Cruising Mindset

Cruising is not just the act of taking long trips on your yacht, it is an entire mindset that becomes you as you cruise. 

Maddie and I have cut the dock lines to society and set off as full time cruisers. We have no schedule, no itinerary, no nothing! We simply pick a place and start heading there. We get there when we get there is a good way to sum it all up. 

When we had taken "extended vacations" before that we called cruising, we had a set amount of time available to us. We had a destination in mind and a return date already set. Everyday that we weren't heading towards our destination was a day lost, because we did have to turn around at some point to return to work. 

While the trips were relaxing, they were still speckled with stress. If the winds were not right, or we didn't get far enough on a day, we felt like we might not actually get to our destination and we would be forced to turn around by our jobs. 

Now, we don't worry about these sorts of things. We wake up when we wake up, raise anchor when we feel like it, and sail until we decide to stop for the day! 

We were anchored in Harness Creek in South River when we decided to visit a little town called Easton. This town is located far up a river and was rather far for us by sail. We didn't care and we set off towards this new destination.  

After three days of sailing, we were nearing this town on the river and were only 0.3 nautical miles from the place we want to anchor for a while when we ran aground. 

Running aground is never a fun time, but the truth is it isn't that bad for us.  Wisdom, our sailboat, has a full keel. Running aground simply means that we are sitting on the bottom of the river with no worry about damage to our undersides. 

We checked the tide table and found that it was nearly low tide, and the tide was going out. We tried to heel over with the sails, kedge off, even be pulled off by the assistance of a passing powerboat. Alas, the tide had gone out too fast and our waterline was about 6 inches higher than normal. Our keel was stuck in the mud and our only hope was to wait for high tide to lift us off. 

The tide would take a few hours to come back up, and instead of stressing our situation, we simply got out some cheese and a game to eat and play in the cockpit while we waited. 

That is the true sense of cruising. Time no longer matters, as you simply take each day as it comes and each moment as it presents itself. There is no worry about deadlines nor schedules, as we are merely sailing along as best we can in the direction of our next destination. 

Blister Repair

Osmotic blisters may be the bane of a fiberglass hull, but it is a small problem that has been blown way out of proportion. The truth is, all hulls suffer form some form of degradation: wood hulls rot and get worms, fiberglass hulls get blisters, steel hulls rust, and aluminum hulls disappear by galvanic corrosion. You simply need to choose a hull material that you feel comfortable repairing yourself.

Blisters are caused by the osmotic pressure of water that passes through the layers of fiberglass and exposes areas of delamination. When the hull is lifted from the water, these areas will bulge out like lumps. When you crack them open, water will pour out with intense pressure. 

Fixing blisters can be a very costly endevour if you pay to have someone else do it, but they are actually very easy to fix yourself. You only need a grinder and an sander. 

Using a grinder, you can rip through the blister, tearing out all the delaminates fiberglass that is overtop. Then you can begin to tear out laterally, as you follow the damage from the blister. As you work, the affected area will be wet and have a slight brown color to it. You simply want to grind away until you no longer see any brown or wet, and you can't even see where the different layers are of the hull. 

At this point you will have a gaping hole in the side of your boat. This may seem like a major problem, but it is easy to fix. 

If the blister is not too deep, the repair is very straight forward. If the blister is rather deep, then you simply need to take a few extra steps to fix it. Neither of these two methods are difficult, and both can be done in a few minutes. 

If the blister is shallow, and not passing through many layers of the hull, you can simply fill the hole with thickened epoxy. How deep is too deep for just epoxy is dependent on the hull itself. If you have a 1/4 inch deep hole on a 1/2 inch thick hull, you have just compromised 50% of the hull in a blister! Yet, if the hull is inches thick, this is a small surface scratch that is inconsequential to the total structural integrity of the hull. 

In my case, the hull in this area is 1.5 inches thick, and the blister was 1.4 inch deep. This comes out to be 1/6th the hull thickness, so I simply repaired it with thickened epoxy. 

Regular West System Epoxy can be mixed well, then 406 thickening agent can be added until the entire mixture looks like thick peanut butter. This thick mass can then be stuffed into the hole and wiped over with a plastic spatula. The spatula will contour the blisters surface to be flush with the hull, taking all the work out of fairing the repair job! It is just that easy, simply smear it in and smooth it off! 

If th blister is deep, you can wet the area with untickened West System Epoxy, and then add some chop strand mat to the hole. This will provide new fibers that will add in the structural integrity of the entire repair. Over this layer, you can then add more unthickened epoxy to fully wet the strands of fiberglass. When they are all wet, you then proceed with the thickens epoxy just like before. Simply smear it in and scrape it smooth! 

Blisters may be an eyesore, but they are more an annoyance than anything else. Small blisters will not sink your boat, only it's resale value! Keeping your boat out of the water through winter allows the hull to dry out well and reduce the incidence of blisters as well. If you live aboard though, your boat will always be int eh water and blisters will become a fact of life when you haul out. 

