Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Damned If You Do...

...damned if you don't. What is it about the internet that makes everyone an expert? Seriously, I'd like to know because I currently have plenty of internet and yet I am pretty certain I am an expert at...nothing.

Commander of the Internet Yacht Club watching...always watching....

Here's a comment left on my last post by Anonymous "Nice work, but do you guys ever actually sail your boat?"It might have been just an innocuous comment but it could just as easily have been meant to be snarky. Then. I got an email which basically accused me of wasting bandwidth on blogging the refit and could we just go sailing already. *sigh*

 At first I got annoyed because well, I am suffering a serious case of itchy feet and am ready to go NOW and I really do not need someone who is not even willing to sign their name pointing out what I already know- this refit is taking forever. Do these people even realize what we are preparing to do and with whom? Then I wondered if I really cared. I do a bit because it seems that 30 years of internet has spawned more expert sailors than thousands of years of sailing managed to do.

I was going to let it go and then one of my favorite sailing bloggers Pat, from Bumfuzzle posted about his quick trip down the coast to Mazatlan to join his family. As I read about what a craptacular trip he was having, I felt nothing but empathy for him. His trip was full of suck but he was bravely soldiering on, after having purchased a boat site unseen and subscribing to the " GO NOW!" philosophy. It bit him in the butt but fortunately, he is okay, the family is okay and the boat is still floating so as far as a score from me, he gets a win. The thing that really stuck in my craw about Pat's posting was the number of well,- pretty rude and unsympathetic comments. One in particular was pretty darned close to being of the "Neener neener I told you so" variety. Talk about kicking someone when they are down. Sheesh.

This isn't a case of thinking "our method is superior", its more a case of thinking "boats are really stupid and at some point you are going to want to take her out open up the seacocks and sink her no matter what you do". I think whether you ascribe to the Go NOW! philosophy or the Black Box Theory has everything to do with your past experiences and innate personality.

At anchor on our last sail, a year ago. The whole point of this was to determine what had to be corrected before leaving. Sitting in Mark's lap, reason number 1 we are so carefully going through a thorough refit.

The Bumfuzzles have been pretty forthright in documenting their sailing life and how they decided to sail around the world. Pat was a trader, a job that requires a heck of a lot of skill, luck, resourcefulness and a stomach for gambling. He seems to be more of the GO NOW! school and hey, it worked to get him all the way around once and I am sure it will serve him well, he will figure out the best course of action to take with his stupid boat and the Bums will be fine. That's what works for them and I am 100% behind them cheering them on.

We are more of the Black Box school. I grew up on a horse farm where there were literally 100 ways to kill yourself on a daily basis. I did some pretty audacious, dangerous stuff (which I will not recount because my Mom reads this and no need to scare the pants off of her after the fact ;) )but I did develop a pretty healthy respect for gravity, the laws of physics and the possible dangers of not heeding their risks. I am a risk taker, but a cautious one with a solid self preservation streak.

Reason number 2 for a meticulous refit, at our rainy night anchorage, same shake down.

One of Mark's first jobs was a safety inspector on rigs in the North sea. When he tells me of the time he caught some weather while on a FPSO ship in the west of Shetland (which is essentially a tanker and MUCH larger than our little boat) and watched as the waves battered dents into the heavy steel bow of the ship, I understand why he is as meticulous as he is. When he tells me of the time he was on the rig Brent Charlie in the North Atlantic which had a 4 foot steel I beam 70 feet above the sea  twisted and warped like a piece of plastic by a wave, I put aside my desire to hurry it up and say "take your time to do it right". Our boat is small. And plastic. You take your time Mark, you take your time.

Not my photo, If you think I would be snapping pics in conditions such as this we obviously have not met. Brent Charlie, where Mark really, really learned to respect the power of wind and waves.
It's all about preferences and past experiences. Our past experience makes us prefer to meticulously go through every single system. We prefer not to take our boat offshore, with kids and 30 year old hoses with suspect clamps that may or may not be in good shape. We prefer not to have a questionable electrical system. We prefer to take the time to install a fuel system which greatly reduces the likelihood of us losing the engine due to water ingress. We prefer to make sure every hose, electrical run, sea cock, through hull and bit of rigging is solid, intact and organized in such a way that when we do have a problem, we can address it as quickly as possible. Does our total and complete refit guarantee that we will never have a spate of bud luck? Not at all, but it does mean we will at least know that we have done everything we can in preparation and hopefully we have put enough into the Black Box to have a good outcome. So do we ever sail it? Soon enough, soon enough.

