It is even more distressing to find that it is not an easy adjustment. For many reasons cruisers find themselves landlocked, whether by choice, or by ...Read more]]> When all your adult life you have dreamed of and planned for a life aboard and cruising, it is a disorientating stumble to face a turn-around back to land.

It is even more distressing to find that it is not an easy adjustment. For many reasons cruisers find themselves landlocked, whether by choice, or by need, and it can be harder than you imagine.

While slipping away and sloughing the cares of land is an attractive lure, complete independence from terra firma is hard to achieve. Cruising as a family with four children ranging from tot to teens, we frequently faced the need to be near land for both medical and educational reasons.

We and many other cruising families have also found the need to be stationery while the breadwinner flies off from some accessible airport to earn the money needed to maintain a young and growing family and their bobbing home.

Recently, the need for major surgery for one child and the serious pursuit of a musical career of another, combined with the ever increasing toll of long distance commuting to support it all, has meant that we have temporarily become landlubbers, living a long way from our boat.

Hot and cold running showers a few steps from our beds, an upright fridge and freezer that is not accessed from under a bunk, a dishwasher and washing machine, all within centrally heated or cooled comfort are delightful luxuries.

Not having to don a raincoat to walk up to the showers is a novelty I will always appreciate, but there are many aspects of the transition that have been very hard.

We have all suffered mourning and depression. While this has not been a forced situation born of a crisis, such as losing the boat altogether – ours is still safely awaiting our return- we were not prepared for the emotional toll that the change would bring.

It is not surprising that so many metaphors for life apply sailing terminology. ‘Rudderless’ is an entirely apt term to describe the experience of having to make such a significant change to a life plan.

It has also been ironic that the classic perceived negatives of the cruising life have been truer of life on land.

Loneliness has been hard to bear.

While an arrival into a new anchorage or marina is the signal for instant meet-ups and friendships, moving into a house, especially one where there has already been a long stretch of often anti-social prior renters, one is not necessarily met with any sort of welcome.

The children were highly disappointed not to receive the ring of the door-bell and the classic plate of cookies.

Being buried in snow for the next few months meant the entire neighborhood was housebound and isolated.

We had sufficient family heirlooms to make storage of some essential furniture, books, photographs, and sentimental items logical when we sold everything else. We were offered so little for our furniture that it made sense to store rather than sell it, especially as we could face just such circumstances that would require us to stock up all over again.

While the cost of storage has made the saving on repurchasing a bit questionable, it certainly helped our transition to have the familiarity and comfort of our own things in the alien context of a completely new town.

It was like Christmas for our youngest, surrounded by hand-me-down toys and much beloved books, but it was disconcerting for our daughter as a teenager to come face to face with her much younger pink and doll-loving self.

Some aspects of sailing have been hard to shake. My family jokes that you can take the woman off the boat but you cannot take the boat out of the woman, when I provision madly before every snow storm as if preparing for a three-week passage.

We are also hyper-aware of every approaching storm, and anxiously watch the skies and weather reports. Our poor son, studying in New York and hoping to be there to watch the 4th of July fireworks, rushed home early at our request, so nervous were we at the approach of Hurricane Arthur!

Our rental home has skylights so we have kept the sensation of hatches and the sound of rain beating on them, and still can’t quite believe we do not to have to rush around shutting and checking to make sure there are no leaks.

While I do enjoy the convenience of an attached garage, by not having to walk outside, we have not only lost the sea, but the sky as well.

The myriad changes that become the backdrop of your daily existence on the water and on foot are all but lost when surrounded by buildings and the roof of a car.

We keep finding we forget to go out in time to see the blood moon or the super moon or a meteor shower that would have been unavoidable at sea.

While medical and educational needs were part of the anchor chain, and we have been so glad to have been able to achieve those goals, they also come with the stress of ferrying and co-ordinating multiple family schedules.

Ironically, we had a far better and more economical meal schedule while cruising because the whole family was on the same single schedule.

Maintaining a boat and an entirely separate home make it all but impossible to actually save any money for the next cruise, despite attempts to live frugally.

I truly believe that all life is an adventure and an opportunity to learn.

