the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset

Now that we've been in sunny San Francisco for over two weeks, I guess I should blog the fact that we've arrived here safely.

The offshore sailing portion from Coos Bay to San Francisco Bay was mostly uneventful - the weather turned gloomy and damp and the winds shifted to a meandering northerly 10kn, and days at a time were spent drifting along at 3kn. For our new US friends, that's three nautical miles, or a whopping 3.4 miles per hour, and for the Canadians (and the rest of the world) it's a speedy 5.5km/h. Not exactly the kind of speeds that win you any races, but obviously enough we did arrive in SF safe and sound. The single most surprising thing learned during the five-day sail? Minke whales have terrible breath! We had one surface several times within about ten meters of TIE Fighter.

We anchored in the lovely Aquatic Park for the first few days while we got our footing, then motored over to Treasure Island when it became apparent that the Aquatic Park anchorage would be the best place to stay while taking our first aid course and we didn't want to wear out our welcome too early.

a robot wheelchair at the Noisebridge hack space

That first weekend I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days attending Hackmeet 2011, a gathering of technologists, cryptophiles and social activists at a hack space called Noisebridge near Mission and 16th Street. I got to meet a few folks with whom I'd only communicated online before, and met a few others in the process. I've been describing the event to non-geeks as "...a meet-up of the IT staff for the Occupy Wall Street movement". There were talks about everything from email cryptography to anti-forensics to effective tools for using the internet for social activism, with a particularly memorable presentation about open-source hardware for sex research taking the flow of the conference off into left field for a few minutes. The Noisebridge staff seemed a little bit nervous at the sheer number of people in their space - I'd put it at around 150 at peak - but they stayed calm and everyone was very well-behaved.

Noisebridge itself was inspiring - I really wish something like it had existed when I was a teen. The space was a large upstairs warehouse space in a busy ethnic neighbourhood, with the main area populated with row after row of shelving units jammed with members' personal projects - everything from stencil art to clothing [de]construction to lasers and makerbots and arcane old computer hardware. Honestly, just from the idea of a "hackspace" I would have expected more computer gear, but it was surprisingly free from the clutter of old broken computers that seems to fill every hacker's bedroom. I particularly liked this wheelchair robot - note the "NOT THREE LAWS COMPLIANT" warning posted on the front.

demolished nose - or at least makeup indicating such

Once the Wilderness First Responder first-aid course started, life got quickly more complicated. The class was held in the Precidio, which was a real treat aesthetically but a bit of a pain to get to every day, with two busses and about a kilometre walk between us and the class. That is, at least until we met Jon and Mark, two classmates who were conveniently staying at a hotel just two blocks from where we were anchored! Jon gave us a ride to and from the class every day, making things a lot easier - not to mention cheaper, those bus fares add up after a while.

One really nice thing was that the bulk of the classroom work for the course was held in a yoga studio in the back of Planet Granite, a gorgeous rock-climbing gym and fitness facility. We were given breaks of ten to twenty minutes every few hours, and about half the class started bringing their climbing shoes every day and spending the breaks on the very extensive bouldering walls. The first day with my shoes I tried too hard to keep up with the children's climbing class and could barely lift my arms for three days after - but with concerted effort over a few days I found myself regaining my former levels of bouldering "skill", climbing most of the V2-rated routes, and finally mastering a couple of V3's. Like any climbing gym, all I could do was watch in awe as lean, skinny pros made their way up V10's and V12's.

Miya "puking" while strapped to a spine board

The class itself was very hands-on, and we spent about two-thirds of the time in classroom lectures and the rest in 'scenarios', responding to simulated emergencies. Many of these situations involved makeup to make them seem more realistic, which made us feel more confident that we wouldn't panic if faced with similar injuries in real life. Everyone took turns being the rescuers and the rescue-ees, and we all got very comfortable diagnosing and triaging major traumas, documenting vitals and establishing trends, and preparing patients for evacuations whether or not advanced medical help would be available.

Still, the days were long. Miya and I got up each day at 6am to be ready for the 8am class start, and by the time we got home at 7pm we didn't have much energy left for... well, for anything really. Most nights found us asleep before 10pm! This was the first time I'd been in a full-time class since college, and my body had a really hard time adjusting to the change. The fact that the course only gave us one day off during the whole ten days was difficult; we all agreed that one day just wasn't enough time to completely rejuvenate.

The course culminated in a night-time scenario where we were presented with a multi-casualty incident; a plane crash in a heavily-wooded area. We organized ourselves into an incident response unit, performed a search-and-rescue sweep and found and treated all of the victims - all of which were strangers to us, and in full theatrical makeup, with bones and blood and intestines (technically condoms filled with oatmeal, but surprisingly realistic) everywhere. The hardships of such a rescue were magnified when later on it was discovered that the woods were infested with poison oak. I apparently got away unscathed, but many of our classmates - Miya included - had a rough time of it. We spent the next class day washing all of the rescue gear down with Tecnu.

the SF skyline from the top of Hyde Street

The class is now finished, and slowly we're recovering and returning to normalcy. The boat is anchored at Treasure Island once again and we have a 21-day extended anchoring permit to stay here, though we have yet to decide whether or not we'll still be in the city in 21 days, or whether we'll be headed off to Monterrey, Big Sur, San Diego and beyond. For now I intend to spend much of my time working on contract work and experiencing all that San Franciso has to offer - so far it seems very similar to Vancouver, with the notable exception of my not having had to wear socks for the past week.

What up, San Fran? Send me your activities! I want to go out and do things!

I've been neglecting the blog, which is something I need to remedy.  In my defence, I've been very very busy.  So, in lieu of posting the ten or fifteen posts that I should have been posting all along, I'll have to just get the queue out in a very condensed fashion.

Returning to the format of the 'What I Did On My Summer Vacation' series of posts, here's a rapid-fire "clips show" of the last two months.

staring down the barrel of a yanmar diesel

I started and finished a two-week class in 'Advanced Diesel Engine Maintenance', in which we tore the above Yanmar 2QM marine diesel engine completely apart and put it all back together.  I'll probably never take the camshaft out of my Yanmar 3HM, but at least now I'm pretty sure I could if I absolutely had to.

notice to move from the Kitsilano anchorage - click for higher-res

This one warrants a blog post of its own - but then again a lot of these pics do.  This is a formal 'Notice To Move' from the Vancouver Port Authority, as delivered by the VPD while I was sitting safely and soundly at anchor just off Kitsilano Beach.  The officer explained that everyone was getting these notices as an advance move, so that if the Port Authority decided at any point to tow boats out of the harbour and impound them, they could do so without warning.  He also explained that the notices were the result of meetings between the City of Vancouver Parks Board and the Port Authority, over just who's responsibility it was to pay for the cleanup of Kitsilano Beach after anchored sailboats were blown ashore and wrecked in windstorms.

What really bugs me is that since then, talking with other liveaboards here in False Creek, it would seem that this notice was only delivered to abandoned or unattended/derelict vessels left out at the anchorage, and that I was the only liveaboard sailor to receive a notice.  Strange, especially since I feel like I've proven myself to be a responsible and conscientious mariner, and I have never been blown ashore.

The notice says that I am anchored without having seeked permission to anchor, but as of now the Harbour Master has still not replied to my email requesting permission to anchor.  I really do hope that this notice is the first and last interaction I'll have with the Port Authority, but I can't help feel a bit of foreboding.

goodbye, creamcycle. you were a good bike.

