Syzygy Sailing

One of the very first jobs we did when we bought the boat was replace the standing rigging [1] [2].  To redo the standing rigging is to replace the most basic structural foundation of the boat.  All the work we have done since then has, in a sense, been built on that foundation.

Last week, less than a month before we are planning on departing, I discovered that the “knees” of the boat have come unbonded from the hull.  Partially ripped off.  If the rigging is the foundation, the knees are the bedrock underneath the foundation.  Imagine digging up your house to shore up the bedrock.  Of all the projects that I anticipated we would have to do on the boat, I never saw this one coming.  It was my assumption that the knees on a Valiant 40 were more than strong enough, for anything, forever.

After much difficult deliberation, Jonny has decided to move on to other pursuits.  It’s a private affair; this is a public forum.  Neither do I wish to gloss over it; do not confuse my brevity for lightheartedness.  My opinion is that Jonny is doing what is right for him, and I support that.  I wish him luck on his path.

This has been the blog of three friends whose paths have diverged.  In the beginning, this trip was about three guys sailing around the world and making a point to the world in the process.  The trip hasn’t turned out as originally conceived.  It’s no longer three buddies all together, and I no longer feel qualified to make a point to anyone.  I have taken down the Owners and Goal page, the tagline as well, and entered them as the very first blog entries (in the archive).  I think it is important not to ignore where we started; perhaps that way we will not ignore the lessons we have learned.

“The best laid plans of mice and man oft go astray.”

The title is from a line of Robert Burns’s poem “To a Mouse”; also the source for Steinbeck’s title “Of Mice and Men”

I was taught when growing up that at times it is important to sacrifice current pleasure, satisfaction, or happiness in order to achieve a greater amount of it at some point in the future.  I was taught to save money for later, to educate myself now to prepare for later, to work hard now so that the future will be brighter.

I also learned, largely in my late teens and early twenties, that it is important to live your life in the present, and not sacrifice everything for some future gain, because of certain obvious truths:  many people die too young, having worked and sacrificed for a future they were unable to experience.  Many people work and sacrifice for future gain for so long that they forget they are eventually supposed to reach–and enjoy–that future.  Working towards a goal always in the future becomes an ingrained habit, they work until the day they die, and, just as surely as those that die young, never benefit from the sacrifice.

I feel that at each extreme, both viewpoints are unassailably true:

a)  In the extreme of always working and planning towards a never-reached future, the reward for that work is never realized.  The definition of “sacrifice” contains the notion that there is some future gain that will be achieved by the hard work.  The online dictionary I just consulted gives the definition of self-sacrifice as “sacrifice of oneself or one’s interest for others or for a cause or ideal”.  Where’s the value in spending your whole life, without cashing in at any point?  I.e. what’s the cause?  For some, it can be justified on the basis of improving the lives of their children, or for their children’s children.  But as a universal philosophy, if each successive generation is supposed to sacrifice for the next, exactly which generation is supposed to stop to enjoy the reward?

b) Neither do I wish to genuinely “live every day as if it was the last”, as the popular advice goes.  The advice is easy to pass around among a society that has erred towards constant work and sacrifice, but if I were to pursue the advice literally I would have degenerated long ago into hardcore drug use, breaking the law, and a life generally devoid of the very inspiration and enlightenment that the expression “live every day as if it were the last” is intended to achieve.

(I consider all the rest that I have written below to be highly assailable.)

There are no shortage of activities for us to engage in that are characterized by a high reward to risk ratio.  Usually, the biggest dilemma is selecting between these winning activities rather than a lack of them.  Should I save money for a car or a house?  Either choice has a significant reward (assuming of course that I want those things), and the sacrifice or risk required to obtain it–such as passing on buying a new set of furniture, or eating out less, or working overtime–is small in comparison (which is not to say that it is easy to achieve, only that the value of pursuing the goal is rarely questioned).  If you eat out less for a long time in an effort to save money for the house, and you never end up getting the house anyway because the stock market tanks, you don’t lie awake at night thinking about all those missed restaurant meals–you just think about how frustrating and hard it will be to go through it again.  It is common to hear people lamenting the difficulty of pursuing their particular goal, but uncommon to hear people questioning whether their goal is worth the sacrifice.  When it comes down to it, there are so many things that seem clearly worth the effort (different things for each person, but still many for each) that it is rare for someone to pick a pursuit where the value of the sacrifice is in question.