You can choose to ignore them until they get big, or you can choose to repair each and every one of them as they occur. Which ever way you choose to go with, just keep in mind that blisters are not a death sentence to a fiberglass hull, simply an annoyance you get in response to your relaxed maintenance schedule of haul outs. 

Keep it Simple

On a sailboat, everything will eventually come to an end. Either it will corrode, break, or fall overboard.

Tools, plates, cups, and trinkets will eventually find their way to the bottom of the sea. Safety lines will prolong the inevitable, but at some point, an accident will happen and it will go over the rail

Gadgets and electronics can fall overboard, but they are at greater risk of corroding and breaking. The marine environment is a wonderful place to watch metals decay as the salt and humidity will eat away at the metals involved. Electronic gizmos are like Olympic athletes who will dash at record speeds to their demise. Salt will destroy the tiny circuits that will make them operate and will instead fail you when you feel you need them most.

If you fill your boat with many electronic devices, you will simply live a life of sadness as they all begin to die on you. You will mourn their loss as you shell out more money to replace them. This costly cycle will continue as your cruising budget turns into an electronic purchasing account.

You will also need more power production as all these devices will pose a considerable electric draw. The more you have the more you need, and you will begin a downward spiral towards a life of obsolete or broken electronic devices. Instead of cruising, you will be funding the lives of electricians around you as you constantly pay them to repair your equipment.

The alternative is to simply keep it simple. Instead of air conditioning powered by a generator while at anchor, why not have enough hatches to allow proper air flow. Instead of a water maker, why not set up a rain collector. Instead of a refrigerator, why not have a well insulated ice box.

We are starting out our trip with very few electronic devices on board. We have the interior lights, but we have flashlights and solar charged lanterns should they fail us one day. We have a GPS, but we also carry and know how to use a sextant and paper charts. We have a refrigerator, which I have made some modifications to make it more of a "fancy icebox" with a chill plate present.

Should our electronic devices fail, we will simply carry on using the simpler backup plan. This will allow us to cruise with less worries and less headaches. Repairing the electronic devices when we want rather than when they break.

The last point to remember is "the less you have, the less you have to break" and this could be no truer than on a sailboat. When I hear other sailors complaining about all these components breaking down on them, I think to myself how glad I am I don't even have that component!

Gantline Setup

Climbing the mast usually involves conning one of your friends to haul your heavy body up the spar so you can take a look at a few things. If you run out of friends who are willing to spend their day grinding on a winch, you will need to find a way up to the top and back to the deck in a safe manner alone.

One of the easiest and safest ways to climb the mast alone is to use a gantline. A gantline is a dedicated line that will raise a human up the mast. It is simple to rig and easy to use.

The gantline is made up of a pulley which is attached to a halyard. This pulley will be a double block. On your chair, you will have another block; double if you want to create a 4:1 system, or single if you want to create a 3:1 system. Between these two pulleys will run the gantline, which you will pull to raise yourself up the mast.

Some things to consider when choosing your system is how strong are you and how much do you weigh.

If you choose a 4:1 system, your weight will be divided by 4, but you will have to pull 4 times the height of your mast in rope to get yourself all the way to the top. If you weigh 200 pounds, and your mast is 50 feet tall, you will have to pull a weight of 50 pounds 200 feet. The weight is slight, but the distance is great and you will need a lot of endurance to make it all the way to the top.

If you choose a 3:1 system, your weight will be divided by 3, but you will only have to pull 3 times the height of your mast in rope to get yourself to the top. If you weight 200 pounds and your mast is 50 feet tall, you will have to pull a weight of 67 pounds 150 feet. The weight is slightly more, but the distance is vastly less. If you are strong enough, I highly recommend going with a smaller system, as you will get to the top faster and you will need less rope to do so.

The gantline is run through the blocks and tied off to the last block after all the pulleys are used. If you are using a 4:1 system, the knot will be on the top block. If you are using a 3:1 system, the knot will be on the bottom block. To go up, all you need to do is pull on the tail and you will slowly begin to ascend.

Coming down is easy too, as you let the line out, you will slowly descend. The friction from the pulleys will also cause you to come down a bit slower as well. If you loose your grip on the tail and begin to freefall, all you need to do is grab the mass of line that runs between the blocks and squeeze. The rope will stop moving and you will come to a stop without hitting the deck.

I like to use 3 strand nylon rope for my gantline because it is easy to grab and also easy to inspect the condition. Double braid rope can have a nice looking cover and a rotten core hiding below, waiting to fail while you are aloft. 3 lay is the entire rope, and what you see is what you have. If you notice severe chafe, you can easily identify it and repair it with a mending splice, or replace the entire rope if you do not feel comfortable with the idea of repairing rope.

Gantlines are a great method to raise yourself up the mast in a controlled and safe manner. They reduce the weigh involved which means that you can pull yourself and your tool bag up to the top of the mast with ease and peace of mind.