So that is what I find so highly amusing about internet sailors and their criticism. I would not be surprised to find that the very same people who are tsk tsking the Bums for not doing a refit before moving aboard are the same folks who like to say we aren't sailing enough and should go now. Which is it? Go now or prepare the boat meticulously? I don't think there is a right answer there is only the right answer for each person and really, everyone is doing the best the can and trying to make the best decisions for themselves.

I get it, I really do. I write and post a blog about the refit and the boat so people feel entitled to criticize. I also understand that a year of refit posts is BORING. That's the reason I don't post more frequently (no one wants to see post after post of each layer of varnish) and the biggest reason I haven't upgraded to a dedicated web site. Until we are on the move, its just not necessary. I just really wish the Internet Yacht Club would perhaps be a bit less quick to tell people what to do. I get complaints that I am not sailing enough and posting photos of Ceol Mor under sail. Pat from Bumfuzzle posts a true and accurate account of his really sucky sail, even managing to grab some stunning photos while in the midst of a poop storm of suckage and he gets admonished for not spending time with a very boring and time consuming refit before hand or even better, being told that the answer to his problems is to just throw money at it until it goes away. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Internet Yacht Club, I am beginning to suspect you have a serious case of bipolar disorder.

So what are appropriate comments on a sailing blog? If you have have a tip as to how to solve a problem, that is appreciated. If you have something that worked for you in a similar situation, also appreciated. If you want to commiserate, or offer condolences when things go badly or just to offer encouragement then your comments are not just appreciated, but GREATLY appreciated. Have nothing to say other than to offer an opinion that XYZ is wrong and we are boring, silly, not salty enough, too salty or whatever? Save it for happy hour at the Internet Yacht Club.

A little over a year to go and then I promise more sailing photos than you could want. Ten bucks says after a couple of months of photos of a boat which is on the move, I get an email saying we should do more maintenance the minute we have a failure. You know, what? I'll put 20 on that bet...

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go order yet more parts and spend a little time sending my fellow boat peeps who are in the midst of a painstaking refit, or a really crap sailing trip or  in the yard dealing with an unexpected and expensive repair or at the broker's dock getting their boat ready for sale a little good boat mojo.




27 comments:

  1. In the midst of our own refit, I really REALLY feel your pain!

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    1. Hang in there! Those who have gone before me assure me it is 100% worth it. I am going to hold them to their word...

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  2. The famous quote is: "There's nothing...absolutely nothing...half so much worth doing as simply messing around in boats."

    It doesn't say anything about actually sailing the boat.

    Never fear, for some, the grass is always greener on the writing side of the blog...and if, for some reason, it isn't - then clearly the blogger didn't fertilize correctly (and let said commentor list the ways to correctly fertilize).

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    1. :) You have made me grin ear to ear. Thank you!

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  3. Hi,
    I have a boat and I sail. I enjoy your site and others like it less for whether the boat is moving or not than for the quality, honesty and humor in the writing. So, I hope you don't modify that. You are one of the few consistently good sailing blog writers out there. We all spend much more time fixing our boats and sitting on them at anchor or at the dock than actually sailing them, so your status for the last few years is not that different from those that claim to be "out there". By the way, the refit saga is not boring - it is fascinating.
    Greg

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    1. Thank you so much for the encouragement Greg! I can not tell you how much your comment has improved my mood. :)

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  4. I'm feeling ranty too. So sick of people's internet parenting comments. Got my own post coming too. Rant away. And I can't stand anonymous comments either. Not worth my time.

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    1. I think the Internet Mom Mafia is only a close second in expertise to the members of the Internet Yacht Club!

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  5. A very nice rant, if I do say so! I do so love a good, soul clearing rant about a worthy subject. These blogs are so personal. I think that people who do not blog their experiences for others to read have no idea how much of ourselves we are hanging out to dry in the breeze on these things. If they knew how much some comments sting, maybe they would think twice. I hope. (Or maybe there are just bitchy people out there. Yeah. I know.)

    I don't mind anonymous posts if they are encouraging or enlightening. I know some people have an almost phobic fear of allowing themselves to be 'seen' on the interwebs. But comments that are meant to be nasty just get the 'delete' button on our blog.

