her philosophical views as if she were sharing them from a fireside chat with a very good friend. In one chapter she talks about wisdom, the tools and qualities of wisdom, in particular she names acceptance.

I quote from her book here for a moment, as a way of sharing my review of it with you, "Acceptance is wisdom. Wisdom is power. Therefore, acceptance is power. Some folks view acceptance as being a wimp. It's not. Neither is it lying down and playing dead or letting others walk all over you. It's not being any kind of weakling. It's the strength and power of a thorough understanding of behavioral diversity among humanity."

"With wisdom of acceptance one has the power to easily override negative emotions, reactions, and attitudes. It instills the power to gracefully accept the bad behavior of others without inciting negativity with self. This is not apathy. This is the power of wisdom." Mary Summer Rain continues.

"Acceptance is an absolute. It possesses the quality of nonjudgement. It's world view is not fragmented into nations or races, but rather sees everyone as a human being. This then means that racism, sexism, and prejudice do not exist with the heart and mind of the one who has attained this powerful tool of wisdom."

"Living through each say,, week, and year of one's life is to experience a thrilling, and unending presentation of gifts. Some gifts aren't needed and, truth be told, can actually be unwanted, yet they are 'accepted' with grace just the same. Life's misfortunes are presented along with life's blessings, both received with a great depth of understanding when one has the power of acceptance .....Acceptance is also letting go. It's releasing the compelling lure to understand another's behavior. Acceptance is the impetus that soothingly eases one forward into a gentle state where healing begins to take hold. Acceptance brings a growing measure of inner serenity."

Mary uses analogies a lot in her writing. Two stood out in my mind since they were nautically oriented and I am on a sailing vessel. She said about having acceptance: "For me, it was like a winch that pulled me up out of the mental mire I'd gotten myself into while trying to understand someone's behavior."

I find, when I am ready to move on with new concepts, that something I have observed in nature accents my acceptance. Today my conversation with myself about sunsets and sunrises was accented by this passage in "Fireside". I am willing to accept the sun's rising and setting time as a beautiful gift of serenity and grace in my life whether it is in the morning or the evening no longer matters. I know that I am ready to apply this to other aspects of my life in the future.

Mary Summer Rains goes on to add that "Patience is power. Patience is a quality of wisdom .....Patience holds hands with perseverance. Waiting. The waiting for something to happen can literally destroy one. Impatience causes stress ands tress wears down the immune system quicker than any other life factor. Impatience keeps one focused on a singular element, which, in turn, prevents awareness of the living moment. Impatience breeds negativity. It makes one crabby and short with others. It can steal life away. Impatience and the anxiety is creates can become a cancer that eats away everything in one's life, even the physical self."

I should clarify that the book goes on to explain that short term patience and anticipation are okay, they can add to the experience, she was talking about long term waiting.

More importantly she goes on to sum up wisdom and power in a single-word. "Attitude! Having the right attitude is wisdom. It's power." By power she goes on to say that "Being yourself is power. It's wisdom. Having the power to freely express your beingness brings the wisdom of understanding that all people are diverse in their individuality as the bird of the air, the fish of the sea and, in that understanding, do we celebrate life ....Gentleness, and inner serenity is power." I want more of that ...I have been at sea for seven days. My mind still works overtime, my dreams at night are like visits with angels and the people in my life, working out the ripples. This trip is grace for me. I want to develop more serenity and grace in my life. I want to be able to remain calm when the sea around me is in turmoil. I realize now that by being still I can help calm the turmoil.

One of the concepts that really hit home for me, in her book, was that she said sometimes in her life she gets too caught up in trying too explain too much. Or, if not explain too much, she forgets about the diversity among peoples at times and offers them more than they are ready for. Her analogy for that was that she was "trying to give them a yacht when all they were ready for was a rowboat."