Just as we take our children to sea in order to see the world and learn life skills, there are many things to see and learn in the midst of unexotic, unromantic urban life, not least of which is that sometimes that is how life is.

There were unexpected skills that needed to be learned or relearned, like the handling of glassware in combination with granite counter-tops.

The kids are all acquiring seasonal skills, like the most efficient ways to rake leaves, shovel snow, and mow lawns. For the first time, they are needing to and learning how to iron!

There are driving lessons and money to be earned from gardening and catering ; there is berry picking and there are museums and bus rides to Boston and New York, and there are always the friends you would never have met otherwise.

Moving everything off the boat has given us the opportunity to give the tired and shabby interior of the boat a thorough sprucing of sanding, painting and varnishing that would have been so much harder while also trying to cook, eat, sleep and school. Multiple grades of schooling had led to the accumulation of numerous weighty books and equipment that filled storage space all over the boat.

I am very much looking forward to returning to the boat with a different approach to life aboard. It is as if the first time period served as a shakedown for our return, enabling us to make changes and improvements in every aspect of our lives aboard. We will also have to adjust to the loss of two very able-bodied crew men (now university students in far-off Australia) and the changed roles and competencies of our two youngest.

Keeping in touch with cruising friends has been a vital emotional lifeline for me, and I have enjoyed being able to provide them with land based support by mailing them things they need.

Disentangling ourselves again from the kelp of land life and possessions will be the next challenge as we work out how to get ourselves all the way back across to the other side of the continent to return to the only home we own.

Whatever we do, it will continue to be on the road less travelled.

About Clare Collins

Clare and her family have been choking on the anchor amid leaf piles and snow drifts in New Hampshire USA. 

Her husband, brother, and a crew will be bringing their 72 foot steel ex-BT Challenger, Ironbarque, around the big “U” in the fall, and the family will move back on in the spring of 2016 in Maine. 

In the mean time she is working on provisioning lists and recipes to equip novice galley chefs with basic skills.

More from Clare Collins, on this website

• Fighting Fears: Taking the Plunge (Feature article)
  The account of Clare family’s quest to fulfill their dream of sailing
• Staying pink in a blue world (Blog)
• First cruising adventure: Our best and worst moments (Blog)

Ironbarque started life as one of the boats built to race around the world in the Southern Ocean as part ...Read more]]> Thoughts on my First Cruising Adventure:  Panama Canal Transit and Pacific Coast of Central America and Mexico in our 72 foot steel sail boat, Ironbarque in June 2008

Sharing a moment on the Chagris River (Panama)

IRONBARQUE

Ironbarque started life as one of the boats built to race around the world in the Southern Ocean as part of the “BT Global Challenge” yacht race and she did it twice under the name of her sponsor, Me to You, a teddy bear company.

The identical yachts were built to withstand the storms of the Southern Ocean and were equipped to accommodate a crew of 18. When they stopped holding the race the boats were all sold off; mainly to charity groups focused on training troubled youth or leaders of the future. Our hope is that we are doing the latter and have turned this former racing boat into our traveling home.

My husband, Ken, sailed her from England to Panama with a crew of 5, headed by a delivery skipper, who helped him learn the ropes of blue water cruising. They started out at the end of March and when they reached the Canary Islands in April they were joined by our two older sons for the Atlantic crossing.

They were aged 15 and 12  and we thought that the Bay of Biscay might be too tough for their first blue water experience. The concern was well founded as heavy weather meant a torn main had to be repaired in Portugal.

Our youngest two children were aged 10 and 5, so I flew to Panama with them for the final leg through the Panama Canal and up the coast of Central America and Mexico. From Panama onwards various members of the crew departed to return to other jobs so that from Acapulco on we had only two additional crew.

On our last night in Mexico we went around the table describing our best and worst moments of the trip, which is how I will approach the description of my very first cruising adventure.

Best experience

By far it was going through the Panama Canal.

Entering the canal at night

We approached by night. In a sea of lights from waiting super tankers, cranes and docks, there is a far more concentrated mass of lights that is the entrance to the first lock.

