I dealt with the gardening issue by bringing aboard window boxes and potted plants.

I put a layer of heavy pebbles in the bottom of the boxes, then put in potted plants in their [...]]]> I have always said the two things most cruising women agree they miss most are their children/grandchildren and their gardens.

I dealt with the gardening issue by bringing aboard window boxes and potted plants.

My outside garden, always changing

I put a layer of heavy pebbles in the bottom of the boxes, then put in potted plants in their pots (if they are only going to bloom for a few months), or actually plant them (if they are long bloomers like geraniums).

The rocks are to give enough weight so the box doesn’t tip over or blow away, since the potting soil is so lightweight.

This is my “back porch garden”, and with such limited space as you have on a boat, I give away the plants that are out of bloom.

My flower basket on the galley table.

Inside the boat, I keep some potted plants that do well without sunshine, and I keep a number of them snugged together in a flat basket to eliminate the danger of tipping over. If they are single containers, I stick them down with museum putty, or put them in the sink while traveling.

This has become a suitable substitute for the large garden I had at home.

It is also easy to grow various herbs, like basil, if your preference is to grow something that’s good for dinner.

The other compensations are visiting great gardens along your path of travel, or even taking walks along nearby roads, and photographing the wild flowers you will find.

Everybody is photographing the black iris, Netanhya

As much as I loved the ancient sites we visited in the Med, it was the wildflowers in Israel, and their pictures, that gives me the most long lasting satisfaction. Following are some illustrations, of what I am talking about.

Lotus Creticus	Alkana Strigosa Borignaceae

The Rothschild garden, outside Hifa, Israel	Black Iris, Netanhya

Hope this inspires someone, and makes them realize you don’t have to leave your favorite pastimes out of your life, just because you are cruising.

It opens your doors to a world of plants you would not see if sitting in one spot ashore, and by using your camera, and even searching out the identities of what you photograph, you will have these memories for as long as you wish.

Beverly and David Feiges
Aboard Cloverleaf
Abaco, Bahamas

About Bev Feiges

After 21 years on a Cal-46-3 sailboat, Bev and her husband moved aboard Cloverleaf, their second cruising boat, a 61-foot custom Krogen motoryacht.

Self-described “coastal cruisers”, they have traveled the eastern seaboard from Canada to Florida, much of the Caribbean, and with a little help from Dockwise Yacht Transport, much of the Med, from the Balearics to Turkey, south along the coast to Egypt, through the Suez Canal, as far south as Abu Tieg.

You can read Bev’s blog, “Cruising with Cloverleaf“, at www.feiges.blogspot.com.

Bev is also a contributor to Gwen Hamlin’s “Admiral’s Angle” column.

Read also on this website

• Handholds, handholds, handholds, by Bev Feiges
• Bev Feiges makes her case for an electric galley aboard
• Bev’s contribution to our feature article “Refitting the Galley: 12 Experiences”

More information (external links)

• Bev and Dave Feiges’s blog: “Cruising with Cloverleaf”
  With 60 years of boating experience, Bev and Dave Feiges have seen it all. From racing inland lake scows, to cruising and living aboard sailboats and trawlers for the past 30 years, they have developed opinions on almost every aspect of life on the water, especially with an eye toward the needs of older boaters

Do you have a garden aboard your boat?

Let us know.

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

we called them “enriched” guides because we wanted to include more than just the “mileposts and signposts” of transiting from one port to another.

When we cruised, we most enjoyed the learning experiences along the way. Although we were busy piloting, we were curious about the stories [...]]]>

When my husband Mark and I started writing cruising guides,

we called them “enriched” guides because we wanted to include more than just the “mileposts and signposts” of transiting from one port to another.

When we cruised, we most enjoyed the learning experiences along the way. Although we were busy piloting, we were curious about the stories behind the island’s names, the birds and plants we were seeing, and the local history. But the existing guides didn’t fill in enough details. And I couldn’t tote along enough field guides, nature books, and regional history reading to cover the miles!

