END OF THE ADVENTURE

End of the Adventure

It was hot and humid in Mobile, Alabama and Alison and I worked feverishly on emptying Happytat of all our personal things.  We had lived aboard for nearly a year and there was a lot of stuff to pack up. I also sanded and painted the rest of the deck before going back to Cleveland so it would look better to prospective buyers.  I have spent everything I own on buying and outfitting this boat and am counting on selling it for at least some of what I have put into her so I can get a new start on a home in TN.   A fresh coat of deck paint will go a long way toward getting a good price for her.

We left Happytat at Turner marina a little over four weeks ago to find a place to live in Cleveland while the boat sells and we earn a little money.  We had planned to park our RV in a campground for a while, but my mother offered to let us stay at her house for a few weeks, so we accepted her kind offer.   Two weeks later, we moved into an apartment.  I contacted my business partner, Tony to let him know I was available to work in the company in any capacity that was needed.  He immediately put me to running service calls, since June is one of our biggest months.  The income earned from work paid for us to go back to Mobile to finish moving out of the boat and get it ready to sell. 

But the purpose of this blog entry is to explain our decision to give up on the dream of sailing to exotic places.  There are people who have followed our blog who were enjoying the vicarious pleasure of our adventure and will be disappointed that we have decided to sell the boat and end this adventure. So, for their sake and my own, I need to write about the ending of Larry and Alison’s Great Adventure.

There were hints of the reality of living aboard on my blog entry titled: “The Dark Side of Living Aboard,” “The Sinking of the Titanic” and in other blog entries.  In fact, there are far more entries describing the difficulties of our adventure than the joys.  That’s because there was precious little joy in the adventure.  The first and possibly the biggest reason we are abandoning this adventure is because it took us FOUR WEEKS of sailing to get to Mobile.  That’s FOUR WEEKS to go a distance that we can travel by car in 7 hours!  FOUR WEEKS of our lives living 24/7 in a boat and seeing little but a green tunnel.  The monotony was broken occasionally by mechanical failure, the challenges of passing under low bridges and finding a place to anchor for the night without going aground.   Had we had no mechanical problems, we might have made it in three weeks, but that’s still a long time to sit in a boat.

And was there any adventure in sailing down the river?  Precious little!  We had a day or two that was warm and sunny with no problems, but even then there was nothing to do but sit in the boat and stare at the river, looking for potential obstacles in the water or keeping a watch out for low bridges.  But there were many more days of sitting in the cockpit, wrapped up in layers of coats, guiding the boat downriver with a cold wind and occasional rain in my face ten hours per day.  Alison didn’t have it much better in the cabin, sitting for weeks in a space no bigger than our former bedroom, her joints aching from inactivity.

When the river opened up onto Mobile Bay and I was sailing on the largest body of water I had ever sailed on, it was exciting!  We sailed the bay for about three hours until we made it to Turner Marina.  As usual, the wind was still blowing on our nose, so I was still motoring and not sailing, but we were still impressed with the big ships we passed and the size of the bay.  When we turned off the main channel to go to the marina, I was surprised to find that we had to be very careful to stay in the channel because the water depth was very shallow outside the channel. So even on this huge (to us) bay, we were back to watching out for shallow water, just like back home in Chickamauga Lake.

Once we left Turner marina and made it to the lovely white sand beaches of Pensacola, we finally anchored out in salt water.  But once we were there and had walked the beaches, we found ourselves back in the boat again, wondering what do to next.  We sailed on over to Pensacola Beach and found a great anchorage that was just a short dinghy ride to the tourist area.  We had the same view and same access to the great restaurants, beach and entertainment that people were paying $100 a night for-if they could find one available on this Memorial Day weekend.  Cool! 

BUT, we had no air conditioning! And when our water tanks got low, I had to motor over to a nearby marina to get water from them.  I had to run the motor for hours per day just to keep the batteries charged so our refrigerator and lights would work. And don't even get me started on marine toilet maintenance! We wanted to do some sight-seeing of the area, but had no car to get us there.   So after the first couple days, we had exhausted all we cared to do in Pensacola Beach.

“Ahh,” you protest “but when you finally arrive at the coast and sail on the ocean, it will all be worth the suffering.” 