In my ongoing quest to simplify and minimize my life, I finally realized that my beloved bicycle just doesn't fit "indoors", and storing the Creamcycle outdoors all winter was slowly killing her.  There's room for a bike in the starboard ama if I arrange things very carefully but that's a lot of valuable storage space taken up, especially with the prospect of Miya also having a bike aboard.  After much research, I decided that the path forward would be to purchase a Montague Boston folding bike, and migrate all of my pro-grade components from the Creamcycle over onto the Boston frame, and vice versa, and then sell the result on Craigslist.  More on this soon.

snow drifted up against the generator

February 26th 2011 brought the first and last big snowstorm of the season.  This pic is a little difficult to make out, but if you look closely you can see the snow drifted up nearly over the cabin window, with a melted/windshaped cutout around the Honda EU2000i generator, wrapped here (as always) in a white tarp to keep the weather out.

March 4th was my 35th birthday, and we celebrated by sailing the TIE Fighter across the Georgia Straight and over to Pender Island for a weekend-long multi-birthday party with twenty or so friends in a mansion on the highest point on the island.  Seriously swank - a hot tub on the roof, and 360º view of the Gulf Islands!

Miya took this video at a particularly stressful moment during the journey across the Straight - we'd had lovely 10-15kn winds coming out of English Bay, but as we rounded UBC the winds jumped to 20-25kn and we struggled to reef the mainsail, which wasn't rigged properly for reefing.  Shortly after we succeeded, we suddenly lost steering...

The rest of the trip got steadily worse, and by the time we arrived at the west side of the Straight the wind was blowing a steady 30kn with pouring rain and 3m waves occasionally breaking over the decks.  We arrived shortly after dark on Friday night, exhausted and happy to be somewhere warm and dry - I don't think my boots dried until Sunday.

DR spraying the sails down with fresh water

We moored the boat at Otter Bay for the weekend while we relaxed at the mansion.  This pic shows Dan Ross spraying down the sails with fresh water, after being soaked with seawater.  You really shouldn't allow sails to sit with salt on them - the salt attracts moisture from the air so the sails will never really dry out completely, which is really bad for the lifespan of the sails, not to mention the probable cause of the large rust stains visible on the headsail.

new battery charger installed!

I picked up a brand new modern battery charger for a little under half price on Craigslist and installed it, finally taking control over the charging of my batteries!  Prior to this I had been charging the batteries directly from a 20a DC-DC converter, which is effective but inefficient, and very very hard on batteries.  With the new ProNautic C3 50a charger, my time to fully charge the batteries dropped from seven hours to just under three hours.  Take note of the mess of wires in the background - this was taken after I had already pulled two full laundry baskets of unused wiring out of the boat.  Apparently at least one of the former owners of the TIE Fighter had rewired the boat, but hadn't bother removing any of the old wiring!

winch maintenance begins

One thing I noticed during the Pender "sea trials" trip was that the winches on the mast had begun slipping.  I've owned the boat for over three years now and have never serviced the winches, so maintenance was definitely overdue.  I had dropped Miya and DR off at Swartz Bay, and TIE Fighter was now anchored in Sidney, BC, so I had my evenings free to work hard on boat projects.  Servicing winches is messy work but quite introspective and satisfying, much like I imagine cleaning a rifle must be.  This pic shows three of the mast winches disassembled and my first experiments with using 'Simple Green' to clean the components.  Result: 'Simple Green' does not effectively clean winch components.

the daily ritual

Being anchored in a new place makes me quickly slip into a comfortable routine.  I finally got around to repairing the broken Bodum hand-crank coffee grinder that I purchased last fall, and this pic shows my morning ritual in progress - a pot of steel-cut oatmeal and quinoa on the galley stove, with a Bialetti 'moka pot' of coffee percolating beside it, lit by a sunbeam.

new day tank, visible (barely) way in the back

Yet another project that I'd been putting off; the aft cabin furnace needed a day tank.  The hard part about diesel furnaces is that they need to be supplied with diesel fuel at about 3psi - this can be achieved with either a small electric fuel pump, or with a gravity feed from a tank stored at least four feet above the fuel intake.  The problem is that as far as I can tell, very few companies make a diesel tank with an outlet port at the bottom of the tank!  After researching the costs of having one manufactured (about $300), I found this water tank, rated for chemical storage, at the wonderful Sidney Boaters Exchange for a whopping $8.00.  Another $6.00 in parts, fittings and tie-downs and I was in business!

more splicing - the headsail sheets are now 340% better.

Evenings over the next two weeks were slow and quiet, so I got a few chances to move away from the "needs" projects a little and onto the "wants" projects.  Here's a pic of the snap shackles on the headsail sheets spliced into the sheets instead of tied in with bowline knots, and the bitter ends of the sheets backspliced.  This is not only faaaaaar more attractive, but also much smoother for tacking as there is less to catch on the inner forestay while the headsail slips across.

winches, cleaned

More detail on the winch servicing project; the acetone in the back proved to be a failure as well.  At some point a previous owner had serviced the winches by putting grease on the pawls.  Apparently - and this was news to me - putting grease on pawls is a no-no, as the grease tends to thicken and build up, eventually causing the pawls to jam.  For reference, you should only ever put oil on winch pawls; grease is fine (and recommended) for the gears, but the pawls only ever get oil.

The thick, gummy grease is difficult to get off of the components, but the ultimate solution turned out to be very simple: diesel fuel dissolves the grease and an old toothbrush cleans off the remainder. The glass and tupperware in the pic above are both full of diesel, stained an ugly greenish-black by the dissolved grease after soaking the components overnight.

winch 'spares'

While I had the winches apart, I took the opportunity to purchase a 'rebuild kit' from the local marine store, and replaced all of the pawl springs in each winch.  In this pic, the silver chicklet-looking chunky steel bits are the pawls, which are held against the gear sprockets by the little flat circular pawl springs, which causes the characteristic clatter of the winch in use.  Pawl springs wear out over time, but after cleaning the winches and replacing all the springs, my mast winches now work just like new.

mast winch mounts

The winch mounts during reassembly, after cleaning with diesel, brushes and paper towel. During this procedure it was so bitterly cold outside that I had to go back into the cabin after cleaning each mount to rub my hands together to regain feeling in my fingertips!

aft furnace installed and operational!

The aft furnace was critical during this period - prior to having the furnace working I was mostly confined to the forward cabin for pretty much everything except cooking, working my day job from either my bed or the "guest nest", which is what Miya has named the port-side single berth.