Sometimes I get so excited about concepts that I plunge ahead in the conversation without stopping to listen to the person I am talking to. Well, actually I am usually talking so fast there is no place for them to jump in. I am working on slowing down. I think these type of conversations, among friends, who have been thinking about similar issues, takes on a momentum of it's own, like the wake of a boat bouncing off the shoreline. To some of us it is exciting to ride the pulpit of the boat, following it's motion in a dance, balancing, waves nipping at our feet, the risk of falling; others just get seasick. Yet others find this type of motion disrupting; conversations that bounce around like the bow of the boat, some may consider brainstorming, others may consider rude. Ah, diversity... plan for it. Be patient. Find out if what they really want is a row boat, a speed boat, a tug boat, a trawler, or a sailing yacht. Some may want a tanker others may be content with a paddle boat.

Tonight we are anchored on the Waccamaw River, south of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The osprey are nesting, nearby, at the top of a cypress tree. One of the pair just flew by with a fish for his family. I can hear the babies calling for dinner. This entire river runs through a forest of cypress. Most of them are tall, thin trees, they have grown to close together over the years. There is one ancient cypress on the far side of our anchorage that looks as if it would take more than one person to wrap arms around it. Others grow fat at the base, like pony tail palm trees, as they reach down into the water. As I look at the trees growing out of the water, right up to and beyond its edge, I imagine it must feel a bit like this on the Amazon. The frogs serenade us as we settle down for sleep.

Sunrise, sunset. They appear in the same way, along the horizon, yet they come indifferent shapes, different colors, they go in different directions. We accept their beauty either way. People do the same. Sunrise, sunset.

Making Time | Dolphins and Elephants

2006-05-03T19:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we arrived at 4:34 for a 4:30 bridge opening at Skidaway Narrows, Georgia. We had been in touch with the bridge operator prior to making the last bend in the Waterway. He knew we were trying to make the bridge opening at 4:30PM. Many of the bridges on the Waterway can only open at certain hours; some are on demand, this bridge, we discovered, had a very exacting operator. We were informed that his job was on the line if he opened the bridge at 4:34 instead of 4:30. This gives new mean to being on time. Most of our appointments in life can have a little flex time. While this is not always polite people do tolerate our tardiness for various reasons. I now realize that the rules of the Skidaway Bridge are like those of most employers. Late is late. Our penalty was that we had to drop anchor, in a narrow waterway, and wait. The up side was that we could drop anchor, otherwise at six miles per gallon for fuel it could have been an expensive wait. I wanted to get on the radio and suggest that if he had opened the bridge for the Ghost Ship in front of us, it would have still been open as few minutes later for us. I was only joking about Ghosts, my point being that if he had started opening it we would have soon been through it. Perhaps the people sitting in their cars for other Ghosts ships complained, loudly to his superiors.

Skidaway had a small beach with a waterside park. There was a boat ramp with one boater, a roofed over area for picnics, a few sunbathers, a fisherman, many seagulls, one sailboat at anchor in observation (us), a pair of Osprey and a dolphin. Our forty five minute wait turned into dolphin watching time.

A young girl of about 4 or 5 was swimming with her father on the little beach. She was making lots of noise, yelling cheerfully, at times screaming, others just chattering away endlessly. I first saw the Dolphin swim in front of a powerboat. He crested the water just in front of the bow. I worried he would be hit. I later saw him repeat this action and realized it must be a game. He seemed to only come up to breath and then vanish below again. I kept my cameras, both digital and 35 Millimeter SLR with zoom at hand. Actually one was around my neck and one had the strap around my wrist. Klutz that I can be, I knew the potential existed to trip and drop one of them overboard especially while dolphin “chasing”.

I tried many times to get pictures of the dolphin when he would surface. You could not really tell where this would be. There seemed to be a bit of a pattern where he would rise two or three times in a row. I sensed that he would eventually work his way over to where the girl was swimming. I have read enough about dolphins to know that he would be curious about all of the commotion she was making. There are stories of dolphins helping people in distress and playing with souls they know to be kind.