I happen to have found myself in just such a pursuit, in which I am deferring current happiness and satisfaction for a future gain.  Is it worth it?  On the face of it, this is a simple question that will be answered in time.  If the trip is a success–i.e. we leave the dock and sail as far as the south pacific and enjoy ourselves during that time–then the time, money, efffort, and deferred happiness will have been worth it.  The reward will have justified the sacrifice.  If the boat burns up and sinks in the slip tomorrow, then I will say “no, it wasn’t worth it”.

There are those that insist to me that it will have been worth it (should have been worth it), regardless the outcome–that even if the boat burns in the slip tomorrow, that I should still answer yes.  Many other people in my position–i.e. making preparations for a long sailing trip–find no need to make the sacrifice that I have: they enjoy every minute of the preparations, and the money they put into the boat does not detract from the satisfaction of their life.  They are able to always answer “yes, it was worth it” no matter the outcome.  This is the answer I have for everything that has happened in my life up to this point, with very few exceptions.  Indeed, I vowed at the beginning of this whole plan that my goal was to proceed such that no matter what happened–if the boat went up in smoke at any instant–that the effort and money would have been worth it, in terms of experience and education and enjoying the process.  However, this is no longer true for my pursuit of this trip–things have become complicated regarding friendships, social dynamics, my life away from the boat, and so I can no longer answer that it will have been worth it regardless the outcome.

The important question is “knowing what you now know, if you went back in time, would you make the same choice to embark on this pursuit, and do it all over again, knowing what the outcome would be?”  One must consider the opportunity cost.

So on one hand, it’s only a matter of waiting to see what the outcome will be.  But that is not the point of this post.

Whether it ends up being worth it or not, there is a very large life lesson that I will be taking away from this whole experience: it is not true that every goal is worth pursuing.  The reward may be worth the sacrifice, if the reward is actually achieved.  But if the pursuit involves sacrificing towards a goal that may not be realized, then one should carefully weigh the risk of never realizing the goal.  The risk is that you will have wasted your sacrifice: that the years of time and effort and money you put into it are still not sufficient to assure a successful outcome, and that the work will have been in vain.  This is not to say that there won’t still be some value and some reward from the pursuit, especially if you were careful to carefully collect the valuable moments of happiness and satisfaction and meaning that you chanced by on the journey.  But there are some activities out there whose success is not a foregone conclusion, and there are some sacrifices you can make that you would not go back in time and repeat, now knowing what you know.  In my case, I gambled three years of my life–during which time such things as career aspirations, moving to the place I really want to live, and starting my new life with Karen would have taken place–all of my money–and a large amount of ego and self-worth–into the successful outcome of this sailing trip.  At the time, I thought that a successful outcome was entirely within our hands–that it was merely a question of adequate sacrifice–that if it wasn’t “working”, simply putting in more time and effort would resolve it, and that it was a matter of sufficient devotion and commitment.  Now I understand that the success of the trip is dependent on certain factors that I cannot control, and if I were back at the beginning, knowing what I know now, I don’t think that I would have taken the risk.

I’m still working on the boat, don’t worry.

I’ve been trying to finish painting the deck, for months now actually, and I am discovering that November 25 in San Francisco is a terrible time to try to dry anything.

Here’s a picture I took today:

Notice that it appears our boat is leaving the slip. Don’t be fooled: I pushed the boat half out of the slip in a desperate attempt to shine a little bit more sunlight on the deck. Unfortunately, the boat’s little trip half out of the slip and back in was the farthest it has travelled in months.

Here’s another one for you:

In this one, notice the box fan in the upper right background. I ziptied this to the stanchion and have been running it for the past 36 hours.

