“Thanks to our memories, we have what we have called experience.”
Aristotle*
I debated following the (trite?) tradition of summarizing the year. It glosses over so many highs and lows as the mind plays games by recalling only some things, usually the ones that support the narrative you want to share. In other words, selective memory warps.
That said, 2022 was a pretty fucking cool year for us.
A friend asked recently when we started entertaining this life of sailing. We think it was in spring or summer of 2018. By October 2018, we combined homes in Las Vegas with Mark making the big decision to leave his hometown of San Diego in an effort to retire early and go sailing (Retirement #1, we call it). I can still remember the conversation at a restaurant, in San Diego, I think, where Mark says something like: sooooo, you want…
Obviously, I guess, I said that sounds fun! We went to the Annapolis Boat Show in October 2018 and started sailing classes in 2019. We lived frugally, well below our means. We were DINKs (double income, no kids). We passed on trips, cars, tech, clothes, and random desires for years in order to have a simple, minimalist life of freedom–well from the man, not from Mother Nature.
Pandemic. Chaos. Job loss. Pay cuts. Inflation. Our 5-year plan to get a catamaran (that we were ~40% into) became a let’s buy a monohull and go now plan. Cut to 1 January 2022, I’ve given notice at work and have about two weeks left on the job. We are living on MACH 5 in Stockton, CA. Cut to 31 December 2022, we are living on MACH 5 in San Diego where we arrived the day before and setting our sights on Mexico.
What have we accomplished?
We’ve logged about 750 nm (nautical miles) from Stockton to San Diego plus little passages around the Bay Area. We’re behind schedule–us foolish project managers making plans. We’ve just about finished MACH 5’s transformation from day sailor to bluewater cruiser. She’s got the bones but her AC/DC power, fridge, and water system needed upgrading. She’s 32 years old so she needed a few repairs.
We’ve learned so much! Mark has been exposed to being a diesel mechanic, marine electrician, apprentice to a master plumber, and dabbled in carpentry. I am a person who SEWS! I’ve dabbled in carpentry and plumbing. We’ve made styrene plastic bend. We’ve sanded and painted the hull. Learned how to fiberglass. Became way less scared of putting holes in our boat. We no longer panic over a tablespoon of water in the bilge…even half-a-cup! Oh yeah, and we occasionally sail the boat.
We enjoy living with nature. Can distinguish between an osprey call, a Western gull call, and an otter call. We have a bird list! We’re learning the types of whales and dolphins. We’re starting to read water and clouds. We can interpret GRIB files (raw weather data) and make passage decisions (thanks to the support of our coaches on SV Totem).
We’ve lived in Stockton, Napa, Vallejo, Sausalito, Emeryville, Monterey, Morro Bay, San Miguel, Paso Robles, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Catalina, and now San Diego. Each of these stops were between one week and four months.
We are both proud of ourselves. It’s been a struggle at times. Cuss words. Not at each other but at things. Tears. Sweat. Bruises (me). Bleeding (Mark). More things than we’d like to acknowledge have fallen overboard, lost to Neptune including most recently, Mark’s phone. Moisture is a constant factor of life and attacks things in so many ways. Food storage has become an art. Did you know if you put bread in a vacuum-sealed bag with a desiccant pack that it can last for months? The art is in not squishing the bread when sealing.
It’s been amazing at times. First whale in the bay with us. Glowing torpedo dolphins in the middle of the night. SO MANY STARS! Living with otters and normalizing the sound of them open mussels on the hull of the boat. Normalizing the crackling sound of shrimp on the hull. Baking bread from scratch. Having time to read. Sunsets. SO MANY SUNSETS! The occasional sunrise. The amazing sleep you get while gently swaying on anchor. Meeting other sailors and making new friends. Getting to love on other people’s dogs and cats. Making in through our time at Stockton Sailing Club without getting sprayed by the resident skunks. Seeing tarantulas just walking by. Living with ospreys again (for me, I adore them). Learning about the olive ranch business. Mark supervising spring pruning on the ranch. Both of us working olive harvest at the ranch. Getting to live on a ranch! Spending 6-7 hours on Ticketmaster during the Taylor Swift concert ticket debacle–and GETTING THE TICKETS WE WANTED. I feel incredibly blessed that I could devote the time and energy needed to getting tix for the goddaughter.
And it’s just been our day-to-day life. We are stronger, healthier, smarter, calmer, and so much richer.
* more on Aristotle and memory at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/memory.html