I was told that they can also sense when something is different about a person and are often attracted to that person. My daughter swam with dolphins at a facility in Florida a couple of years ago. One particular dolphin paid a lot of attention to her, talking and chattering away at her, coming in closer to her, even before she was in the water. He must have been able to tell she had only one kidney the handlers had said. She was delighted that he was so interested in visiting with her. I often wondered if it there may have been more to it than that even. My daughter, Amber, was raised with elephants and horses. She is a horse trainer ( www.rockinHhorses.com ) and has an affinity for animals that allows her to respect their wild nature and yet work with them in tandem; the result is an athletic portrait worth watching where the two-legged and four-legged creature become one in a dance. We spent eleven years interacting with and watching a young African elephant grow from 5’-4” and six years of age to over 8’ in height at the age of seventeen or so. We lived on a farm and presented educational programs at schools and other events, as well as doing commercials for companies like Amway and Trus Jois MacMillan and even a movie with Jim Carrey, When Nature Calls. I think that the dolphin may have sensed my daughters intimate relationship with animals. Growing up with an elephant for a sibling has quite an effect on your level of communication with animals.

I say sibling because elephants, not unlike dolphins, are very smart. I would describe a young elephant much as I would an eight year old child in their view of, and interaction with, the world around them. Were privileged to know such a creature intimately.

As I waited at Skidaway for the dolphin to surface again I thought about all of this. I was hoping the dolphin would sense something special and come to visit me. He did not, however he did swim within 25 feet of the young girl on the beach. Well I guess he was only 30 feet from me but it seemed special that he went over to check on her. I heard the child yell out “There’s an animal! I saw an animal!” as the dolphin dipped under the water and just as quickly the girl was back at her own swimming game. The only picture I got on my digital camera barely showed a fin. The camera’s picture taking process was too slow to capture the dolphin. I may have something better on my other camera, or I may have a frame filled with the sunlight dancing off the water. I told myself that the next time I saw dolphins I would just enjoy watching them since I could enjoy my time with them more if I was not looking through a lens. Video taping ones children is a lot like that. Life just does not look the same to the film maker as it does to the watcher.

I first noticed the Osprey flying with a fish clutched in his feet. I was not sure at first what type of bird he was. He circled a nest, with his mate sitting on it, that was built on top of a sign on the Waterway that said “Thanks”. A lot of the Waterway is a no-wake zone, they often thank you for slowing down. After feeding his family the bird flew over our boat, gliding peacefully on the air currents. I took some, what I hope to be, wonderful shots of him with my zoom lens. I could see his underbelly and the cream and tan patters formed by his feathers. I believe and Osprey is in the Hawk family but need to do some research on that.

The bridge operator, when called at roughly 5:25PM, informed us that the bridge would open exactly at 5:30. It did. It was a very pretty blue bridge set against the blue sky. The bridge operator did not appear to wave at us as we went by.

We anchored last night near Savannah in Herb’s Cove. This morning I was making a cup of tea and heard a bird close by. He sounded like he was right on deck. Sure enough, as I have heard them say in southern movies, he was on our boat. I climbed up the first four steps to the cockpit and saw him perched on our dinghy at about my eye level. A black bird, dark like a raven but smaller than a Michigan crow was looking at me. He was just a chattering away. Complaining? Tell me what for? Asking for a treat? Telling us to move our boat? Or perhaps, as the Native Americans might tell you, All That Is, The Great One, may have sent him to accent my thoughts and prayers or actions of the moment. What was the Osprey telling me earlier in the day? I wonder…

As for the dolphin, I still think God is helping him to teach me patience and observation, stillness. They seem to appear just as I am distracted by a cell phone or the book I am reading. Psalm 37:7 Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret because of him ... Be still",

Today as we head north of Savannah our First Mate, John , noticed a dolphin swimming along side our boat. I went over the rail and could look right down on him or her. I could clearly see the air hole she breathes from and her whole body dipping in and out of the water in a game of chase with or boat. I broke my promise to myself to just enjoy watching her and went for the camera, she was so close. I did continue to watch her as the battery warmed up, though, enjoying my time so close to the dolphin. I never did get the photo. I can’t help noticing they disappear just when my camera is ready. Some people would say I need a different camera. Some Wave Walkers would say I still needed to learn the lesson. My time with the dolphins is not over yet, as we continue on our journey, I will have another opportunity. I think the lesson changes day to day, moment to moment. For now we just passed Hilton Head Island. I will go help look for more buoys, markers and shoals. A boat we just passed was aground.