I don’t have a picture of me holding up one of my photography reflectors trying to dry the side deck–I lasted about 15 seconds before I realized the futility of that one.

Here are some pictures of the progress:

Also, I borrowed a heavy-duty sewing machine from Greg down the dock and I’ve been sewing our lee cloths with really crooked lines of stitches:

A brief glimpse into what working on the boat has been like for us the past few weeks:

Excellent question!  We’re leaving in January (worst weather off the coast of California is in January) and heading south down the coast to Mexico.  Then we will cross the pacific.  Maybe in March or April?  At this point we’re open to suggestions and easily influenced.

I have illustrated our basic plan on the diagram below, which admittedly is little better than a napkin sketch.

So that’s my cheat sheet, to help me keep it all straight in my head.  “How do you know where to stop?”  is another excellent question.  I chose the stopping points on the map above largely from information gleaned from Louis and Laura, a fantastic couple who we are lucky to count among our friends.  I used to race on the bay with Louis and Laura until they sailed their boat Cirque down the coast; they have been cruising all over the coast of Mexico since then (i.e. good people to ask for advice).

On their recommendation, Karen and I visited Waypoint in Oakland, a store which specializes in charts and navigation-related boating information (the owners also have a winery in the warehouse next to the store–very cool).  We purchased two chart books and a cruising guide, and each night since then we have been spending a little time planning.

Maps of the sea are called “charts”.  Together with a compass, the chart is the foundation for navigation: it is used to figure out where you are, where you’re going, and how to get there.  Old-school charts (still readily available) are huge pieces of paper that you roll up and stuff in tubes to store, and then can never use because you can never flatten the damn things out again.  A “chartbook” contains the same charts cut up into conveniently sized 16″ x 22″ sheets and spiral bound.

The two chartbooks we purchased at Waypoint are titled “Southern California” and “Mexico to Panama“.  While sailing, one of these chartbooks will be open to the page for our location and we’ll plot our progress on it.

The charts are necessary for figuring out the route from port to port, but they don’t give information about where to go once you actually arrive.  Some of the things we need to know about each port are
1) are there any obstacles and dangers while trying to enter the harbor that aren’t marked on the charts?
2) can we anchor?  if so, where?  if we can’t anchor, what marina do we go to and how much does it cost per night for a slip?
3) where is the dinghy dock or beach (the convenient spot to tie up the dinghy while going about your business on land) and how much does it cost?
4) where is the fuel dock, if we need more diesel? 
5) where is the harbormaster’s office, so we can take care of any necessary paperwork?

The “cruising guide” is the source for this information.  The cruising guide consists of mostly text, with rudimentary charts of each harbor (sometimes hand-drawn).  I chose the “Mexico Boating Guide” by Rains; “Charley’s Charts” is another popular one.

And since I love maps and navigation, for extra credit I’m printing out 11″x17″ aerial photos from google maps of some of the anchorages in Mexico for which we have no detailed charts.  It’s amazing how much information you can glean from the aerial photo–you can see where the sailboats are anchored, and you can see where it’s shallow because the water changes color.  Also, it feels much more real and exciting when you can see other sailboats anchored out in the same spot where we will be.

Armed with these resources, we have been working out way down the coast, examining each port on the list we gleaned from Louis and Laura, looking at the charts and locating the anchorage, discussing the merits of whether to stop or skip each possible harbor down the coast.  Most of the harbors get relegated to the “backup list”, to be used in an emergency, or if we get too exhausted and need to duck in for a rest.  Some harbors–like Marina Del Rey and Ensenada on the map above–get the special nod as ideal places to resupply food or diesel.  Others are unavoidable: Turtle Bay for example is pretty much the only protected harbor between Ensenada and Cabo San Lucas.

So we have the charts and the cruising guide and we know where we’re going to start and where we might visit, and that’s enough for now!

