Beginnings

    Today is the 12th of October, and I am writing this post from a small marina in Peekskill, NY. It's a members only marina, but they said we could stay here for the night at no charge. They even have power and water. My batteries have been running very low, as we've been squatting restaurant docks where they let you stay the night if you buy a meal. None had plug ins though.
    Perhaps I should explain who "we" is. Cassandra and I were headed down the NYS Barge Canal, racing the clock to get through lock 13 before they closed it for repairs. The lock closed at midnight on the 6th, and I made it through around noon. The following day I pulled into a lock with two other sailboats, and that night we all spent tied to a free wall together. There's Dan and Scotty on their O'day 27, "SomeDay," and Mike and Allison on their Hunter 27 "Impulse"

Left to right, Impulse, Cassandra, SomeDay

Dan is about my age and decided to buy a boat and set off to find himself. His younger friend Scott is joining him. Their back story isn't quite filled in yet, and their boat is old and rotten. I worry it won't last for very long cruising.
    Then there's Mike and Allison. They're a couple, artists. They used to own a gallery in Kentucky, but Mike couldn't take the monotony, and decided to go for broke. Somehow he was inspired to buy a boat and just start going somewhere. He needed to escape from society for a bit. Amazingly, Allison is all for it. Like me they have no destinaton, just a direction; south.
    Both crews have owned their boats for less than a year, and both have so much to learn. I feel obligated to protect them. Perhaps in part because if anything were to happen to them, I wouldn't be able to live with myself knowing that I could have tought them the thing that could have saved them or their boats.
    In any case, in the ten or so days I've been out here I have made it to within 50 miles of Sandy Hook. Supposedly Tuesday will be a good weather day to hop down the Jersey coast, but I've yet to verify that.


    Just to update, we all tied up in a small marina in Hoboken for the night last night and went into downtown to see Times Square and get dollar a slice pizza. It's too expensive here for me though. $2.50 per foot per night to tie up, plus bus fares. I'm looking forward to dropping the hook again and staying free. Checking the weather to see when we can make the hop down the Jersey coast. More updates when I have wi-fi again.

09/21/2013 Update

Okay, so I really haven't felt like writing anything, but I promised I would update, so here it is.
I've gotten a few smaller projects around the boat done. My water tank is partially re-installed, I have new opening ports in the head/v-berth area, I've started stocking up on spares, and my bookshelf is 1/3 finished. I've been out sailing a couple times, but have spend more time at the dock than anywhere. I've got a digital ammeter/voltmeter setup to install, I need a new battery as one of mine boiled off a cell. A new 22lb Rocna anchor is on it's way and supposedly Simrad is sending me a bracket to mount my tillerpilot, I've yet to see it.
Lock 13 on the Erie Canal is closed due to a sever leak in the movable dam, so it will be 2-3 weeks before they have it fixed. I'm aiming to leave at about the 3 week mark. It's getting cold and I don't want to get stuck here.
-Brian

Every Single Night

   Every night. If you asked me how often I see my boat, I'd say, "maybe once every two weeks." How often do I think of her though? "Every night." I think about her galley when I cook dinner, I think about her settees when I lay down. I think about her lights when the living room starts to get dim. I think about the hidey-holes for foods and tools. I think about her motion in a heavy chop. I think about her massive sails, her too-short motor... about her nonexistent charts or gps. I think about all the times she scared me, and the times I scared myself with her.
   I ask myself every night, "Why am I doing this?" I think about tides I've never had to deal with, new, strange anchorages, careless cruisers and overnighters dropping anchor over mine. I think about hailing bridge operators, and being invited to other boats. I think about not getting invited. I think about being alone for days at a time, maybe weeks. I think about how Cassandra feels just a little to big to sail alone and a little to small to live on.
   I think about this trip, this 'hair up my butt' as Dad would say. I ask myself question after question, and the answer comes up the same. I don't know.

   Why do you want to go?
   Won't you go crazy?
   Won't you be lonely?
   Will I make friends?
   Will I be too (I can't think of the word, tired, afraid, introverted, shy, broken?) to want to meet people?    Meeting people is one of my biggest fears. I can talk to any boater, my job has proven that to me. But, the amount of effort it takes is almost painful sometimes.
   Will I be able to handle the boat alone?
   Will I be able to handle the conditions? They aren't like Lake Ontario.
   Is my boat ready?
   Am I ready?
   Why do I want to do this?