Cormorants, Whales and " A Gift From the Sea"

2006-05-03T19:16:00.000-07:00

The cormorants glide effortlessly across the water and land smoothly in the water, no feet flapping and hitting the surface like a swan or goose. No drag, it’s as if they are part otter. I can see both animals in my mind as they touch down. This morning one landed right in front of the boat as we motored along the waterway. I saw him dive, not 6 feet in front of us. Not knowing much about this creature I was alarmed that we might run him over. I was overreacting, in part, because I had been reading about a young whale who was run over by a research vessel in a book called “The Year of The Whale” by Victor B. Scheffer.
The Cormorant dives quite deep and stays under water for quite a while as it dines. He surfaced to the east of us quite safely.

“The Year of The Whale” was written in 1969 and was the author was the winner of the Burroughs Medal for the year’s best book in the field of natural history. It is a delightful story about a year in the life of a baby sperm whale.

On this trip I have also been thinking a lot about “A Gift From The Sea” written by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. She writes about the patience we can learn from the sea and many other insights about life. You can read more about her, along with some wonderful quotes of inspiration from her book at: http://www.dailycelebrations.com/062203.htm I have always felt an affinity to her writing. Wave Walker is, in many ways, inspired by her writings. Thank you, Anne, for sharing your life and teaching me that our observations and musings can help others as they walk along the waves.

Losing Your Hat - The Bigger Picture

2006-05-02T18:41:00.000-07:00

The inside of the sailboat, Majestic Dream, is about forty feet long and feet wide, useable space that is. My Father, who I am traveling with, reminded me this morning, with a wry smile, of the familiar adage that everything should have a place and everything should be put in its place. This, after I spent ten minutes searching for my hat. Both my Father, Don, and his friend John were sitting in the cockpit, one at the wheel and one with the chart book in his lap for navigation. I looked at them. They both had on their hats. Don had on his favorite and customary Australian style straw Stetson. John had on a ball cap.

My search started in shadowy cabin lit by the natural sunrise light. Then I turned on the overhead lights in each part of the boat, the aft cabin, the head (the bathroom to those unfamiliar with boating), the quarter berth cabin, the main salon( like the living room), all the nooks and crannies. This boat was built in Taiwan. It has many, many beautiful teak cabinets, cubby holes and other various storage compartments. I finally got a flash light.

I was also searching for my banana style hair clip. I had packed only one of those thinking how many hair clips could I need? I had packed about ten t-shirts, thinking it would be ninety degrees everyday and I would need lots of clean clothes, but only one hair clip. On day six of my trip I have only worn two or three various t-shirts with many more layers added on some mornings than I had hoped. So here we are searching for the one hat and the one hair clip. Finally, I climbed up the steps from the cabin and announced I could not find my hat. That was when my Father teased me by facetiously agreeing that it was easy to lose things in a forty by eight foot space, one had to be on ones toes at all times or things got lost he basically side as he grinned at me. He also suggested my hat was on the buffet or side cabinet in the main salon. I searched again to no avail. I picked up my cup of tea and when topside to announce my defeat. The sun was just peaking over the sea of reeds and grasses along the Intercoastal Waterway. We were in Georgia heading North. The Herons, Cormorants and other birds were enjoying their morning, low tide, feast of fish. I took up my camera to see what I could catch.

As we sat and enjoyed the quiet morning interrupted only by the hum of our engine and the calls of the seagulls, John announced that he was not wearing “his” hat. He said, “Why, this is not my hat, this feels like a girls hat. This is not a guy hat.” Sure enough, he had on my hat! Now his hat is not navy blue, but it does have a round logo on the front just a bit bigger than my White Cloud Fire Rescue Logo. Under normal circumstances however, they would not be mistaken for the same hat. I know you heard me say “Normal”. So you are probably wondering what circumstances these are, if they are not normal? I cannot answer that other than to note that “normal circumstances” is one of those comments we often make. Normal is actually quite relative and varies between people, locations, even the day.

It should be apparent that normal for me, today, involved tunnel vision. I was not looking at the bigger picture. My focus was too narrow. I Laughed as John handed me my hat. I had not even looked directly at his hat during my search, I had focused on his face which is actually quite normal for me. I had, at one point, picked up his hat out of the wicker basket we put odds and ends in, like cell phones, hair clips, chap stick and cameras, next to the companionway and stairs to go below. This arrangement supposedly keeps them from getting lost. Assuredly it make sit easier to grab one basket and save the whole lot when a power boat comes along and their big wake sends us tipping and rocking.

