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Who buys and boat and then doesn’t sail it?
This puzzled me, shocked me, confounded me the first few years I had the boat. And in Berkeley, especially, with some of the highest slip fees in the Bay (well over $330 a month at minimum), I wondered who could afford to just let their boat sit there, right in the mouth of the slot and not sail. Here are my best ideas, please add any you can think of in the comment section! #1 Sailing is tiring and time consuming. I used to crew on a Santana 22 on Sundays until I realized that by the time we rigged the boat, got her out in time to shake down…
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On Loneliness and Solitude (part 2)
Today on the boat, my loneliness is sublime. The weather is warm, the beach is empty and a flurry of watercrafts buzz around me as the party preparations are underway. When I set off yesterday, it was more in defiance than ambition, as my heart is broken and open. I let my guard down and was taken in by a siren song and this weekend is for adventuring and little bit of licking my wounds. I’ve found that love, and her mistress grief, propel me into the universe and off the dock most often. As a student of love I somehow became a student of grief and loneliness. The boat is…
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What could go wrong?
Things fail, crack, break, and rot on even great boats but jeez is it hard to avoid a grandiose attitude about your own boat. When I started reading sea stories and watching sailing videos, I had this voice in my mind that went something like, “Oh yeah, but that probably won’t happen to me” or “Yeah, but that could probably have been prevented” or “I’ll have this better boat where things like that won’t happen” and then, “well, once I get everything fixed then things like this won’t happen anymore.” Exceptionalism is as American as apple pie but it really didn’t serve me well to hang on to the idea…
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Fear, Pain, and Mortality. Part of the fun of boats
Positivity has gotten to a nearly pathological level in mainstream culture. As a therapist, one of the hardest things I do is to try and convince very nice people that it is okay to be angry, disappointed, afraid, and resentful and my patients don’t need to immediately make themselves feel “compassion” for people that have hurt them. They are without fail quite skeptical, but I press ahead because I am confident that is true and part of that confidence has come from learning to work with fear, pain, and mortality on this boat. The boat is a near constant exercise in pain. Learning to sail meant learning to throw out…
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Why a Dana 24?
I wanted something small enough that I could singlehand but comfortable enough that I could anchor out on the weekends and judge if you will, a bathroom was and still is, important to me. This put me squarely in pocket-cruiser territory and I was rooting for a Norsea 27. I looked at several in varying degrees of decline before I came across the Dana. A friend, sailing instructor, and fellow Dana owner went through her with a fine toothed comb and declared that while I didn’t have to get her, I wasn’t going to find anything in better condition. The engine died on three separate sea trials. I had never…
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How a girl gets a boat
Like many east coast kids, I was shipped off to camp for a few weeks every summer. I tried all the things – archery, swimming, arts and crafts, soccer, etc. but when that little bathtub was pushed off the dock and I found myself completely self contained and out of any harasser’s reach, my mind was blown. It was like tasting a new flavor. I was on my own. My god, my own space. I don’t have a lot of memories from that time, but it made enough of an impression that I signed up for a sailing clinic that fall. I was the only girl and so housed separately…
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Could you live on a boat?
I know you have read the other posts about how amazing living on a boat is. You have already seen all the dreamy, adorable, nothing-out-of-place blogs where it looks remarkably easy and the weather is fine, much like the adorable, dreamy blogs about living in your car, I mean van, where you make pumpkin spice lattes every morning and you’ll be 20 and French or just wearing a bikini. After getting to really test it out over the last two years, This may sell ads, but I don’t think it is true or even the point. The great joy of living on a boat is the opportunity to grow mentally. The ability…
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If you love to sail…
Join a sailing club. If you love boat maintenance, get a boat. I’ve heard the other boat jokes far more often -the happiest days of a boat owner’s life: day you buy the boat and the day you sell it – a boat is a hole you pour money into – BOAT is an acronym for: Bring On Another Thousand But so far, the first one is the truest advice no one wants to hear. Even down here in California, in San Francisco Bay, where there is good weather and good winds nearly year round, it is far more common to see people down on the docks fussing with their…
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Who doesn’t love being surprised?
Today the boat threw a lot at me. One of my best friends came down to help install the new diesel heater. In addition to it being a sunny Sunday, it was also the annual junk sale, er, swap meet so there booths and tables and dogs and Pac Cup yarns and it was a little bit of a feat just getting onto the dock. First, there are all the people who want to talk to me about my one dog who is in a wheelchair. Then there are my boat neighbors, and I am glad to see them and if they are of a certain age I will engage…
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On the Virtues of Loneliness and Solitude
“Solitude and loneliness are two distinct states, not to be confused one with the other…Loneliness implies discontent, a feeling of deprivation, a yearning for company, a frustrated dependence on other human beings, tension.” – Frank Mulville, Single-handed Sailing But isn’t sailing by yourself lonely? I often want to reply, “I feel the loneliest when I am on the train, surrounded by people staring into those little black screens, devoid of anything to catch my eye, while an indescribably terrible, screeching wail of weak political will drowns out any connection I dare attempt”. But I think the question beneath the question is, “Why would you put yourself in such a vulnerable…