I was excited to finally find a day to devote to sailing on the big ocean!  But as you might have read in my previous blog, that turned out to be an unpleasant experience too!   Now, I know that the ocean is not always that rowdy and I could very easily sail for days or weeks in beautiful gently rolling seas.  But that two hours of utter exhaustion and disorientation was enough for us!  Imaging getting caught in even rougher weather not for two hours, but for days at a time, 24 hours per day with nowhere to rest!  No thanks!

So, if sailing on the open ocean no longer seems fun, the boat is cramped and un-air conditioned, are there any other reasons not to continue this journey?

Well yes there are even more reasons to not continue this journey. 

Ever since I bought this boat, I have put thousands more into it, along with months of my time and energy.  When we listed the things we needed to continue our journey safely over open sea to South Florida, the total added up to at least another two or three thousand!  That was the final straw. All the way down the river, I had to spend and spend to fix things and keep the motor running.  When does the hemorrhaging stop and the fun begin? I am an above-average mechanic and did most of the work myself and still I spent thousands.  A common saying in boat circles is that B.O.A.T stands for Bring Out Another Thousand.  A truer saying was never said!    I had had enough of spending, suffering, and spending most of my waking and sometimes sleeping time, working on or thinking about working on the boat.  I had brought my guitar along thinking I would finally have time to learn some new songs.  But there was never a time that I didn’t need to spend every moment tending to the boat.  No time to sit around and play guitar or even read a few chapters in a book, unless it pertained to sailing.

All this so that we could travel at 5 miles per hour; then when we got there, we had no car to get around in.  Had we decided to continue, we would have spent several thousand dollars and the next 4-8 weeks going down the coast of Florida, dodging sandbars, fishing nets, thunderstorms and possible hurricanes or tropical storms so that we could live in an uncomfortable cabin to see the parts of Florida that we have seen before by car or airplane.  Those thousands would have bought us several really nice trips to wherever the heck we wanted to go in a fraction of the time and in a great deal more comfort.

In summary, I can no longer imagine what the attraction would be to live and travel in a boat.  They’re amazingly slow, uncomfortable and remarkably expensive.  

When I was a boy, I decided one summer day to ride my bike to the end of Troy Street and headed North.  After a few hours, I turned back.  I learned later that Troy Street is a state highway that goes all the way to Michigan.  There was no shame in turning back, only a lesson in being realistic.

When I learned to fly airplanes, I bought a map of the US and tacked it to my wall.  I imagined many trips all over the country in a small airplane.  I imagined that I would fly to New Orleans on a Friday in a few hours, then fly back Sunday.  When I learned the cost and complications of flying a small airplane long distances, I decided to give up that dream.  But I learned and experienced a lot, so it was time well spent.

When I became a hang glider pilot, I dreamed of soaring to cloud base and staying aloft for hours like a bird.  I might even go cross country long distances, catching rising air for hours and covering many miles in my motor-less wing.  I flew my hang glider for several years off and on, but never got higher than the 2000 feet that the tow plane pulled me to, or stayed aloft longer than about 45 minutes.  But it wasn’t a waste of my time.  It is still one of the most amazing things I’ve ever experienced!

When I decided to become a sailor, I dreamed of sailing across oceans and seeing many wonderful things by boat. I promised to stop when it wasn’t fun anymore.  Well, after living aboard for a year and sailing to the Gulf, it wasn't fun anymore.  So it was time to stop. 

Now that we are back on land, little things that we took for granted bring us great pleasure: the marvelous comfort of my recliner; being able to use the toilet, then just flush everything down to who-knows-where; having a refrigerator that we can just reach into and get what we want; having a freezer that can freeze ICE CREAM; having unlimited water available without having to fill the tanks first; having hot water in the shower every morning; having a car to go to the grocery with; having electricity available everywhere; air conditioning; being able to just go outside and walk around; going to music concerts and movies;

I hope I didn’t disappoint anyone who was rooting for me and hoping to see me sail across oceans.  If this is your dream, please don’t let me influence you negatively.  You might be smarter, richer, more capable, or just more tolerant of the inconveniences than I and might love a life aboard.  If so, I’ve got lots of books and lessons learned that I’d be happy to share.

But life is short. There is no time to waste pursuing a dream that no longer makes sense. 

Now, on to the next adventure…