    Between this blog and the other refit blogs I check in on, I just figure that 1) refits take a long time 2) everyone who is refitting wishes they got to sail more but that's just how it is 3) it takes really good writing to make a refit interesting to anyone. 4)I want to choose our next boat very, very carefully.

    Frankly, this blog is going to be my 'go to' reference and resource when we are refitting our own boat, should that glorious day ever actually occur. The way I look at it, everyone who is going before us is inventing the same wheels we will have to invent. I'd rather look at what they did first. I already know how to sail, sort of, thanks. So blogging on the refit is anything but boring for me.

    Keep up the excellent work! And keep those photos of Captain Perfecto's work coming.

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    1. Keep in mind, our boat was far from a project boat, just old and in need or an update. I am very much looking forward to reading all about your refit on your next boat, mostly because by then I should actually be sailing. ;)

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    2. I love your figures 1-4...especially #4. People often ask us if we are going to go on smaller trips, say to Key West and back before we go on the big one. When would we have time to do that? I tell them we will get plenty of practice when we leave and go slowly through the Caribbean. I mean we know how to sail, We have sailed some on our boat, and in racing, and to be perfectly honest, I don't think anymore sailing around here is going to make me any better. We don't have the luxury of taking weeks off to go explore the unknown, we have to work.

      Anyways, Our boat hasn't left the dock in over a year and probably won't again until next spring. Just keep plugging along Cid. I can't wait to read stories when you finally do get out there, then you can ask the commenter, "So do every sail the Caribbean?"

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    3. ;) Right on Dani. And who knows, we might have a snazzy little Westsail in the same area to help us get gorgeous underway shots.

      The whole point of us starting in the Caribbean is to get a little more distance sailing experience. Our cruising grounds around here, well, they suck. We have done the out into the bay, tack, tack again come home. We have also done the go to Red Fish Island, anchor come home. Also the go to Galveston, anchor, come home. There just isn't the interesting cruising grounds around here that are conducive to mini cruises. Mark has been sailing since he was 16. We will figure it all out.

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  6. With luck, this comment will come across as meaning to be caring, and not snarky or any such thing... Would it make any sense to take quickie sailing breaks on a friend's boat, or hire a boat to play on the bay for a day, or even just pick up a ratty Sunfish to keep with Ceol Mor? Just as a way to keep up a sailing fix and keep up some rudimentary sea legs?

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    1. It would make sense if we only had time. No worries though, Mark is leaving work this winter to finish up the refit. Worst case scenario, we don't sail again until the Spring and that will be okay.

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  7. I'm sorry some people are so negative. I don't remember how I found my first boat blog - but I was fascinated. I teach in a Title I school just outside of Houston. My students' world is school - their apartments - and Wal-mart. They are about 1 hour from the coast, but most have never seen the beach.

    I have used various blogs of people having different adventures to show my students a life beyond that little triangle. They are fascinated. They talk about their friends around the world. When they have a question about something - often they will say (Blog Name) lives there or (Blog name ) knows about dinosaurs lets ask them too. I'v never had a blogger not answer the kids questions. They worry when a hurricane is near one of you. A fifth grade teacher was talking to a couple of my kids in the lunch room when I came to pick them up - "I knew they had to be yours they were telling me about their friend in North Carolina, and another one sailing across the equator in the Pacific Ocean.

    You will never know how many dreams your blog has sparked in a run down neighborhood school, where the bathrooms and 3rd grade wing still flood in heavy rains despite 12 years of promises that it will be fixed.

    Thanks for blogging

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    1. How amazing is it that your students have you? A teacher to remind them that they are the authors of their own life story. I wish we had more teachers like you, who take the time to show them that there are so many different people in the world, so many different ways to live your life and so many people who are not any different than they are, they just dared to dream big and to be willing to color outside the lines.

      I hope every one of your students dreams their own audacious dreams and sets about making them all come true. I hope you and the kids will stop by from time to time and share their own dreams and ideas. THAT is the awesomeness of the internet. :)

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  8. People suck... ignore them/us... I enjoy reading your blog. I enjoy the parts about the refit, but mostly I enjoy reading about your family... about preparing them for cruising, about when and why you will start on your journey and any reason you choose to delay.
    It's a going to be a huge occasion when you leave that dock on your trip with your beautiful family. Why shouldn't that occur with your boat in tiptop shape?

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    1. Thanks Angela! I look at it this way, we get to have many celebrations. One for when the boat is finished, one when we get to start doing mini cruises again and a big one in little over a year when we cut the docklines. I love a good party...

