Where do you go when it rains?

... or something we were asked just last week: "you stay on the boat all night?"  You kind of expect these questions from non-sailors, they only know fishing boats or maybe cruise liners. Because they have not thought about it, they really have no idea what life on a sailboat might be like.

We expect more from fellow cruisers though. We recently realized that the only fossil fuels we have personally used over the last seven months have been about 25 lbs of propane for the stove and maybe one gallon of diesel maneuvering with the ship's engine.

So we announced that to fellow cruisers at a beach pot luck. When they heard we had not run the engine or generator for so long their response was "We have read about people like you with no refrigeration and only a few lights. We could never live that simply".

But we do not live simply. We have used our Torqeedo 3 HP electric outboard daily getting back and forth to beach, we have a built-in fridge with Adler Barbour large vertical freezer, we have ice in our drinks and usually watch 3-4 hours of TV every evening, we make all our own fresh water with a 12V VMT NF-200 water maker, and we leave our LED anchor light on continuously. Oh, and we usually have warm if not hot water for washing dishes and showers and we also keep the phones and laptops charged up.

Some people would say we have taken our shore home life with us . . . and they would be at least partly correct. It is nice that the solar panels and wind generator are set-and-forget methods of maintaining our life style but it did take some thought on systems and implementation and no small initial monetary outlay. For example our 480 watts of solar panels ($500) are controlled by an MPPT control box ($550) that diverts excess afternoon solar power to a 12V/120V dual element water heater element ($100). When we have excess power, why waste it? We use a 1500 watt Prosine inverter ($1100) to supply clean AC power to all but cell phone chargers.

We know people can live extremely well with little or no electrical power. We are not in that group tho.  It did take us a while to realize we could live without ice cream in the drawer freezer or keeping 12 bottles of drinks in the upright refrigerator. By simplifying only a little though, we gained hugely from not having to listen to the generator every evening and especially not having to make frequent trips to the gas station.

Most of the cruisers we were around could not fathom our ability to live without a generator or running the main engine an hour in the morning and evening. I think now they are rethinking their systems.

Our no-interaction-required lifestyle changed this week though. Our Torqeedo outboard started acting strangely. I think fishing line that wrapped around the prop compromised the integrity of the seal around the motor shaft, letting seawater in. We had to mount the old 15 hp Mercury outboard on the dinghy so we will be back to gas station runs for a while.

Pressing Pause

We have just passed the three year mark for cruising. What we have seen and experienced has been fantastic and never to be forgotten, but we are now ready for a bit of change - like trying land-based living for a while.

For me (Mike) cruising at the not yet ripe age of 65 seems to have turned into endless body aches and problems that just were not an issue in my 40's.  The 5-year cruise in my 40's included scampers up hills with full provisioning backpack, and sitting on the sea bottom for 2 minutes at a time waiting for lunch to swim past.  Now I have maybe 20 seconds underwater time before having to broach and blow like a whale.  And hills? We are currently anchored in Brewer's Bay St. Thomas, USVI.  Between the beach where we land the dinghy and the parking lot where we get picked up by a bus to town is a hill that cruisers have named Mount Everest.  It is a mere 85 feet tall but leaves me huffing and puffing. And that is before we add cat litter, gin, and diet Coke.  Actually, now that I think about it, that would be the same as lugging all our groceries up stairs to an eighth floor apartment...

The 85 foot Mount Everest

Cate misses her peeps (friends and family) and especially the feeling of fulfillment she gets from teaching.  She has been going back one week a month since the first of the year to get her consulting business on track and coordinate a place for us to migrate.  She just rented us a cute cottage in Gulfport, Fl.  It is not big (ad says 2 bedroom NO king beds!) but after a boat, it should work great for us.

Two trips back Cate bought a sweet 2013 Prius Plug-In with less than 20,000 miles.  I know gas prices are lower than they have been in decades, but fossil fuels are still a limited resource and you know prices will only go back up from here.  Anyway, low gas prices means that economical hybrids like the Prius are selling very cheaply.  And oddly enough, used Plug-In models generally sell for less than the non-Plug-In variety.  Go figure!  It has exactly the same 50 mpg gas engine fuel economy, many options for the non-Plug-In are standard (backup camera, nav system, etc.) and the Plug-In has a 4kw battery that gives it 12 miles on an electric charge.  What's not to like?  And the cottage we are moving to has off street parking where we can plug it in!

Cate's new ride - 2013 Prius Plug-In

We intend to leave Horizon with a caretaker in Puerto Rico for this coming hurricane season.  She will be close to the biggest hurricane hole in the Caribbean and so should be safe from just about anything.

Our decision to leave her in the water and in Puerto Rico is that we wanted the option to flee back to her quickly if we need the respite from civilian life.  And when we come back, the fantastic cruising grounds of the Virgin Islands are only 60 miles away.