The Cynical Sailor & His Salty Sidekick: 2018

31 December 2018

Life In A Tree House, Or Stuck In The Boatyard With A Hole In Our Boat

We used to live on a sailboat in the water. Now, we live in a tree house. Well, not exactly a tree house. We still live on our sailboat, except now it's on land and you have to clamber up a ladder to get onto it. So it feels like a tree house, except it's a lot less fun.

My mom is going to have a heart attack when she sees this picture. Yes, mom, we climb up and down this several times a day. So far, no broken limbs.

We had always planned on hauling Tickety Boo out of the water and into the boatyard to do the bottom paint and take care of a few other things. But the plan was to do that after this season in the Bahamas. Not before.

We were busy getting ready to head off. Boat projects were coming along nicely, provisioning had begun in earnest, and I dug out my swimsuits. Then we discovered a crack in our hull. No bueno.

Could it be that my latest book, Bodies in the Boatyard, is coming to life? Finding a leak on their boat is exactly what happened to Mollie and Scooter. Let's just hope that's where the similarities end. I really don't want to stumble across any dead bodies behind our boat hidden under one of our dinghies.

So while we wait for the insurance process to sort itself out, we're stuck in the boatyard, living in our little tree house.

It's kind of an interesting way to live. When we want to fill up our water tanks, we have to tie the hose onto a line to pull it up on deck.

Our gray water from washing our dishes and brushing our teeth drains into a bucket which we have to empty regularly. Don't ask about the toilet arrangements. You really don't want to know.

In the meantime, while we're waiting to see what will happen with insurance, I've been working on the next book in my cozy mystery series, Poisoned by the Pier. Since the last book has started to come true, I'm thinking this one might end up being really boring and be all about a boat that nothing ever goes wrong with. That's the kind of story I'd like to come to life.

Did you have a tree house as a kid (or as an adult)? Does climbing up and down ladders make you nervous?

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26 December 2018

Wordless Wednesday | Christmas Decorations At Pittock Mansion, Portland OR

Wordless Wednesday is supposed to be about posting a photo(s) without any words. But, I'm a rule breaker, so here are a few words:

1 - While I was in Portland visiting my family, we went and saw the annual Christmas decorations at the historic Pittock Mansion.

2 - Every year they pick a different decorating theme. This year it was hobbies and pastimes including such things as knitting, stamp collecting, hiking, puzzles, card playing, painting, and my favorite pastime - drinking and eating.

3 - We don't decorate for the holidays on our boat, but if we did I think I'd do something with a bookish theme. Or maybe a Crazy Cat Lady theme.

What words does this picture(s) bring to your mind when you look at it?

For more Wordless Wednesday fun, click here.

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24 December 2018

Happy Holidays

Happy holidays to everyone from the crew of s/v Tickety Boo!

19 December 2018

Wordless Wednesday | Fun Library Display

Wordless Wednesday is supposed to be about posting a photo(s) without any words. But, I'm a rule breaker, so here are a few words:

1 - I think one of the fun parts of a librarian's job would be to put together displays of books based on various themes.

2 - This particular one caught my eye. The sign reads: "Families more dysfunctional than yours."

3 - I love how they used an old card catalog to display the books.

What words does this picture(s) bring to your mind when you look at it?

For more Wordless Wednesday fun, click here.

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17 December 2018

Life Lately From Coast To Coast

Things have been crazy since my last Life Lately post. Let's see. . .when I last left you it was the end of November. What's happened lately since?

After all of the Thanksgiving festivities, we tried to cut back on pigging out so much, but then we went for Ethiopian food in West Palm Beach. How can you not pig out when you're eating delicious sambusa, doro wat and miser wat? We took a bunch of people with us who had never eaten Ethiopian before. Thankfully, they loved it. Or, at least they said they did.

Then I took off for Portland, Oregon to visit my family (mom, sister, and two nieces). I made it out of the Charlotte airport in the nick of time before everything shut down due to a winter storm. Thankfully, I had packed lots of socks, mittens, and a hat. Once you get out of southern Florida, it's pretty darn cold.

We went on several fun excursions, including one to the Mt Angel Abbey and Seminary. If you're ever in that neck of the woods, definitely go pay the monks a visit cause there's a cool library, a fascinating museum, and the brother who works at the gift shop makes a seriously delicious mocha.

When your sister is a library person, this is what you do when you visit. Take a tour of a library. This one was designed by the famous Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto. We also toured the Portland Central Library and saw what happens behind the scenes.

The monk leading the tour, Brother Simon, really talked up the book sale they were having. So we bought a book plus a tote bag with the Abbey logo on it. I thought it might come in handy for my sister to take to work or the grocery store. Instead it's become a very coveted cat bed.

That's Georgie about to pounce. I think she was trying to make it very clear to Sebastian that it's her bag, not his.

This is Sebastian. He had to settle for napping on the bed. Yes, I got my Crazy Cat Lady fix while in Portland.