Upon first lighting of the new furnace, I nearly burned the boat down! It started up just like normal and worked great, but shortly after this photo the furnace began making a "chuffing" noise and the walls of the burn chamber started glowing red hot - I quickly shut it down, but it kept burning for a good five minutes afterwards. Apparently the diesel metering valve had been set for a much more viscous fuel, and when I measured and tuned the meter it was delivering more than three times the normal amount of fuel to the burner. Since the tuning the furnace has worked 100% as expected, keeping the aft cabin warm for days on end.

the 'boudoir' cubby, painted and shelved

Speaking of the "guest nest", here is a pic of the newly-painted and newly-shelved cubby below the port side berth, which Miya has named 'the boudoir', and we've decided is her personal storage area while she's living aboard with me.  My personal storage space is the opposite cubby, which I have dubbed 'the study'.

the yankee headsail, spread out at the sail loft

In the sail across from Vancouver, we tore the mainsail in no less than five places, mostly due to poor reefing skills but probably the fact that the sail is fifteen years old might have something to do with it.  I brought the sails in to Sidney's Leitch and Mcbride sailmakers to have it repaired and to get a quote on a replacement sail.  I was impressed with their workmanship and attention to detail, and by the personal service I received - they even picked me and the sails up from the boat, and dropped me off again afterwards.

cutting the hole for the new switch panel

The biggest project of all, while living at anchor in Sidney, was to gut and replace the entire electrical system of the boat.  This meant making final decisions on the organization and placement of the switch panels, and cutting into the walls of the cabin to install them.  Here I've discovered that the panel above the stove is only 1/4" plywood, and that I'm able to cut through it quite easily with my pocket knife.

LED lighting in the engine compartment

As a part of the electrical system upgrade, I installed LED lighting into all of the under-cockpit cubbies, with the engine compartment getting extra attention as it's probably the one where having good lighting is the most critical.  Amazing how much cleaner Maude looks with good lighting!

cubbies in the forward cabin, lit up with LED strips

The forward cabin cubbies - the 'study' and 'boudoir' - shown lit up brightly with the new LED cubby lighting system.  What a phenomenal difference it makes, having these formerly dark and dirty spaces now clean, white and bright.

a new outlet beside the bed

I only have a 400w inverter on the boat currently, but that's more than enough to run things like laptops and cellphone chargers - I really don't have much else to plug in anymore!  Still, it's nice to have the convenience of being able to plug things in wherever you are, so I've installed GFCI outlets all over the boat.  This one is only temporary - I've replaced it already with a more modern outlet that has a green LED, so that you can tell at a glance whether or not the inverter is turned on.

the finished electrical panel in the galley

The galley electrical panel installed and active! I've since also added a backlighting kit to this panel, so the panel labels glow a soft green at night. It's the little touches that really make the work feel professional, and give me great pride in having done it all myself.

the completed electrical system wiring

I'm very proud of my wiring job - apparently fifteen years of being a network tech has some boat benefits after all!  All wires to the switch panels are cut to length and terminate in double-crimped flanged spade connectors on terminator bars, all grounds are bussed together with appropriately-sized wiring, and every subsystem on the boat has an individual circuitbreaker. TIE Fighter now has a modern, well-installed electrical system, onto which I can build with confidence. Next steps: a much larger battery bank, then a powerful solar array and possibly a wind generator. The "grid" just keeps getting further and further behind me.

propane canister packed up for bicycle transport

On yet another trip to the Sidney Boater's Exchange I found a pair of nearly-new horizontally-mounted propane tanks for $100 each.  This was a great deal, as used horizontal tanks are very hard to find, and new ones are over $400 each - my propane locker can fit two twenty-pound propane tanks, but they have to be horizontal tanks, standard vertical tanks (like on a barbeque) are too tall for the locker.  Packing a propane tank home on my bicycle garnered some strange looks from the locals.

Xantrex LinkLITE installed and operational

I also picked up a Xantrex LinkLITE battery monitor, which conveniently fit into the hole from the ancient (and dead) Heart Interface battery monitor that was installed on TIE Fighter when I purchased her.  Yet another step towards complete mastery of my electrical system - a former boss of mine was fond of saying "that which gets measured, gets managed".  This is absolutely true with regards to battery life; I can now measure how much electricity the boat is using at any given moment, and know at a glance how much battery life I have left before I have to run the generator to charge back up again.

sitting on a stoop on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico

After three solid weeks of heads-down work on the boat, a vacation was in order.  Miya's close friend and cousin Stacee was getting married in Puerto Rico, and Miya was the maid of honour so I was invited along as her date.  We flew to Vieques, a small rustic island about an hour east of San Juan.  Vieques is known for beautiful beaches, quiet towns and a large population of unfenced horses running free over the whole island.  At times I really felt like I was back living in Costa Rica again, and within the week my spanish came rushing back to me.

Miya, post-serenade

At some point, walking from our budget hotel towards the posh resort the wedding was being held in, we were flagged down by pensioners in a small bar by the side of the road, invited in for a drink and to listen to the locals playing music and gabbing.  Here Miya has just been serenaded with very decent spanish folk music by the man on the left, and the one-armed man on the right had just finished telling her the story of his being stabbed in the abdomen two nights earlier, on the street a block from our hotel.

first scuba dive!

We took advantage of the tourist industry on Vieques and signed up for a one-day 'Explore SCUBA' course, which took us out to the end of an unused (but heavily secured) military pier for a pair of dives.  The waters under the pier were teeming with life, and I discovered to my great relief that the sinus and inner-ear problems that plagued me as a youth have not in fact followed me into adulthood - I am able to dive after all.

click for a high-res version

I've included this pic because I think it makes an excellent desktop wallpaper; subtle and not too busy.  Click the pic - or for that matter, any of these photos - for a higher-resolution version. We saw many sea turtles, as well as several types of ray and many, many different tropical fish.

ripping around on a little Yamaha scooter

Vieques is fairly small at only about seven miles long, but we soon felt the pangs of not having our bicycles. Renting bikes was an option, but at $25/day per bike renting a motor scooter for $50/day seemed like a much better option. In the three days we had the scooter the island was opened up to us in a way that was impossible on foot, and we explored the tiny back roads of the island.

probably my favourite pic of the whole trip

There's something about the sunshine that makes everything a little easier to take... after a few days on the beach it was difficult to remember why we'd been so stressed out about all the little things back home.  This pic was taken at the "red beach", on our way back from the "green beach", where we'd discovered that tiny, vicious gnats come out in swarms as the sundown approaches.  Miya was strangely unaffected, but bites covered my arms in itchy red welts that lasted for several days.

yet another splice - this time it's rope-to-chain

A month or two ago I visited Miya in Seattle and picked up a 150' length of gorgeous barely-used eight-plait nylon anchor rode at Second Wave, yet another marine consignment store.  I think I might be getting addicted to used sailing equipment - this 3/4" nylon rode was a great deal though, at $50 for 150', compared with $1.60/foot locally!  I spliced the rope to a 40' length of 5/16" heavy steel chain, and this splice is currently holding me at anchor quite handily.

motoring away from Tsehum Harbour

On April the 6th, I left Tsehum Harbour and headed back towards Vancouver.  I missed my tide window for Active Pass that day - with a sailboat you can only traverse the pass at slack tide, and slack tide was at 1pm.  I ended up sailing slowly up the Trincomali Channel and spending the night in Montague Harbour, which is a lovely anchorage but in a complete cellular reception black hole, ruling out any extended stay.  In the morning I packed up and headed out through Porlier Pass to begin my solo crossing of the Georgia Straight.

racing the rainstorm

The weather for the first days sail was a mix of sun and rain, with long periods of spring-like warmth followed by cold rains and wind.  This rainstorm followed me up the channel for several hours, but when it finally caught up with me late in the afternoon it turned out to be an unexpected hailstorm!

sailing ninja self-portrait, about 4km into the Georgia Straight crossing

The only real downside to sailing in cold weather is the long periods of inactivity, requiring you to basically sit outside in the cold wind for hours on end with nothing to do.  Even with proper foul-weather gear, two layers of wool sweaters and wool hats and gloves, it's still freezing.  Pair that with the inexplicable lack of a fly on my overall-style foul-weather pants, and the only real movement you have for the vast majority of the journey is the occasional trip indoors to pretty much completely disrobe to pee.  Still, apart from the puzzling lack of zipper, I am completely pleased with my Helly Hansen foul weather gear.

