Before arriving, we had sailed eight days to Beveridge Reef, and than another three days to Tonga.  Eleven days of sailing is quite a bit.  We need a couple of days of utter relaxation after that, and so we spent the first three days exactly like that, reading, relaxing, reconnecting on the internet.

Then we decided to leave.  Then our diesel engine decided otherwise.  It decided to break.  Again.  Necessitating four more days of work.  I’ll describe this later.  And so back to the cafes we went to eat and drink.  And then we drank some more on the boat.

Cafe Aquarium rates as the most friendly.  And has free, albeit slow, internet.
Sunset Cafe has the best burgers.
The Giggling Whale is the fuel hook-up, the loudest owner, and the best art on the walls.
The best coffee can be found at Crow’s Nest.  
The best ice-cream at
The atmosphere at Tropicana is stiffling.
The  Coconet Cafe also does laundry.  But it is so absurdly overpriced you would think they were laundry peddling mobsters and it’s embarrassing to admit we spent over $100 doing laundry.
The Neiafu Yacht Club didn’t leave an impression.
We didn’t make it to the nice pizza place.

I’m supposed to be on the trip of a lifetime.  This is not how I imagined I’d be spending my time. All I can tell you after eight days in the Kingdom of Tonga is that the cafes are nice, Immigration officials will fleece you if you arrive on a week-end, and the water in the bay outside Neifu does not inspire swimming.

And having a diesel engine break sucks.

(refers to events that happened most importantly on July 20th)

I have toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo for about eight years now, starting right at the peak of my young adult ‘I’m-trying-to-find-and-define-myself’ phase.  We all have one right? Back then, my ideas for a tattoo ran the stereotypical Chinese or Japanese character, or a Greek or Latin word.  How cliche right?  Thankfully that phase passed before I acted on it.

Matt rekindled my interest three years ago when he suggested Jonny, Matt and I all get similar tattoos to mark our journey, something with a sailing theme.  I toyed with a number of drawings.  Again nothing inspired a decision.  When it was clear the trip would not happen as planned with the three of us, our inaction seemed prescient.

When, however, I was going to join the trip again, I knew the last last five years of effort towards a sailing trip and this past tumultuous year in particular deserved a special remembrance.  So I began researching traditional Polynesian designs and locations on the body.

For a location, I settled on my right shoulder; my right because for some reason it feels more natural to look down at my right shoulder.  As for the design, Polynesians frequently make use of a spiral.  Most often, one path spirals around itself; Karen’s tattoo is an example of this.  Part of Matt’s tattoo has two paths that spiral around each other.  In all the pictures I looked through, I never saw a tattoo with three, so I painstakingly made a sketch that had three symmetrical paths that spiraled each other.  I then re-worked it on a computer.

As for a design, I wanted a tattoo I could attach my own personal symbolism to, and my idea had three distinct parts representing three phases of life over the last five years.  As for location, I wanted to be able to see it.  This ruled out the popular Polynesian location of the entire ass-cheek.  It also needed to be somewhere I could live with should I rejoin the proper business world.  This ruled out the less popular but very traditional facial designs.  Recalling all the styling I had seen of Polynesian tattoos, I made a terrible sketch, I am a terrible artist, of what could be within each spiraled path.  My sketch was by no means what I actually wanted, just a visual to attach my very visual brain around.  One was a basic geometric design; simplicity and un-complex. Another, a dark swirling, heavily inked pattern; change, turmoil, confusion, loss, sadness.  The third, many Polynesian symbols and a smiling tiki face; looking forward, happiness and a trip realized.

I took the outlines of the spirals (but not my styling sketch, I didn’t dare show a true artist my awful renderings!) to Simeone.  His shop is upstairs in the main market of Papeete, tucked away behind one of the myriad of jewelry and cloth booths.  Friends of Jerome, whom I stayed with in Papeete for a week, highly recommended him.  The many awards on his walls of contests won spoke to why.  I flipped through five books of pictures of tattoos he had done, pointing at styling that was similar to what I envisioned.  I then tried to indicate that he was free to do what he wanted within the spirals, let him do his artistry.  As usual, I was reduced to pantomiming and basic phrases; Simeon was not talkative and did not seem to speak much English.

It took two and a half hours to draw and ink.  Normally, there wasn’t much pain, but a few times it was more painful that I anticipated, but not unbearable.  I am extremely happy with the result; Simeon did an excellent job reproducing the spirals and his artistry within them is definitely to my liking.  All in all, I know I’ll be happy 30 or 40 years down the road looking down at my shoulder.