We were rafted together with two other sail boats and silently coasted in excited camaraderie into the lock behind a ship. Line handlers high up on the side walls hurled blue ropes towards us in synchronous cascades in order to steady us away from the walls in the middle of the roiling rising waters. After 3 rising locks we emerged onto Gatun Lake and were guided to our mooring pontoon, where we tied up for the night, surrounded by the jungle.

It was magical to wake on the lake among all the other ships and yachts that had done the same, with the wild life of the jungle making their presence audible. We had to await the return of our cigar-puffing pilot before continuing the rest of the journey along the Chagres River to the locks descending into the Pacific. The whole journey takes 9 hours. The 3 yachts had separated at the lake and made the journey down the river individually. We came together again at the next locks and rafted as before.

Chagres river

Exiting the canal towards the Pacific

Descending was even more wondrous. Our boats were dwarfed as they sank to the bottom of the dripping black walled locks until finally the huge metal gates opened onto a new world and we emerged, blinking at The Pacific Ocean.

Worst Experience

The brain scrambling heat and humidity at 7 degrees above the Equator in a steel boat with openings designed to keep out the water of pounding Southern Ocean storms. Until we got to Cabo San Lucas we wore as little as possible, even on deck at night on the ocean.

Sea turtle

Most surprising

Silky calm water the color of oil dotted for miles with the domes of sea turtles.

Most delightful

The dawn dolphins that erupted from the surface in simultaneously leaping pods of riotous joy as far as the eye could see. At various times of the day charming groups would surf and race us at the bow, stunningly silver deep below the surface. They seemed to know when there were people at the bow.

Most wondrous

Green bioluminescent arcs flashing in the darkness of the night as dolphins leapt out of the black alongside the boat. Normally you see sparkling fairy lights in the froth of the water parted by the hull but this was simply awe-inspiring. Both are caused by Dinoflagellates, which are tiny plants that absorb sunlight during the day and emit a blue-green light in response to movement in the water. Even flushing the toilets at night became magical when these got sucked into the intake pipe.

Favorite time of day

6pm. We took turns in pairs to take watches of 3 hours at night and 4 hours during the day, so that a lot of the time, most of the crew were either sleeping or working, but at 6 o’clock there was a change of watch and dinner was brought up on deck and everyone emerged blinking and happy and enthusiastic to see what had been prepared from the variety of cans of meat, tuna and vegetables, and those who had prepared the meal were relieved to escape the sweaty heat of the galley and feel the cooling breeze.

It was such a companionable time of catching up, gentle teasing and all round delight in our shared peripatetic island in the wide Pacific.

Favorite watch times

Women cruising

We rotated through watch times and duties each day and every third day each team was responsible for the cleaning, cooking and doing dishes. This was called the “Mother watch”.

I loved cooking and trying to create interesting meals and delicious morning and afternoon snacks. These were called ‘elevenses’ and ‘threesies’ by the Irish crew.

Nothing can compare to the thrill of finding you have all the right ingredients self-sufficiently on board, or the gratification of having something so essential as a lemon when you catch a 25 pound tuna!

My favorite watch sequence was the 9-12 midnight followed by the 6-10am watch because that gave the most normal stretch of night to sleep in and the delight of the dawn and the accompanying dolphins. The ravenous lust for sleep was overwhelming at the end of any of the night watches and one would tear off life jacket and harness (and later all the layers of foul weather gear) with a hungry passion.

Sunrise near Panama

Most memorable sounds

• The crazed grunts of the autopilot (nick named ‘Rover’).
• The clanks of the metal fittings on the on-watch crew’s life jackets and harnesses as they came below to brew coffee, or worse – to wake you up.
• Mexico. The cacophony of all sorts of music from all quarters all the time.

Biggest challenges

• Preparing meals with everything sliding away like something from the Three Stooges.
• Baking a cake and getting it level when the boat was heeling over.

Best Breakfast

The chocolate ice cream sandwiches we had on our dawn arrival into Cabo San Lucas after 6 days at sea and a grueling last night. (They were followed by a second full English version later, which was nearly as good).