Debt Cycle

Our modern society lives on and for debt. If you have debt, you are more likely to conform to the norms of society and you are viewed as a normal person. Debt will ensure that you will show up to work on time, and that you will work hard for the promise of payment. You will also buy things that you need to work, in order to pay your debt. The best part of this is you will buy these things with debt.

That's right, you will go to work to pay for your debt, and you will make more debt to pay off your existing debt.

When I worked as a dentist full time, I would listen to the things my patients would say. I would see these people twice a year, but the stories they would say all melted together as they were all the same story. They would buy a car to get to work with debt. They would get excited when the car was nearly paid off because they wouldn't have a car payment anymore! Then they would come into their next appointment in a new car because they traded in their paid car for a new one with debt. Over and over the cycle repeated itself.

The car was just a toy to the bankers, who have these people on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars with the houses they financed. These people have to work every day to pay their mortgage, precluding them from ever taking a long vacation, one which would allow them to realize what happiness really is.

I myself was caught up in this rat race as well. I had graduated from dental school with a significant amount of student debt. Each month, I had to pay a little over $2,000 in student loan payments. Then I bought a new car to get to work, which added on another $400 a month. I needed somewhere to live, luckily it was an old boat that I was able to pay for and not owe for the rest of my life, but the slip fee was still $500 a month. This means that if I stayed home, I had to pay $2,500 a month. If I wanted to get to work, I would need that car and it would cost me.

The first $2,900 I made each month was already spent. This may sound dismal, but the fun is only starting! I worked for this money which means that the tax man needs his cut of it. Between state and federal taxes, I was paying nearly 40% of my income in taxes. The $2,900 that I had to earn to pay these simple payments would cost me another $1,160 a month in taxes.

At this rate, my first $4,060 was already spent! I haven't even gone out to buy groceries yet, but I've managed to spend $4,000 a month. Believe me, this was a huge motivator to not take vacations! When Maddie and I would go on our month long cruising adventures, I would save up not for the trip, but for all the bills I would have to pay while not working.

Going to work each day cost me $48,720. This is a deep hole to dig myself out of, and it was not that deep of a hole compared to other people I know. I chose to live on a 50 year old boat, so it was very inexpensive to purchase. Those who live in McMansions are far deeper in a hole then I am. They are also tied in to additional taxes as they are subject to state and county property taxes.

I remember in school being told that it is a good idea to have a mortgage because you can deduct the interest on your income tax form. I couldn't understand why that was good, because you still had to pay a monthly payment with interest! The system is setup very well to keep us from seeing what it really is and who it serves.

Maddie and I are ducking out from the rat race and instead following a the path less traveled. Both of us have stopped working, which greatly reduced our income levels and the associated taxes that go with them. We have saved up some money and will be living on a very strict budget that may seem ridiculously low to most, but still rather high in our opinion. Following this plan we will slip out from society and explore the world on a shoestring budget where we don't have bills or monthly payments due.

This ducking out was not easy. The whole world is setup to make sure that you feel crazy to do such a thing! We had to get rid of our cars, and stop going to work. This took out the car payment, but it didn't get rid of the student debt.

Luckily, there are student loan refinance options which base the payment on your income, and if your income is low enough, you don't have to pay. There is no free lunch, and interest will continue to grow, but we will kick that can down the road and see where it leads.

With the student loan payments cut down to $0 and the car payment gone, all of a sudden, we don't need to get up in the morning to rush to work! There is no monthly quota of $4,000 coming due, and instead we can focus on being happy and exploring the world.

The first day felt really weird. I got up early in the morning but didn't have to go to work. Instead, I worked on the boat to get it ready for our trip. This continued for a few days, until I would wake up in the morning ready to work on the boat and not even thinking about going to work. After the first week, I began to forget what day of the week it was because it didn't matter any more. I stopped dreading Monday and didn't care if it was Friday, because everyday was about doing what we wanted to get done that day. We would set goals for each day, and strive to complete the goals early in the day so we could have the rest of the day to do whatever else we wanted to do.

After 2 weeks of this, something clicked in my mind. Now I can't fathom how I used to run the rat race! I was always tired because I didn't have enough time to sleep at night. I used to get up at 530am and get home at 9pm. Somehow I would squeeze in a few projects at night on the boat and get to sleep around 11pm. I was exhausted but I knew no different. To me that was life, now I understand that my old life was crazy!

I see why corporations only give you 2 weeks of vacation per year. If you know you have to return to work, you will start gearing up for it in your mind and you won't slip out of the system. In my case, at the 2 week point, it clicked how ridiculous the entire system is and it made the choice to stop going with he flow all the easier.

Now Maddie and I work on the boat as we prepare to go cruising full time. We will work odd jobs, rigging jobs, teaching jobs, or dental jobs as we go, working for a few days or weeks and living in a vacation instead of the other way around.