My nieces are seriously talented. My mom and I picked up one of them at her school. Miranda has been painting these great murals on the walls. Why didn't I go to a fun high school like that where they encourage you to turn boring white walls into artwork? Here's one she did with some friends, Kale, Sophia, and Taesha, last year.

And here's one she's working on by herself this year. Notice the underwater theme? Maybe she'll want to come sailing with us one day.

Miranda is also a published writer. I think her sales are probably better than mine. {grin} My other niece, Simone, is an extremely talented photographer. Check out her Flickr page. And they both get great grades and have gorgeous hair. Nothing like my high school days, that's for sure.

I also spent a lot of time visiting my mom at her new digs. She lives in this awesome building with really nice, interesting, and super active seniors. They're so active that I ended up doing back-to-back exercise classes with my mom one morning and couldn't keep up with the 102-year old lady next to me. You know someplace is a great place to live when they have a Crazy Cat Lady & Gents Society. The members get together once a month, drink wine, and talk about their cats. Sounds like my kind of place.

While I was away, Scott hauled out our sailboat on his own. Well, not exactly on his own. So many of our wonderful friends pitched in to help. Yay for wonderful friends! Tickety Boo is now in the workyard for repairs. But let's not talk about that anymore, shall we? It's all too depressing. {Photo credit: Tina Riley}

What's been going on in your life lately?

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12 December 2018

Wordless Wednesday | Exploring A Scrapyard

Wordless Wednesday is supposed to be about posting a photo(s) without any words. But, I'm a rule breaker, so here are a few words:

1 - Since the weather has cooled down a bit, we've been trying to go for walks in the morning. There's not a lot of places to walk to in Indiantown which is why we found ourselves walking up a dirt road to the local scrapyard.

2 - Humans throw away a lot of stuff in their lifetime.

3 - Did you notice the picture of the saddle in the dumpster?

4 - What's the most interesting thing you've disposed of or recycled lately?

What words does this picture(s) bring to your mind when you look at it?

For more Wordless Wednesday fun, click here.

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05 December 2018

Writing Aboard A Sailboat | IWSG

The Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is a place to share and encourage, where writers can express their doubts and concerns without appearing foolish or weak. It's a great place to mingle with like minded people each month during IWSG day.

Every month there's an optional question which may prompt folks to share advice, insights, a personal experience or story. Some folks answer the question in their IWSG blog post or let it inspire them if they're struggling with what to say.

This month's question is:

"What are five objects we'd find in your writing space?"

Check out how people have answered this month's question, as well as the other insecurities and writing topics they may have shared by visiting the IWSG sign-up list here. You can see how I answered the question below.

* * *

Hmm...what can I say about my writing space? Right now it's very, very messy. We have so many projects going on at the moment, that our entire sailboat is in chaos. Floorboards are up in the main living area due to a crack in our hull. There's a big hole in the side of our boat where we took one of our windows to rebed it. Tools are scattered everywhere. Oh, and did I mention that we don't have a working toilet on board?

The only place that we can sit down (or rather lay down) these days is in our aft cabin where our bed is. And that's where I've been trying to write these days. Ordinarily, it's a comfy, little nest, but even this room has stuff piled everywhere.

As I sat in my bed writing this blog post with my computer propped up on my lap, I looked around to pick out five objects to share with you. I decided to omit the bag of dirty laundry from the list, although, that's the first thing you see when you walk in. So, here we go - stuff in my writing space:

1 - A container of oatmeal. We started to provision for cruising to the Bahamas and I still need to find places to store all of our food. In the meantime, the oatmeal container provides a convenient perch for a toy dinosaur.

2 - Baskets full of clothes and dishtowels. When you live on a sailboat, you have very limited space and need to get creative when it comes to storing things.

3 - Collapsible water containers. We're going to fill these with distilled water for our batteries. We use four golf cart batteries for our power when we're not at a marina. We charge the batteries with our solar panels and our engine's alternator.

4 - A ziploc bag of tissues. Cardboard is a no-no on boats as they can harbor bugs, not to mention get all mildewy. I take tissues out of the boxes they come in and put them in ziploc bags. I need to do the same thing with my containers of oatmeal.

5 - A stack of books, some of which are ones that I've written.

Curious what our aft cabin looks like? Here are some pictures from when things were less chaotic. You can see more photos here.

Some of you may be asking yourself, "Where's Simon?" Well, my imaginary cat got so fed up with the chaos on board that he traveled forward in time to when all of our boat projects are completed and the boat is neat and tidy. In the future, there's plenty of space for him to take naps and play with his catnip mice. In the present, not so much.

What are five objects we'd find in your writing or work space?

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03 December 2018

November In Numbers

Clockwise from upper left: (1) new batteries = more power; (2) new charge controller = more amps into batteries; (3) new-to-us windlass = no more pulling up anchor by hand; (4) waiting for rigging inspection results = three nervous guys; (5) canvas & mainsail up = Tickety Boo looking more like a sailboat; and (6) varnishing project = fun with arts & crafts.

