Amanda's Senior Adventure (Part 1)

We (my youngest daughter Amanda and I) have started her senior adventure. We are driving from Denver to Seattle, catching a bus to Bellingham, WA to the ferry that runs through the Northwest Passage known as the Alaska Marine Highway. We will travel by ferry to Homer. We will then catch a bus to Anchorage and fly back to Seattle. From there we plan on driving to a friend’s cabin that sits on the western end of Yellowstone and spend 3-4 days touring Yellowstone National Park. From there we then drive back to Denver.

Last night we camped in western Wyoming. We drove until about 8:15. We stopped at a KOA campground in Lyman, WY. It was the first time I felt relaxed since I quit work. I have been a total road warrior in all the driving and working on the boat so far. We set up a tent, played games until it was to dark to see without a flashlight and then went to sleep. It made me aware of how much I have been pushing and I need to slow down.

These senior trips started with my oldest daughter Sara. She wanted to know why I had been doing adventures with my son Tim through Scouts and they never got a chance to experience these kind of trips. Up to that point I am not sure if I wasn’t aware of their need for adventures or never thought about it. I told her that when she graduated we would go on an adventure. The only rule was it needed to be a challenging adventure (ie no sitting on the beach outside the hotel). It would need to challenge you physically and mentally. Suggestions I gave were things like a white water raft trip down the Grand Canyon, hike the Colorado trail, do a long bicycle trip, etc.

The trip my daughter chose was to sail from Key Biscayne to Key West and back. We would need to pull the boat 2000 miles and back as part of the trip. This was a compromise from what she first suggested, which was to sail from Key West to San Diego. That would have been a real adventure. She then suggested sailing down the whole east coat of the US. I needed to put a restriction in of a total trip of 3 weeks. This was the most time I would be able to take off from work on a vacation.

My son decided he wanted to sail to the Bahamas from Florida. We pulled the boat to Florida again, spent a week sailing with our Boy Scout troop on a charter boat and then took off for the Bahamas. This was a stretch for me as it was my first off-shore experience. As with most things that you have a fear of in your mind, it was much worse in the mind than the trip across. We had a great nine days and did a night crossing from the Berrys back to Bimini. We then got chased out by a hurricane, but stayed ahead of it.

Both of these experiences, as many of sailing experiences, have set me up for the grand adventure I am taking off on later in July. As the Winter Warlock in the Christmas show Santa Claus is Coming to Town says, “to get anywhere you need to put one foot in front of the other and soon you will be walking out the door”. As I journal here, I hope to share with you those different steps I have had the experience to take to bring this adventure to fruition.

The adventure in this trip is going to be our forms of transport and sleeping conditions. We are driving 1100 miles to Seattle, use public transportation to Bellingham, ride a ferry of an unknown distance for a total 8 days, catching a bus from Homer to Anchorage, flying back from Anchorage to Seattle and then driving back to Denver via Yellowstone National Park.

For sleeping arrangements, we plan on tenting while driving and staying in a Hostel in Juneau. On the ferries we will have a couple different types of arrangements. The first leg of the trip we will be sleeping in deck lounge chairs and on the second and third legs we will be in a “sleeping” cabin which is suppose to only have two sea berths.

Preparing the Boat - Phase 1

6/10/2008. This is my first check in on the blog. It has been a whirl wind of activity since last Tuesday (D-Day D is for departure). After 12 years I left Cisco to realize the dream of my life time to set out on a long term adventure. My plan is to spend a period of time sailing the East Coat of the US , The Bahamas and through the Caribbean. After I turned in my computer at work, which was the last activity I needed to do for Cisco, I left for the 1800 mile drive across the US to Maryland where the boat is stored.

My last minutes at Cisco were anti-climatic. In typical Cisco fashion, on the eve of my departure, I was working until 7:00 trying to wrap up a rough draft of a playbook describing the activities that I performed in my role to assist in handing off the project load I supported. When I walked out the doors though, I realized I just walked away from my career for a period of time and felt a burden lifted.