Every night that question rears it's head. "Why am I doing this?" "...I don't know..." Maybe I'm doing it because I have to prove something to myself. Maybe it's because I don't need to prove anything. Maybe it's because I can, maybe because I'm convinced it will 'fix' me. Maybe I'm hoping to find a friend, or love, or renew my relationship with God. Maybe I'm running away, scared. Maybe I'm running at what I'm afraid of. Maybe I'm lost and wandering. Maybe it's because I only feel whole when I wander. Maybe... there are too many maybes and it could be any, all, or none of them. I don't know.

So why am I going? Right now, it's because I said I would, and I am a man of my word. The rest of the blanks will fill themselves in as I go. Or not. I intend to find out.

There is a season.

Well, summer is here. Cassandra is in the water, some of my fit-out projects are done, others are in progress. My hope is to have them all completed this September when I head south for the winter.

On that note, Hope is nearly finished. I tested her in a pond near the house and she floats as I'd expected her to. She's surprisingly fast, but skittish, so a skeg is on the workbench to help keep her headed the right direction.

Not much else to report at the moment. I'd like to update more frequently as the summer progresses and adventure nears, so hopefully any followers I might have will be able to check back here more often. I'm going to try to post something monthly during the summer, and weekly during my trip this winter. So, if you know someone who might enjoy reading about a madman in a boat, please share a link to my page.
 -Ever at your service
   Brian Straw \|/

Spring is springing

  The weather here is finally starting to warm, West Marine has been getting busier by the day, and the lake level is slowly rising. I should be able to launch my boat for the summer pretty soon, but I have a few projects on the list in preparation for the end of the season and, hopefully, a trip southwards.
The number one priority is wiring up a masthead antenna, as mine spent the last few years bolted to the stern-rail with an old lifesling bracket that has since given up on life. Among many other projects on the list for the summer are: shortening the bimini for use under sail, new backing plates for bow and stern pulpits, LED lights throughout, a bookshelf, shelving in the hanging locker, positive latches on everything, gelcoat patches, reinstalling the water tank, and many more besides. There are also some needs/wants I have to think though more before implementing, such as: bow roller and anchor, a second reef in the main, possibly one in the jib, dodger, thicker sleeping cushions.
 I've got all but one cabin light switched over to LED. While I was working on that I removed the old 12V car fan Cassie came with and sewed up a vent scoop for the forward hatch instead. I bought replacement bulbs for my nav lights only to find out this afternoon that all my fixtures except one use a different bulb, so I'll be rethinking what to do about that this week. I've got a Simrad TP10 autopilot waiting to be installed as well.

Hope, skin-on-frame.

  On the home front, the newest addition to my fleet, Hope, is almost ready to see her first bit of water. Hope is a little hard dinghy I originally designed in college to be built skin-on-frame from scrap wood in the scene shop. I really liked her lines, but couldn't get the canvas skin right. Her ribs sat stacked in the shed for the past few years, but when I started thinking about a trip south I realized I might need something a little more portable than Adra. Now Hope is built, stitch-and-glue from lauan and pine, and provided she behaves well, I look forward to putting her into service.

Hope, just being glued up.