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  9. What if I just want to be outraged on your behalf? :-) :-) :-) It's too bad some of the comments aren't more supportive. :-( I guess that's why some people don't allow anonymous comments. In fact, *I* might not even allow anonymous comments! Not really sure - I did something to stop the incredible spew of spam comments on my blog and that's what it might have been!

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  10. Hi.
    I just came across your blog. This is the first post I read, and it's really hitting home...
    As someone who recently left 20+ years of landlocked life to live aboard (I also own a business - my second), I am finding many of my friends a bit shocked when I tell them I'm not ready to take them out sailing yet. I'm the crazy one, the risk-taker, the guy who will do all sorts of things they'd never consider doing. Now I'm not willing to take them sailing yet? I get the genuine confusion, and explain how poorly humans do in water, cold water, cold water with big waves, and how there's plenty I'll risk on dry land that I won't on sea. That seems to work for the most part, but I sure appreciate your way of spelling it out.

    I'm hooked. Can't wait to follow along your journey.

    Tom

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    1. Glad you stopped by Tom! Thanks for the comments. I can make a strong argument in favor of just setting sail and in favor of doing it our way. I just wish the IYC would remember that we are all responsible for our own decisions and choices and that we are all trying to make the right decisions for ourselves and leave the woulda coulda shoulda comments to themselves!

      14 months to go and things should get a it more interesting. ;)I know you want to, so tell me about your boat!

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  11. I take an hour every few days to read a bunch of sailing blogs. I enjoy the good, the bad, and the ugly, but particularly the problem-solving stuff and the international experiences and perspectives. Just keep writing what seems important to you and what seems like you are learning from and I will keep reading it. I don't know much about sailing even though I crewed on a big wooden boat for half a year. I am mostly learning from these blogs that you need to be clever and roll with the punches. It is experiential and not really a thought experiment to run in cyberspace leading to a 'right' answer. How many complicated riddles have that one answer, known only to a guy in his den with the computer. None! In Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Suzuki says: "in the beginner's mind , there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few." International cruising seems like a 'beginner's mind' type of thing...
    regards,

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  12. Cidnie, how frustrating! Anyone who reads your blog knows that you guys are ready to leave mentally, but your boat still needs work. That's not something you can rush or anyone else can judge. Plus, if they were smart they'd know that there's nowhere to sail in Galveston Bay anyway! I got soooo tired of doing loops outside the channel. The races were pretty cool though. :)

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  13. Go Cid! I'm behind you. And so is Brie. We just want to see Your Life, however you go about living it!

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  14. Cidnie, from one refitter to another...ignore the haters, the "free-advice givers" and the "I'm just concerned about one little thing here" nay-sayers.

    None of them know what you are proposing, the processes through which you family is progressing, or the reasons you are taking your time.

    A schedule is the enemy of a sail. You must be steely in your resolve, and blobby in your daytimer. The sea will inform you rather quickly if your prep is insufficient, and you can only ever improve your odds by filling that black box.

    And that takes three times the time and four times the initial, starry-eyed budget. Hell, my blog is named "alchemy2009" because I *clearly* had no clue as to how long it would take to get the boat together and to make up our deficits in "trades skills"; to make a balance between earning a living and spending on boats; and to grow a child into a pre-teen capable of standing a watch. (This last bit turned a delay into a feature!).

    I have very few anonymous comments; they tend to get deleted unread. Really, only people already out there, or back from being out there, or at a different point on the path of getting out there, can make for a useful exchange of ideas. The rest is just noise with a whiff of envy over choices not made and (sea) roads declined. Keep on keeping on, skipper!

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    1. I know you get it. Hopefully things come together for you and your departure date becomes clear and defined. By the way, a fellow women sailor posted photos of their travels down the St. Lawrence and BELUGAS!!! Belugas nudging up to say hello. Hope you get the same welcoming committee.

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  15. Actually, I don't find your blog boring at all :) The ones I do find boring are the ones where cruisers are posting about the nightly party & type of drinks they are having! I just move on. Not sure why people find the need to criticize others, but it seems to go hand & hand with Internet blogs or boards. People feel a bit (or a lot!) of superiority power behind the keyboard. It's your blog so post what you want. Those who are interested will read & enjoy & the ones who feel they MUST post some negativity, well, maybe they are having a bad day or some other negative drama in their life & you are easy prey for them to feel better about themselves. I make a wish for those people & hope that they can find some joy in their day.
    Lori

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