May 8th, 2008  (Almost Time To Let Go Of The Ledge)

Our two month anniversary of purchasing Gypsy Cat is fast approaching.  We acquired her on March 11^th and it’s almost May 11^th in a few days.  We are almost ready to start heading south to the Gulf Stream and the only thing we are waiting for is to sell Chris’ jeep.  In the short time that we’ve been in Englewood, we have felt a sense of strong community and utter friendliness here.  Everywhere we go, we meet such down to earth friendly people – at the stores, bank, everywhere!  Just today, we went to town (when I write we went to town – I mean we dingy over to the county dock, than go through a hole in the fence, and than walk down a long dirt lane to get to Andy’s house where we park the jeep and head into town).  We might run into the county workers along the dock letting water into the loch and we chat amiably to them for awhile.  At first, when I saw the county workers, I got scared because technically it’s a NO TRESPASSING POLICE TAKE NOTICE zone, but they just smile at us as we pass through the little hole in the fence.  We than walk over to Andy’s house, the only house within miles of that area where he let us park Chris’ jeep.  Thanks to Andy and Fawn for letting us park there.  I mean how nice is it to meet people and they just say, oh yeah, you can park at my house.  Before parking there, Chris had to scooter a few miles to the nearest super market where he kept his car overnight sometimes or even at the storage yard where we kept our boat previously at All American Storage.  Chris would be gone for hours when he had to do that.

          Today we went to open a Washington Mutual Account in Venice and they had the nicest staff there.  They offered us pickles and diet mountain dew.  I never got offered pickles before at the bank.  Thanks Tom and Bryan for being such help and your customer service is exemplary!  I had to open up a new account b/c now that I don’t get direct deposit payments from work anymore, Bank of America is charging me $6.00 per month for my checking account that I have had for over ten years!  Bastards!  They won’t give me a FREE checking account and they say I can get it for “free” if I have a ten thousand dollar limit in the account and if it dips under that amount, even for a second, than I get charged $6.00!!!  Not good customer relations so I am taking my business elsewhere to WAMU where it’s all FREE.  Six dollars in the islands can buy me a rum punch drink at happy hour!  BofA can kiss my ass! 

          After the bank, we went out with Bob and his wonderful girlfriend Marian to the Moose Lodge.  We purchased our Gemini from Bob, a retired school counselor, and we’ve been in contact numerous times since than.  He’s a great man with an even kinder heart.  He’s been a great help with the boat and we’ve become great friends with him and his girlfriend Marian.  Tonight, we went to the Moose Lodge and had chicken wings and taco salad with live music.  They belong to all sorts of clubs such as the Elk Club, Moose Club, Eagles Club, and so many other animal clubs that I can’t remember the name of.  Chris and I LOVE the clubs.  They have the best prices around on dinner and drinks.  It was funny when the band, Bayou Blue sang a song about the city Englewood and they said, some people refer to Englewood as “wrinkle wood” because the town is predominately retired people.  Any mix drinks are around $2 and a pitcher of beer $4!  And yesterday, we had Bob and Marian over to the boat (our first guests ever) and we had a great time.  And last Friday, they invited us to the Elk Lodge to eat prime rib dinner for only $12.95 for the king cut.  When they said the prime rib was HUGE – I thought they were exaggerating, but when it came out – our mouths gaped open – it was at least 3 inches thick and the BIGGEST cut of prime rib I ever saw!  I was in heaven!  Thanks to Marian for letting us park our trailer in her front yard and for being such a great lady.  I was thinking that Englewood is the best place to retire because there are so many events for senior citizens and at such great prices!  Bob and Marian have a more busy social schedule than Chris and I had when we were living in CA.  Plus, the “senior” citizens here are not even remotely “old” looking or acting.  The majority look younger than their age and are even livelier as they dance the night away. 

          And speaking of friendly people, we love the staff at West Marine in Port Charlotte (they are also known as Boat’s US on 4200 Tamiami Trail).  The strange thing s that there are two West Marine’s across the street from each other.  They are the Boat’s US.  We have found them to be the most knowledgeable and friendly staff.  We have been there numerous times spending obscene amounts of money, but it’s always been fun.  Chris is always picking their brains and asking a million questions and they always answer with a smile. Thanks to Si, Ray, Captain Dave, and Justin. 

          The people are so friendly here that Peter, a local fisherman, comes by and gives us crabs and fish on our boat.  He even filleted one for us just yesterday.  I just LOVE it here in Florida!