Interpretive vignette from “Managing the Waterway” (Mule Key to Loggerhead Key)

So when we started our series, although they are first and foremost navigation books, we decided to include what we called “interpretive vignettes”: short but detailed background reading on the sights, sounds, and stories along the way.

• What marine animal makes that crackling noise under the hull at night?
• What causes bioluminescence?
• How can a large pelican hit the water at such high speeds?
• How far can a flying fish fly?

Our cruising guides were a perfect business outlet for our mutual passions: Mark’s passions for computers, photography, design, and boats; and my passions for the outdoors, nature, writing, and research.

Cruising is like living an eco-tour.

When you cruise, nature is all around you. Although I try to balance the vignettes to include history, geography, geology, archaeology, and so on, my favorite vignettes to write are nature-based. I’m an avid (Mark says obsessive) bird-watcher (now called a “birder”), but I’m particularly interested in birds in their larger ecological context, which means plants, insects, climate, etc.

To help me write the vignettes, sometimes I think of myself as a guide on an eco-tour, interpreting all the amazing natural sights along a particular waterway or in an anchorage.

Atlantic Puffin

When you live aboard a boat, natural phenomena that other people pay to experience with a nature tour are regular daily sightings. Destinations that folks go on birding trips become your home for days or weeks!

In the Dry Tortugas, we anchored for days surrounded by the racket of thousands of sooty terns and brown noddies. They were our all-day companions. Most birders have to take a ferry out to the island and only spend a few hours before being herded back aboard for the return trip.

When we sailed the coast of Maine, we charted our course along Eastern Egg Rock to experience the successful reintroduction of an Atlantic Puffin colony. We had front row seats as puffins commuted back and forth with beak-fulls of tiny fish.

I was reminded of the unique vantage point of the cruising lifestyle when I read Return of the Osprey, by David Gessner. The author fervently wished to see an osprey haul a fish out of the water in its talons. I can’t even count how many times I’ve witnessed this event from our boat at anchor. Wildlife, doing their daily chores, are your neighbors when you live aboard.

But I want to do more than just “watch birds.”

On land, I love participating in projects that aid bird conservation. There are countless opportunities for this: Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs), Important Bird Area (IBA) surveys, or the Breeding Bird Atlas.

But what about when I’m birding aboard? Although I love watching birds, and searching for new birds, it’s not enough. Writing our cruising guides helps scratch that itch by letting me share my knowledge about common bird species. I also write articles on more advanced birding for nature magazines.

Now I’m ready to start my next project: a “CBC at Sea.”

As I brainstormed how I could bring my passion for bird conservation onto a moving vessel, I came up with the idea of a “CBC at Sea.”

CBC at Sea:

A call to those who spend time at sea to establish a worldwide annual bird count and contribute their ocean sightings to a citizen-science database for the study and conservation of pelagic species.

The cruising community is a huge untapped resource for citizen science. We are tuned in with our environment, educated, and interested in the marine world. We explore the less-traveled areas. And there are literally thousands of us out there!

Bridled Tern

Remember all the amazing bird sightings you’ve experienced at sea? The tropic bird colony along a rocky cliff? A seabird that followed your stern wake? The tired songbird that landed on your gunwale? The birds seen as you dinghied to a little island off your anchorage?

If you’re on the water and interested in nature, then you can really help.

Your sightings matter since there aren’t too many scientists who have the time and money to be where you are! Citizen science is the new thing in this massively-connected digital world. Research and conservation databases need reports from those of us who live unconventional lifestyles in unconventional places (admit it, live-aboard cruising is highly unconventional!)

It’s fine if you’re not a bird-whiz. We need to start somewhere and, just like land birding over the decades, knowledge will come in time. But we need to start getting the data and spreading awareness sooner than later! For example, when the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred, so little was known about seabirds on the Gulf of Mexico that the early spill data basically had to function as baseline information.

