(Map 1):This year we traveled from Elburg in The Netherlands to Smir in Morocco. The trip took a little under 4 months and consisted of mostly day sailing from port to port along the European coast from the North Sea, down the English Channel, across the Bay of Biscay, along the Emerald Coast of Spain, the Portuguese Coast, then through the Straits of Gibraltar. In a way this website is a log of our trip but not the usual "we saw this site and we visited this point of interest". We've tried to also make it a commentary on our experiences. But there is usually more than one way to tell a story.
April 25, 2004 – Seattle, WA: Preparing for a four month cruise starts months earlier with multitudes of little and big projects to complete. After leaving SUGILITE the prior July in Elburg, Holland we had a list of to-do project as long as your leg. During our months ashore we managed to secure parts and equipment for about 75% of the projects and left to return under the wonderful satisfying delusion that we would easily be able to find the remaining parts to complete each project in Europe.
One of our major acquisitions was a new cruising spinnaker. At the Seattle Boat Show, the prior January, we ordered a new chute from Carol Hasse (Port Townsend Sails). Carol has a well deserved reputation for making top quality sails and we had met with her a couple of times as the design and construction went forward. A couple of days before we were scheduled to leave we arranged a rendezvous with Carol to take deliver of the new spinnaker.
April 28,2004 – Elburg, Holland: We originally were scheduled to fly to back to Holland on May 13. Steve decided to leave a couple of weeks early so that he could do boat projects and the plans were, that when Jan came, all of the projects would be completed. Well then Jan decided she didn't want to hang around Seattle by herself and that she would have more fun bottom painting the hull with Steve, so she decided to leave early as well. Unfortunately there didn't happen to be any more seats left on Steve's flight, so this meant that Jan left one day later.
The airlines allowed us to have two checked bags of 70 pounds each plus one carry-on of no more than 10 pounds. Our prior experience with British Airways had been that they actually weighed your carry-on at the check-in counter and if it was over 10 pounds, they wouldn’t allow you to bring it on the plane. Well this didn’t exactly fit our plans as we had way more “stuff” to bring than that.
There wasn’t much we could do about the checked luggage. Both of those bags were carefully weighed and came out to exactly 69.5 pounds each (two for Steve and two for Jan). But for the check-in, we left that extra 50 pounder in the car while we interacted with the counter personnel, all the while watching with smug satisfaction our less experienced flying companions get busted by the weight police. After everything was copasetic, we returned to the car to get our last bag and moseyed towards the gate. Arriving at the gate, we noticed that we weren’t the only “experienced” BA flyers on the plane that day. It seems as those a lot of other people had left just a bit of luggage in their cars as well when they checked-in.April 30 to May 4,2004 Elburg, Holland: We had kept SUGILITE stored inside of a building for the winter. This meant that we had to take the mast down before we left the prior year which further meant we had to put it back up this year. We cleaned, polished, painted, varnished, installed, lubricated, sealed, stowed and stuffed gear. We kept careful records on where everything was placed. We wanted to make sure we could find it again, when we needed it. But then when it didn't fit, we re-stowed and re-stuffed everything, then we did it again and again once more. Finally arriving at the point where we couldn't exactly remember where anything was at, unless we tore everything up again. We got a lot of practice.
One of the true joys of "yachting" is the application of the Instant Karma concept. Some people confuse Instant Karma with Murphy's Law. But they are not the same and there is a subtle difference. Murphy just doesn't let you get from beginning to the end of a project without going the scenic route so to speak. Murphy is a kind of spiritual reminder that Journey is it's own reward. Most of our projects had a lot of "Journey" associated with them before that check-off was made in the to-do list. So with Murphy your final satisfaction is bit delayed.
Instant Karma on the other hand can often bring "satisfaction" quickly after doing something particularly stupid. Something you knew better, but were too damn lazy to do it right the first time. To give you an example, we have a canvas cover which encloses the cockpit of boat. When the weather is bad or just plain cold, it is nice to put the cover up and be able to stay warm and dry. We had used this cover quite a bit the prior year sailing in the Baltic and Northern Europe. Since we were on this massive cleanup campaign, we decided to wash the cover. After it was thoroughly washed and cleaned, we laid it over the lifelines to dry. Laying implies not fixed or secured other than by gravity. That every so little voice in one's head kept saying, you "...know you should tied that cover down." Further little voice nagging went something like this: "You know the wind might come up and you'll be sorry if it blows over the side." Well, there just wasn't any wind that day and we checked it often to make sure it wasn't moving anywhere. But Aeolus (the god of wind), can be a bit of a trickster and as we were folding the cover to put it away, we noticed that the rear window didn't seem to be there. All the while the little voice is screeching, "Told you so, Told you so." Instant Karma. "Told you so. You should have clipped the window on. Told you so."
And don't take the "Instant" part too literally. You can often receive plenty of "Karma" for a good long while. For instance; we now had to replace the window with the dollar worth 30% less than last year. And we had to pay VAT taxes on it because we were buying it in Europe, another 22%. Shipping costs from Sweden added another 25%. Finally, we never used it, even once this entire season. Priceless.
(Steve) I was at a boat show and came by Etaine's booth (ATN Products). Etaine was selling a setup that you let you climb up the mast using a combination of rigging and foot power. He demonstrated the setup all day long, zipping up and down a static line. It looked amazingly easy and what a good idea it seemed, as now I would be able to go up the mast without assistance, i.e. I wouldn't need Jan to crank me up using a winch. Well, this was my first opportunity to try it and boy was I excited. Here you see me just over the boom on my way up. I'm probably about 6 or 7 feet above the deck at this point. It has probably taken me about 30 minutes to get to this point. But hey, I'm still trying to get the knack of how the system works. I remember Etaine telling me, "Sit way back, pull your knees up as high as you can, push the slide up the static line, now extend your legs and push yourself up, repeat." The little problem you have is that the push with the legs, really wants to push straight out and not up. You've got to pull yourself in against the static line at the same time you are doing the damndest deep knee bend you have ever attempted. The static line isn't all that static as it is wobbling to and fro like a wet noodle. My form didn't exactly duplicate Etaine's either. After another 30 minutes or so, accompanied with some really wonderful grunts, I made it to the first spreader level (20 feet). That was it. Break time. Going to the top wasn't going to be an option. Jan is just going to have to develop her biceps and get cranking on that winch!