Boat Must-Haves or Just Wishful Thinking

As I write, I am looking out a large window at these drops of water falling from the sky to the parched ground below. It is a sight so rare these last few months that I struggled to recall the word to describe this weather phenomenon.

Today was one of the first days we have had a solid chance of rain in San Antonio for many weeks. I am sure I am not the only person to look forward to autumn this year. After a long summer of temperatures that stayed well above 100 degrees for several days in a row, I cannot wait to enjoy the outdoors again without carrying a full canteen of water and feeling like a wilting flower.

San Antonio is known for its gorgeous winters. The region rarely experiences temperatures below 30 degrees, and the days are absolutely beautiful during the fall and winter months. The spring and summer months…not so much. Which leads me to speculate on how well we will fare in a tropical climate, where temperatures are almost always in the 80s and often in the 90s. Since I hate the heat so much, will I be able to take it?

As we search for our next boat, one thing that we have on our list of “must haves” is air-conditioning. Surprisingly (at least to us!), we have found that many boats do not have air-conditioning. How do people make it when it’s hot? How do they sleep? I have research to back me up here. Smart people have shown that we sleep better when we are cold.

Many boats lack the ability to make ice as well. What? No ice? How am I going to make margaritas? I do not have any scientific evidence that margaritas are good for you, but it seems that anything that convinces me that I am a good dancer cannot be all bad. Margaritas are necessary on our adventure.

Generators, water makers, and shade also seem to be optional in many instances. In reading the blogs of other cruisers, from whom we draw so much inspiration, it seems that what is required is largely up to the individual. While I think that I must have air-conditioning now, after suffering in 100-degree weather for the last three months, I may find that I do not need it to live comfortably once we are on our way. It seems that a water maker can help save the time and energy it takes to find and store clean water. Is it an absolute necessity, though, given that freshwater is fairly available almost anywhere? A generator seems necessary for running said water maker and other features required for our daily living. Shade is the most important feature, in my opinion. Being a fair-skinned blonde, I will need to be able to protect myself as much as possible from the sun’s rays no matter the latitude. The freckles on my nose are cute, but I do not need more of them if I can help it.

Captain Joe and I compromise and negotiate on almost everything we do, and choosing our next boat is no exception. I know that he will be able to make the best decisions about what is a “must have” and what is just a “would like to have.” I am going to push really hard for an icemaker, though. Everything is better when there are margaritas involved.

What do our readers think? What boat accoutrements are necessities for you, and what could you live without?

Nauti Professor

The Name Game

There are many theories regarding the naming of boats. Most sailors recognize that the name of a boat should reflect something about its owner, but that is where the agreement seems to end.

When we bought our first boat, we thought long and hard about what we wanted to call her. The name on the boat was Water Dancer, in light blue sans serif letters about 5 inches high on the back of the boat. The “W” in Water was missing, so it read “ater Dancer.” Yuck. For one, Water Dancer is obvious and boring. I absolutely refuse to use the word “water” in any boat name. The same goes for “wind.”

We scraped off the remaining letters, did our best to sand the remaining shadow of the former name, and started the search for the perfect name for our new boat.

We consulted many websites that offer hundreds of possibilities. We looked at 10,000 Boat Names. And coolboatnames. And even hilariousboatnames. I wanted something clever, but not too clever. Too clever names seem to suggest that you aren’t really that serious about what you are doing. I also did not want a name that was common or too obvious (see “water” above!). We thought about names for various gods in different cultures. We thought of song titles we liked, translated them into various languages, and started over when they didn’t seem right. Meanwhile, our new boat sat unnamed for quite some time. Poor boat.

Other cruisers have strong feelings about how to name a boat. Bumfuzzle, a young family of cruisers, had this funny and interesting perspective for boat naming. While I appreciate his great passion for the subject, I can’t say I agree 100%. Another cruising couple, Windtraveler, also thought long and hard about the name of their new boat. The name they chose for their Brewer 44, Asante, is lovely, and it reflects their personality perfectly. The same holds true for another sailing blog we follow, Zero to Cruising. Their name reflects exactly how they became cruisers, and it fits them and their adventures quite well.

One day, as I was grading papers and thinking about how lovely it would be to grade them as I was sitting in the cockpit of my future (much bigger!) boat in the warm, refreshing waters of the Caribbean, the right name popped into my head. I was sure it had already been used a thousand times over, though. It was obviously a great name, and it reflected exactly what we were hoping to do as full-time cruisers. Nauti Professor.

I did a quick Google search, and I was amazed that no one else had used that name. I saw a lot of “nauti” names, to be sure. But I liked the play on the words. Nutty professor. Naughty professor. Nauti Professor.