          A few days ago, Chris was getting supplies from the jeep – cases of beer, and maybe a few cans of spam, on the dock to the dingy.  A boat comes up to him and looked dubiously at the ratio of beer to food and asked Chris if he knew Rowland.  Chris shook his head and said no, than asked who this Rowland person was.  The guy said that Rowland lived around here and that he was a transient that lived in the area!  They mistaken Chris as Rowland’s transient friend and thought he was a BUM!  How hilarious is that?  Chris pointed to his dingy and said that he owned the boat over there on the water and I’m sure they were so surprised that Chris wasn’t a bum after all, than they all started to talk and it turned out the girl on the boat was raised in Tobago and of course the discussion came to boating.  It’s amazing in Florida how many boaters there are and just how friendly people are. 

          It seems to me that most of the men we spoke to shared similar dreams of sailing around on a boat.  I don’t hear the women say, I regret not doing that, but seriously, 99 percent of the men tell us – they wished they did it when they were younger or for the younger guys, say they are planning on doing that.  What is it with men and boats?  Even my own father told me touchingly one day, that he is so proud that me – his daughter - is living out his own dreams of traveling on a sailboat and that he has always wanted to do that all his life. For some reason, traveling on a boat strikes a very deep, nostalgic chord in most men’s psyche.  It’s like the mysteries of the sea is calling out a siren call to the men to come be explorers of a vast untamed ocean. 

          Other highlights that happened over the last few weeks, (drum roll please) is that Chris fixed the head (toilet!)  Hurray!  No more smelly leakage of some unknown fluid permeating the air!  No more Wal-mart double bags!  No more pee pee cups!  The first day the miracle happened, I was still very hesitant about getting rid of my pee pee cup, but Chris implored me to get rid of it and to just go like NORMAL people do but I was very suspicious of the toilet.  I was afraid of it!  One month of no normal toilet usage and I didn’t trust it!  Well, let’s just say I “christianed” our head that first day with something other than urine and looked on in amazement and trepidation as it flushed to our holding tank without a problem.  The toilet is small compared to conventional toilets and the hold is smaller, there was a slight problem with stickage to the sides as I flushed the head, which Chris referred to as “dingle berries,” but I was happy that at least it WORKED!  Hallelujah!  The stickage problem is normal on boats and I just have to wipe with toilet paper to make sure everything is flushed out since the flushing action isn’t strong enough to make “dingle berries” disappear!  We have also decided NOT to buy marine toilet paper, 4 rolls for $2.59 at Wal-mart and much more expensive at other areas.  That’s crazy expensive!  We can get 10 rolls of normal toilet paper for that price!  Everywhere we read says that marine toilet paper is necessary to not clog up your marine toilet, but it sure clogs up your budget big time!  On Chris’ passage to Hawaii, Captain Dave, just had everyone use normal toilet paper and when you took a dump, that you put it in the zip lock bag that is placed in the head to keep the smell down.  We heard that even with marine toilet paper, that it will clog the toilet, so we opted to do the zip lock method.  Sorta gross, but very economical in the long run.  Plus, I got a trash can that will hide the zip lock and we plan on taking our zip lock with us to be thrown away every time we go on shore.  I got all sorts of air fresheners to keep the head smelling fresh, but hopefully it doesn’t’ start smelling like it did when we first moved onto the boat or I’ll have to revert back to my pee pee cup and double Wal-mart bags even though transporting the soiled bags to town to dispose of is NOT very pleasant – the aroma is very STRONG to say the least. 

          Just when my bug bites are getting better (all two hundred of them) – I get a new mosquito, no-see-ums, horse fly attack on my body. It never ceases to amaze me at the creepy places bugs will go to bite someone.   It’s never ending and very relentless.  I’m surprised I have any blood left for the suckers to get.  Now I rub rubbing alcohol on the bites and hope they dry faster.  I still scratch like mad, but I am a little more disciplined at my scratching.  I realize that scratching to the point of getting scabs will not help my appearance in any way, and may scare people off, so I try to scratch more gently and less frequently.  When I come home, I want my sister to let me hold my nephew and niece, and not have to quarantine me first.  Chris calls me “lumpy” and it’s not in places that being called lumpy is attractive.  Thankfully, help might be on the way.  Chris’ dad, bless his heart, just mailed us a bug zapper.  He says he has a huge one in his yard and that it works wonderfully by attracting the bugs to the light, and zapping them!  He bought us a battery operated one, which arrived today, and I can’t wait to try it out.  We also bought some mosquito coils and citronella candles, and hopefully all that will help combat the little buggers away.