It’s Halloween night, and I found myself sitting with Karen at a table in the common area of our building complex, making large To Do lists for the next few months and planning the details of how to dispose of our worldly belongings and cancel all our accounts and memberships and subscriptions and plans.  I was walking back to our apartment and it dawned on me that most other people were busy spending the night socially i.e. dressing up, drinking, partying, scaring people, trickortreating, whatever, while we were sitting in a large dark quiet room alone with big pieces of paper and magic markers and highlighters and lots of old partially completed to do lists, and then I had the thought: that would have been me a few years ago i.e. out partying and doing halloween stuff but now I’m the type that is planning a monstrous cruising trip without even remembering what day it is.  And also I thought: maybe that’s what people who really sail across oceans would be like when they planned their trip.

Anyway, Karen and I started looking at where we will go in January.  Sure, we’re headed south, then across the pacific, that’s the general plan, but honestly up until this point I haven’t even looked at a map to decide what ports we might hit on our way down the coast. No clue.  So to buy a map and look at aerial photos on google maps and make a list of the spots we can duck into if the going gets rough–well that means we’re getting to a whole new stage of this adventure.  That’s a different kind of preparation than sanding the deck or mounting solar panels (both of which also happened today).  For one, it is a lot more fun to point at the map and say “let’s go there”.  For two, we’re at the point where I’m actively doing all those things that one needs to do in order to  depart from one’s former life start anew disembark cut ties and set out.

And also it means that hey!, we really think it’s going to happen, just like that point in the matrix when mr anderson shows up and is about to put the smackdown on keanu reeves, who wants to run, but then starts to feel all badass and the computer guy back on the mothership says “what’s happening??” and lawrence fishburne says all matter-of-factly “He’s Starting To Believe” with incredible articulation of his words and then keanu reeves doesn’t run to the phone booth to escape but turns around and looks all cocky and then gets totally caught up in this wicked gunbattle with mr anderson but wasn’t truthfully ready to come into his own as “the One” and so gets his ass royally kicked and nearly dies via punching to the stomach followed by being hit by a train before barely escaping.  Moral I guess being that in the end (after the beat down) neo sails around the world!  Metaphorically.

I have been unable to write any posts on this blog for some time due to differences in opinion and vision between Jon, Jonny, and I, which to this point I could neither ignore nor discuss dispassionately. I feel the need to address some issues before I can move forward as an author of this blog.

To start with some excellent news: I got married. Karen and I have been together for a little over three years. After the first year, we started planning our future as a permanent team.  We made it official back on the family farm in NJ and it was beautiful.  Nothing has changed since we got married and I don’t expect it to: our relationship was healthy and wonderful before; our relationship remains healthy and wonderful. She is the best decision I have ever made in my life (and I told her that in my vows).

When we first formulated this sailing plan, I had not yet met Karen (the plan was hatched about a year before I met Karen, and we bought the boat a year after I met Karen). Jon, Jonny, and I were bachelors when we decided that it would be a good idea to sail around the world–bachelors not by choice, but because none of us had found “the one”. The hitherto unsuccessful search for a woman had been the most popular topic of conversation among all three of us for a decade–far more popular and important a topic than climbing or sailing ever were. In retrospect, the only reason we ever entertained the notion of sailing around the world in the first place was because none of us were involved in relationships.

Even though I became quickly involved with Karen, and despite differing levels of participation and commitment among Jon and Jonny, I never stopped or even slacked in my unwavering drive to fix up the boat and do this trip. The trip was never in question, for me.

Karen loved me, and Karen knew that being with me involved a sailing trip, so Karen adopted the trip into her own plans for the future. Already interested in sailing, she took a sailing class and started imagining a two-year trip on a sailboat with three guys–only one of whom she was dating. It started out as my trip and my boat and my friends, but Karen bought into the trip in a way that has let me continue to pursue this dream.

At some point, I crossed a threshold and Karen and I became a team, a package that comes together or not at all. Karen is more important to me than any boat or any trip. If it is a question of ______ or Karen, no matter what you put in that blank the answer is still Karen.

My friends were happy for me because they agree with me that finding a mate is at the very top of the priority hierarchy above all else, without question. There was no need to explain why Karen comes before the boat; to say that I was in love with Karen was to say all.

And yet I continued putting all my time and money and effort and determination into fixing up the boat and preparing for the trip–that did not change.