Madman with a Boat

  When I bought my little O'Day 25 I bought it for two reasons: I wanted to work on a boat, and I wanted to go places.
  I think every sailor starts out dreaming, not of helming for hours on end, or huddling below during a thunderstorm (both things I've rather come to enjoy), but they imagine all the wonderful places they could go, things they could do and sights to see. I think it's the glimmering hint of beautiful beaches and bikini'd women that convinces a man to lay down his hard earned money for something as impractical as a boat.
  Up till now, my boat, Cassandra, has gotten very little day-to-day use. I'll splurge and take a week or two trip, and then maybe go out only two or three more times for the year on day sails. Part of the trouble is how far away my boat is from where I live. Wind is free, but the gas to drive an hour in an '85 Pontiac getting 16mpg is prohibitively expensive.
  The other issue is simply this: You don't go anywhere on a day sail. You spend 15 minutes prepping the boat, ten motoring out into the lake, ten hoisting and trimming sails, you sail around for an hour or two, then spend another half hour or more getting the boat put back in it's slip and packed away. Somehow having a destination, someplace to get out, to explore, a new view to wake up to that makes the work worthwhile.
  This is the time of year when dreams come. This time of year, when the store is empty and I have hours upon hours to imagine those far off beaches, making repairs anchored in crystal clear water. I imagine exploring little creeks and inlets up and down the East coast in my little dinghy, Hope (yet to be finished). And so I set myself to thinking. "Why haven't I done it yet; what's stopping me?" In the summer I don't go off for long because I 'need' to work at the store and make money. In winter I work at Syracuse Stage. What's stopping me? New jobs can be found, I have no significant other, I have a boat that sails and is a pleasant home for me. So, what's stopping me? I've decided that I'm really the only thing standing in my way. I have some financial obligations I have to fulfill, but if I can take care of that, all that is left is to screw my courage to the sticking place and go.
  And so I'm announcing my plan. It is my hope that come September 2013 I will cast off and sail down the East coast making my way for the Keys and Bahamas. I don't know how far I may get, or will even want to go. It's been a dream of mine to explore the Outer Banks ever since my family went to Ocracoke and saw the Blackbeard museum. I want to revisit the keys, and to sail a bit of the Texas coast. I want to see Norman's Key in the Bahamas. But most of all I want to go someplace,  I don't much care where.
I'm a madman with a boat, and I want to see what's out there.
 -Brian

A Pause to Reflect

I update sporadically, I'm getting used to this fact. Still, five months after it happened seems a bit lazy to me.
I've half updated my map on google with the approximate route I took and what happened along the way. Dates and stories will come once I get my log book from my parent's house.

Anyway, I wrote this after my first or second day in Cape Vincent. I was feeling very alone, and very unimpressed with myself.

Well, I've done it. I sailed to Cape Vincent. And what have I found here? A quaint little town no more exciting than home. Less. A mess of shops and passing cargo ships reminding me exactly how out of place I feel.
Cassandra feels empty, like her soul left her. I feel empty too.
What was I expecting; some great miracle to give my life purpose? All I see is empty water. I see struggle and meaninglessness, because in the end, what I have done here is nothing. I don't want to go home. I don't want to go anywhere else. I want to stop being. I only feel alone and helpless. I miss Shawna every day. I am happy that she has found the life she wanted, but mine is bleakness without her. I think of finding someone else, anyone... just to feel something again. But I can't. My mind and my heart won't let go, and won't let me abandon the ideals I hold to.
What ideals... if it's all meaningless what does it matter? I don't care anymore... Some irrational part of me tells me "get drunk, screw around, and die." But I know I can't, and I won't.
I'm not a pirate. I'm not an actor. I'm not a craftsman. I'm not a writer. I'm not a gentleman. I'm not a sailor or an expert at anything. I'm not a ruffian, not a vagabond, not a romantic, not pessimist, not optimist, not realist. I'm an aberration. I fit nowhere. My body longs for open spaces, my heart for meaning, my mind for fulfillment, and my soul for it's mate.
I want to be positive, I want to be happy. But that hasn't been me for longer than I can fully remember.. I can pretend, I can put it off, and I can block it out, but when I'm alone, or when I look off into space, my eyes are turning inward, examining what is left, or what there ever was... and I always come back to this reality, always to the person I am, and it is never who I was meant to be.
I can see the man I was, the one I was supposed to be.. he lived before I ever did. He lives still in my dreams, when they come anymore. I wish at times I could just sleep and live in that world I see. Shawna saw it too, and that may be what I miss most... my companion in life and in dreams. I miss living. 

 On reflection though, making it to Cape Vincent, and then on to Mexico Point and my home marina was in many ways fulfilling. I didn't realize at the time, but that trip built up my confidence in my sailing skill, my boat, and myself far more than I knew or imagined it had. I felt so very alone, but it gave me the courage to ask a pretty girl to sit and visit with me for a bit. It showed me how valuable brief meetings and friendships can be. And above all, I accomplished my goal. I made it to Cape Vincent. In five months the disappointment has faded, and left good memories and a will to go on, to do more. I'm in the pre-planning stages of a trip to the Bahamas next winter, if I can get myself, my boat, and my finances up to snuff by then. I remain hopeful.