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.

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.

There’s a cliche about boat-owning: they say that the best two days of a boat-owner’s life are the day you buy your boat and the day you sell it. Anecdotal evidence already suggests the opposite.

First, buying Syzygy was no fun. Buying the boat — literally paying for it — entailed electronically wiring the largest check I’d ever written to some obscure bank in Seattle, while at the same time second-guessing myself and wondering if I’d made a grave mistake. Was I buying the right sailboat? Had I taken a big hasty jump too soon? Did I just screw myself for the next three years? Five years? Life? My concerns ranged from tiny to huge, such that the actual boat-buying was fraught with anxiety and concern and distress. Which is to say that the day I bought the boat was not one of the best days of my life — 99% of the other days in my life, in fact, were better. A bad day at the dentist was better, because at least there was progress. With the boat, I wasn’t sure if I was going forward or backward. I can’t fathom how the first part of this myth was born.

Second, I saw Syzygy’s previous owners a year and a half ago, when we met them in Mexico to take the boat for a sea trial, and I would testify in court that they assuredly did not enjoy selling their boat. I think owning it made them feel young, spirited, engaged, and adventurous, and that selling it only reminded to them that life’s circumstances — increasing age and flagging ability and mobility — had finally caught up with them and forced their hand. It took them three years to sell their boat, and it’s difficult to imagine that, at the end of the ordeal, there remained, as far as Pavlov could be concerned, any joy still associated with their boat. Relief: sure. Annoyance: yup. Finality: fine. But exultation? No way. That’s not what I saw.

There is another cliche about boats and money that does hold true: they say a boat is a hole in the water that you pour money into. Some say BOAT stands for Bring On Another Thousand. Absolutely. Here’s how you quantify it: You think a project will cost $500? Triple it. Even if you’ve already beefed up your estimate, added some wiggle room — triple it. It’ll cost $1500, I guarantee it. It is absurd how much stainless steel, copper, and “marine-grade” parts cost. The only way to spin it positively: at least this isn’t aeronautics.

On top of projects and maintenance, there’s the cost of keeping a boat at a marina or, if you’re really feeling flush, at a yacht club. To most sailors, this is an extra cost, in addition to rent/mortgage for a dwelling on land. When the economy sours (as California’s has), boat owners promptly stop paying their slip fees. Marinas, in turn, chain up boats belonging to such delinquents, so that the owner can’t just sneak in one day and sail away. There are a few such boats here. Apparently, you can put freedom in shackles.

I suspect that John Tierney, in last month’s NYT science column, called “When Money Buys Happiness,” was right. He examined the relationship between money and happiness, and reported that houses, higher education, travel, electronics, and fancy cars, though expensive, tend to provide happiness. On the other hand, there’s children, marriage ceremonies, divorces, and boats. These things are also expensive, but don’t provide happiness. Tierney sums it up: “Boats: very costly, very disappointing. Never buy a boat.” I wish he’d told me that a year and a half ago.

There’s a corollary rule about time that’s related to money and happiness. If you think a project will take 5 minutes, that means 10 hours. If you predict 3 hours, that means 6 days. The rule: double the number, and step up the unit – from seconds to minutes, from minutes to hours, from hours to days, from days to weeks, and from weeks to months. Accordingly, as projects abide by this rule, and drag on and on, it’s easy to see where the happiness goes. It swims for shore, headed to Colorado. Boat owners chase after it, and before they know it, a few years have gone by and the bank account is near empty. So it goes.

Perhaps the best rules of all, though, I learned last summer from Tim, a friend who also owns a sailboat. We were at a bar, yabbering on about the ongoing nature of boat projects, when someone interrupted and asked if there were any general principles to sailing. He answered immediately. “Keep water out of the boat, keep people out of the water, keep the girls warm, and keep the beer cold.”

There’s only one last important rule, lest you are prepared to lose all of that happiness, time, and money: Keep the boat off land.

In 1834, Richard Henry Dana, a classmate of Henry David Thoreau, dropped out of Harvard because his eyesight was failing. He couldn’t study — couldn’t read — like he used to. So he joined merchant marine, to sail from Boston to California and collect hides. The voyage, which began with 14 other men on the 86-foot Pilgrim and took him around Cape Horn twice, lasted more than two years. When he returned, he went back to school, got a law degree, and got married. Then he wrote a book about it, called “Two years before the mast.” It, like he, made waves.

