It's a Small World

People always say "It's a small world" but I used to just discount this statement as something everyone says without thinking about how large and vast the world is. We frequently meet people who have lived in the same place for generations, so this "small world" concept just doesn't seem to fit in. This bubble of an idea burst on Wednesday night when we were visiting friends from Baltimore.

We used to live in Baltimore in a marina for 5 years. During that time, we saw people come and go. One such couple was Collin and Ginnie. They moved in on a 30 foot sailboat with plans of doing the Northwest Passage. They worked to prepare their boat and then left the marina, for what I figured would be a cold cruise about a year before we left to go cruising.

After they left, another couple moved in, Ben and Kate, who quickly became some of our best friends (we were actually up from Cape Fear to visit them)! Ben and Kate lived in the marina until we left, and then moved to Annapolis.

Now, this is where the world gets small. In August, I texted Collin to see how his trip was going and he told me that they changed their plans and were heading down to the BVI and they would do their icy trip later. Then we come to Annapolis to visit with Ben and Kate, and there is Collin and Ginnie in the marina lounge!

They were just passing through and stopped in Annapolis to purchase and install a diesel heater in their boat, and they were having trouble lighting it. When he searched on YouTube "how to start a diesel heater" or video on lighting a Dickinson Diesel Heater came up first on his list. When we were neighbors, he used to come over and experience the sweltering heat it produced, so he figured he could trust our video on the matter. He was covered in diesel soot and about to give up, when he saw us walk in! So Collin and I went to his boat for a one-on-one tutorial on how to start a diesel heater.

While I was away, Maddie was talking with Kate and found out that Kate was in Maddie's cousins highschool class in North Carolina! We have known each other for a few years, but Maddie was already married to me at that point, so they never knew her maiden name.

This night was filled with wow's as we met up with old friends, friends that were far away, friends that had just watched one of our videos, and friends that grew up with our family members; all in one night of mind blowing small-world-ness connections!

Life Choices and Cruising

We live in a world where the norm is to grow up, go to school, graduate, go to work, retire, then do what you wanted to do, and then die.

Cruising, believe it or not, is really hard work. Everyday you get up and start exerting a lot of physical effort. Anchors need to be weighed, sails raised, and sheets trimmed. There are many long hours at the helm where you are not able to stop and have lunch, but instead you must work through the hunger until you forget about the fact that you haven't eaten yet today!

This is very demanding on your body, and easy to do when you are young, not so easy when you are older and retired. At this age, you will require the assistance of many technological devices that will mechanize and automate the processes for you. These come at a significant price, and yet are very prone to failure. When equipment that you rely on fails, you then are stuck, and this will incur added costs as you await for parts and repairs. 

All in all, cruising when you are older presents additional challenges, and will cost a lot more to carry out. Cruising when you are younger allows you to negate these amenities and lets you rely more on your physical strength to move your yacht. 

If you want to explore the world, and do so on a budget that you can afford, it would behoove you to go cruising while you are younger. Yes, you will miss out on work, but you can always work when you get back. Work will always be there waiting for you to return, but your health will not wait for you to be ready.

Coast Guard Documentation Renewal Scam

Documenting your yacht with the Coast Guard is a wonderful plan if you plan to cruise internationally, and some boat lenders will actually require you to document the vessel. Documentation is a simple formality that requires a few forms and a small fee paid to the United States Coast Guard. 

Documenting your vessel is a good idea and definitely not a scam, the scam comes in the mail when it is time to renew your documentation. A few months before your documentation is set to expire, this will arrive in the mail:

Scam company envelope

Maritime Documentation Center sure does sound official! Being how my documentation is coming up for renewal, this made sense to me and I thought it was a courtesy from the USCG in sending this to me. 

Scam company letter

When you open the envelope, you are greeted with a very professional looking paper that directs you to their website. Now, upon visiting the website, which mind you has a very official sounding domain name, you are prompted to pay $75 as a renewal fee. If you read the letter, it states that this fee is due in addition to the Coast Guard fee (which is $26).

A few weeks later, you will then receive a letter from the actual Coast Guard.

Real Coast Guard Envelope

Actual Coast Guard Documentation Renewal Form

This form is very easy to fill out and send in, and the fee is only $26 per year. I don't think that the form is $75 worth of trouble to need to pay an outside firm to take care of it for you.

If your yacht is documented, beware of this scam company, they will contact you every year as they exploit this form mimicry.

Anchor Scope

Anchoring is a pretty simple concept. The boat is floating in the water and will float away if not tied down to something. The anchor is a fancy hook that grabs onto the sea floor and you are tied to the anchor, thus tied to the sea floor! 