          Another highlight is that Chris fixed our sink, and it’s not leaking anymore.  We had to empty out everything under the sink for days while Chris was working on it.  All the parts he got were too big to fit under the sink and what he thought was a one day fix became a few days fix.  That’s the story of life on a boat – constant maintenance – and if you are not a handy type of person like MacGyver, you will cry on a boat.  I’m the designated manual bilge pumper, since Chris is super busy trying to fix everything, and pumping out bilge water is gross when the water is so slimey and my imagination wonders what is in the water.  For those of you not familiar with boats, a bilge is like a tunnel under the boat that you cover up with covers, and they SHOULD be dry, but they are frequently wet with some sort of fluid leakage.  I had to pump out the filthy bilge when we first got it and the water had been there for God knows how long.  We bought a little electric bilge pump, but it doesn’t work too well when the water level is low so I have to take out the handy manual bilge pump and pump and pump and pump.  I think my arms are getting toner with all the pumping I’m doing so at least something good is coming out of it.  Just the other day, we bought the biggest manual hand pump there is at West Marine, as a backup. 

          I know what all the guides were saying about jerry jug showers now.  I like them better than the cold shower we have.  I don’t look forward to spraying myself with cold water so I was very reluctant to shower, but than I started to get sea water and heating it up on the stove and doing jerry jug showers (meaning just get a bucket of water, and bathe with a wash cloth).  I was so happy with the HOTNESS of the water, but Chris reminded me that we bought a solar shower.  I like the solar shower, but I do not like taking showers in the cockpit, since there is no privacy and I can’t scrub at my bits and pieces without it looking vulgar, and rubbing is required to feel really clean.  Solar showers do not fit in the head (bathroom) of a boat, b/c the bag is too heavy to hang on the shower head and we do not want to break it.  And solar showers only work when Chris’ remembers to put water in it to heat up during the day, and since he forgets most days, solar showers are not handy.  Chris assures me we won’t need hot showers in the Bahamas and Caribbean since it will be so hot there, but even though a lot of our showers will be in the salt water just swimming, it’s nice to have HOT WATER for showers at night.  So I was very happy with my warmed up salt water jerry jug showers, but Chris said that we should not be bringing in salt water b/c it will erode our bathroom fixtures and he was right.  I was also carrying a bucket of salt water to wash dishes in the sink (to save fresh water) but we realized any salt water in the boat wasn’t a good habit to get into.  Before that, we just put salt water in a big bucket outside the cockpit and I would wash the dishes there, but washing dishes became such a big chore having to cart it all outside, plus looking like a hobo washing dishes for people to see that once the sink was fixed, I started to carry a smaller bucket inside so no one would see me.   No salt water in the boat.  I than started to heat up fresh water for my jerry jug shower and it was heavenly.  I never felt so clean or took so many jerry jug showers.  My favorite part is that once all the soap is applied, I get to dump cups after cups of hot water on me – much better than a cold spray of water on me.  I haven’t figured out a way to wash my long hair other than in bucket, which seems to be the fastest way of washing it.  In the shower, it’s too cold plus I would waste too much fresh water washing my hair since it’s so long and needs a lot of water to get clean.  The funny thing is that my hair is much healthier and shinier than before – when I have it down – but most days I brush it in a braid so the horrible La Gatita event (that is how I refer to what happened to my hair in Orlando) does not happen again and that I am forced to chop another big chunk off my head.  I still have La Gatita and Mustachio comfortably tucked away in a box in the saloon, even with Chris beseeching me to throw them away, but I feel they are part of the family now.  They somehow complete the picture of the gypsy/witch spirit since gypsies usually have feral animals hanging about and witches have their “familiars” around.