Tunnel vision is something that happens when we are either looking to hard, our view becomes too narrow. It’s sort of a trick, since we think we are being so faithful and dedicated to our cause, we cannot imagine how we could miss the bigger picture. The Big Picture is easier to grasp if we start with the wide angle view. This morning I tried to photograph the Cormorant’s fishing and diving. These agile, mostly black birds, are very lithe and swim as easily in the water as they fly in the air. They remind me of sea otters as the dive for fish. If I set my camera with the zoom as close as it can go it is easy to lose track of my subject as he moves about in the water. If I am waiting for him to come into range to line up with the sun reflecting on the water I often missed the shot altogether. My Camera technically was seeing a big picture since I was zoomed in very tight. The bird, if found would almost fill the entire frame of the shot. It was easier to get the shot I wanted if I looked at the wider view and then zoomed in on my subject, narrowing my depth of field at that time. I do not claim to be a highly technical photographer so these are not photography tips. This was just my experience this morning. I want to learn how to be more focused and intuitive in my life with out narrowing my view too early.

This trip is a precious gift from God and my family I want to use it to grow, to be humble and to be a better person. I wear a lot of hats in my life, hats being a metaphor for the different “jobs” I do. I am a Mother, a Wife, a Daughter, a Sister, a Realtor, a Firefighter, an Artist and a truck driver. In 2004 I went back to college to advance my technical skills in Web Design and Marketing. I am a very right brained, visual person and Web Design will let me be creative in my job. I will not have to wait to find a spare moment in a busy life to paint. I can paint with design software instead of brushes. You can see my work at www.BrassWindWeb.com . Wearing all of these hats can make my life hectic, and at times confusing. I try to remind myself daily that I am, most importantly, a child of God. I pray that His strength will be my strength. Perhaps I should pray for his focus to be mine. I hope to lose things less and remember where I put them more! I ask Him for guidance and wisdom, I give each day up to Him so that as I walk along the wave of life I will notice the ripples that show me the way. The Big Picture is the goal.

Majestic Dream | Photo

2006-05-01T20:12:00.000-07:00

I am still learning how to post on this Blog...especially photos..so some of these are being posted late..Here is the boat we are on, Majestic Dream. I forget how magical she looks from a distance...when I go ashore and look back I am reminded she is a boat from another era. I feel like Tinkerbell should be right around the corner; it's like a magic carpet ride...

Ripples and Gifts

2006-05-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

Gifts in waiting, are they part of the ripples? It seems we often save gifts for special occasions. We tuck them away on a shelf somewhere waiting for a special time to use them. One such gift at my house was utilized recently. It may have been on that shelf for over a year. It was a truly useful and wonderful gift in the form of a car wash gizmo that needed no scrubbing or rinsing and dried spot free. It had it's own "magic wand" for the application in the form of a special spray nozzle which held the washing and rinsing solutions. We had been waiting for the right time to use it. In retrospect, anytime a motorcycle or vehicle needed washing would have been the right time.

When I mentioned to the gift giver that we had finally tried the car washing wand, I detected a note of disappointment that it had not been used sooner. He may have even felt that we did not think it was a very important gift because we had not used it yet. We are each given gifts, in the form of talents, by our Creator. Many if us spend our lives waiting for the right time to use our talents. Sometimes the right time has come along but we are too tired, too stressed or too busy to notice or have not the energy to use the gift. Occasionally we even make excuses saying "if this happens" or "if that was a certain way" we would use our gift.

What if our Creator is offended that we put off using our gifts? Is he hurt that we do not use our talents? Or do you suppose God is patient about our gifts, allowing time for their discovery, purpose and utilization? I believe that the hints we receive in our daily lives, in the form of coincidences and highlighted events, are placed in our path to remind us to use our gifts. Author Rushnell calls these God Winks. (When God Winks : How the Power of Coincidence Guides Your Life by Squire Rushnell.)I call them divine coincidences or divine awakenings.. Sometimes the light around us seems a little brighter, a tree or scene seems to have more color. Often something we need to help nudge us along shows up in the form of a gift from a friend or an Angel; they can be one in same.