Here's a video, taken once everything had calmed down and I was moving steadily forward. After I came through Porlier Pass I was expecting some heavy winds and probably some waves, but the addition of the tidal surges from the pass made for some very, very stressful moments!  I got my second reef into the main, but not before stuffing all three bows into the waves several times, strewing tools from one end of the cabin to the other, and spilling the contents of my cupboards all over the floor, breaking a bunch of dishes and making an awful mess.  The rest of the trip across was spent with the double-reefed main and staysail, which I finally shook out near UBC.  I made an average of about 6kn across the Straight, but once I got the headsail up in more protected waters I reached 9.2kn coming into English Bay.

creamcycle, built up and listed for sale

This is the "new" Creamcycle, built up as a fixie with all the brand-new components from the Montague bike and listed for sale on Craigslist.  Do you know anyone looking for a rad (if well-used) bike for the summer?

off to class, with a 20kg outboard in my backpack

Yet another class with the Bluewater Cruising Association; this time an outboard motor repair and maintenance class.  Here it is Saturday morning at 8am, leaving on my bicycle with the heavy outboard in my backpack.

The outboard, we like to say, "worked really great until it didn't".  In Sidney, during a trip to shore, the outboard very suddenly quit with no warning, in the sort of way that makes you think something is very, very wrong.  Reading up a bit on the internet, I found out that you're supposed to change the gearbox oil regularly, which I hadn't - though apparently when you go to drain the gearbox oil it's supposed to be oil, not dirty water and metal filings.

outboard repair class, saturday morning, 10am

Sitting in class, we learned all about the workings of outboards, stripping out sparkplugs and taking apart carburetors, and I slowly dug down into the problem that had caused the outboard to stop so suddenly.  Clearly the problem was in the gearbox, but could it be repaired?

what came out of the gearbox of the outboard - photo by Jennifer Craig

When I finally got the gearbox opened up and stripped, a few pieces fell out - and some of those pieces were ball bearings.  Well - I use the word "ball" somewhat loosely there; the parts that fell out were anything but spherical.  D'oh!

End result?  The engine is apparently a write-off.  I can probably get a few bucks on Craigslist for it, for parts - but the cost of the replacement bits to get her running again are approximately four  times what I paid for the engine originally, and given that it was quite underpowered for the dinghy it was on anyway, I guess I'm now in the market for a good used 8hp motor.

freshwater system complete!

Lastly, I finally added in and plumbed the third 100-liter water tank to the freshwater system. This has been on the bench for a while, but now the freshwater system is pretty much 100% complete - there's still a slow, weeping leak on the galley sink that I need to tend to, causing the water pressure pump to kick in about once an hour to keep the pressure up. As far as I can tell the only fix for that is to replace the whole faucet assembly it hasn't really been high up on my list of priorities.

 
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Phew! And that brings us pretty much up to current!  So many updates, with so little time. I've got to remember to try to spew this stuff out in smaller portions, but when things are moving fast it's really tough to keep up.

goodbye, little house. maybe I'll miss you.

Today is the closing date for the sale of my house in Vancouver.

Yesterday I signed the last of the documents with the notary public and dropped off the last of the keys with the realtor, and apparently Monday I should see the mortgage accounts disappear from my web banking.

The sale represents both the severing of my biggest physical tie to the sedentary world and the un-shouldering of the single largest source of stress in my my life.  My priorities and goals have changed, and while I know that real estate in Vancouver is a sound financial investment in the longer term, I also know that I'm not interested in settling down into a life on land right now. As long as I owned a property I would always have to be a landlord, something that I am neither good at nor enjoy.

The emotional fallout from the sale has been slow to manifest - the house was the last relic of a failed relationship and a terrible downward spiral through the second half of my twenties; a dream that, once achieved, proved to be a huge disappointment.  I am incredibly thankful that I was lucky enough to learn reasonably early the folly in living one's life by others' ideas of success.

the thing I'll miss most: my techno studio

At age twenty-eight, I figured I had won the game - I had a cute, successful fiancée, a great, high-paying job and a gorgeous home studio in my own house.  I literally had the proverbial white picket fence!  By all conventional logic, I should have been on top of the world, but instead I was falling deeper and deeper into depression. My relationship was failing and I was drinking far too much. I was rapidly becoming overweight and unhealthy.  I was miserable at my job, and it showed in my work. Still, when I stepped back and looked at my life, I couldn't see anything wrong with it! My ambition hit an all-time low - if the game is won, why bother continuing to play?

Fortunately that relationship fell apart in early 2007, and in the very same month the company I worked for was purchased and dismantled by the new owners.  We received severance packages and pink slips and I watched, shellshocked, as my world crumbled around me.  I spent the next few months fumbling about aimlessly, rented out the upper half the house and moved into the basement, and about a year later I started this blog.

onward, technomad.

The nearly four years since the collapse of that world has been a period of intense personal growth and discovery, of purging and change, much of which has been documented here.  The house was the last reminder of the former life, and selling it has been both exhilarating and terrifying - not only was it a memento and an investment, but also a safety net should this crazy living-on-a-boat adventure turn sour!  I think I've proven to myself over the past two years the value in trusting my instincts and following my dreams, and I have no intention of stopping now.

As it turns out, personal happiness has very little to do with the ideas portrayed in the movies - everyone knows that once the prince rescues the princess and carries her off into the sunset on horseback, they live "happily ever after".  So why wasn't my 'success' a source of unending joy? Life is defined by struggle, by working toward goals - but when all of those goals are achieved, then what? How many women look as much forward to the six months following their wedding as they do to the wedding itself? What was Ward Cleaver really thinking?

In the past four years I've learned many lessons about the pursuit of happiness. I've learned to actively appreciate beauty, and that the time and energy spent to experience fleeting moments of intense beauty is not wasted. I've learned that while acquiring possessions stimulates a similar part of the mind, real happiness doesn't require anything material. Most of all though, I've learned that happiness is subjective to each person individually, and that it is the sum of emotion and experience. For me, happiness is a combination of freedom, beauty and opportunity.

So! It is official. Apart from six tupperware bins in a storage locker and music equipment and furniture "stored" with friends and family, I have severed my physical ties to the land.

As for what's next... that post will come soon.

1. write more,
2. develop and trust my emotions,
3. procrastinate less (see #1), and
4. seize any opportunity to gain new skills.

The first of the four is pretty obviously failing so far, but that is because #4 has been taking up a lot of my time.  I've become involved with the Vancouver chapter of the Bluewater Cruising Association, a support network for offshore sailors who are either planning to head off into the great blue yonder, who are currently out there living the dream, or who have "been there, done that" and returned to tell the tale.

Miya on New Year's Eve

So far, I've been mostly taking advantage of the education offered through the BCA - I've enrolled in two classes, one for offshore meteorology and another for ham radio operations and licensing.  Both classes are proving to be well worth the time and money spent - the more I learn about ham radio, the more it interests me!  The world of amateur radio - and more specifically, 'packet radio', or computer networking over the airwaves - has a distinctive feel to it so far, one that strongly reminds me of learning about the world of modems and dial-up bulletin board systems, back before the internet gained popularity.

