learning
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Living on a sailboat, Is it worth it?
It’s hard to say right now if it’s worth the sacrifices living on a sailboat. But the truth is, we really haven’t experienced boatlife yet. We’ve experienced dock life. And there is a difference. Boatlife and docklife are always going to encompass work. Your engines will break down. Hoses need to be replaced. Decks need cleaning. Dishes need washing. Sails need mending. Take your pick,… Continue reading
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Engines
YouTube is not sailing. I know this. It’s a slightly romanticized version of living on a boat, but there’s a lot that you can’t learn from YouTube, like when to reef your mainsail. Or how to turn the boat to minimize the slapping of the waves on the bridge deck. There’s a lot that you… Continue reading
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Loss
Last weekend we traveled to Connecticut to attend my grandmother’s funeral. She was 95 and died peacefully in her sleep. Although I hadn’t seen her in 5 years, I did talk to her several times a year, probably not as much as I could have, but we did talk. Reflecting back, her initial reaction to… Continue reading
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The Universe, Lessons, and Lifelines
Preface from Jon: Sailing Pivo recently posted about some of the hopes and dreams that she had when they moved to the sailing life. In Debunking Myths, Daniella observes that if you don’t some work to change yourself, you aren’t likely to feel any real true life satisfaction with just a change in scenery. That’s… Continue reading
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Charter successes
The last post I talked a bit about how it was confidence building to get the sails up and sail on our own. But the whole trip was really a confidence booster. We had opportunities, even though we didn’t sail much, to practice a lot of other skills and really show ourselves that we can… Continue reading
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Wind (?) on the open water
We got to the spend the week on a sailboat in the Pacific Northwest. I’m pretty deliberate about saying we spent a week on a sailboat, because to say we sailed for a week would be a bit of an overstatement! In typical Lever fashion….we were lacking wind or when we had it, it was… Continue reading
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Learning to Dive
After I wrote about our experience scuba diving, I said I would write a bit about the training. It’s been a minute or two since I said I would do that, so I’m getting to it. Now that the school year is out, and even though I still have work to do, I have a… Continue reading
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Moving On!
We have finished our practical lessons on the J/22. Our last lesson in the basic keelboat and coastal cruising line will be on a J/30. It’s made by the same company, but is about 8’ longer. There are also some other differences, including the sail set up as well as steering and anchoring. I’m looking… Continue reading
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We had wind!
We’ve had a few sailing lessons now, the first one did not have any wind, so it was more of an exercise in learning the parts of the boat, running the motor, when there was wind, trying to figure out where it was coming from. The next two lessons had wind! So, we could sail! … Continue reading
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Sailing is fun…when there’s wind!
Grandad said, “When I tell you, push the tiller until the bow is pointed at that point, I’ll trim the mainsail from there. We can’t sail into the wind, so this is called tacking.” I said, “Yeah, if we pointed the bow directly into the wind, we’d go backwards, right?” Grandad, “No, we can’t sail… Continue reading
The Great Wander 