Edward Tyrell Channing, a professor of oratory and rhetoric at Harvard, reviewed the book in the North American Review. He wrote that it was “a successful attempt to describe a class of men, and a course of life, which, though familiarly spoken of by most people, and considered as within the limits of civilization, will appear to them now almost as just discovered.”

Indeed, it still reads that way. There are discoveries on every page.

The New York Review agreed, and published a review that said the book “will serve to dissipate all the illusions about the sea, which most young men are wont to cherish; they will learn from it, that the forecastle of a ship is the most undesirable of asylums, to any one who has had even a moderate share of comforts at home; and be convinced, that no reasonable man will choose it for his dwelling place.”

Richard Henry Dana destroyed illusions alright, but he also wrote about boredom, fortitude, discipline, and perspective. He wrote adventure and tragedy, history and legend. The book, which is on most current lists of best-adventure books, still floats.

He showed up with a chest of stuff, and spent his first three days at sea puking. Recalling that first night, he wrote: “I had often read of the nautical experiences of others, but I felt as though there could be none worse than mine; for in addition to every other evil, I could not but remember that this was only the first night of a two years’ voyage.” He goes on: “There is not so helpless and pitiless an object in the world as a landsman beginning a sailor’s life.” Weeks later, a different kind of misery: “However much I was affected by the beauty of the sea, the bright stars, and the clouds driven swiftly over them, I could not but remember that I was separating myself from all the social and intellectual enjoyments of life.”

But he was getting the hang of it, learning about the boat and how to sail it. He wrote of “the routine of sea-life which is only broken by a storm, a sail, or the sight of land.”

“The discipline of the ship,” he wrote, “requires every man to be at work upon something when he is on deck… You will never see a man, on board a well-ordered vessel, standing idle on deck, sitting down, or leaning over the side. It is the officers’ duty to to keep every one at work, even if there is nothing to be done but to scrape the rust from the chain cables. In no state prison are the convicts more regularly set to work, and more closely watched.”

He spent two hours each morning washing down the decks, then filling up the fresh water bucket, then coiling up the rigging. There was no end to the work. “When I first left port,” he wrote, “and found that we were kept regularly employed for a week or two, I supposed that we were getting the vessel into sea trim, and that it would soon be over, and we should have nothing to do but to sail the ship; but I found that it continued for two years, and at the end of the two years there was as much to be done as ever.”

The work then wasn’t so different from what is required today: “If we add to this all the tarring, greasing, oiling, varnishing, painting, scraping, and scrubbing which is required in the course of a long voyage, and also remember this is all to be done in addition to watching at night, steering, reefing, furling, bracing, making and setting sail, and pulling, hauling, and climbing in every direction, one will hardly ask, ‘what can a sailor find to do at sea?’”

Sailing south soon became monotonous. He wrote of the “unvarying repetition of these duties,” and spelled out the predicament: “No one who has not been [on] a long, dull voyage, shut up in one ship, can conceive of the effect of monotony upon one’s thoughts and wishes. the prospect of change is like a green spot in a desert, and the remotest probability of great events and exciting scenes gives a feeling of delight, and sets life in motion, so as to give a pleasure, which any one not in the same state would be entirely unable to account for.”

He thought of home: “Everyone away from home thinks that some great thing must have happened, while to those at home there seems to be a continued monotony and lack of incident.”

The monotony worsened on the return trip: “The sole object was to make the time pass on. Any chance was sought for, which would break the monotony of the time; and even the two hours’ trick at the wheel, which came round to each of us, in turn, once in every other watch, was looked upon as a relief. Even the never-failing resource of long yarns, which eke out many a watch, seemed to have failed us now; for we had been so long together that we had heard each other’s stories told over and over again, till we had them by heart; each one knew the whole history of each of the others, and we were fairly and literally talked out. Singing and joking, we were in no humor for, and, in fact, any sound of mirth or laughter would have struck strangely upon our ears, and would not have been tolerated, any more than whistling, or a wind instrument. The last resort, that of speculating upon the future, seemed now to fail us, for our discouraging situation, and the danger we were really in, (as we expected every day to find ourselves drifted back among the ice) “clapped a stopper” upon all that. From saying—“when we get home”—we began insensibly to alter it to—“if we get home”—and at last the subject was dropped by a tacit consent.”

