We've been invited to give a talk on preparing to cruise at the 2010 Wauquiez Rendezvous in Port Townsend, WA and so I've been doing some reflecting on the issue.

It wasn't until February of 2009 that I was living on the boat, "retired", and working on it. Prior to that Carol (and when I visited I also) worked on "catch up" maintenance to keep on top of the systems and gear we already had. However, for the most part he was either away from the boat, settling into his new role at work or dealing with his move and I was living in Colorado. Using Feb 2009 as our starting to prep date would mean we prepped to cruise in 16 months. Overall I think this is a good ballpark.

That estimate is short because before February 2009 we had already accomplished some important getting ready to cruise tasks: 1) We had sold the house and rid ourselves of everything besides what would fit into a Honda Element, 2) We had taken a 5 day course on our own boat with an instructor and 3) We had read a gazillion books and online discussions.

However, 16 months is an overestimate in a sense because, frankly, we didn't work that hard most of the time. We played. We played A LOT. We went on trips, we climbed, we generally tried to keep preparing to cruise in its appropriate place in life -- "important but not THAT important". I wasn't working on the boat full time during those 16 months because I was also our "director of fun".

There have been a number of times when we made big pushes and boat work dominated our lives for a chunk of time. Just before the VICE (our quick jaunt into the ocean which I should write up at some point), we had a major almost month long push (too long) which involved installing both our bimini and our windvane, getting our electronic navigation and charting systems up, buying a liferaft and epirb (actually 2 x PLBs) and a long list of critical for coastal offshore safety items. But for the most part, it has been a big but not overwhelming part of any given month.

Keeping ourselves balanced within a month is important to me because one thing I learned after grinding myself down for 7 years during grad school was that delay of gratification for later reward is only OK for me at a minor level. I'm no longer willing to work hard for a long time for some ephemeral future. I want balance in my life now, or at least within this month. I use "one month" as a good amount of time to evaluate whether I'm falling back into my rut of delaying fun. Overdoing it is tolerable to some extent as long as I am doing too many fun things.

Plus, why does preparing to cruise have to be the painful part? For some people, on more limited timelines, the prep has to be compressed and so it becomes a necessary evil to be pushed through so that they can have more time to cruise before they have to return. But prepping is *exciting* when you stop and think about it and the more time I give myself to tackle a problem the more I am likely to enjoy it. We have the luxury of time that so many would give so much to have and so we are taking advantage of it.. If I feel like I have time to really understand the problem and to take each stage individually I can enjoy it. If I feel like I'm pushing then I get easily frustrated by the challenges that inevitably arise.

This is another reason we are cruising "around here" for the first 13 months. First of all, we have the luxury of living somewhere which is a world class cruising area and that is enough motivation on its own. But also, it allows us to have a firm date of departure from a dock, while simultaneously providing a steam release valve in the knowledge that most things don't have to be done because we can keep preparing as we go. We can cruise for a while before we decide what type of watermaker we want or the changes we want in the standing rigging.

I keep telling myself these things when I feel myself starting to get sucked into the vortex of cruising preparation freak out. I ask myself "are you having fun?" and usually, despite the stressball I am wrapping myself up into, I am. I ask myself "what happens if this isn't done" and the answer (now that we have new batteries which were our last must-have item) is "we leave June 15 anyways".

- Livia

We spent 10 days in Québec -- alternating between Montréal and my favorite small city in North America (so far), Québec City.

J'adore Québec City. If you want to travel to a European city without hopping the pond, go to Québec City. It is one of the oldest cities founded by Europeans on this continent and that, combined with the French, makes it feel like like a small French city.

We did not bring our camera but we were able to snag some photos with Carol's brother's camera.

We squeezed in some play time on this trip including a bicycle trip to the Montréal Grand Prix track where we started the race:


And had the slowest best tire change ever in the pit:


In Québec City I was introduced to the Bonhomme of the Winter Carnival:


Finally we visited Falls #1 and Falls #2:

A good friend asked me if we had some kind of real-time check in system when we are out on the high seas so that someone knows we are in trouble (if we are) and can come looking for us.

The answer is kind of yes and kind of no. Here is what I know so far on the topic.

First, checking in...

There are "check in" systems - most notably the radio nets that are operated by volunteers on land. Boats check in each day reporting position and the position can be published on a website. During those check ins there are all kinds of rules that I know about only from reading other people's blogs. We won't be using a check in net when we make the passage down the coast to CA and so all of this is too far away for us to have made time to learn about it. The rules are designed as a kind of triage - problems first, single handed boats get to check in before boats with more than one crew, etc. Being able to check in on one of these nets assumes our radio works, we know how to use it, we have the time to use it and our electrical-power system is working.

We also have the capacity to radio with other people and other boats (are any of our friends HAMs?), email, email-to-blog, etc while offshore. This assumes all of the above plus for the email our modem has to be working.

Not exactly a check in, but in an actual abandon ship emergency, we have two handy devices that we can trigger to send a distress signal with GPS coordinates to a satellite which relays the message to emergency services in the US. Emergency services has our coordinates and can route traffic in the area to look for us. Quite a few people have been picked up in this scenario particularly when you are in a relatively normal shipping area, even far out at sea. With that being said, it isn't something to count on by any stretch.

Now the other part, if we fail to check in, what happens? What should friends and family do?

NOTHING.  If we have an electrical short or if our radio gets a little salt water on it, it could stop working. The odds are that if we drop off the radio/email world that our radio is broken. Nothing else. We would have to be way, way past our due date for anyone to assume something had gone wrong because long passages can be unpredictable and could easily take much longer than expected. If we abandoned ship or are otherwise in trouble, we will (hopefully) have triggered our call to the satellite. If we haven't done so, there isn't a whole heck of a lot anyone can do.

What is the moral of this story for us?

Crossing oceans in small craft is potentially dangerous and the safety net is thin. If you get in a bad place you need to figure a way to get yourself out of it. Don't expect rescue and preparation is key. With that being said, thousands of small boats, much less prepared, well built than ours and with less safety equipment, successfully cross oceans every year. It's not rocket science.

Did I scare you Mom?

Don't worry. Although I don't want to spend too much of my time in front of a computer during the experience of an ocean crossing, I'm sure that I will want to connect with people. But the important point is, if all of sudden there is silence the most likely thing is that the radio isn't working. Because of the installation it isn't really realistic for us to carry two complete systems -- meaning there isn't a back up.

And ultimately all of this is years from now...our first 7-10 day passage won't be until summer of 2011 and the biggie, the Pacific crossing is in 2012 at the earliest, probably 2013 if we spend a year in Mexico.

- Livia