Furthermore, my day job has increased in responsibility, so now I am working very nearly full-time hours during the week.  Part of me is tickled to spend my days working in cloud computing and my nights learning how to interpret cloud formations!  Still, with full-time hours and courses five days per week, I'm not left with much free time to socialize.

Miya sadly had to move back to Seattle this week - her day job was only willing to allow her to work remotely for two months, and those two months flew by faster than either of us expected.  Given that I spent a lot of time paring down my possessions and footprint to make room for a second human aboard the Tie Fighter, her moving off has left the boat feeling somewhat cavernous and empty.  We'll still be together moving forward, with her moving back onto the boat in a few months, but that's a subject that could (and will) make an entire posting itself.

a lovely farewell evening on the Creek

It is January the 26th 2010, one day past my due date to get the heck out of False Creek - but here I am, still about two hundred meters from the Cambie Bridge.  I've had visits from the VPD two days in a row, but since I haven't been able to start my engine there hasn't been much I can do.  Yesterday I managed to get my engine started again, and today I blew a large portion of the day working on day-job stuff and reprovisioning Tie Fighter for an extended stay where there isn't a grocery store a block away.  I'm still here, but I'll be leaving in the morning.  Tonight is my last evening in the Creek for a while, so I figured I'd relax and enjoy it.

I thought I'd update the blog with a few notes on what has changed in the neighborhood over the past month - besides the constant visits from the VPD, that is.  As I write this, there is a massive inflatable boom across False Creek, about ten meters west of the Cambie Bridge.  There is a gap of about thirty meters across, and that gap is currently being patrolled by no less than four RCMP boats.  Still, I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's start from the beginning.

denied access to my favourite bike path!

Southeastern False Creek is home to the newly-constructed Olympic Village.  The Village will be home to all the athletes during the games, so of course security is a big question - but the sheer amount of money being spent on this project is astounding.  The most recent roadblock to go up, a block or so from my boat, was being staffed by seven people at last check, including three uniformed police officers and four people in VANOC jackets!  As far as I can tell, there is a similar roadblock on every road adjoining the Village.  The entire area is surrounded by tall steel fences.

Still, this is all stuff you can read elsewhere.  This is my blog, and so I will tell (and show) you what I am seeing from the water. For instance, my favourite bike path - the one from Cambie Bridge down towards Science World, past the shiny new Olympic Village buildings, over the boardwalks and sculpted bridge, past the immaculately landscaped gardens and artificial peninsula built for the wildlife - has been blocked off.  To get downtown I have to skulk my way through five blocks of alleyways and several blocks of fenced-in sidewalk.  I hate riding on the sidewalk.

CFAV Glendyne placing the buoys - intimidating!

Anyhow, about a month ago, a large, scary-looking navy tugboat pulled into False Creek.  I did a bit of research and found the tug to be the Canadian Forces Auxiliary Vessel (CFAV) Glendyne, a Glen-class tugboat based out of CFB Esquimalt, near Victoria.  The Glendyne put a pair of large, orange buoys in place just short of the Cambie Bridge, complete with orange flashing lights on top.  I knew that this would be the beginning of the promised 'boom' under the Bridge, but I still hadn't seen any documentation about what the end result would look like, and so I watched with interest as they set the buoys in place.  I figured they'd be back in the next couple of days to finish the job, but once they were finished they motored slowly away and never returned.

Off-topic, one of my neighbors has mentioned that he expects to see at least one military gunboat in the Creek, paired up with the RCMP zodiacs and whaleboats currently patrolling the boomed-off area.  I am not convinced, but given the focus on security I wouldn't be shocked if there were some kind of small, fast Canadian Forces gunboat deployed here during the games.

holy crap, a hovercraft!

Anyhow - a few weeks went past without any change to the buoys, but one morning last week I awoke to the sounds of something very large cruising past me.  I popped my head up out of the hatch to see a Department of Fisheries and Oceans and/or Canadian Coast Guard (both were painted on the hull) hovercraft making its way slowly down the creek!  The hovercraft - which later research found to be the CCGH Siyay based in Richmond - was outfitted with a crane and a large cargo of cement blocks.  I figured they were planning to work on the boom somehow, but instead they spent the day lining both sides of False Creek with smaller, lighted channel buoys, indicating the shipping channel in the center of the Creek.  This of course was followed by several days of the VPD visiting any boat anchored too far out into the middle of the Creek, issuing warnings and referring everyone to the notice that anchoring within the commercial shipping lane is banned by Transport Canada.

Personally, I think the buoys are actually a nice touch, and I hope they stay past the Olympics.  It's nice to pull into a bay and have your way clearly marked - it makes everything feel a little bit safer, a bit more professional... dare I say "a bit better-managed"?

mmmm, sausages

Anyhow.  Sequential Circus 7 was this weekend - it was excellent, thank you for asking - and as such I didn't spend much time on the boat.  When I returned, I found that someone had been busy, and there were now several large black inflatable sausages stretched across the Creek!  They're about two and a half meters in diameter and appear to be made of a thick rubber, with webbing straps every three meters or so, tie-down grommets on those straps, and large metal rings at the end to fasten the sausages together, or to the shore.  In other words, the sausages are clearly designed and built to do one thing only: to operate as a boom or blockade over water.

One question we'd be bantering about on the Creek was what exactly they were planning to use for the boom.  One guy thought large logs, another thought a very thick rope - I had no ideas, but apparently the answer was easier than we thought.

While rowing back to Tie Fighter yesterday, I made a short detour out to the opening in the boom, where an RCMP whaler was sitting.  As I approached, he was quick to lean out the window and let me know that the area past the boom is now restricted waters - as an aside, I have gotten similar warnings from the people manning blockades as I approached them on my bicycle.  Seriously?  The huge black barrier, the orange flashing lights and the menacing police boat - or in the case of the roadblocks, the seven people in official-looking uniforms, the flashing lights, the pylons, the big orange-striped barrier sawhorses and the police car parked perpendicularly to the road - do other people really not understand these signs?  Or maybe it's just that the barricades are so universally unpopular that anyone approaching them must be some kind of threat.  I don't know.  Anyhow.

The officer, once he understood that I was just there to ask questions, was quite friendly and explained that the boom would be closed to all boats except official VANOC-approved vehicles.  The boom is apparently scheduled for removal at the end of March, but the officer did not know whether or not the shipping lane buoys would be removed.

Speaking of speaking with officers, I've spoken with two different sets of VPD in the past two days, both of whom were somewhat interested in the fact that my anchoring permit had expired.  Each time the R.G.McBeath shows up there are at least two officers onboard, and often more.  Yesterday there were four officers, none of whom I recognized, and when I explained to the officer doing the talking that I was planning to leave as soon as I could get my engine started, he answered "I'll believe that when I see it.".  He then pulled slowly away without saying another word to me.  In contrast, when they came by today, it was another batch of officers I'd never seen before, and when I showed them that I'd just gotten my engine running again, the officer in charge said "It's almost 5pm, why don't you wait until morning before pulling out, it'll be dark very soon.".  Nice!

Anyhow.  I've only blown my deadline by two days, but it's definitely time to go.  The only thing I know to expect is significantly rougher waters - False Creek is very protected, and I'm really not looking forward to just how bad the February weather can be out in the open.  Rest assured, I'll blog about it as I go.