“I commenced a deliberate system of time-killing, which united some profit with a cheering up of the heavy hours. As soon as I came on deck, and took my place and regular walk, I began with repeating over to myself a string of matters which I had in my memory, in regular order. First, the multiplication table and the tables of weights and measures; then the states of the union, with their capitals; the counties of England, with their shire towns; the kings of England in their order; and a large part of the peerage, which I committed from an almanac that we had on board; and then the Kanaka numerals. This carried me through my facts, and, being repeated deliberately, with long intervals, often eked out the two first bells. Then came the ten commandments; the thirty-ninth chapter of Job, and a few other passages from Scripture. The next in the order, that I never varied from, came Cowper’s Castaway, which was a great favorite with me; the solemn measure and gloomy character of which, as well as the incident that it was founded upon, made it well suited to a lonely watch at sea. Then his lines to Mary, his address to the jackdaw, and a short extract from Table Talk; (I abounded in Cowper, for I happened to have a volume of his poems in my chest;) “Ille et nefasto” from Horace, and Gœthe’s Erl King. After I had got through these, I allowed myself a more general range among everything that I could remember, both in prose and verse. In this way, with an occasional break by relieving the wheel, heaving the log, and going to the scuttle-butt for a drink of water, the longest watch was passed away; and I was so regular in my silent recitations, that if there was no interruption by ship’s duty, I could tell very nearly the number of bells by my progress.”

Thank god we’ll have books, and plenty of ‘em, with us, on board Syzygy. Richard Henry Dana was so overjoyed to discover six-month-old newspapers that he pored over them, again and again, for a week, “until I was sure there cold be nothing in them that had escaped my attention, and was ashamed to keep them any longer.” I’m bringing the complete works of Shakespeare.

At sea, he saw pirates. He learned some new sea shanties. He saw “”one of those singular things called catamarans.” He sailed across the equator. He experienced a gale, and learned how to reef quickly, without “sogering.” He experienced man-killing weather for 20 days straight — weather that ripped apart sails, weather that blew “like scissors and thumb-screws.” He experienced the glory of sailing 1300 miles in seven days, and the glory of sealing a wooden boat so well that even smoke couldn’t find a way out.

He wrote a thrilling chapter on rounding Cape Horn; it features snow, hail, fog, and sleet; violent wind; seas breaking over the bow, burying half the ship up to their chins. “We hardly knew whether we were on or off,” he wrote. He spent ten consecutive days reefed, and a few hove to. “Our clothes were all wet through, and the only change was from wet to more wet.” On the misery the wet entailed: “snow is blinding, and very bad when coming upon a coast, but for genuine discomfort, give me rain with freezing weather.”

By and by, his experiences turned to hardened wisdom: “No time is allowed on board ship for sentiment.” And:
“Whatever your feelings may be, you must make a joke of everything at sea; and if you were to fall from aloft and be caught in the belly of a sail, and thus saved from instant death, it would not do to look at all disturbed, or to make serious matter of it.”

When he arrived in San Francisco, there was no bridge, no city;  just the Spanish mission (still here), and one other boat in the whole bay. There was also constant rain, cold, fog, and strong currents. But he recognized the splendor of this area. “If california ever becomes a prosperous country,” he wrote, “this bay will be the centre of its prosperity.” He called the bay “fit for a place of great importance.”

Later, he was amazed that a letter made it from California to Boston, via an overland route from Mazatlan to Veracruz, in 75 days — “the shortest communication ever yet made across the country.” Now there’s history.

After far too much time sailing up and down the California coast, he packed up, and headed home, loaded down with 40,000 hides, 30,000 horns, several barrels of otter and beaver skins, spare spars, a dozen pigs,  a dozen sheep, 40 chickens, as well as stores — food and water — for five month of sailing.

One of the crew was lost, and Richard Henry Dana captured the devastation. “Death is at all times solemn, but never so much so as at sea. A man dies on shore; his body remains with his friends, and “the mourners go about the streets;” but when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost, there is a suddenness in the event, and a difficulty in realizing it, which give to it an air of awful mystery. A man dies on shore—you follow his body to the grave, and a stone marks the spot. You are often prepared for the event. There is always something which helps you to realize it when it happens, and to recall it when it has passed. A man is shot down by your side in battle, and the mangled body remains an object, and a real evidence; but at sea, the man is near you—at your side—you hear his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows his loss. Then, too, at sea—to use a homely but expressive phrase—you miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark, upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their own and one is taken suddenly from among them, and they miss him at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch is mustered. There is one less to take the wheel and one less to lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss.”