          On April 20^th, we gave Gypsy Cat her first name ceremony.  We were hoping that that would give us good luck and that our many problems with the boat would be improved with the ceremony.  We thought “she” – Gypsy Cat – was upset that we hadn’t had a naming ceremony for her yet.  Sailors were notoriously suspicious about renaming a boat and they were overall a suspicious lot, and that is passed on to boaters and people alike.  Some of my friends were aghast that we were changing the boat name from BobCat (previous name) to Gypsy Cat.  They said it was “bad luck.”  Supposedly, owners have to go through a naming ceremony to make it right with the boat.  Even John, our instructor for our beginner sailor’s class, addressed the issue, stating that most people DO change the name of the boats they buy, and that there always seem to be a stigma of doing something wrong when you do that.  So we decided that it was most appropriate that we hold her name ceremony during the FULL MOON.  Chris still wanted to research on how to do the traditional name ceremony with champagne, and since we didn’t have access to a wifi connection, we decided to give her a less conservative, less traditional ceremony with sangria (a Spanish drink that is mixed with fruit juice, red or white wine, garnished with fruit).  We decided that Gypsy Cat, as the name implies, is wild at heart, untamed, with a naturalistic spirit or pagan spirit so that her ceremony should reflect that.  We decided to give her more than one name ceremony later and were going to wait to research how the traditional method was done with champagne before doing that.  The more parties the better!  So when the full moon came, we thought that reflected the pagan spirit we were looking for and it was perfect.  On that day, the full moon came up as a large bright orange moon that looked very spooky and mysterious, so we called the whole ceremony the Pumpkin Moon Ceremony because the moon looked like a huge pumpkin in the sky.  I personally thought it was a sign since I’m born on Halloween and right orange full moons are not commonplace.  Chris played guitar and I dressed in my gypsy costume and we had a gypsy inspired name ceremony with goblets of red sangria.  We gave Gypsy Cat her own red goblet of wine and we went outside the boat to do our blessings while splashing all the corners with red sangria, especially the name of the side of the boat.  The next morning, the boat name looked positively satanic with red splatters all over it!  Two days later, we decided to have another name ceremony for Gypsy Cat with white sangria this time (white wine is used instead of red wine).  The weird thing is we were expecting a big bright almost full moon since the full moon was just two days previous, but the sky was black, pitch black, so we called the second ceremony Black Night Ceremony.  The first Pumpkin Moon Ceremony celebrated a wild gypsy spirit, and the second Black Night Ceremony celebrated man’s dark primitive side.  We decided to do it in the buff and we ran naked outside the boat like little children while we blessed the corners of the boat (I do not mean THAT kind of blessing!  I mean pouring the sangria all over the corners of the boat!) Thankfully it was a black night so no one could see us.  We wanted to do it in the buff (to capture the wild gypsy spirit) the first night, but with the full moon, it was too bright.  So now we have done 2 name ceremonies for her, first with red sangria, second with white sangria, and we will do the last ceremony in the more traditional way with champagne.  We haven’t done it yet, but we are planning it.

          The time is nearing where we are going to actually START our trip.  It’s almost time to let go of the ledge.  Like children when they have their first swimming lessons, everyone is on the ledge watching the teacher, and it’s ALMOST time to LET GO!  Am I scared?  Yes!  Excited?  Yes!  Our dream is slowly becoming a reality and that’s pretty heady, scary stuff.  Every time before a backpacking trip, I am always SCARED, and a little reluctant to go, but once the plane lands on the ground to some new exciting place, my excitement and fear builds up, but than once on the ground, my mind focuses on the travel – and I’m okay again.  This time is even SCARIER since it’s all new, on a boat, in the ocean.  But hopefully my fears will subside when we reach crystal blue azure waters.  Chris wants to leave by THIS weekend, but we still have to sell his car - that’s the ONLY thing we need (besides waiting for a few things shipped to us).  God help us!  God help ME!  I can’t even steer the boat in a straight line – the wheel is huge, and it’s not like driving a car at all (I am not even a good car driver).  The wheel doesn’t turn right away and I drive the boat in a zig zag pattern like a drunken whore and all the boats around us steer clear of me since they think I might run into them.  But let’s think happy thoughts.  Thank God Chris is a very competent boater and is very good at steering in tight corners, or we would really be in trouble.  But I can’t depend on Chris for everything, since he might fall overboard, God help HIM than!

          But I’m sure everything will be okay once I get the hang of it and we are actually cruising.  I bet my limited boating/sailing experience will surely kick in (only one beginner sailing class last year, a few trips with Chris to Catalina on his 25 foot McGregor) once we begin.  So the countdown begins, we will be leaving once Chris sells his car – it could be this weekend, or it could be a week.  Almost time to let go of the ledge and SWIM (I used to be a very bad swimmer in class and all my siblings and my cousin got a first aid batch in swim class, and I didn’t get one – I was THAT bad – but the ironic thing is that now I swim the most out of my siblings and my cousin and probably feel most comfortable in the water).

To Be Continued….If I am to Swim or Sink!

April 08

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