Instant Messenger has emoticons that shake our computer screens to get our attention or help us feel the experience. God gives us the divine nudge more often than we realize. When we walk on the beach we usually see acres of smooth sand. The waves will come up leaving small tokens of favor in the form of sea shells, pebbles and drift wood. When the tide goes out all of the effort of the waves can be seen in the patterns left in the sand. It may seem like we can leave our talents unused but then what form do they take? Are they like the smooth sand on the beach blown by the wind; unnoticed? If we use our gifts or don't use them the ripples we can create spread in patterns we can not always see, touching the lives of others, as the ocean of life moves on. We are always part of the wave that carries others along their path, the result can be like the many natural jewels we find on the beach or it can be like the wave that crushes our sand castle. You choose.

I saw a planned neighborhood yesterday that was filled with beautiful million dollar homes. Each one was an architects dream. We passed other areas where a single wide trailer sat next to a great red tile roofed estate. The Intercoastal Waterway has many different views. Today I saw a town that had the most unseal combination structures I have ever seen. Two gigantic paper plants formed the north and south perimeters. Great amounts of white steam clouds came from the stacks. The wind blew from the north so heavy that the smokestack looked to be in motion like steam engines moving along the tracks. The plant to the south lay nestled by the water. It looked like an industrial sized roller coaster with all of its motorized conveyor belts glinting in the sun. In front of these plants was a beautiful harbor filled with many moored sailboats lazily at anchor. The sailboats had names like Cosmic Rose. In St. Augustine I saw "There Be Dragons" and "Solitaire". The quaint town of Fernandina, with streets of lined with many colored buildings, was situated in the middle. Her docks filled with all variety of recreational boats. A 65 foot powerboat was docked next to a schooner from the 1800's. The power boats along this waterway have names like Blue Chip and Kisses. The harbor was also filled with many commercial shrimping boats heavy with salt and nets sporting names like Georgia Bulldog and Earl's Girls. As I took a few photos, our American Flag proudly displayed on the stern of our sailboat, I thought only in America. I had just started reading a novel today about life in the year of a sperm whale. It reminded me that maybe I should have been thinking only humans would build a town like this. I also could not help thinking that I am probably not the only one who found it contrastingly beautiful in a sort of Matrix or Mad Max (the movies) sort of way.

Pathways on the Intercoastal Waterway

2006-04-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

Life is like feathers walking. Emily Dickinson said in her famous poem, "Hope is the thing with feathers...". Our hope is that we can walk on the right path. We pray that we choose the right fork in the road. The artist that I am, the part of me that sees in pictures, sees a horse with large feathers of hair on his feet and eagle feathers twisted into his free flowing mane running out of the ocean waves. I cannot see where the wave stops and the horse begins any more than I can sometimes tell whether my thoughts are nonsense, intuition, knowing, not-knowing, God's Voice, an Angel's voice...or just hope?

I am taking a trip on a sailboat, called Majestic Dream, with my Father. Our journey takes us up the Intercoastal Waterway from Vero Beach, Florida to North East, Delaware on a fourty-seven foot Vagabond. My goal is to look for small miracles along the waterway, a rainbow, a special bird, a dolphin, a human kindness. Little ripples that create the waves of life.

I thought about calling my Blog Water Walker since Jesus said we were all saints and could do what he could do if we believed. I thought it was too presumptuous of a name; made it sound like I thought I walked on water. Feathers Walking seemed to vague to anyone but me. I kept searching.

I believe that our spiritual beliefs, no matter what religion, lead us to ask similar questions and to seek. So please do not wander away, stay and visit with me as I wander the earth seeking God and delighting in the wonder of it all. Einstein showed us that it is through wonder that we learn and create things.