“All these things make such a death peculiarly solemn, and the effect of it remains upon the crew for some time. There is more kindness shown by the officers to the crew, and by the crew to one another. There is more quietness and seriousness. The oath and the loud laugh are gone. The officers are more watchful, and the crew go more carefully aloft. The lost man is seldom mentioned, or is dismissed with a sailor’s rude eulogy—“Well, poor George is gone! His cruise is up soon! He knew his work, and did his duty, and was a good shipmate.” Then usually follows some allusion to another world, for sailors are almost all believers; but their notions and opinions are unfixed and at loose ends. They says—“God won’t be hard upon the poor fellow,” and seldom get beyond the common phrase which seems to imply that their sufferings and hard treatment here will excuse them hereafter,—’To work hard, live hard, die hard, and go to hell after all, would be hard indeed!’ …Yet a sailor’s life is at best but a mixture of a little good with much evil, and a little pleasure with much pain. The beautiful is linked with the revolting, the sublime with the commonplace, and the solemn with the ludicrous.”

Take that, Shakespeare.

He gets used to the sailor’s life. He learns that “an overstrained sense of manliness is the characteristic of seafaring men, or, rather, of life on board ship. This often gives an appearance of want of feeling, and even of cruelty. From this, if a man comes within an ace of breaking his neck and escapes, it is made a joke of; and no notice must be taken of a bruise or cut; and any expression of pity, or any show of attention, would look sisterly, and unbecoming a man who has to face the rough and tumble of such a life. From this, too, the sick are neglected at sea, and whatever sailors may be ashore, a sick man finds little sympathy or attention, forward or aft. A man, too, can have nothing peculiar or sacred on board ship; for all the nicer feelings they take pride in disregarding, both in themselves and others. A thin-skinned man could not live an hour on ship-board. One would be torn raw unless he had the hide of an ox. A moment of natural feeling for home and friends, and then the frigid routine of sea-life returned.”

Even though life before the mast, life in the forecastle, is at times miserable, he knows it well.  “To be sick in a forecastle is miserable indeed. It is the worst part of a dog’s life; especially in bad weather. The forecastle, shut up tight to keep out the water and cold air;—the watch either on deck, or asleep in their berths;—no one to speak to;—the pale light of the single lamp, swinging to and fro from the beam, so dim that one can scarcely see, much less read by it;—the water dropping from the beams and carlines, and running down the sides; and the forecastle so wet, and dark, and cheerless, and so lumbered up with chests and wet clothes, that sitting up is worse than lying in the berth! … A sailor is always presumed to be well, and if he’s sick, he’s a poor dog. One has to stand his wheel, and another his lookout, and the sooner he gets on deck again, the better.” Nevertheless, he starts to prefer it. It offers him a better perspective on life.

“We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths, for the byways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought upon our fellow creatures by accident, hardship, or vice.”

He discovers, approaching Cape Horn, that “a ship, unlike people on shore, puts on her best suit in bad weather.” He discovers that “no one knows what he can do until he is called upon.” He discovers a penchant for good, solid, practical boats: “There was no foolish gilding and gingerbread work, to take the eye of landsmen and passengers, but everything was ‘ship shape and Bristol fashion.’ There was no rust, no dirt, no rigging hanging slack, no fag ends of ropes, and ‘Irish pendants’ aloft, and the yards were squared to a ‘t’ by lifts and braces.” He discovers that he’s become a sailor: “Give me a big ship. There is more room, more hands, better outfit, better regulation, more life, and more company.”

Yeah, and more money.

The flag, five feet off the deck, bestowed upon Syzygy some glory. That afternoon, the wind picked up from the west, and the flag began flapping loudly, wrapping around itself, fluttering and flicking about. I was working on the lazarette — aka stern locker — and kept ducking to keep from getting smacked in the face by the flag. There’s a metaphor for a boat: sacrificing practicality for beauty, functionality for symbolism. These are sacrifices worth making, sometimes.

So I kept my head low, determined to crank some productivity out of the holiday. Unfortunately, I kept my nose so close to the deck that the wisdom in the air almost blew by unnoticed. Almost, but not quite.