Ok, so I figured I'd write this "tomorrow", but that "tomorrow" was Christmas Eve and well... you know how it goes.

official notice from the VPD

So!  December 23rd, I got a visit from the Vancouver Police Department, in the R.G.McBeath.  They were quite friendly, as they often are, but they explained that unfortunately the court battle between the city and a False Creek liveaboard had come to a close, with the judge ruling to uphold the 2006 Vancouver addendum to the Canada Shipping Act.  The Act, translated to layman english, says that no person or group can "own" a navigable water - ie anywhere that the tide goes in and out.  Navigable water is public land, and anyone can anchor in any navigable water for as long as they like as long as they're not blocking shipping channels or in military areas.

...or as the Addendum states, "or if it's False Creek, Vancouver, in which case all bets are off.".

Anyhow, the officers told me that they were now under orders to enforce the anchoring bylaws, and that I would have to get an anchoring permit if I wanted to stay in False Creek.  They gave me an informational pamphlet detailing what to expect in the Creek during the Olympics, and they served me with an official notice saying that I must have said permit by January 4th, or that I'll be towed from the creek at my expense.  That's not an insignificant expense, either - the towing includes a haulout, which requires a special mobile crane lift to pull the boat out of the water and up onto land storage.  Usually a haulout costs around $200 per trip, and the officers made sure to point out there would be added storage fees racking up daily while the boat rests on their land.

Just as an aside, I wouldn't be surprised if the VPD marine dry storage place didn't actually have the capability to lift a boat of Tie Fighter's size out of the water - she's about 7.5m wide, and most travel lifts can only handle a boat about 5m wide...  not that I have any inclination towards putting that theory to the test!

the outside of the VPD's pamphlet

There are folks around in the Creek who have their hackles raised by the ruling.  Honestly, I must confess there's even a little anti-authoritarian anarchist part of me left over from my teens - that part of my mind has built a mental barricade from a burning, flipped over Prius, and is screaming "WE WILL FIGHT THIS!" - but the reality is, I have no intention whatsoever of fighting it.  I'll go.  Frankly, I kind of needed the kick in the ass; if you're going to live in an apartment that can travel around but you don't actually take advantage of that fact... well, you might as well be living in a trailer park.

If you're reading this and you're not from Vancouver, you might not realize that False Creek is pretty much ground zero for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.  I am currently anchored just west of the Cambie Bridge, about 300m from the Olympic Village, future home to the illustrious athletes while the games are ongoing, and future snooty yuppy condo village for decades after that.  It has actually been a real pleasure to watch the Village rise from the unused industrial plots over the past few months, and the bike ride around the seawall from the Cambie Bridge down towards Science World has become a tour of some the most beautiful architecture in the city.  I will deeply miss calling this neighborhood my "permanent" home.

pamphlet, inside

Of course, with the Olympics being a huge political and financial debacle, forethought is critical.  I can certainly understand the need to crack down on anchoring given the situation; hotel rooms are pushing up to $5000/night during the games!  Anyone within boating range would/should/will jump at the chance to come and spend a few days staying on their boat free of charge, anchored pretty much directly in the downtown core of Vancouver.  There's a serious potential there for chaos, with hundreds or perhaps even thousands of boaters of various skill levels attempting to anchor in the notoriously foul weather of February.  A single dragging anchor can mean many thousands of dollars of damage to a boat... or more importantly, to other boats or property nearby.  The city would be crazy to stand by and let it happen, which is why I've been saying for months that there'd be absolutely no way they'd allow us to stay on, unfettered, through the Olympic games.

So what does it all mean for me?  Well, when I first heard the news I took it as bad.   After reflection, I have now I have come to realize that it's just the change of a chapter for this lifestyle; sometimes you get to pick when the next chapter begins, and sometimes you just have to roll with it.  I've grown very complacent in the past few months, settling in to the easy life here in downtown Vancouver.  There are groceries, laundry and many coffeeshops and restaurants within an easy walk.  If I want to go to Canadian Tire, it's a hundred-meter row followed by a three-block bikeride - anchoring anywhere else that could be a two-kilometer row followed by a five-kilometer bikeride, or even much further.  I'm already in decent shape, but I suspect that I will be in much better shape by summertime.

When I get my anchoring permit on January 4th, it will be valid for twenty-one days, meaning I will have to vacate False Creek on or before January 25th, 2010.  Normally I wouldn't wait until the last minute, but I have obligations here in town on the 23rd, and I am hoping to travel a bit earlier on in the month.

To be clear, this isn't the end of an era - the permit only really says that I have twenty-one days in which I can stay in False Creek out of any sequential forty days.  I can return to anchor False Creek in March, ideally just after the Olympics finish, but at that time the forces-that-be will have switched over to the summer permit rules.  In the summertime one can anchor in False Creek for fourteen days out of any consecutive thirty days with a valid permit.  Anchoring permits are free; the only thing that really changes here is my stable, unmoving spot, where I have been squatting at anchor without a permit for the past five months or so.

So now, on top of my usual pile of duties, obligations and stresses, I have a half of a month to finish all of my maintenance tasks, tie off any loose ends in town and find a new place to live for a month or so, and my ability to stay in one place for months at a time has been more or less permanently removed.  As of January 25th, I will officially be a nomad!

The Man: Just This Guy, You Know?

Rather than evangelize, let me just say this:  maybe you've planned go to Burning Man but something got in the way, or maybe you've seen images or TV shows about it and thought it sounded interesting.  Maybe you've just seen the deranged, happy looks in the eyes of folks who've recently returned from the desert, and noticed the lasting changes in the way they look at the world around them, and maybe that made you wonder just what the whole thing is all about.  Do yourself a favour and just get there.

It's not too difficult; the trick I've used to great success several times now is to get a ticket when they first go on sale in February, then stick it somewhere that you'll see it regularly, like on your fridge.  If you have the ticket and it turns out you can't go, you can easily bounce it on Craigslist pretty much right up until the day the event starts, for as much as you paid for it - so there's almost zero financial risk.  Drop the $250 when the tickets go on sale, and your life will mysteriously get out of the way and allow you to go to the desert.  However, if you tell yourself you're going but wait until August to buy your ticket, your life will conspire to prevent you from going, be it work-related problems, or financial or whatever.

Anyhow.  After a few frantic days of last-minute preparation (ok, I admit it, mostly costume shopping), Carrie and I loaded up her truck with a huge pile of camping equipment and headed down to Seattle to meet up with our three-RV convoy.  After being denied a border crossing back in February, I didn't want to take the chance of having our whole RV turned inside out - or worse yet, having the whole RV turned away - just because of a little black mark on my record.  We made it across with zero hassles, and spent the night in a Super-8 before reconnecting with the rest of the motley band at the Seattle REI.  Interesting fact(*): the Seattle REI is the second most visited tourist attraction in Seattle, after the Space Needle.

(*: by "fact" I mean that someone working the door at the REI told me this, so take it with a grain of salt.)

Carleigh and Bayrock in the Monday sunrise

We drove looooong through the night and arrived at the Black Rock Desert at approximately 2am, where we had to wait in a long, dusty lineup of RVs, trucks and cars for the next three hours.  When we finally arrived at the Greeters Station, all the first-timers ("virgins") were pulled out of the RV to roll in the dust, ring the welcome gong, and receive a certificate good for one spanking at the Greeters Camp.  I thought the certificate was pretty lame, personally - in previous years the spanking was administered promptly and with great enthusiasm shown by both spanker and spankee, but apparently there have been complaints.  *sigh*.