Jon met a girl and fell in love, and I was happy for him. I didn’t know what that meant for Jon’s trip, but I knew that if she was the one for him then there was no telling what might come to pass.

When Jon and his girlfriend got pregnant, he made the obvious choice for a good guy who is in love. None of his friends doubted or questioned. I back his play without reservation–the love life and the search for a mate and the relationship is more important than a boat or a sailing trip. Things change–Jon’s life has headed down a different path now than he ever expected and he is embracing the new path better than anyone else I know ever could have. He’s rolling with the changes and making the best of everything. He’s doing the right thing and I support that.

Without a doubt, the changes in Jon’s life have had a direct effect on my own: all of a sudden he is out of the boat trip and not sailing around the world with us. And it all happened right as he was about to start putting in his time working on the boat, and take his turn paying for boat parts. But I haven’t felt even the slightest bit of anger or resentment towards Jon. The dramatic changes and responsibilities are in Jon’s life; the effects on my own life are mere ripples in comparison. More importantly, he is my best friend and I want what’s best for him and his life, regardless of the side effects it might have on mine.

Jonny’s involvement and commitment to the trip has changed. He has decided to limit his financial contributions and the duration of his participation in the sailing. Following the successful sale of his business and recent changes in the group dynamics, he started planning for a future that does not have fixing up the boat and sailing around the world at the top of the list.

In the initial stages of this endeavor, one of the most common questions I would answer is “how can you spend two years within 40ft of the same two guys?” and the related “how can you trust these guys with your life?”. My answer was invariably the same: although I had many other worries on my mind, I had complete confidence that the three of us guys would always get along–that was the one thing that was locked down tight. After all, I have known these guys for over a decade, and have had some close calls in extreme situations with each of them, and have counted on them with my life at times in the past where that statement was actually tested.

The dynamic broke down, and I have been humbled. If I can be wrong about the one thing about which I was most certain, I can be wrong about anything. Anything can happen. Anything could change tomorrow–in fact, these days I expect it to.

Some things haven’t changed (not yet at least). I continue to spend all of my time and money preparing to take a big sailing trip. I continue to get up at 6:30AM every day in order to go work on the boat (those days that I don’t work for money that is). I continue to read and research and figure out how to fix the boat and make a plan and make it happen. I continue to make lists of what we need and how to get it. I continue to drive to svendsens and lay down my credit card.

I don’t know how long the trip will last. Now that I’m bankrolling the boat repairs by myself, Karen and I have less money for living expenses for the actual trip. I don’t know if the boat will be ready to leave in January since the rest of the repairs are all on my shoulders. Karen and I are planning on sailing for as long as the money and the fun last–when one of those runs out, our trip will come to an end.

The plans have changed, the trip has changed, the crew has changed. The changes haven’t been of my choosing, but I can live with them. Things are rough at the moment; recently I have not enjoyed the time I spend on the boat. I feel like I am pushing through to the start, sacrificing my current happiness for a few more months before we are able to depart. I remain optimistic that the trip will happen and that all of the setbacks will have been worth the reward (or else I wouldn’t be keeping on keeping on). It’s a dangerous gamble, sacrificing current happiness for the promise of future reward: what if the promise doesn’t come through? Still I feel like it’s worth the gamble, worth the effort.  So I stick it out.

What a change.  For the past four years I’ve been part of planning a two year sailing adventure.  Now, I’ve been spending time planning a new life-long adventure.  I’m expecting a baby! And with a girl that I love!.  Wow.  You sure can get some unseen huge curves on that road-of-life thing.