Jim, from Kanga, stopped by, and we chatted about ideal gasket-making techniques, the better to keep the ocean out of the new stern locker. “Water’s gonna come in the hatch,” Jim said. “You can’t force it, just direct it.” He paused. “Actually, you can’t direct it, just coax it.” He recognized the poetry he’d spoken, and laughed. It applied to so many hurdles before us. I told him I wouldn’t forget it.

An hour later, two of Jim’s friends stopped by. I was upside down and backwards in the new propane locker, fiberglassing away, and when they — a couple — yelled hello, I waved with my foot before extracting myself. They laughed because they’d spent three years fixing up (“nerding out” they called it) a 1988 Passport 42 before sailing it to New Zealand, and recognized what I was up to. Their work had paid off; their voyage wasn’t compromised by mechanical failures or catastrophes, and that bolstered my spirits. They recalled having to explain to friends that, contrary to popular opinion, sailing wasn’t all fancy drinks and white shoes; that nautical-themed pashmina afghans never entered into the equation. “You’ve probably heard this before,” he said, “but remember: It’s a lifestyle, not a vacation.” Here’s to the eloquence therei

Two days later, still nose-down, Matt and I stopped by Svendsen’s, to empty out our bank accounts and acquire some information and goods in the process. I’d been having a bitch of a time polishing the metal of our new radar arch, so I stopped by Svendsen’s metal shop, and asked Chris for advice. He led me around the workshop, revealing industrial-grade tools I could only fantasize about. No, I could not borrow them, and no, I could not afford to pay $80/hour to have them polish the metal for me. Chris told me where to pick up jeweler’s rouge (aka grinding paste) and then, all Yoda-like, sans-pronouns, offered the best advice I’ve heard all year: “When faced with daunting task, lower expectations.” I may take him up on that.

A couple of days ago, I helped my friend Liz move out of her fancy apartment. She’s lived in San Francisco for five years, and, as landlubbers tend to do, acquired nice furniture, a bunch of art, and a few acres of books, as well as all those little gewgaws that sit atop shelves and coffee tables. I was enlisted to help move the “heavy things” and “very heavy things” down three flights of stairs, so that she could transport them and store them elsewhere, until further notice. My help, unsolicited as it was, began immediately, over the phone. “Sell it all!” I said. “Put it on Craigslist. Put it on the street. Just get rid of it!” I tend to treat unwanted objects like jank.

Liz, who fancies her possessions, likes her lot of things, was not amused. And her initial experience with Craigslist — some scam artist claiming he was hearing-impaired, hence the unusual shipping and payment arrangement — was not encouraging. She rationalized her situation. If she couldn’t sell her unwanted furniture right away, she’d put it in storage, and sell it in a few weeks. This was even worse: this was like being a slave to your possessions. “Just get rid of it!” I said again. “It’s not worth the trouble!” Liz’s uncle, a sailor, who was also there to help, agreed with me. While Liz crammed things into cardboard boxes, I offered to throw some stuff out her 3rd floor window. He said he’s already suggested that. We laughed: a laugh, perhaps, that only sailors can share. Liz didn’t laugh. She ran around packaging things up, making her life difficult, chained, apparently, to her stuff.

I’ve always been a minimalist, but living on a boat makes you an austere minimalist. You don’t fret over things, or lament their loss. When deciding whether or not jettison possessions, the default becomes Get Rid of It. I’m sure the habit will come back to bite me in the ass later in life, but for now, I’m proud of it. I am the Jank Remover, and when the question is “To take or not to take,” I have my answer in 3 milliseconds. Beat that processing speed, Google.

So after I carried Liz’s sofa bed, bookshelf, carpet, coffee table, and huge TV down the stairs, and had a couple of beers, I recalled a certain relevant literary anecdote. It’s a tongue-in-cheek story of three overworked, partied-out, permanently-hungover English lads — George, Harris, and Jerome (and their dog) –  who decide to rejuvenate themselves by taking a week-long boat trip up the Thames River. It’s called, fittingly enough, “Three Men in a Boat,” and it’s hilarious. The story is classic — it’s #33 on the Guardian‘s list of “The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time” and #2 on Esquire‘s list of “50 Funniest Books Ever.” It was written in 1889, and has never been out of print, and is freely available online, courtesy of the Gutenburg Project.

The part that I thought of, and later sent to Liz, is from the planning stage of their voyage. Here’s an extended excerpt:

George said: “You know we are on a wrong track altogether.  We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can’t do without.”