The drive across country was a non-event with the exception of stopping and seeing a close friend of mine, Dave, in Indianapolis and was able to spend the evening with him and his son. It was great to reconnect in person as we had not seen each other in three years since he left Denver. His son’s name is Cayden and we had a fun time playing. Dave indicated that Cayden did not usually open up, but we hit it off right away and he invited me into his life.

I arrived in Maryland Thursday evening after leaving Cisco Tuesday afternoon. The boat was still standing, which is always a good sign. I have a long list of activities I want to get done. The list is always longer than the time available. I started working Friday morning and found that there was a power issue on the boat and how the batteries were working. This was not something I planned on and ended up spending almost all day understanding the power and determining that there is at least one bad battery. I talked with my wife and indicate dhow frustrated I was that I was behind schedule already the first day into the adventure and she reminded me of what I named the boat, “No Rush”. I have since started to relax and not allow a schedule dictate my activities to a point.

Another major issue that has cropped up this week is the weather. There is an unseasonable hot spell with the temperatures in the mid to high 90s with the humidity at the same level. It makes it very difficult to work in that heat so I spend the mornings working before the high temperatures, go out for drive when it is too hot and then end up in a mall or movie theatre to keep cool until the evening and then I start the working again.

I have met two men in the boatyard where I am working on the boat. The first one is John Harper, an Englishmen living in Newfoundland and the second is Didmar, a naturalized US citizen from Germany. John has just purchased a 28 footer that he is in the works of sailing it up to Newfoundland over the next month. Ditmar has a 52 footer that he has sailed to Caribbean and back. The three of us have become sort of the Three Musketeers.

6/18

I met Ditmar Wednesday morning. I was starting to work on installing the cabling needed for the Radar system. After I did some running around I was back at the boat. I did some measuring as I needed to cut the cable to run it. I asked Ditmar if he could spare 5 minutes to help verify I was cutting the cable in the right place. After spending 4 hours we had the cable run through the mast. I do not even know how I would have done that without his assistance. After we finished, I offered to take him out for dinner and drinks. He said he couldn’t as he had dinner cooking for John and I. We had a wonderful evening eating a good meal of pasta and sauce and a few drinks.

The next morning I knew Ditmar was leaving the yard to go back home in VA. I went over to say good bye until I made it back to MD to launch the boat. He then offered me the keys to his boat and full access to his pride and joy collection of tools. It blew me away his generosity. I had met this man less than 24 hours ago, he helped me with wiring my boat, cooked dinner and trusting me with his boat and tools. This is the kind of community I was looking forward to when I started my travels, but this far exceeded my expectations.

I spent Thursday waxing a hull of the boat and installing a replacement water heater. Everything seems to take longer due to the heat and working in tight spots.

Friday was busy running more cable, connecting the new chart plotter and installing the GPS. Most of the effort was spent understanding how all the current cabling and power is being wired throughout the boat. In the future, it will be easier to troubleshoot any power issues with all this work I have been doing.

Saturday was a travel day. I had hoped to get out of the yard by 2:00, but with all the clean up and locking up the boat I did not make it out until 4:00. It was another brutally hot day. I waxed another hull, cleaned out all extra equipment that I did not plan on traveling with, put all new equipment on the boat, loaded the truck, took a shower and finally took off. I needed to drop off an air conditioner unit I sold through eBay on my way to Pittsburgh. Within 30 minutes of leaving a cold front started to roll in, the temperature dropped 20 degrees and it started to rain. Figures J. I traveled to Pittsburgh to see my aunt and family and also to watch my daughter, Sara, play one game a rugby tournament she was playing in.

Later Sunday I left Pittsburgh for the drive back to Denver. I made my fastest run ever between Pittsburgh to Denver in 28 hours door-to-door. That is a lot of interstate driving. I was in a rush to get home to get ready for the next adventure.