Today doing further research for my new venture into blogworld, in an effort not to get blogged down, I visited a few other Blogs. I discovered Neal Donald Walsch author of HOME WITH GOD in a Life That Never Ends. I read at his blog, http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com, this excerpt from his book:

"Life is God, made physical. What is important to understand is that there is no single way in which life makes God physical. Some waves are small, barely a ripple, while other waves are huge, thunderous in their sweep. Yet, whether minuscule or monstrous, there is always a wave. There is no time when there is not a wave on the ocean. And while every wave is different, not a single one is divided from the ocean itself. Difference does not mean division. Those words are not interchangeable.You are different from God, but you are not divided from God. The fact that you are not divided from God is why you can never die. The wave lands on the beach, but it does not cease to be. It merely changes form, receding back into the ocean. The ocean does not get "smaller" every time a wave hits the sand. Indeed, the incoming wave demonstrates, and therefore reveals, the ocean's majesty. Then, by receding into the ocean, it restores the ocean's glory. The presence of the wave is evidence of the existence of the ocean. Your presence is evidence of the existence of God. "

I read Neal's metaphor comparing life to an ocean wave. His comment that there is not a time when there is not a wave on the ocean hit home with me. We can be the wave, follow the wave or get out of its way, I mused. I would like to part of the ripples that build the wave by just sharing the wonder of it. Each of you can view it from your own perspective and continue the momentum of the wave. We are all wave walkers. So my Blog is born "Wave Walker". It truly started a few weeks ago in my head. I made a few short notes the day before my train to Chicago and flight to West Palm Beach.

Wave Walker
April 26th, 2006

While contemplating a name for my Blog an errand took me to the shoe repair shop. I had purchased a new pair of sandals and needed a 1/2 lift put in the right shoe. I had been told that any black sole could generally be cut and fitted and still look quiet sensible.

I walked in the shop and quietly waited for the man to out down the shoe he was working on and see what I needed. his back was to me and I could not see what he was working on in particular. I held my sandal in my hand and inquired if this type would work well for the lift process. I asked him if he had had any experience with this brand before, Rockports. He stopped, took the sandal from me and looked bemused. He Said he was about to cut into a sandal just like this momentarily! He walked over to his work table and brought back a brown version of my sandal, tags still on it. He inquired how much I had paid for mine. If I stuck around he would know how well the process would work as he was going to cut into her sandal. I waited. Mine could still be returned if it would not work .I said I would let her shoe be the guinea pig.

I walked away wondering about this coincidence. It occurred to me that Jesus wore sandals. I left the shop thinking that God had winked and made the answer about the sandals a simple one. Yes it was the right sandal, the right choice. No more to worry about. Take them on your trip and when you come back have the work done. It also occurred to me that God was blessing this trip with his light and that the sandal incident was just a small taste of the events I would find on my trip that gave evidence of God's presence.

Next Day..4/27/06

Sleeping at end of train ride to Chicago, viewing taupe colored scene with eyes closed. Third eye view. 3 to 5 angels. Faces sculpted against the taupe, heads, detailed relief of nose, cheek bones, strong jaw lines, heads turning, eyes on me. Fading in and out first one then another as if 3 to 5 angels were with me on the train letting me know of their presence as I looked closer each one came more into focus.

Friday 4/28/06

Just passed the "Hole in the Wall Island. Osprey Nests. Watching for red and green markers to plot our path and avoid the rocks. Red right returning except when heading north on Inter coastal then it green on the right. The buoy and marker rules change depending on which direction you are heading. On a channel the red right returning rule would always work but on a waterway or a river it would depend on which way the water was headed.

In our everyday lives we are looking for signals to guide our path. Wouldn't it be great if they were red and green markers along the way. How easy is that?

A dolphin surfaced near the bow today. Camera in hand I climbed out of the cockpit to the deck to get a photo. In my effort to position myself I wasted precious time not really viewing the dolphin. He went below the water and was gone. He must stayed down a long time. I never saw him resurface. I remember thinking I had missed the forest for the trees again. Here was this wonderful dolphin just floating at the bow for me to see and instead of enjoying him I was anxious to get a photo and missed truly seeing him, missed the details of the event. This is just another example of how life happens when we are trying to get ready for it. While it would have been nice to share my first dolphin of the trip with you I basically missed it myself trying. I could say the sacrifice in the effort was worth the gift it would have been had I gotten a great photo I am more inclined to suggest that my experience with the dolphin and how his presence felt to me personally would have been a more meaningful insight than a hurriedly taken snap shot. This is not to say that a great photo cannot tell a story but I was not in a position to take a great photo, not the right spot, not hate right camera for hate moment.

