So close to sailing

Prepare the boat

Anna tejiendo las redes del guarda mancebos y Diego, arreglando los agujeros donde va fijado el carro de escota, después de descubrir que por ahi entraba agua. 

That meant, first of all, playing detectives and to be as students. Find little problems and try to understand what caused them, then investigate how they could be fixed, and then take action from a total inexperience in the matter. Among other things, we find water inlets and fix them and isolate almost all​ of the ship, since between the aluminum and the wood inside, there was no insulating material. If that is missing, not only does the boat boil when it is hot and freeze when it is cold, but condensation is produced permanently, which translates into droplets of water that wet the wood and ruin the interior. A wet hull increase the risk of electrolisis-  Isolating meant completely disassembling the ship, which in itself was not as difficult as reassembling. And it was  quite magical: discovering what our ship was like, getting to know it well, in each of its corners. Reassembling everything took much more time. Diego discovered talents for carpentry these months, and when we finished insulate he had become so enthusiastic about wood that he continued, creating a table for Mael, cabinets for Oiuna's cabin, some boards so that the books do not fall, a large wardrobe us, and many more details…. It's amazing what can be done with wood, creativity and a lot of patience!!!! We slightly modified the space as well, removing part of the bathroom to be attached to Mael's cabin.

Anna cleaning the aluminum hull to install an adhesive insulation.                        Diego enlarges Mae's room by annexing part of the bathroom.  

DIego removing rust and painting the replacement anchor                                                    Anna varnishing the tiller and spare tiller

Mae and a friend sanding the tiller                                                                                          Oiuna painting the wooden planks to assemble the bow roof

Many details appears liKe a safety net so that the cat, the children or ourselves do not fall into the water so easily... Repairing the radar and checking the navigation lights, fixing the entry of water into the boat and electric installation,  installing the lifeline to the that we could tie up, check the rigging and repair the cracked bolt that is in the top of the mast uuuuuppppp there... yes, details like that can take longer than it seems, and that make us learn a lot along the way.... The boat came with a 150 W solar panel. We decided to buy two more panels of 100 W each, and try that. We will see in a few months if it is enough or how we would have to complete it. The electricity will be used largely for the navigation electronics, the plotter, GPS, AIS, VHF, navigation lights, and for now to have a small refrigerator on and at night interior lights. We replaced all the lamps with LED lights, which illuminate very well and spend very little.

Prepare ourself

Terling Hayden said that travel belongs to the seamen and the wanderers of the world who cannot, or do not want, to fit in.

I believe that traveling already belongs to us. Surrendering to chance, to the present, taking risks, living without insurance or security. In that sense we are already prepared. Anyways about the sea, we know little. We began to read and read and read and read, theoretical books but also novels, absorb, learn, to be able to take this ship and discover the sea. Diego immersed himself in enormous navigation manuals, while I followed the exciting adventures of fictional or real characters at sea... In addition to that, books on how to tie knots, on nautical vocabulary, on tips and advice for living at the sea economically start to fall into my hands: how to preserve food on board or invent an automatic pilot with a rope and an elastic...

These months I let the books come to me, which they did, sometimes from the hand of a friend, sometimes found in the laundry of the port abandoned by its former owner, others because they winked at me from the library shelf. I navigated through such diverse readings, and such different voices, that they brought me, each one in its own way, echoes of the sea and sailing.

Schooling

Oiuna in the cockpik learning to use the dictionary

And for sure, even if we are preparing, we must continue teaching, involving the children along the way. While Diego was a carpenter, I was a teacher, sometimes on the beach, or in the port, sometimes in the town library. The years we expand doing  homeschooling is impressive, the number of things kids have already learned, and most importantly: I look at them and I have the feeling that they have learned to learn, to be interested, to ask questions and seek answers, to be themselves and have a strong integrity.

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On the jetty, studying anatomy                                                                                                    taking care of her little garden

But being with children is not just doing school, sitting down for a few hours a day to teach, and preparing classes and monitoring frustrations and progress. We also have to manage, no matter how engrossed we are in a project, to listen, to share, to remember to play and laugh, to dance and put on music, to go for a walk, to hug ourselves when needed. Being with the children is not sharing a space in which each one walks to his own ball. To be, is to be with all the senses. Without having your head somewhere else, without looking at your cell phone or thinking about the next arrangement or the food that we have to make…. It's so simple. However, sometimes we forget.