My biggest worry was that the name was a little too centered on me. Boats are often named after women, but the fact is that Captain Joe is the instigator of this little adventure we’re planning, and I certainly did not want to leave him out in our boat’s name. So I suggested it to see what he thought. He loved it. In fact, he designed a fantastic logo for us, had it made into a burgee, and started looking into getting the domain for us online.

Our little boat had her name! More importantly, we had a name for our adventure that suited our personality and focus.

Yes, we will be carrying this name with us on our new boat. I know many sailors argue that you should not rename a boat. Others probably don’t think you should keep naming different boats the same thing. My perspective is that any boat we choose will be the Nauti Professor, and that she has probably been incorrectly named in the past. In other words, our next boat will be the right boat for us. We’ll step on it and say, “Yes. This is the Nauti Professor. Glad we found you, old girl.”

Ultimately, there are no “rules” for boat naming other than this one: You should choose a name that feels right to you. Understand that you will have to spell the name out, and you will have to be able to communicate its name clearly over radio. However, I think it’s important that we avoid assuming that our rules should be everyone’s rules. After all, we can all agree that the goal is freedom, and what’s more free than being as Nauti as you want to be?

The Nauti Professor

It Takes Two

I’ve been thinking a lot about the type of fortitude and gumption it takes to make a drastic change in one’s life. Many of us have big plans and even bigger dreams. We start off life saying things like, “When I grow up, I’m going to be an astronaut!” or “Someday I’m going to be President!” As we get older, we start getting more realistic. Maybe not an astronaut, but perhaps a scientist. Maybe not President, but perhaps a lawyer.

For most of us, the world starts beating us down almost as soon as we make these pronouncements.

You can’t be President because you’re a girl.

You aren’t good at math…do you really think an astronaut is a good choice?

You start second-guessing yourself, and pretty soon you settle for what society deems an appropriate career choice, given your gender, your social standing, your geography, your education, your culture.

Given all those restrictions placed on you, usually by complete strangers, it is no wonder that so many of us give up on our dreams and spend the rest of our lives convincing ourselves that what we settled for is what we wanted all along.

So it takes a tremendous amount of courage to stop what we are doing, which seems rather comfortable and normal, and start planning for something completely different. I will be the first to admit that I have an incredibly lazy streak. I will work very hard to maintain a level of comfort, but I resist making changes that make me feel awkward or out of place. It takes someone with a great deal of patience to push me out of that comfort zone and into a new way of thinking.

Fortunately, I am married to just such a person.

I have gotten very used to living with the personality I developed to combat the strangers who kept telling me what I could not do. Like the proverbial bull in a china shop, I tend to run roughshod over people who get in my way. Unfortunately, sometimes that means I run over people who are really trying to help me.

Leaving the traditional trappings of American society takes gumption, and in my case, it also takes two. I would not embark on this journey to sail to parts unknown alone. I would not have thought of it myself, I would not have worked hard to make it happen, and I would not have made the changes to my lifestyle and my outlook on my own. That took Captain Joe, who has been the driving force behind everything that has been accomplished thus far on our plan. There should never be any doubt as to who is running this show. If it had not been for Captain Joe making the radical suggestion that we sell everything and go cruising around the world, it never would have happened. If it had not been for his research and hard work, we wouldn’t know anything about sailing or sailboats. If he had not reached out to other sailors, we wouldn’t have any experience at all.

In my case, it takes two to make dreams a reality: One to dream big and work like crazy to make it happen, and another to stop every once in a while and congratulate the dreamer on all he has accomplished. I know I will continue to knock things over as I push my way through life, but I hope that I will learn that at least one person isn’t telling me what I can’t do, but showing me what I CAN do.

The Nauti Professor

Managing Our Web Site

Our readers will probably figure out pretty quickly that our initial posts are few and far between. It looks like we took a big huge hiatus after just getting started. We will post what we have been doing over the last couple of years in following blogs.

I wanted to make this post about setting up and managing our web presence. I got started with the web site using WordPress . I like it because you can use their tools to make your web site as simple or complicated as you desire. I am all about the simple. :) Where I failed was not updating the billing information for our URL registration with our new banking information when it renewed. The URL expired and they wanted four times as much money as it originally cost us to register to get the URL out of purgatory. I decided to risk our URL getting snatched up  and let the purgatory expire so I could save that money. (It is all about the Sailing Kitty.)