Best reason to bring kids

• To have them join you on deck to watch the dawn dolphins.
•  To see them become so competent at all the tasks on the boat.
•  To be reminded of the magic
  - After 6 days at sea we had a tough and tiring last night coming into Cabo San Lucas, during which everyone had each taken two 3 hour shifts in rough conditions. Our 5 year old had slept soundly and emerged bright eyed with wonder up the companionway as we were surrounded by the harbor, asking in awe, “How did we get here?”

Who knew?

• There were so many stars.
• That seals leap through the water like dolphins.
• That land has a scent and you can smell it out on the ocean.
• That it would be so fabulously exhilarating to fight fear and steer a boat at night on the Pacific with crashing waves spewing up from the bow like lava illuminated by the red of the navigation light and find you are not afraid at all, but smiling with your whole being.

About Clare Collins

Clare and her family have been living aboard and cruising ever since.  They are currently stationary while the kitty gets replenished and children take part in musical and academic pursuits.

Clare believes that with the attitude of adventure you can be a cruiser anywhere you find yourself.

Her family’s adventures are documented at www.ironbarque.net.

Read also on this website

• Fighting Fears: Taking the Plunge, by Clare Collins (Feature article)
  The account of Clare family’s quest to fulfill their dream of sailing
• Staying pink in a blue world, by Clare Collins (Blog)
• Ellen Sanpere: My first real cruise, by Ellen Sanpere (Blog)

Tell us about your first cruise!

Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.

Men become swarthy, they get to grow beards and have an excuse to be unwashed and scruffy.

Unfortunately, what can be dashing for ...Read more]]> Ann, on HanaCrew, made a sad observation as we sat on deck in the marina in La Cruz: “Cruising seems to make men more manly, while women,” she noted, “watch their femininity disappear.”

Men become swarthy, they get to grow beards and have an excuse to be unwashed and scruffy.

Unfortunately, what can be dashing for men is not nearly so attractive in women!

The transition from landlubber looks to cruising couture happens quite rapidly.

For ease and convenience (and the preservation of bilge pumps) women often cut their hair shorter; Though in my case it was the result of having my daughter cut my hair while we were on a heel!

Contemporary waitress with funky tan lines

Their nails end up shorter, whether they plan it or not. For ease of movement they wear shorts or cut-off pants and they watch all their clothes develop rust stains, bleach scars and general rumpled inelegance.

The choice of shoes is confined to “Crocs” or water trekking sandals, both of which have probably made their appearance near the top of a yahoo list for ugliest footwear, and which tan the feet in untidy geometrics.

Women have neither time nor space for cosmetic regimens, and shaving in such a way as to avoid clogging drains is awkward and time consuming.

Jewelry needs to be stowed away, both for safety around moving machines and because it can present a robbery risk (sad personal experience).

Yet despite all these obstacles, women do hold onto their femininity and I asked a number of fellow cruisers what they do to maintain it.

Cruising is certainly not the domain of the diva. One woman I met was used to a maid, and while we would all agree that having one would present the ultimate solution to a host of challenges, we would also conclude that neither she nor her maid are ever likely to leave the dock.

I have made a point of asking friends without maids what life-line connects them to their feminine side and they always seem to have one.

Interestingly, one seems to be all they do need.

• One cruiser insists on blow drying her hair once a week.
• Another has chosen Friday as her makeup day (though, mascara running in humid heat put her off even that small indulgence).
• One even made a New Year’s resolution that she was going to try in general to dress more like a flower.
• Another credits a daily nap with maintaining her looks, and no doubt, sanity.
• Other friends paint just their toe nails or make themselves inexpensive jewelry.  Many are the marinas with a busy group of women sharing beads, materials and artistic talent.

No matter how you try to pare down your wardrobe before cruising you will still find yourself wearing only a small portion of it.

With nothing more than a change of “Crocs” and a color co-ordinated cover-up, you can take your bland boat wear to luncheon, window shopping or a dinner out.

The trouble is you still need to have clothes for the extremes of heat and cold just in case. I need to keep revisiting my clothes, packed tightly in geological layers, in order to reacquaint myself with what I have.

I found I actually have some pretty clothes somewhere round the cretaceous period, but the occasions to wear them are so few and far between. And then there’s the risk that the white skirt you do put on will find the one splash of oil that made its way from the oil change in the engine room to the rim of the navigation station (though for that disaster I found that the product “Goop”, by Critzas Industries, was miraculous).

