There was so much to learn. What size yacht could two people handle? What depth of keel would be safe in the Bahamas yet provide for a stable sailing vessel in heavy wind? How to assess speed of sailing for dead reckoning? There was no such thing as GPS then. How to work a sextant, take a sun, moon, or star shot and work out the angles? What is a radio direction finder? How do you figure currents into your compass heading? How do you stock and store food and water on a boat for long passages? What extra parts are important to have and how do you replace those extra parts in an engine, a marine head, the rigging, the sails? How do you maintain an engine, sails, varnished or oiled wood, painted decks, anti-fouling painted hull? What kind of self-steering device works best? How do you rescue a person who might fall overboard? What kind of safety equipment is financially practical? How do you change sails in a storm with only two people onboard? How do you retrieve a halyard that is accidentally lost up the mast? How do you keep the rigging maintained? Is the mast straight? Are the batteries charged? How do you fix heads, kerosene stoves, oil-burning lamps, winches and blocks and halyards? What are blocks and halyards and all the rest of the names of the ropes and wires that hold up the mast and tame the sails? Since Jim had a head start on answering a lot of these questions, (he had been sailing for a couple of years), I had a lot of catching up. I can clearly recall myself sitting on the floor for the next two years surrounded by his 2-3 years’ worth of monthly Sailing, Yachting, and Cruising magazines reading and tearing out important articles. We read stacks of books on the same topics, everything from the classic Joshua Slocum “Sailing Around The World Alone” to “Women’s Cruising Guide”. We practiced taking sun shots with a sextant and figuring out our position on the beach. We raced on his boat and any other boats we could coax our way onto. We dropped things overboard and tested our retrieval skills. Then it was time to buy a cruising boat which would be our next home. A locally popular 33’ aluminum hulled racing boat became available, so we jumped at the chance to own such a prestigious yacht and began the process of restoring, fitting with new gear and learning this boat’s unique properties and characteristics. This necessitated whole new areas of study – aluminum and its relationship to electrolysis and the maintenance of the mahogany cabin top when exposed to the elements. We were excited as we drove to the owner’s house where “Doxy” was moored. We were to sail the yacht across Mobile Bay to a marina for hauling, painting and survey. Our first night out was spent bouncing up and down at anchor in the middle of Mobile Bay, waiting for the owner to arrive in his motorboat with food and to pilot us to the marina for hauling the next morning. Our adventures with living aboard began that night. The owner was a local sail maker who had a love of alcohol and a good time. He apparently found a place to have both alcohol and a good time because he didn’t arrive until 10 p.m. with dinner from McDonald’s. In the meantime, we were exhausted and dehydrated from the all day sail on an unfamiliar boat, having discovered midway in our journey that the boat’s water supply was contaminated with something that smelled suspiciously like gasoline. Later that night we questioned the owner who humorously reminisced that “one drunk night I mistook starboard for port and filled the water tank with fuel!” Not to be deterred, we simply took this news as one of our first challenges with the elements, and for me, it reinforced the importance of learning port from starboard!
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