This boat has a lot of teak carved doors and walls. It was originally built for a man who dated an actress with the first initial M. There is an M carved among flowers as part of them main salons decor. I noted this as I was seeking shot for the interior. I thought that M also stands for Miracle. Interestingly, the next overhead carving that runs parallel with the M Carving is of two fire breathing dragons with their flames burning into the sun. The two carvings demonstrate easily the battles we fight on our spiritual paths. Flowers, vines and miracles against dragons threatening to burn away our source. Here they are on the boat with me.

I have not been on this boat since March of 2003. She spends her summers in the Chesapeake by area. My brother keeps and eye on it while my parents enjoy the Michigan golf season and family. Each fall they head back down the inter coastal and cruse the key’s and waterways in Florida and the Bahamas. When I first boarded Majestic Dream this trip I noticed the quiet water through the portal. I think the last time I was here I never even noticed how cool that was to see; like an old movie on a pirate ship.

When I was little, my father would make us "Egg on a raft" for breakfast. I remember toast fried in butter and the egg, yolk still soft cooked in a cut out hole in the netter of the toast as one of the delights of my childhood. Today when my Father asked me how I wanted my eggs I responded in a child like manner that I would like mine cooked in a piece of toast with the middle cut out like he used to do when I was a kid. I laughed out loud as if I was joking because I truly thought it was too much to ask him to do. When my breakfast arrived it was a perfectly golden brown raft of egg and toast. I thanked him several times. It was wonderful that he remembered what it was it was and did not think me silly for asking. I felt loved and special eating that breakfast.

Another one of my favorite childhood hood pass times was sitting up on the front pulpit of our sailboat. Riding the waves it seemed, as the water rushed past. There was always a bit of a thrill knowing you could fall under the boat. No one ever did. Today I went up and walked out the long bowsprit on Majestic Dream and sat on the pulpit, balancing, enjoying the wind on my face and toes -- waiting for a big power boat to come by and rock my world. For those of you who do not sail, the wake from a power boat can be really rock a sail boat. The bow can come up right out of the water and crash down! Yahoo!

Sitting in the cockpit (Yup same name as on a plane) under the shade of the dodger (no relation to baseball; works like an umbrella) chatting, not paying any attention to the water around us for some time, I notice a shadow to my right. The dark, sleek body of a dolphin is quietly swimming along side our boat. I look over and he or she is just 3 feet away from me keeping time up with the boat. This time I watch him and grab my camera at the same time, not taking my eyes away this time. I missed the shot of the close dolphin but snapped a few of his friends swimming 25 or 40 feet away. I can't help wondering if watching Dolphins is like being still and waiting on the Lord. You see more if you are still.

Saturday April 29th 2006

Today I realized that the Intercoastal is like a peaceful river for many miles. It looks a lot like a lake in some places, a lagoon in others. It can be a mangrove, a busy water ski lane, even a high rise heaven, a trailer park or a haven of palatial homes or just a row of regular houses. I also realized the dolphins are elusive. I have decided them come up to breath and then they carry on... Too quick for my camera...

Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer wrote about manifesting your own destiny, Einstein wrote the Einstein Podlusky theory or the wave particle duality with Podlusky. They are somewhat similar. Wayne told a story about needing a certain wrench or pliers and then finding them in his driveway where he was certain they had not been. He thanked the Universe. Einstein discussed measuring wave particles. Everything is made of atoms. Atoms are made up of waves and particles. Something can either be a wave or a particle depending on the moment in time that it is measured. This has lead my husband to the simplification regarding the example of the contents of a box being shipped, "Is it a Cat or a violin?" Today I was watching the homes and birds as we cruised north on the waterway. I was thinking that I needed a nail file, an emery board would do. Later I was cooking in the galley. I walked out of the galley across the main salon as I had many times in the last few hours; this time there was an emery board at my feet! Cat or Violin? Manna from heaven? I thanked God and the universe or whatever angel left it there for me. Check out the authors and scientists I have mentioned if you doubt.