George comes out really quite sensible at times.  You’d be surprised.  I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life, generally.  How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.

How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha’pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with – oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! – the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal’s iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!

It is lumber, man – all lumber!  Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment’s freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment’s rest for dreamy laziness – no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o’er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the blue forget-me-nots.

Throw the lumber over, man!  Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain merchandise will stand water.  You will have time to think as well as to work. Time to drink in life’s sunshine – time to listen to the Aeolian music that the wind of God draws from the human heart-strings around us – time to… Well, we left the list to George, and he began it.

In late November I flew to the East Coast to visit my family for Thanksgiving. It was the first time I’d spent 10 days away from the boat in six months. They gave me an earful, my family.

On a walk in the woods with my mom, she asked if I was “prepared to weather a downturn in the economy.” I hemmed and hawed, and admitted all my savings were sunk into the sailboat. Then I tried to explain that cruising is really cheap — you load up on rice and beans, and just take off and go, like a climbing road trip. She seemed unconvinced, and rightly so.

My cousin Myles asked if I was done fixing up the boat; I told him it was complicated, that the boat was sorta like his house — a huge, ornate 1880′s Victorian, perpetually mid-repair, in a historic town. He grasped the situation immediately, and said, “So you’ll never be finished.” I smiled. “Exactly.”

My cousin Joel told me to read “Adrift” — Steve Callahan’s terrifying story of shipwreck and survival — and I told him I had, and that if he thought that story was good, he should read “Survive the savage sea,” by Dougal Robertson.

This got them — my whole extended family, now — riled up, and the comments began to pour forth. Myles, reasoning that piracy was more of a threat than sinking, suggested that I acquire cannons. My dad chimed in: torpedos! Myles: machine guns! My cousin Jim: Missiles!

I opened another beer, and tried not to get defensive. Maybe I should bring their phone numbers, so that I could have the would-be-pirates call them directly to negotiate the ransom?

While home, I also added a few more names to the list of People Who Wish They Could Come Sailing With Us:

-My mother’s boss
-At least one of my folks’ neighbors
-Half of my friends, including one who’s just finishing grad school and afraid to look for a job
-At least one former coworker

Heckling and eager stowaways aside, it felt good to get away from the boat and gain some some perspective. Onboard Syzygy, it’s easy to get so involved, so focused, so lost within a project that it’s impossible to decompress or relax. At the same time, being away from the boat was also disorienting. Soon enough, withdrawn from the boat, I found myself getting antsy. I chalked it up as an urge to tinker. The urge to repair and build was so physical — like I needed to hold tools in my hands lest they curl up and wither — that I had to wonder if the sailboat thing hadn’t changed me.

I climbed up onto the roof of my folks’ house and did some caulking. I put down some new roof with my dad. I cleaned the gutters. I tried to go with the urge, but this was just regular maintenance. I still yearned to build something, and the opportunity that presented itself came, courtesy of my mother, in the shape of… a squirrel-proof bird feeder. It was no sailboat, but it was a challenge: could I use a little ingenuity to outwit mother nature? (The answer, sadly, was no. Squirrels are tenacious little things.) As I dug through the garage looking for parts, I wondered: do I enjoy asking for trouble? Do I tend to invite problems my way? In another sense, I was looking for an opportunity to solve a problem. Such opportunities are often compelling. Can I get up that rock? Can I get up that mountain? Can I get down that canyon? Can I run those 26 miles? Or how about: Can I fix up an old sailboat and sail it around the world?

I spent last week away from the Syzygy, too, visiting my family again. The urge to tinker was still there — I climbed up the Chestnut tree in the backyard and hacked off some dead branches, and sanded and painted the rusting wrought iron railings on the front steps — but even more evident was the urge to nestle in, stay put, have some coffee and just relax. After all this fixing-up-a-sailboat work, I needed a break. I needed to, as they say in the South, “set a spell.” So I sat. And that’s when I noticed the coolest thing: I’ve changed. I’m way more patient than I used to be (though still no saint). I’m way more eager to immerse myself fully in a task. And I’m more comfortable without distractions, just me and my thoughts.

This last realization occurred near the end of a six-hour, coast-to-coast flight, when I noticed the passengers near me getting fidgety, almost childishly so. I sat, knees bent, safety belt buckled, neck squished against one of those godawful airplane headrests that comes standard on those godawful airplane seats, and thought: this is nothing. This aint no sailboat, and this aint no ocean.