Once I got our URL back I was hoping that I could just merge the old postings with the newly registered account. Don't we all set ourselves up for disappointment when we expect something to do with technology to be simple and it turns out it is not. :) After hair-pulling for two weeks I realized salvaging the old site posts was not going to happen. (That and the WordPress support desk confirmed that the old posts were corrupted beyond repair.) So I did what I always do. I opened a cold beer and placed another file in my mental file cabinet labeled "Things not to do when trying to  avoid self-inflicting pain." I used to access that file quite often in my younger years, but it seems I haven't needed to access that drawer nearly as much lately. Maybe that comes from maturity or perhaps it is more in relation to finding better excuses for a cold one. :)

Captain Joe

September 8, 2012
Website is moving along much better now. I stopped trying to be a geek and building the website totally with Wordpress. Now I just linked our URL to Blogger which it makes it so so much easier to manage our postings. :) You won't ever see me trying to say emphatically that doing it one way is the only way to go. I'm always looking for new and better ways to accomplish tasks and evolving my approaches hourly. :)

Captain Joe

Our Sailboat S2 1978 7.3

We actually did it. We found a sailboat for the right price. (Cash) It is located on Canyon Lake, Texas. We have only had her out by ourselves 3 times, but they were wonderful experiences. There are some great experienced sailors at the marine where she is docked who have already asked me to crew with them in upcoming races. They are extending that offer I'm sure because they know how invaluable the experience will be for someone so new to the task. Each weekend we cart more stuff to her to clean her up, fix some things and make her our own. Next week I start on her chalking finish, and tear down and clean her four winches.

Remembering the past and steering toward the future

This voyage of ours will be to steer a new course toward something different and new. This will not be an escape but rather a redirection of our energies and passions. When we set sail I will build paper boats (biodegradable) on which to record the things in my life I wish to change and evolve and burn them at sea viking style.

Benchmarks

My purpose in writing this second blog entry is to create a list of benchmarks to meet that would help us determine whether we were indeed ready for this type of adventure and, if so, what it was going to take to get there.

Before I do that, though, I have to note just how frustrating work has been this week. I don't want to read too much into the problems I had this week in association with our recent decision to try to become a sailing family, but I have to say that this week I definitely could see myself saying "good-bye" to the corporate world forever. I like getting a paycheck every other week, but I'm starting to ask myself, "What is the point?" More about that later, I'm sure. Since we are looking at a 3-5 year plan, I'll have plenty of opportunities to lament our economic slavery.

The first thing I told Joe we had to do is pay off all our debt. This is no small feat. We have been working diligently to cut into our debt for several years now, but it is a slow process. I hate slow processes. I want things now. But, getting out of debt takes time, so we have been whittling away at ours for a few years now.

We have our debt down to a handful of accounts these days, but those accounts are, ahem, large. Or at least larger than I would like. More frustrating is our low credit score. We have worked hard to pay bills on time, but sometimes the money just isn't there, and bills are paid late. Of course, this ruins your credit. My goal ultimately is to NEVER use credit again, or at least only for large things (house and real estate!).

Benchmark Number One: Pay off all debt. I absolutely, positively consider this a must. I am NOT sailing around the world with debts hanging over my head. I want to be free and clear, having only to work to maintain a boat and provide us with living expenses.

Benchmark Number Two: Build up savings. After all debt is paid off, we will start using that extra income to build up enough savings to pay cash for a boat and have a cushion in case my online work hits a dry spell.

Benchmark Number Three: Get all three kids out of high school and into college or travelling with us. I won't leave solid ground until all the kids are done with high school and are pursuing their own lives. Our youngest won't graduate until 2015, so realistically the earliest departure date is the summer of 2015.

Benchmark Number Four: Sell house, cars, and all unnecessary worldly possessions. There are a few things in our house that I insist on keeping (our bed for one), but I'm not attached to anything so much that it couldn't be replaced later, once we decide to become landlocked again.

Benchmark Number Five: Find the right boat. Not too small, not too big. Just right. The Goldilocks Boat. Cost is important here too...I don't want to get back into debt (see number one!).

Benchmark Number Six: Cross the T's and dot the I's. Joe is an excellent researcher, and I know that he already has a long list of things to do before we set sail, including what type of boat we need, what types of things to take along, etc. etc. He's really good at that type of detail.

I know that we'll think of other things along the way, but for me these are the big picture items that need to be considered. Somewhere in that mess is my devoting some time to writing a book so that we can take care of everything on that list with one blow.

Benchmarks help us to know whether we are on track and whether we are all on the same page with this endeavor. Debt and the children are the most important considerations for me right now. If we can create a plan that addresses those considerations, then we could definitely be in business!