Setting up camp while the sun rose was gorgeous, and went smoothly - we were all far too excited to sleep, so we broke out the costumes and ran giddily around the playa all day, hitting up bars and checking out art.  Most of the big sound stages weren't yet setup, so Monday night was by far the quietest of the week, but that didn't stop us from tracking down bar after bar and partying as hard as possible.

Tuesday was much of the same.  The first 'real' day of Burning Man; wake up, struggle into consciousness, clean up with babywipes, apply sunscreen, don your most fabulous, anticipated costume and stumble out into the blinding white desert in search of adventure.  Of course there was no shortage of adventure, and the day was mostly spent riding from art installation to art installation, making new friends at the Man, gathering and subsequently losing a posse, and drinking fabulous martinis at Martini Village.  Sleeper hit of the day: Lollipop Shot Camp, where we were served shots of Ketel One vodka and Tootsie Roll Pops in custom take-home glow-in-the-dark shot glasses, on lanyards for easy access of course.  The procedure - dunk the lollipop in the shot glass, twirl it around for a minute, take the shot, repeat - was both fun and dangerous, and we all agreed we needed to take a break from drinking shortly thereafter.

Drew and a new friend at Lollipop Shot Camp

By Tuesday night the Opulent Temple was up and running, and the throbbing house music could be heard from one end of the playa to the other.  Shortly after we met up with them the crew decided to head for the other side of the playa to catch DJ Dan at another stage, and Carrie mentioned being tired and planning to head back to camp.  When she left, I decided I'd had enough of house music and headed off to find some dubstep, eventually meeting some folks who told me that DJ Mimosa was playing at the Space Cowboys stage, so I took off like a shot to get there.  Mimosa was hands-down my favourite act from the Emrg-N-See festival in Oregon earlier this summer.

As I arrived at the stage, I rolled up on my bike at a reasonable clip.  I wove in and out of the hundreds of bicycles lying on the street, aiming to drop mine as close to the stage as I could to make it a more undesirable target for a bike thief, should any be around, and managed to make it within about twenty feet.  As I approached what looked like a good spot, I swung my leg up over the bike and rode on a single pedal, unravelling my long skirt and adjusting my hat while riding with one hand, and then gingerly stepped off as the bike reached the drop spot, allowing the bike to fall gently to the ground.  A nearby group of three girls, unnoticed until that moment, began a round of polite applause.

"That was the best dismount I've seen this year!", said one.

I took my top hat in hand and bowed low in acknowledgement, and at the lowest point of the bow I was startled to see that I had dropped my bike directly next to Carrie's - nearly on top of her bike, in fact.  I guess great music is universal; I spent the next half-hour tracking her down in the massive crowd, letting her know that it was just one of those quirky Burning Man coincidences, and that I wasn't in fact stalking her.

My custom-built Rad Playa Cruiser™

Wednesday I parted ways with my crew to meet up with Miya, whom I hadn't seen in a few months, and we spent the day riding double on my Rad Playa Cruiser™ which I had equipped with stunt pegs for exactly such an opportunity.  In four years of Burning Man I have yet to see a single other bicycle with stunt pegs, which confuses me somewhat - mine cost me a grand total of $6, and have come in handy numerous times each year.  What better way to meet cute girls?

"You're looking for Root Society, hey?  Hop on, I'm heading that way now..!"

Just as an aside, my Rad Playa Cruiser™ has now seen three Burning Man expeditions, and currently resides with my friend Dan Ross as his primary bicycle.  She began life as a $25 junk store bicycle and underwent massive reworking to become the jewel that she is today - please click here for a photo of her in the "before" state.

Rocking 'Hair of the Dog' with an impromptu band

Miya and I ended up bouncing from bar to bar, eventually finding ourselves drinking at 'Hair of the Dog', an open-mic bar a block or so from Center Camp.  Miya noticed a whiteboard behind the bar, listing things the bar could use as donations, such as orange juice, tequila, baby wipes and... "little people".  Apparently one of the bartenders had a thing for dwarves and/or midgets, but this entry spawned a furious row ending with Miya standing on a barstool and berating the bartenders mercilessly, arguing that her 5'4" frame certainly qualified her as "little".  She was quite convincing, and soon found herself working behind the bar helping random burners take the edge off the day.  I seized this opportunity to take the stage, and played and sang several songs with an impromptu band.  We were pretty bad, but considering none of us had ever met before, much less played together, we weren't terrible and the crowd was quite appreciative.

Thursday was much quieter during the day than the previous days, spending most of the time taking it easy and recovering from the past three days of lunacy.  Most of our camp napped intermittantly, and I had an excellent guitar and mandolin jam with Glyn and a few random folks that wandered under our shade structure throughout the afternoon.  Thursday night on the other hand, Carrie and I got into our most dressy costumes and headed out for a night of dancing.  We made our way to the enormous Root Society dome to see Bassnectar, which was apparently also the plan of about seven or eight thousand other burners.  The dome was packed wall-to-wall, and they'd configured soundsystems outside as well, with spillover crowds extending well out into the streets.  The bass could be felt from blocks away!  We danced well into the night, and I didn't get to bed until well after sunrise.

Miya attempting to make breakfast crêpes

Friday I met up with Miya again, who had had a very rough morning dealing with a medical emergency involving a member of her camp.  We spent the afternoon and evening just talking and wandering around from art installations to bars, spending an hour or so watching a terrible italian caveman soft-porn flick in the Bad Ideas Theatre and eating popcorn.  We ended up crashing reasonably early, in preparation for the festivities of Saturday.

Saturday, the day of the burn, felt like it arrived far too quickly.  Our camp, 'Team Gong Show' (a subset of the 'First Republic of Slacking') had planned a three-hour party in the afternoon and I had been elected bar manager.  In preparation for this, we had stopped at the Rite-Aid pharmacy in Alturas, California to purchase alcohol - the ridiculous prices of booze in the states never cease to astound me.  We purchased a grand total of twelve gallons of vodka and rum for just over $120, and in three hours of serving heavily-sauced smoothies to a crowd of about a hundred or so we went through it all.  The theme of the party was, unsurprisingly, "The Gong Show" and after buttering up the crowd with drinks and house music for an hour or so, the gonging began.  I went up to play and sing A-Ha's 'Take On Me' with my mandolin, to much acclaim, though I was gonged when I returned to the stage an hour later to perform Britney Spears' 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' on the acoustic guitar.

in the Deep Playa, surveying the land

The burning of the man was spectacular, with phenomenal fireworks and a huge fireball erupting from the base of the man to start the blaze.  The man himself was particularly well built this year, and it was a solid forty minutes or so before he finally fell.  I had plans to meet up with Miya at midnight, but I took a short nap after the burn which turned into a three-hour stretch, and I woke up at 1:45am, groggy and faded from the day's heavy partying.  Fortunately, I subscribe to the theory that every Burning Man meetup plan should have at least one backup plan, and so I had also made a plan to meet her at 2am at Center Camp should we miss out on the midnight meetup.  I raced over to Center Camp, losing my third set of goggles of the week on the way, and waited - but she never showed.  When I made my way back to her camp to see if she was there, I found her fast asleep in her tent - it turned out she had also partied way too hard during the day, and had slept right through the meetup times as well.  We ended up napping for another few hours, intending to wake up for sunrise, but we even missed that by about an hour.  The early morning was spent riding around in the deep playa, checking out the furthest-flung art installations, talking and enjoying the morning sunlight.

