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“out there” vs “tied down”

Benj might win “best job” as he’s joined the POB crew on weekends

During our summer “tied to the dock” season we experience life on the fence; not quite as cruisers and not quite landlubbers.  On more than one occasion I’ve felt like saying “please pardon my appearance. I know my hair is less than perfect but I no longer wash it every single day and spend 15 mins styling and drying it.”

On the other hand we no longer walk everywhere; our 9yr old MINI Cooper, Bonny, allows us unlimited access to every place we wish to go. So I got to thinking about “out there” (OT) vs “tied down” (TD) while I was in the middle of mega errands the other day and this is what I came up with. Maybe some of this will strike a chord with other cruisers, or not… perhaps for those still with strong land ties (read: landlubbers) you will be enlightened!

The three most striking differences between OT and TD are 1) for much of the five months of TD we are three, making life aboard more cozy, dynamic and replete with family conversations, mostly at dinner time; 2) we smile at how no money is being spent on diesel and try to ignore how much we are spending on food and all the summer’s misc boat projects and routine maintenance and 3) working! all three of us work part-time and that feeds Kitty for Russ & I and helps keep the dream alive for a few more years.

OT= virtually constant awareness of weather and sea-state.  TD= we can’t easily turn off our attention to weather but we do take it down a few notches, to the point of knowing if we need to bring rain gear in the car.

OT= being part of the expansive community of cruisers. TD= not sure how we fit in. Living opposite lives of nearly all our marina neighbors, we are 24/7 on board, work summers, play all winter and fondly watch the boat traffic.

TD= no worries about water, electric, heat or cold, propane while when OT we conserve on all these. Even with a water maker we can’t run all water through it. Muddy, silt-y, polluted water is a no-no as well as water that contains bleach. Water usage and production management is important when we are “out there”. Underway with the engines charges the batteries, makes hot water and provides enough juice to make coffee, run the microwave and use cockpit lights and small fans if needed. If we sail too much – yes, that does happen J – then the poor batteries get wimpy and we fire up the genset; although that still gives us a net fuel savings.

TD= having a car and access to all the variety we miss while in the Bahamas. Worth mention is that in CT we don’t have Publix or The Fresh Market; those we do miss. Stop & Shop simply does not compare; prices are higher and not the great B1G1Fs we find at Publix. Maybe you detect a little whine with that complaint! Oh, but that reminds me that once we leave CT we can buy wine in the grocery stores; I love that one stop shopping. Big news in CT is that now liquor stores can open on Sundays; leaving Indiana the lone holdout.

Life is good!

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Yay for the CT River.. Boo for land germs!

The 410-mile-long Connecticut River has been a part of our lives, as a couple, for 25 years and part of Russ’s life for- well, let’s just say, many more. Those who live along its banks and especially those with boats of all shapes and sizes who enjoy it all summer long can count their blessings that the river’s mouth is shallow; too shallow to have allowed for commercial development and traffic. The river offers recreational boating at its best- well, at least the southern part which is the area we know.

The other day I happened upon an exciting piece of news about the river.  Here is an excerpt from the e-article:

In riverfront ceremonies in Hartford Thursday, U. S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar designated the 410-mile-long Connecticut River as America’s first National Blueway, saying restoration and preservation efforts on the river were a model for other American rivers.

“Most people didn’t awake to the possibilities of the restoration of rivers and what they meant to the environment and to the economy and young people and health until very recently,” he told reporters at the conclusions of the ceremonies. “The people who live along the Connecticut watershed started waking up to this possibility half a century ago.”

The term blueway emerged in recent years in many states including Connecticut to describe canoe and kayak routes along rivers and other waterways, akin to greenways for hiking and bicycling.

The Connecticut is the first of what is to be a National Blueways System that is part of an Obama administration effort to promote a community-driven conservation and recreation agenda for coming years.

The 410-mile-long Connecticut already was a highly decorated waterway.

It is one of 14 federally designated American Heritage Rivers. The estuary at its mouth near Long Island Sound was named one of the Nature Conservancy’s Last Great Places as well as a globally significant wetland under the international Ramsar convention. The Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, created in 1991 to encompass the river and all the land it drains, was the first of its kind in the U.S.

We enjoyed watching the young swans grow up

Kayaking – fun for you and your best friends!

Boaters make good use of the wide sandbar

You may have guessed that these are “file” photos.

I’ve had a lot of time to kill so catching up on news and emails, reading – anything quiet- has been the name of the game since May 10.   I was the first to get sick. A few days after we’d made the rounds to get our mail, stock the fridge, stop at two storage places and enjoy a delicious dinner at Aspen, I came down with doozy of a cold.  My first in several years.  Do I thank the mild winter or the fact we haven’t had much exposure to bad germs lately?  Who knows.  Not to be left out of the fun, Russ starts his cold-like symptoms the day after Mother’s Day- phew that was close- I got the “you don’t have to cook today” treatment just in time. After days of wondering if Russ had a cold, the flu or something else and bouncing back and forth between feeling lousy and starting to feel better, he finally saw the Doc on May 23, who proclaimed, “strep and now bronchitis.”  Wow- whoda thunk?   He’s on day 4 of a 5 day antibiotic treatment and the cough just won’t go away. Needless to say, we’ve accomplished very little in the past two weeks. Our son returns from his study abroad semester Thursday night and I think I see his name on the boat project list to help us catch up. 🙂