My relationship is not analogous to some random islander hook-up.  We are very much in love and very much together for the long haul.  Rather than run off to the next port-o’-call like they might have done in previous centuries, a couple of months ago I left Syzygy.  Upon arriving from Colorado, I was at Syzygy only briefly before I learned the news and headed back to Colorado to be with my girl-friend.  Contrary to being punished, I feel rewarded. My life has traded one option for the equally incredible one of raising a child.  Of course, this was definitely unexpected. I mean, I was planning on sailing around the world for Christ’s sake!  So it was a heady choice, though definitely the right one for me, and I am very much excited.  A baby!  I’ve always looked forward to the idea of kids.  Soon after I found out, a friend relayed a story that struck a cord.  He talked about how he had always thought about having kids but probably would have never gotten around to doing it.  But it happened unexpectedly to him and now he just couldn’t be happier.  I think, in the first half of that thought, there’s some truth to that for me and I fully expect that the second half will ring spot on.

It was extremely hard telling Matt that I was having a baby, moving back to Colorado and not going sailing.  I was still a mess of emotions at that point.  My fear of the unknown was high;  I didn’t know how he would respond and so I feared the worst: his reproach, his disappointment, and the weight and the burden such a response would have on my already frazzled emotional state.  His opinion carries so much weight with me and his opinion of me is incredibly important.  It would have been crushing to me if his reaction was intensely negative.  When I broke the news though, my fears did not come to pass.  Instead congratulations came and the reassurance, “I’m not mad at you.”  It speaks to his character that despite his disappointment, which I knew was there, despite his sadness at how our lofty goal would not be shared, he chose, perhaps because he knew I needed it, to stand in support of my decision and where my choices are taking my life.

With that fear overcome, I felt enormous relief.  I knew telling Jonny would be, while difficult and emotional, immensely easier.  A couple of hours later, as I put away a few beers, Jonny and I talked well into the night on it.

I know I’ve chosen to miss out on an incredible adventure: attempting to sail around the world.  But I also know that this is clearly the right choice.  And there will be plenty of adventures for me in the future.  They might not be the sailing-around-the-world type, but adventures will be had.  I’m going climbing this week-end.  I’m planning a trip to France in December.  So adventures will still be had.  I feel some guilt though that I will not contribute to finishing work needing to be done on the boat.  We were on a tight timeline even before this event.  Now, minus my labor, the to-do list looms larger.  And as is usually the case, while some items get checked off, new ones get added.  It has been tough to listen to Matt and Karen describe working on the boat.  Karen told me of her excitement at refinishing the deck:  laborious work, but extremely fulfilling to see it look so nice.  I had pangs of envy wanting to be there to pitch in and enjoy.  Matt vented and despaired at new work to be done, and I despaired because I can’t say, ‘well let’s you and me double down on our efforts.  Let’s make a big push.  We can do it.’  I can’t say that because I’m not there.

However, I certainly was not the critical component to this trip like our captain Matt, and my departure from the plan will not doom the trip.  My sailing skills are still, unfortunately, much to my chagrin and to put it nicely:  limited.  Living in Colorado has not allowed for nearly as many opportunities as I would have liked to get to know my boat: sailing her, the systems, and the work put into the boat.  I have to admit that I have never taken the boat out sailing without our captain on board, Matt and I agreeing that my skills simply were not quite up to par.  Depressing perhaps, but I willingly admit it to be true.  So my bailing certainly isn’t an impediment to Matt, Karen and Jonny going forth on an amazing adventure and doing what we began planning four years ago.  Sailing the world is still a consummate adventure filled with endless potential.  People beg off trips all the time, including many trips that Matt, Jonny and I have been on or led, and those that stay on still get to experience everything the adventure has to offer.

We’ve all had six weeks to sit and chew on this.  Matt and Jonny, at my request, refrained, for the most part, from writing about this this until I was ready, a fact I very much appreciate, allowing me to announce this very personal news first.  We aren’t the Washington Post, here at our little corner of the blog-osphere, breaking news of Watergate to the world, and so I want to acknowledge the courtesy of allowing me to tell our little audience about this first.  I’m sure they both have many thoughts on it, some of which I hope and expect they will share here.  We have all used this blog as a window into our excitement, frustrations, and feelings for the last two years.  I will probably not have much more to blog (though a sail still awaits completion), this adventure ending for me as a new one begins.  Jonny, Matt and Karen, however, have the opportunity for an incredible adventure ahead.  My absence from it certainly doesn’t stand in the way of that.  Good luck to you!