Thoughts of Return to Why Knot
April 7, 2011
We have been at our land home now a few days and have had a chance to visit some friends and family. We are still in that process. We have had a go at those greasy enchiladas and BBQ done the right way (beef very slowly smoked with mesquite). This is a magic time of year in Texas to renew our citizenship, particularly in the Hill Country for it is here in March 1836 that the icon of Texas Liberty, the Alamo, fell and it is here in April that the Bluebonnets bloom, well if they have had enough rain. Rain is the problem here this year but there are a few of them to be seen. It’s a Texas thang, ya’ll.
We took the chance to bring much stuff home and lighten Why Knot’s load a bit. I think she raised a good inch and a half. Our return logistics have changed and we will take our old clunker back to Fort Pierce in a few weeks. That spinnaker we took to the Abacos and back to Florida thence back to Texas will make the trip back to Florida where it will reside in our clunker mobile storage unit (cmsu). Those that have followed our blog know it will have 4.500 miles on in by the time we get it back to the area of WK. So far, it has held up well, no wear and tear (especially since it has so little time in flight). Does 1.5 ounce spinnaker cloth wear out in the bag?
The process of our cruise thus far has changed our thinking on some things equipment wise. Big cooking utensils are nice but storage is a bear (not Bear). The amidships head on WK served well as a storage compartment but stuff like the big pots occupies too much room. I won’t mention those three large tubs of spare parts and projects also in that space. In the absence of guests, we will move the stuff out of that head to the guest quarters thus making available a much more suitable necessary room for those times when we are at sea. The simple fact is that our forward head, particularly in any kind of sea is a challenge since we observed it to move vertically and horizontally some seven to eight feet during a recent bout with Mother Ocean. Get the point? I wonder now that the shuttle program is ending if some of those space shuttle heads might be available?
We are looking forward to Phase V (yet fully defined) where we will have a chance to visit areas north of Charleston and perhaps some of those friends we have made that live there. While we have met folks all along the way from Texas it was mostly dock type meetings. Where we stayed in one place for a few days or even weeks, those friendships grew but infrequently. The trip to the Islands was awesome in that the anchorages and harbors were focal points for meetings and conversations about everything in the liquid world. We spent two months with dozens of folks facing the challenges of mail, communications with friends and family back home, with provisioning outside easy sources, with weather concerns every day and other such stuff that does not frequently challenge the cruiser in the land of the big box stores.
As a basic pack rat, I have changed. I no longer want to keep that cool zippered package that the dooderflam came in. We don’t need a dozen towels, a gallon of laundry detergent and two backup bottles of vinegar for the cruise up the East Coast. I will let the inventory of spares dissipate some since parts are relatively easy to obtain in the US. Besides that, waiting for parts is a secondary occupation of cruisers. Those with plans and/or limited time find it a bad thing but if you have no plan, schedule or destination, it is not a killer. “Bear, I cannot fix the broken quirkwhirller today due to lack of parts so I think I will take a nap. Nawh, I cannot shift to the toe rail refinishing because that is on schedule for manana”---- or not.
The picture is of Grabbers on Great Guana Cay, Abaco