Marathon

Boot Key, Florida N24 42 W81 05
January 6, 2006

Ah, one could get addicted to this life. Life in this harbor is nice. Well protected. Clean water. Sand bottom. There are dinghy docks, showers, laundry, restaurants and stores nearby. There’s a service called Smorgosboat. Smorgosboat is a water taxi. He can bring you newspapers, and pastries in the morning. Take trash. Ferry passengers. He’ll even walk your dog. All for reasonable rates.

We met a couple who have live here at anchor for three years. They pay no taxes or fees for anchoring here. The only mandatory fee is $4 per day to park your dinghy at the dinghy dock when you go ashore. Every evening they take their sailing dinghy, and one martini each and sail around the harbor chatting with people on the other boats until sunset.

It would be seductive but Libby and I still have the wanderlust. Aside from our agenda of Pass Christian, Panama, Hawaii, Alaska we like the idea of exploring and seeing different places. We might get bored here. But maybe someday …

I’m also amused by the description of about 20% of the men I meet among these sailing boats. Long gray beard, long hair, toothless, unwashed, and wearing dirty shirts and dirty jeans. In other words, they look like bums. That description could fit me if Libby lets me get away with it. Time will tell.

I found a mechanic and this one seemed to know about Perkins and know about my cooling problem. He was sure that I need a new heat exchanger. “It’s like a car radiator,” he said. “They become ineffective after too many years, and need replacement.” He ordered me one, and I picked it up today. It cost $500! I sure hope it works. Next week we have to sail a narrow offshore passage up to the Florida Mainland and we’ll have headwinds the whole way. Without the engine cooling, we’d never make any progress.

It scares the heck out of us sailing in shallow waters. The Grand Bahamian Banks and Florida Bay are alike in that there are huge areas, like 50 miles across where the water is about 6 feet (2 meters) deep. No more. On one hand it sounds wonderful. You can stop anytime and jump off to swim or to walk! You can stop overnight and sit on only 10 feet of anchor chain. Who cares if the anchor drags, you wouldn’t go anywhere? On the other hand if foul weather comes, the waves in that shallow water would be very dangerous. Then there’s the problem of running aground. It will be an adventure, but somewhat scary.

Some things here are the same as home but different. Riding my bike down the street, I saw an ExtraMart convenience store. “Just like home in Harmony Corners,” I thought. I was about to go in when I read the sign more closely. It is XX eXtra Mart Adult Convenience store. Oh. They sure don’t have THAT in Harmony Corners. Perhaps they should. It would liven things up. Anyhow, I must say that the owner of the store had the most OUTSTANDING decal imprinted on the side of his van. Unfortunately for my readers, I didn’t get a picture. You’ll have to use your imagination.

Some things are different but the same. A cold front went through here today. It kicked off three days of bad weather complete with hazardous weather alerts on the radio. Yes it was windy this morning. But when the front passed the sun came out and the temperature is about 60. The thing that really upsets the Floridians is that it may get below freezing tonight. Up north, around Daytona Beach, it happens often. In Miami and the Keys it doesn’t happen often so the locals are in a tizzy. It reminds me of the time we came to Sweden in 1982. There was a heat wave. It was going to be 32 degrees C (about 90F) during the day. On the radio they gave an alert. They said, “Lie down naked on the kitchen floor and stay still and you’ll survive the heat.” It is the 3 sigma temperatures that upset people. For Libby and I it will be only one of many freezing nights we’ve had on the boat this year. Besides, we have a cabin heater.

Tonight we invited a young couple to have dinner onboard Tarwathie with us. Drew and Kia sailed in yesterday on a Westsail 28. I struck up a conversation right away because of the Westsail. I learned that they used to own a Clipper Marine boat as we did, and that they had sailed to Alaska. So we had a lot of interests in common.

Drew and Kia live an interesting lifestyle. They work in a fishery in Ketchikan Alaska during the summer, and pick apples in Putney, Vermont in the fall. The rest of the year they roam. They bought the Clipper in Seattle and sailed it up to Ketchikan and back. Then they sold the Clipper and hitchhiked and jumped freight trains to get across the country. They bought a Westsail 28 in Stuart Florida two weeks ago. Now they’re just following their noses with no plan.

They told us a lot about the inland passage through British Columbia. For example coasting into protected coves to anchor. Coasting in with no engine allows you to hear the whale songs. At anchor in the bays, whales breach all around you. Wow! Sounds great.

Anyhow, Drew and Kia are yet another example of the vagabond life that people can still live in the USA if the circumstances are right. Retirement with good health is one set of circumstances. Youth, no kids, and no career constraints is another set of circumstances. It’s eye opening. Consider the conventional life. One needs to support a house or apartment, car, multiple kinds of insurance, work clothes, phone-cable-internet bills, utility bills, state taxes and more. One has to work hard to earn enough money to support a conventional lifestyle and then one only get weekends and two weeks per year vacation to have fun. On the other side of the coin, boat-based vagabonds can get along on much less money. Sure they give up some comforts, and accept more risks, but they get a lot of benefits. I think the deciding factor is risk aversion, or stability, or security or however you want to express it. However the vast majority of young people in developed western countries choose the conventional life by default simply because they never consider any alternatives such as immigration, emigration, or vagabond lifestyles. There is also a cultural bias. Consider the English synonyms to vagabond - hobo, drifter, bum, tramp, beggar. All very negative. If we had a more positive view, they synonyms might be nomad, wanderer, traveler, itinerant, or transient. Consider how favorably we think of the word tourist. A tourist is a conventional person who temporarily becomes a vagabond while on vacation. My point is that there’s lots of cultural bias in these words.