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.
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