Maé practicing aerobatics

Make the place where we are a home

Cuando vimos el barco por segunda vez, ya interiormente decididos en comprarlo pero con la necesidad de mirarlo de fondo un poco más, Diego me comentó que iba a hacer una revisión de sentina y tanque de gasoil que iba a tomar tiempo. Estábamos estacionados en una calle con mucha pendiente, se veía el puerto y los mástiles y el azul del mar allá abajo. Le dije a Diego que los chicos y yo nos iríamos a dar una vuelta. Empezamos a deambular por las calles del pueblo, yo lo estaba adoptando, abrazando, haciéndome parte de él, ya que el barco estaba en ese puerto, sabía que tocaría pasar unos meses aquí, que esta sería, por un tiempo indeterminado aún, nuestra casa.

When we saw the boat for the second time, already internally decided to buy it but with the need to look at it a little more in depth, Diego was going to do a bilge and diesel tank inspection that was going to take time. We were parked on a steep street, you could see the port and the masts and the blue of the sea below. I told Diego that the kids and I were going for a walk. We began to wander through the streets of the town; I was adopting it, hugging it, becoming part of it, since the ship was in that port, I knew that we would  spend a few months here, that this would be, for an undetermined time, our home.

We arrived at the library and an archeology workshop for kids was just beginning. The children were invited and got in. I got a library card to each of them, My smile was so big that it could not fit in my face, the library was large, quiet, in the distance you could see the sea and I already sensed that we would spend a lot of time doing school in that space. The librarian must have sensed it too, he welcomed me with a surprised and curious joy, as if he knew that the library, always empty on workings days, had just found its inhabitants . I talked to some mothers from the workshop, I found out that there was a chess workshop (Mae is a chess fan), and a music school (Oiuna has been asking to sing and play an instrument for a long time). Finally: we discovered plazas, veggie market, we walked without time, I had completely forgotten about Diego and Alberto, the owner of the sailboat: we were doing something that was as important as seeing the boat again.

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I had no idea where the car was parked, and when night fell, together with Mae and Oiuna, we went searching, recognizing, making mistakes, until we reached the right corner and ran into Diego. He had not found any problem in the sailboat. I nodded; I already knew from the first time I had seen it, that this ship was ours. And I told him we'd be fine, in this port, time to get ready.

Why am I telling you this? It was a few months, but when one lives as we do, everything is a few months. In those months we went to the library every day to study. The kids did chess, judo, music and rollerblading workshops, as well as art workshops in a little school near the port. We made friends, precious encounters at the ship mooring  121. The town that looked towards Puerto Masnou, its beach, its people, its streets, everything became part of our lives, our ever-changing daily lives. It was a few months but our world was created here, full of light, as it has been created in so many places that remain in me as homes forever, momentary nests. It's a bit of that, inhabiting the world. Embrace it and discover it and make it yours…. All of that takes time, which is valuable, not productive, but essential.

games in the port, that is the yard of our house-

To stow and sail away

To set sail you have to stow. It is a word that I discovered recently. I thought it was beautiful, I was so delighted to reach that stage, to go buy food per weight, to feel that the time was approaching... Then, the reality is that loading for the first time is something that can become complex . Think about where to put each food, that is practical, that does not interfere with the balance of the ship.... See the ship full of things to order and not even know where to start.... It is a game of trial and error, of geometry and balance and a lot of patience...

You will wonder if we are ready... if the whole ship is impeccable to go out, in its optimal conditions, if we already know everything there is to know about navigation in theory and in practice, if we have savings to ensure many months of economic independence, if the children closed their school year so as not to have to continue teaching on the road, if if if… and the answer is, of course, no. We are not ready. If we have learned something in 17 years of traveling on land, it is that one is never quite ready to go out, but we have to go out the same way, and it is the same path that will teach us what we have to improve in our team, what we have to let go….We are going to learn from the sea, and from the sailors we meet. It would be absurd to ask a student to know everything before going to university... It's the same, here, we are students of the path we take, we are going to make many mistakes to learn. That's why we'll sail away, in few days, even if now it seems that an earthquake hit the ship, nothing is in its place and Diego and I still don't have a mattress. School will continue as usual, on the way, somedays yes, someothers not. We will also learn to generate resources from the sea, whether it be working in ports with my photography and Diego's paintings or with the ship itself... We don't know, we don't have answers or guarantees or guarantees... Those are concepts opposed to the life of the traveler, and perhaps to life itself. We know that a lot of material is missing, and we have no plans. But to live life one does not have to wait for all conditions to be optimal.

Nina, a friend with her boat on the same jetty, helps us sew the cover for the "shockproof" pillows Thom giving us a good hand with sanding the table