Home Afloat

December 2005

As you read this, the Captain and I will finally be settled into “Solitaire”, our home afloat, discovering the difference between spending weekends on your boat and living aboard fulltime. This is the culmination of nearly ten years spent sharpening nautical skills (with much credit going to OKC Sail and Power Squadron classes), outfitting Solitaire (thanks to West Marine and a cast of thousands), organizing finances, planning and dreaming. The final two months passed by in a blur.

Selling the house and sorting through two lifetimes of possessions were the most daunting tasks. What can you fit onto an already crowded boat? What do you give away to friends or relatives? What do you sell or donate to charity? Something as simple as narrowing down a wardrobe of shoes to one black pair, one brown pair, one tennis pair, one boat pair, etc. proved so taxing that I was almost reduced to tears. You can’t begin to imagine how difficult it was to part with my kitchen equipment - nearly everything had to be sold since I already have a well-equipped galley. The Captain suffered similar angst while going through his garage. Fortunately, we had done a few things that made the job easier than it could have been. We scanned every photograph in every frame and album, converting the photos to digital images. We also converted all our home movies and favorite videos into digital videos. We entered all my favorite recipes into an electronic cookbook. We imported over 12,000 songs into our computer. Memories, music, address books, cookbooks, checkbooks, and tax records – all stored on an external hard drive the size of a paperback novel (backed up on CDs and DVDs).

We made it through the household packing and moving hurdle – only to face the boat moving challenge. We spent every weekend for over a month, disassembling, packing, stowing and getting “Solitaire” ready for her trip across country. But first, we had to make a decision on where we were taking “Solitaire” and figure out how to get her there.  We weighed the pros and cons of Houston, Miami, Tampa and Washington DC – finally settling on the latter. After some fairly extensive Internet research, we made a marina-hunting trip to the Chesapeake area and found the perfect place for us.  We also made use of the Internet to comparison shop yacht moving companies and were shocked at the variation in quotes – nearly a 200% spread between the least and most expensive.

Finally “D-Day” (decommissioning) arrived. The Captain stayed behind to watch “Solitaire” get loaded onto the semi trailer while I headed toward the East Coast in order to be at the new Marina when she arrived. The plan was to have some fairly minor work done, get new bottom paint, finish re-commissioning and splash her into the Chesapeake within a couple of weeks. The owners of a local Boat Works had a small rental house we could camp out in temporarily. Murphy’s Boat Law came through for us again and the “fairly minor” work turned out to be more extensive than we’d anticipated. “Solitaire’s” yard time dragged out from two weeks to two months. We gained some appreciation for what it means to be homeless and worried that our two cats would become landlubbers. It has all turned out for the best - we now have a boat that is better than new. “Solitaire” has a new rub-rail and shiny new stripes. The mast has seven coats of paint, and all new hardware and wiring. She has a state-of-art electronic radar system and a new single sideband radio. Her hull is reinforced with new fiberglass, a poly-barrier layer, and two coats of bottom paint. In fact, her hull is so strong that they are referring to her in the yard as the “Ice Breaker”.

While our boat was undergoing major surgery, the Captain and I have been exploring the area and falling in love with this little corner of the world.  Deale, Maryland is our hometown for the next twelve months and sometimes we feel as though we have stepped back in time. Jim wears flannel shirts and gets referred to in local shops as “Captain”. I buy fresh vegetables from farmer’s markets and “just caught” seafood from the back of trucks parked along the road. We are getting to know a few of our new neighbors and settling in for our first Chesapeake Winter.

The hardest part of moving aboard “Solitaire” was driving past the “Welcome to Oklahoma” sign, heading in the wrong direction – away from our dear Oklahoma and Texas boating friends. We hope that family and friends keep in touch with us by reading the Captain’s journal of our adventures at www.nancyjim.org, emailing us at solitaire@nancyjim.org, or coming by for a visit during our stay on the Chesapeake or next year when we are cruising in warmer latitudes. Because of the boating community, our world has become a little smaller, our hearts a little larger, our smiles a little wider and our love a little deeper.

 Nancy Aadland, Galley Slave of the Sailing Vessel “Solitaire”