The initial idea is to have boaters from around the world record their local bird observations on a one-day count. Observations would be submitted to a central database, such as Cornell University’s eBird.

If you’re home-schooling, this is a perfect project to teach children about ornithology, marine biology, data-gathering and recording, citizen science, and seabird conservation. There remain so many unanswered questions about ocean birds, such as where some species breed or winter. Your child can help answer these puzzles!

If you’re interested in participating or staying updated about the CBC at Sea, send me an email at diana@managingthewaterway.com. I’ll send information as the project develops.

Get Involved in Seabird Citizen Science!

Even if you don’t consider yourself a birder, here are some tips to help you or your home-schooled child identify what you see.

1. Purchase a field guide for your area. Women and Cruising’s website includes many excellent regional suggestions.
2. Take notes or draw sketches of what you see. First look and record; identification can come later.
3. Ask locals. Their knowledge of nature usually far surpasses what’s available in field guides or even web searches.
4. Jot down what locals call a bird. Do they call it a “dry land booby” or a “diablotin”? That’s a black-capped petrel. Many regional field guides include local names.
5. Submit your sightings to Cornell’s eBird database so it can be used to help bird conservation and study trends (www.ebird.com). This is a great activity for home-schoolers.

About Diana Doyle

Diana Doyle and her husband Mark write the cruising guide and electronic charting series, Managing the Waterway. They wrote their first two guides, covering the Intracoastal Waterway and Florida Keys, while cruising on a PDQ catamaran and home-schooling their son.

Diana began birding at age seven, when her third grade visiting teacher, a “twitcher” (compulsive bird-lister) from the U.K., ignored the state-mandated curriculum and took his students birding all day—resulting in an entire class in remedial summer school. She recovered from that early academic setback to earn a Ph.D. from Yale and is still birding forty years later. A former political science professor with a lifelong interest in environmental conservation, she also holds a 50-ton USCG Master’s License.

Mark and Diana’s latest guide is An Illustrated Cruising Guide to the Great Loop Inland Waterway: Chicago to Mobile. You can see details on all their titles, see Mark’s photos, download additional cruising guide resources, and get the latest guide updates at their website: www.managingthewaterway.com.

Read also on this website

• Katharine Lowrie sets sail to protect wildlife
• Take Your Passion Cruising: Birdwatching
• Cruising Women’s bookstore: Nature guides that Women and Cruising contributors carry aboard their boats

More information (external links)

• Christmas Bird Count, from Wikipedia
• Audubon Official Christmas Bird Count (CBC) page
• What is an Important Bird Area?
• The ebird website (on-line database of bird observations)
• Details on Mark and Diana Doyle’s cruising guides: www.managingthewaterway.com

Has cruising given you a unique opportunity to explore YOUR passions?

Do you have stories to share about how cruising has brought you up close to nature?

Do you want to get involved with the Christmas Bird Count at Sea?

Let us know.

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

Okay, I might be a bit obsessive about my trash and I admit it, but I come by it [...]]]> Imagine this…You are one week out on a three week trip and you realize that funky odor is coming from your trash and there is no place to toss the bag and get it off the boat.

Okay, I might be a bit obsessive about my trash and I admit it, but I come by it honestly.

We have taken three trips, each three weeks in length up the Rio Macareo, one of the outflow rivers of the Orinoco. We have also spent a month in the Venezuelan out islands, Las Tortugas, Los Roques and Las Aves without a place to get rid of our trash.

If I know that we will be without a trash deposit facility for more than a few days I start sorting and managing the trash.

Sorting the trash

In the Rio Macareo there was no trash deposit facility.

Organic trash is all food waste and it gets deposited into a closed container. I use a 5-liter Rubbermaid container. The lid fits tightly and the walls of the container are straight, so it is an easy container to rinse.