White is, in general, a good color to have a lot of because of its bleachability, and nothing screams “I’m clean and fresh and my life is in order” so well as a white shirt after the first shower on hitting land. Wrinkle proof clothes or ones that are supposed to look wrinkled are good to find.

Remember what’s in your wardrobe when you wander through the craft markets and you end up with outfit-creating accessories

Having one wardrobe item that can dress up your standard live-aboard livery is economical of both space and cost for those times when more glamour is required. A shawl is probably the easiest such item to store, and a stunning variety can be found on all your travels.

Having two pieces or accessories of your outfit match in color is also amazingly powerful at glamorizing and pulling together a look from cheap and cheerful. Keep this in mind when hesitating over dazzling choices in the markets and decision making becomes easier.

While we are on the subject of maintaining looks we cannot overlook the importance of protecting our skin.

Me in a protective hat!

Our clothes might be irredeemably blotchy and wrinkled but our skin should not be. Wind and sun both burn so you need balaclavas and sun hats as well as sunscreen, moisturizer and lip protection.

Prevention and early detection are vital. Skin cancer is no respecter of age, as my 12 year old daughter found out when I insisted that a dermatologist remove a mole that had changed. The doctor suggested we watch it over time but my insistence proved providential when the lab results came back positive and an even wider margin of healthy tissue removal was prescribed.

None of us need to sun bathe in order to get a color, or indeed, to manufacture the vitamin D that we are now told we are short of. We already spend so much of our days outside, and most of us have managed our movements to ensure almost constant summer.

What can I not do without?

During my childhood in Australia there was a television advertisement for “Mum” brand deodorant that consisted of a scantily clad woman coyly enumerating all the things she could do without. These included her bra and her boyfriend, but she insisted she could not do without her “Mum”.

So what, you ask, can I not do without?

Personally I have developed a wardrobe that could be classified as contemporary waitress, which makes mixing and matching decisions obsolete.

I won’t go anywhere without a chapstick. My make-up bag consists of a moisturizer and a lip stick. A good set of cuticle scissors, tweezers a pumice stone and a razor constitute my personal care arsenal. I would also agree emphatically with the advertisement model on the importance of an antiperspirant deodorant. At the end of the ad, however, she confides that she can’t actually do without her boyfriend.

And in the end, for all the cruising women I meet, after all my random sampling and personal experience, what can they not do without? What is the essential solution to the challenge of staying pink in a blue world?

Connections to other women.

Cruising women in Ensenada have been meeting for four years every Friday morning to paint and craft.

However closely bound they are as a cruising team with their husbands, women need the company of other women, even more than they need a maid (OK I might be going out on a limb with that one).

Hands of friendship transferring skills in a jewelry workshop

Women are extraordinarily rapid at forming deep supportive friendships and it is these bonds, formed in the challenging, changing situations that cruising women find themselves, that I believe are more crucial than any beauty regimen.

The value of those beading groups is not so much in the baubles created but in the bonds cemented. Clearly it is important to maintain at least one link to the pink pursuits of a former existence, but more than anything, just being able to spend time with women in non boating chores is what helps the most.

About Clare Collins

Clare and her family have made their home on one of the BT Challenge race boats.  They are currently stationary as they work to revive the kitty before continuing home to Australia.

Clare has a passion for textiles and seeks out embroidered or appliqué work and fabric dolls made by the indigenous people of the places she visits.

Her family’s adventures are documented at www.ironbarque.net. The account of her family’s quest to fulfill their dream of sailing can be found on this website: “Taking the Plunge”.

Read also on this website

• Lipstick Sailor, by Lanea Riley
• Beauty and Da Boat (Gwen Hamlin’s Admiral’s Angle column #20):
  Keeping ourselves looking good is not so hard, but it’s different!
• What we wear (Admiral’s Angle column #10):
  Most cruisers pack way too many clothes and the wrong kind.  Forethought will help space and laundry issues.
• Shampoo and soap for bathing in salt water? by Women & Cruising
• Fighting Fears: Taking the Plunge by Clare Collins

How do you maintain your femininity aboard?

Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.