If only it were so simple. 

There are many different styles of anchors and many different ways to attach the boat to the anchor, but if you comb through all of this information, you will find one common characteristic amongst the variety: Scope. 

Scope is the ratio of line connecting your boat to the anchor with respect to the depth of the water. If you have 10 feet of line and 10 feet of water, you will have 10:10 or 1:1 scope.
If you have 20 feet of line and 10 feet of water, you will have 20:10 or 2:1 scope.
if you have 30 feet of line and 10 feet of water, you will have 30:10 or 3:1 scope.

You get the picture. 

Now, as your scope goes increasing, the angle from the anchor's shank to the sea floor goes decreasing! Anchors are hooks and they are designed to hook into the sea floor when they are slid along the sea floor at an angle. When you pull straight up on them, it is because you are trying to pull them out of the bottom so that you can continue sailing. Therefore, anchors are also designed to be easily retrieved and will pull out if they are pulled upwards. 

With a 1:1 scope, the anchor is dangling vertically, and obviously won't hold the boat to the bottom very well.  with a 10:1 scope (so 100 feet of line for 10 feet of water), an anchor will hold with 100% of its rated holding capacity. So, when you are sold an anchor and told that it will hold the weight of your boat pulling on it, this is only when you have enough scope out, and the scope they calculated it with is 10:1. This means that if you really need your anchor to hold well, you need to let out enough anchor line to give it the needed scope.

Home

When you live on land and travel, you always feel that you have a home to come back to. No matter how far away you travel, you know where you will return to when the journey ends. When you liveaboard, this changes a little, as your home is floating and is easily moved from one place to another. While a boat in a slip is a permanent as a leaf on a shore, you will feel like this small patch of water that your boat floats in is home! 

We lived aboard for 5 years before we set off cruising. In that time, we would sail for a day, weekend, or even month, but we always returned to our slip in Fells Point, in downtown Baltimore. When we decided to make the leap from liveaboards to cruisers, we had to make a strange decision, we had to end our slip lease. 

The marina I lived in did annual slip leases starting in January, and our cast off date was in July, so it felt rather odd to sign a lease that would end in a few months with no plans on extending it. When we sailed out of the marina, we knew we were giving up our wonderful slip in the heart of our favorite neighborhood as we voyage far and away. 

This was such an odd feeling, as I knew that now I had no "home" to return to. Every moment we sailed forward, we were sailing away from a place that we had called home for so many years. We had to dissociate that patch of water as home and instead recapture that sentiment towards the entire boat.  

Home is where the anchor drops! As we ventured off, we still felt like we were off on a weekend sail. We were sailing through waters that we have been in almost every weekend of the year. This meant that we knew how the winds worked, and where the currents are strongest, as well as where to anchor to enjoy the best sunsets! After a few days, we got a bit restless, as we felt it was odd that we were still sailing away and not returning to our old slip. It took a little strength to subdue that thought, and it faded quickly, as did our knowledge of the date and time.

We soon transitioned from city dwellers who know what day, date, and time everything around them was happening, to cruisers who get up when the sun rises and drop anchor when the sun sets. 

As we ventured south in the Chesapeake Bay, we felt like if we were seeing things for the first time, but this was not true. Two years ago, we did a month long trip where we sailed down the bay and offshore to Kitty Hawk, NC. On that trip, we were in a rush to get as far south as fast as we could. This time we are at a much more relaxed pace, enjoying the sights and scenery and drifting along without any time constraints. 

While we felt it was new territory for us, we had the comfort in our mind that we had in fact sailed these waters once before. This feeling lasted for only so long, then we passed this point and continued onward! 

The day we finally passed Kitty Hawk was magical. It felt like if we were birds that just flew out of a cage. Every moment was now further from home than we had ever been, even though home was always with us. Every town we anchored in would bring the same questions: Have you done this before? Is this the farthest you have ever sailed? 

Practice makes perfect, and being asked these questions over and over makes you better at answering them. "Nope, everyday is the furthest we have ever been!" Is our answer of choice. 

The memories of our slip and neighborhood have been fading as we have found new favorite places to relax and explore. I guess this is what you do when you feel disconnected from your "home." When we were in the bay, we knew that we could always turn towards Baltimore and reach our old port in under four days. Now, we are hundreds of miles away and returning to Baltimore would take much more than a few days! This sensation of being so far away that it would be hopelessly pointless to feel homesick helps you find new "comforts of home" wherever you are. 

Every town we make landfall in, we make friends, explore the town, and find ways to make this place our new home!