Burnable trash, such as paper towels, toilet paper and any paper wrapping get segregated into a separate container. Since this will have to get burned I try not to put wet paper in the burnables and will even try to dry paper towels. This should be mostly dry and non-smelly. I keep the toilet paper in a separate bag and do not open that until the flames are hot.

Non-burnable trash will be all the plastic, glass bottles, cans and other food wrappers.

How we get rid of our trash

I keep my organic trash until I can toss it overboard in deep water or where it will not wash up on a beach or in view of someone. The Macareo River is a large volume river and a bit of food trash will not disturb the ecology of the river, but I did not want to be seen tossing trash in the river so I waited until dark to toss the trash. If we are at anchor every few days we take a dinghy trip outside the island water flow to toss the organic at sea.

The burnable trash can be burned when you have a beach or shore nearby.

Trash burning up the Macareo was a buggy affair. (Photo by Chuck Shipley)

Getting the “burnable trash” to burn can be quite difficult.

Toilet paper does not burn well even before it is used – enough said on that.

We start a small fire with local wood and wait until it is a burning well before adding any of our trash.

My husband, Hunter, uses an accelerator fluid of approximately one part gas to five parts diesel. He mixes about a cup and we wet down the fuel before we light it. It is not safe to add the accelerator after there is fire.

If that makes you uncomfortable bring some dry newspaper and collect plenty of kindling and make a good fire before adding the trash.

Make sure you get all the stuff burned and put the fire out.

Trash burning up the Macareo was a buggy affair. On wet season trips we wore long pants, long sleeves and head nets.

The non-burnables are the most troublesome.

Drying trash

This is where I get a little obsessive. This is where you have to be meticulous.

You need to wash and dry everything before you toss it into the non-burnable bag. It will only take a few days for the tuna can to stink and then you have its company for the rest of the trip. That means plastic food containers, ziplocks that held food and even the tetra pack that held your milk.

You can use seawater for washing and then dry the trash (now, doesn’t that sound stupid?) and even after weeks at sea your trash should not be stinky.

If you are at sea or will be making passages in deep water you can sort out your bottles, cans and paper for deposit in Davey Jones’ locker, but make sure there is no plastic. The paper will float for a while, but soon will sink and disintegrate.

Here is the rule – no plastic in the sea.

About Devi Sharp

I come by my trash fetish honestly – In my misspent youth I was a river guide on the Rio Grande for week-long trips, and more recently Hunter and I have taken many long canoe and kayak trips in the Alaskan Wilderness.

On all of these trips we had to manage our trash and in Alaska the trash had to be non-smelly and bear-proof. On the Grand Canyon kayak trips we had to pack out all trash (including the porta potty).

When I am not managing trash I hike on the islands, teach yoga, watch birds, write and chase green flashes.

We have been living aboard our Island Packet 45, Arctic Tern, since December 2005 and never looked back.

Read also on this website

• Katharine Lowrie sets sail to protect wildlife

More information (external links)

• Recent articles by Devi Sharp in All at Sea
• Devi’s blog: Artic Tern

How do you handle your trash when you are sailing in remote areas without disposal facilities?

Let us know.

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

Back in [...]]]> If you’re not an animal lover, you may as well skip this particular log entry.  Just go ahead and exit the site, or move on to the next post, because what I’m about to talk about will only deeply affect those who have large hearts for God’s creatures.

Here’s a story for you

Back in the fall of 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and
happened upon Cuba, which he claimed for Spain.

Among the many things he brought ashore were his Spanish horses, beautiful creatures bred for their hardiness, endurance and courageous spirit, and with them, Columbus established two horse farms on the island.

Fast forward 400 years.

At the turn of the 20th century, the pine forest on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas, was being clear-cut, and logged.

Not having any modern machinery in those days, nor work animals on the island, horses were brought in from Cuba to drag the logs out of the forest.

Many years later when tractors became available, the horses, now obsolete, were abandoned and turned loose in the forest to fend for themselves, simply castoffs.

