Needing Less Doing More

Tag: plans

4 Months Out

There is nothing better than to know that you don’t know.

-Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)

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NIla Girl through the trees.

As Ren and I drive down US 17 South in a rented 10’ Budget moving truck I realize that I am not sure what our plans are.  Yeah, I know where we are headed and when we have to be at Port Everglades to ship out cargo over to the Bahamas but what about our plans?  We do not even really know what we are doing or where we will be in four months from now.  Part of me is terrified by this fact.  The other part is ecstatic at the prospect of change and adventure.  There is a third part of me also.  the third part is saying, “Yeah, yeah, no plans…great.  Yeah, yeah, excitement…whatever.  But how will you make it happen?”  Everyone would be living like we do if they could answer that question with 100% certainty.

Although we do not know what lies ahead of us four months from now what we do know is that we are about 1/4 of the way into a two year plan.  The two year plan includes traveling on Nila Girl and focusing solely on freedive training and competition.  For two years we will suck up all of our financial hardships, missing our friends and family and coping with out other non-conformities in order to pursue these goals.  This brings me to a valid point and one worth making.  How are we doing what we are doing?  How are we maintaing our relationship along the way.  The short answer and the most relevant one is that we make goals and we stick to them.  If I want to jump ship in a year and abandon sailing it is not an option.  We are committed to two years.  If I get tired of training and competing, too bad, two years.  “Stick to the plan” is a mantra developed by Ren, myself and our buddy, Nick Mevoli.  When faced with a fork in the road traveling through the Caribbean we always fell back on this mantra to help make our decisions.  When I want to jump ahead deeper and deeper in my freedive training, Ren and I rely on this mantra to keep the focus and keep us from getting injured or burnt out.  The simple act of setting common goals together is productive.  It assures both of us that our concerns and needs are being considered.  That our hopes for the future will not be washed up on a Bahamian shore one day where we reach down to pick it up, not even recognizing our hope for what it was.

Setting and sticking to the plan shines a light at the end of the tunnel.  If we get tired, bored or craving stability there is always an exit strategy.  I encourage everyone to grab life by the horns, live for the moment, carpe diem, blah, blah, blah but please and especially if you have a significant other to consider, do not be afraid to commit to a change of plan or at least the option for one even if it is a temporary solution.  It’s ok to make plans and it’s ok to stick by them.  It doesn’t mean you have lost your thrill for life, your edge…it means you care about something or someone other than just yourself.  We are in this together and by having goals and discussing them openly, both partners actually feel like this is true.  Like they are part of something bigger, a team.  The work of a team is a beautiful thing.  I am no lifestyle or marriage counselor.  You’ll smirk to hear that I have been married less than two years.  The advice of goal setting is timeless and transcends my limited life experience. 

Whether you are attacking credit card debt, planning to start a a family or working towards the trip of a lifetime, break the unmanageable , daunting parts of your life into smaller bits.  $40,000 of debt sounds like a lot more than a transitional plan would.  A plan where you never look at the $40,000 but look at the debt in terms of  monthly and yearly goals.  If paying off the debt isn’t a real goal, you will never make it happen.  Sit down with your partner and discuss goals in terms of 6, 12. 2 or 5 year plans.  If is was not for this organized approach to managing our lifestyle two people with mediocre paying jobs like ours could not have ever made this happen.  The finances of this trip must be discussed often, sometimes daily (or every time the talk needs to happen).  Sure the conversation isn’t always pleasant.  Sure the tone becomes accusatory and mocking sometimes but we get through it together and keep each other’s attitudes in check.  Besides, a hostile tone can even be productive.    It let’s people know you care.  Nothing wrong with righteous anger.  We live with the same standards working towards the same goals..sometime grudgingly.  However, this team approach to life makes it a lot easier to assess when one of us looses track of the plan.

I know this little equation sounds a bit cheesy but it’s true:

goals+communication+compromise=anything you want!

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A Look Back Before Looking Forward

Our two year plan:

1.Conquer the world.  If that fails…

2.Dedicate the next two years to freediving and sailing around in Nila Girl.

After two years:

1. Figure out if we want to go back to life on land, 8 hour work days, traffic jams, television….

A LOOK BACK BEFORE LOOKING FORWARD

12/6/12

As the first installments of the next set of Nila Girl blogs let’s start with a factual account of last years accomplishments, pitfalls, experiences and observations.

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Tracks from Nila Girl’s first voyage. Highlights included…well…everywhere but especially Cuba.

Total Miles Traveled: ~3,677

Countries Visited: 4

Communist Countries Visited: 1

Crew Along the Way: 3

Failed Marriages Under the Pressure of Confined Space: 0!!

Plane Tickets for Oreo: 2

Freediving World Records Earned: 3

Fish Harvested While Trolling Under Sail: 9

Lures Lost: 2

Bags of Stacy’s Pita Chips Consumed: 4

Bottles of Cuban Rum Drank: 2

Gallons of Diesel Burned: 70

Bottles of Sriracha Consumed: 2

Rolls of Toilet Paper Used: 30

Adventures Left Un-adventured: Too Many

Unforgettable Moments: Infinite

Looking forward to catching you all up on this seasons’s adventures.  The newer adventures will likely include more about our freediving exploits as our new two year plan is all about freediving and living free!