November was busy, busy, busy! We worked on a lot of boat projects and I released the second book in my cozy sailing mystery series - Bodies in the Boatyard. Boat projects went really well during the month, so well that we started to wonder when the other shoe would drop. And drop it did - we discovered a crack in our hull a couple of days ago (more on that in a future post). So instead of getting ready to head off to the Bahamas in January, we've made arrangements to haul out our sailboat, Tickety Boo, and move her to the boatyard in mid-December so that we can see the extent of the damage and address it. We'll also tackle a zillion other boat projects while we're there.

The scary thing is that I think my books are coming to life. In Bodies in the Boatyard, Mollie and Scooter discover a leak on their boat and have to haul their sailboat out. Let's just hope that's where the similarities end and that we don't run across any dead bodies.

Now, on to a recap of last month in numbers:

5 - Number of new batteries we bought for Tickety Boo. Four house batteries and one starter battery. The previous owner of our boat had removed the starter from the battery set-up. We've reinstated it. So reassuring to know that we have one battery dedicated to starting the engine, especially after that terrifying incident we had anchored off of Cat Island in the Bahamas.

2 - Number of portlights (or, more accurately, deadlights as they don't open) we replaced. One left to go. No more leaky windows. Although there is that pesky leak coming through the hull to deal with. {Sigh}

$1,532 - How much we spent on boat-related things in November. I expect to have several more spendy months ahead of us.

4 - How many days in a row we ate ham. The marina puts on a huge spread at Thanksgiving and there was so much food leftover. Usually people eat leftover turkey. Not us - we were all about the ham this year.

732 - Approximately how many mini-chocolate chips I put in my morning oatmeal. Last month, I reported that I put in 16 in my bowl. Scott pointed out that I was greatly underestimating my morning chocolate consumption levels and that I was misleading all of you, so I decided I should come clean. Yes, basically I eat a bowl of chocolate for breakfast with a few oats thrown in to make me feel less guilty.

1 - How many masts we have (Tickety Boo is sloop-rigged). This comes in handy when you're having your rigging inspected as you pay less than someone who has a cutter-rigged boat. I'm happy to report that Tickety Boo passed her inspection

$208 - How much we spent on eating out last month. There's been a lot of socializing going on at the marina lately. It's been a lot of fun to be reunited with our cruising friends - great times and lots of laughs.

1 - Number of books I read last month. Anyone who knows me will know that's pretty shocking. Usually I read quite a bit, but life was busy crazy during November. But if you're only going to read one book in a month, it should be a good one, and it was - Music Boxes by Tonja Drecker.

2,581 - How many words I wrote. I had high hopes of participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and knocking out the first draft of my next book, Poisoned by the Pier. I failed big time. I'll really need to get cracking on it this month.

In case you missed them, here are some of our favorite posts from last month from here and from my author blog:

Chloe the Coconut Husking Dog
Mrs. Moto's Murder Meows
Bodies in the Boatyard Now Available

How did last month go for you? What are you looking forward to next month?

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28 November 2018

Wordless Wednesday | Turkey Vultures

Wordless Wednesday is supposed to be about posting a photo(s) without any words. But, I'm a rule breaker, so here are a few words:

1 - We've been trying to go for a walk every morning. Along the way, we often run into the neighborhood turkey vultures.

2 - I always think of turkey vultures as the thugs of the avian world. Not the type of bird you'd want to run into in a dark alley.

3 - Here's a bit of strange trivia about turkey vultures that Google offered up: "Nestling Turkey Vultures projectile vomit to defend themselves." Gross, but I guess you got to do what you got to do to defend yourself.

What words does this picture(s) bring to your mind when you look at it?

For more Wordless Wednesday fun, click here.

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26 November 2018

Life Lately At Indiantown Marina

It's been ages since I've done a "Life Lately..." post. I'd say it's about time we had one, wouldn't you? so here's a few pictures and a few words about what's been happening lately at Indiantown Marina.

We had a fun Women Who Sail get-together on Halloween (the guys joined later). I was in awe of the culinary creativity of the ladies. Why yes, that pumpkin really is vomiting guacamole.

The bats on these deviled eggs are adorable. Just make sure you don't think they're edible. A couple of people made that mistake.

Our marine toilet is broken and we've been trying to decide whether to switch over to a composting one. Our friend Sandy on s/v Ragtime Gal built one and gave us a demonstration of their system. Yes, this is the kind of thing cruisers talk about. Just normal chit-chat about pee and poo.

Boat projects are in full swing. We've in the process of redoing our portlights (three down, one to go). Goodbye leaky boat.

This guy's name is Tick Tock. Alligators don't freak me out like they used to.

Before you know it, Halloween is over and Thanksgiving is on its way. Notice the use of the palm frond for the turkey's tail? That's how you do things in sunny Florida.

The marina throws a week-long Thanksgiving celebration with music, food, and drink. Seats are at a premium, but our friend, Michele, is the best when it comes to saving seats for everyone. You know what's better than Thanksgiving turkey? Thanksgiving ham! Who would have thunk it.

What's been going on in your life lately? What do you think about composting toilets?