Bred to survive harsh conditions, they made the sun scorched island and the regenerating forest their home, and they thrived despite all odds.

Today, DNA samples prove that the wild horses of Abaco, which are now recognized by the Horses of Americas Registry as Abaco Barbs, are direct, undiluted descendants of the Spanish horses introduced to Cuba by Christopher Columbus in 1492, and brought to Abaco in the late 1800s.  There are no similar horses in Cuba today.

As of this date, only 6 horses remain from a herd of about 200, on the verge of extinction for the second time in recent years.

These beautiful creatures have become endangered by the environmental changes brought about by man; the road which cut through their forest, the relentless clear-cutting of same, the unspeakable atrocities perpetrated by men who hunted and slaughtered them, the fires which destroyed their natural grazing source, the poisonous weeds that grew up in the aftermath of bulldozing.

Against all odds, these 6 remaining Abaco Barbs, known to be the most endangered breed of horse on our planet, continue to fight courageously for their survival.

That, effectively, is the end of the story.

Most people really don’t care. The Bahamian government doesn’t seem to much care, either.

But there’s one woman here in Marsh Harbour, who lives on her boat, and who devotes her life to preventing the extinction of the Abaco Barbs.

Skip and I met with her, to see how we could help, how we could give back, how we can make a difference.

We’ll start by volunteering our time in the Buck-a-Book bookstore, where, not surprisingly, books cost a buck, and all the money generated goes to the non-profit fund for the horses.  And the fund needs money badly.

Now, if I were to ask you whether you thought you could afford to spend $10 a month on eating out, you’d tell me not to be ridiculous.

Of course you can’t eat out for $10/month.  You can’t even buy lunch for two at McDonalds for $10.  I’m not even sure that you can buy a 6-pack of Bud Lite for $10 (you definitely can’t in the Abacos), and I know for an absolute fact that $10 won’t get you more than two boxes of Cornflakes anymore.  I’ve thought about this a lot – Skip and I are on a tight budget out here – and I’ve concluded that in today’s economy, you can’t really do very much at all for $10/month.

But you could make an enormous difference for the Abaco Barbs for $10/month.

If we all did it – if everyone of us who gets this log did it, (which doesn’t include the non-members who simply log in and read from the site), we’d have generated $6750 in one month.  In ONE month!!

(Lydia originally posted this entry in the log that she sends out to friends and family. When she is counting readers and members, she is referring to readers of her log/newsletter.)

That amount of money would go a long way towards catching up the wages for the two loyal men who stand watch over the 5 miles of fence around the horses (constantly weeding around it and repairing it, among other things), who haven’t had a paycheck since July, but are still working, such is their devotion.

I don’t know how you feel about your raison d’etre, but I believe that if I see an opportunity to make a positive difference in this world, I’m obliged to take it.   I mean, really – if you are reading this log, I can safely say that we all agree with that, right?

So, for $10 every month, I am going to be a part of preserving the oldest, and most endangered breed of horse on this earth.

I’m going to help repair the damage that mankind caused these creatures; I’m going to help stave off their extinction for at least another month.  I’m doing it for the horses, and I’m doing it for my grandchildren and your grandchildren, and all their grandchildren, and for the beautiful planet we live on.

I think that most of us could scratch up $10 each month from the change under the seats of our cars and our sofas, not to mention what gets left in our pockets in the laundry hamper.  Would you help me?

Please take the time to look at the site – www.arkwild.org.

Please click the donation button.  I already have.

Love, Lydia

S/V Flying Pig
Morgan 46 #2

Related articles

• Katharine Lowrie sets sail to protect wildlife
• An Addiction: The Fascinating beauty of seashells
• Cruisers Give Back (Admiral’s Angle column #26)
• Taking Passions Cruising (Admiral’s Angle column #41)

What’s your passion? Have you taken it cruising?
Let us know. Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.