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Any Last Words?

“But what shall I do with my furniture?”  My gay butterfly is tangled in a spider’s web then.  Even those who seem for a long while not to have any, if you inquire more narrowly you will find have some stored in somebody’s barn.”

-Thoreau

We cast off the dock around 11:00pm on Wednesday, November 23.  Already exhausted from three days of all work, no sleep (it’s more work than you may think to get your affairs in order, get a boat in order, and provision a boat for a seven month tour!) we had to take advantage of the weather window.  Down the dark northeast Cape Fear we went, on our way to downtown Wilmington.  It was cold as ice and a bit windy, what can you do?  We put on more clothes and tried to get excited about our adventure.  The moment I was hoping for, the elation after leaving the dock, was pretty understated.  It turns out I wouldn’t feel that ‘moment’ for another three days. 

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Ren taking the opportunity for a little nap.

I tried not to let doubt creep in as I patiently waited for something to happen.  Anything really.  Anything sign to justify our decision to quit our jobs, sell our stuff (all of our stuff), move on a boat, and leave our families behind.  I waited, not so patiently, for a white dove to land on our bimini top, a shooting star to spell out my name in the sky, Oreo to get up and start dancing a jig, or even Ren to just tell me everything is going to be alright.  In his exhausted state, he was not in a position to offer support to a needy wife.  I shouldn’t have been in the position to feel so needy.  I mean come on, how many people take a chance like we were taking?  How lucky are we to not be paralyzed by fear.  Fear stopping us from our dreams!  But I was paralyzed, not literally of course, but with fear.  That too would pass, but it is still taking time.

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Ashley keeping warm in nice sailing conditions.

As we approached downtown Wilmington I called my brother, at 3;00am, half hoping he would still be out and about ready to meet us for a beer.  I knew that even if he answered we wouldn’t be stopping for that beer.  It’s kind of like taking off a band-aid.  You gotta rip it off, you can’t slowly pull, one arm hair at a time, until the thing  is off.  We had to keep on going.  We had already said our goodbyes.

We left the Cape Fear river behind us around 7:00 am on Thanksgiving Day.  Our first ocean passage was narrowing in on us.  Once you leap from the precipice, there is no turning back.  The leap off our edge was painless, we landed in water.  The sailing on the first day was good.  The wind was up, and we were able to sail at a nice beam reach. 

Let me digress.  Ren has worked extremely hard to learn all systems on the boat.  Since we do not have the option of throwing and endless supply of money every one of Nila Girl’s whims one of us had to learn to be resourceful so that most every repair could be made by us.  Two words, “Not it!”.  Because of Ren’s capabilities as primary captain, engineer, mechanic, husband, etc. he decided to engineer a wheel adapter for our self steering wind vane.  A manufactured wheel adapter, $500.00.  Ren’s wheel adapter, $50.00.  Knowing ahead of time when to buy the real thing, Priceless.  As we were getting ready to settle in, on the same side of the cockpit of course, and let our trusty Windpilot take over for us for a while, we learned that the wheel adapter Ren created just wouldn’t work quite right.  Damn!  I guess that’s what you get when you are rushing the boat for a weather window, not to mention, you quit your job and have to dodge town ASAP in order to stop spending money out of your newly fixed income.

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The lee cloth keeping Ren snuggled up on the starboard side of Nila Girl.

Back to sailing down a nice beam reach.  So we were steering down a nice beam reach and decided that hand steering all night just wouldn’t do.  Ren taught me something valuable at that moment.  Something to store in the vault of Sailing Information in my brain.  Not to be   immediately discarded with other sailing lectures from him such as, “trim this sail like this blah, blah blah”, “…then release the switch, then push this button here, blah, blah, blah”, or “winch this here and tie the so and so knot to cinch blah, blah blah”.  No, this advice was something I could immediately start practicing.  You can actually let the boat sail itself, if you’re not downwind, and you set the sails perfect and lock the wheel in place.  Holy crap!  You would’ve thought I won the lottery.  I was going to be able to read, in 15 minute intervals, while on watch.  This was going to be A-Ok.

The wind blew all day and into the night.  We kept watch in 3 hour intervals, which worked great.  Ren sewed us a couple of lee cloths (I told you he was sickeningly resourceful…lucky me!) which I couldn’t imagine spending a night in the ocean without.  They turned our downtime between watches from fitfully tossing around on a settee cushion that’s already a bit too small into a decent little nap.  I actually became so fond of the lee cloths that when we later anchored in the ICWW I preferred to sleep on the settee cushion that still had the lee cloth up.  Sleeping next to one is like being cradled in your mother’s arms.  I may have just been homesick.

We survived our first day and night at sea.  We didn’t kill ourselves or each other.  Oreo faired well too.  At first, all three of us felt a bout of sea sickness.  No chunks, just nausea.  Ren and I ate Gin Gins, in part because they are supposed to ease the nausea of motion sickness, in part because they are freaking delicious.  Oreo tried one but didn’t like it so he fought the sickness by panting a lot.