Overall?  Amazing.  Very much a different experience from the previous two years, but that's pretty much always how it is - you go in with expectations of how things are going to be, but you can never really predict what will happen or how it will affect you.  I was a lot more 'crew'-oriented this year, instead of heading out solo like the previous years, and I stayed a lot more sober.

I will most certainly go again.

Gonzales Bay, Victoria

It's day two in Gonzales Bay, just east of Victoria Harbour.

It's lovely here!  Nicer even than Fleming Beach, from which I was evicted on Tuesday - and even nicer now that it's not pouring rain anymore.  I arrived on Wednesday afternoon to grey skies, and it rained all Thursday, so the sun is welcome - I had the sails up this morning for an hour or so to let them dry out.  Mildew isn't something I'm really interested in dealing with.

One nice thing that happened: about an hour after I anchored, an older woman with long white hair rowed out to say hello, and to offer me a shower, a dinner and the use of a bicycle, should I need one.  What a far cry from the surly stares of the Esquimalt fishermen, or the studied disinterest of the older sailors at the naval base!  She offered her back yard as a place to tie my dinghy, instead of the public beach, and told me to feel free to come and go though her property.  I took her up on the latter, and rowed my bicycle to shore in the pouring rain last night to go have birthday drinks with Oakley and Amanda.  Making my way home much later on was a bit of a trial to say the least, especially in the pitch dark with a head full of Jack Daniels - when I finally found the place, the tide had gone waaaaay out, and my dinghy was stranded about twenty feet up on the steep, slippery rocks.  I managed to get the dinghy, my bicycle and myself down to the waterline without falling - at least, as far as I remember.  Good thing I remembered my flashlight!

The bay is shallow - only ten or fifteen feet or so where I'm anchored - and I can see the bottom.  It's really nice being able to see the bottom, especially after so much time in the murky brownish waters of False Creek.  There are large shoals in the bay, and tonnes of seabirds - the only downside is that there's not really any shelter from the open ocean.  I get to rock around on the wake of every whale-watching tourboat that goes past - but between the gentle, constant rocking, the sounds of the seabirds and the waves lapping at the rocky shores nearby, it feels very much like the east coast here.  I can't see any crabs down there, but I might try dropping the trap later on just to see if I can snag some dinner.

If the sun sticks around, perhaps this weekend I'll get out the flippers and snorkel and give Tie Fighter's bottom a good scrub - she's starting to look pretty scummy down there.

Tonight, a house party.  Tomorrow, shopping for Burning Man supplies.  Sunday, who knows?

At my last major post, I was about to speak at the Open Web Vancouver conference at the Vancouver Conference Center.  My talk went pretty well, I guess - I mean, I definitely didn't win any awards, but nobody walked out either.  I met some great new folks and had a good experience overall.  I know now that speaking at tech conferences is almost exactly like doing live-pa techno in front of a big audience - the more prepared you are, the easier it is to let go and just be yourself.

Since then, there's been... God.  Seriously, where to start?!

I've had repeated, profound musical experiences on the boat, jamming with friends.  Picture if you will a mirror-smooth False Creek, with the boat anchored about fifty feet offshore.  Dan Ross playing guitar and singing, Chad Taylor playing muted trumpet and providing some percussive backup and myself on mandolin and backup vocals - folks walking past, double-taking and sitting down on the seawall to listen, applauding between songs.  Making music on the boat with friends has given me far more joy than I ever imagined it could.  Actually, making music on the boat at all - I've been spending on average about eight to ten hours per week sitting on my deck, playing my guitar and singing.  If there is a greater peace than playing music on the water, I haven't found it yet.

Yarrrr!

I've gone on three epic sailing adventures, the third of which is still ongoing - as of this writing I am anchored in this lovely little bay, surrounded by million-dollar waterfront houses and a beautiful cliff infested with rock climbers.  More on that in future posts - but suffice to say this ongoing solo-sailing adventure is not without its trials and tribulations.

The first of the three epic sailing adventures was with a beautiful woman named Miya who I met at Burning Man in 2008, and who had come to visit me several times over the past year.  Her confidence in my sailing ability was appreciated, though perhaps unwarranted, as we left Vancouver and immediately ran into eight-foot breaking swells just off Point Atkinson, enroute to the Sunshine Coast.  The sailing got a lot better after the first day, but we still had to spend a few days on Bowen Island with engine trouble - mostly waiting around for a mechanic, until we tackled the problem head-on with the manual and some elbow grease, finally solving it ourselves and getting the engine back up and running.  We then cruised up the coast to Secret Cove and Smuggler Cove, where we spent a night before returning to Vancouver.  It was an amazing trip; the ocean opened my eyes and put a good fear into me, and the company was exquisite.  The parting of ways at the end was wistful to say the least.

Drew and Laurel spinning fire on the boat at Diversity

The second sailing adventure was with yet another beautiful woman, Carrie, who joined me on a trip to the Diversity Festival on Texada Island.  Technically we were supposed to sail with a crew of six, but Vancouver being the city of flailers that it is, the crew slowly called in to cancel until it was just the two of us.  The winds were against us the whole way there and back, forcing us to motor around 90% of the tip, so it's debatable whether or not we actually saved any money travelling by "sailboat".  We did get the sails up once or twice, but not nearly as much as I would have liked.  The festival itself was excellent, with us arriving in full pirate regalia to great fanfare, spending a weekend surrounded by beautiful people and great music, and rolling out again on Monday with a grand exit.  Sunday was a bit crazy, as the wind suddenly went from 5kn up to 25-30kn, and Tie Fighter danced in four-foot swells for the night - I now have a lot more faith in my anchor than before.  Another boat nearby actually did slip their anchor, and came within a few feet of hitting us, but we held steady and Monday was much calmer.  Another thing learned: rowing a dinghy in calm waters is one thing, rowing through four-foot waves as they break on the beach is another thing entirely!  I made very good use of the drybags my sister gave me for my birthday.

The next weekend after Diversity was the Emrg-N-See Festival just outside of Salem, Oregon.  I went to this festival with Trent last year, and it was probably the best festival I'd been to to date - it was as though someone had sent a personal invitation to every single gorgeous, blonde, dreadlocked, dubstep-loving yoga instructor on the west coast.  I cannot express how many times I had to stop and shake my head at the sheer beauty surrounding me.  This year was similar, though somewhat diluted, as though every guy who went last year went home and explained the situation to every guy he knew.  I know I did, which is why I was surprised that the crew going down fron Vancouver was much smaller this year.  Regardless, I definitely got my fill of amazing dubstep and bassline music, on very excellent soundsystems.  I also got to take a tablespoon of dancefloor dirt out of my nose every morning, which I am choosing to look at as preparation for this year's Burning Man expedition.

The weekend after Emrg-N-See was Sequential Circus 5, an electronic music event that I guess I'm sort of in charge of.  I say that with some reservation, because the show couldn't happen without every one of the seriously talented and driven people involved - we've got the whole thing pretty much down to a science now, and even with six live acts on a small stage, we continue to be efficient and competent, and we still have a good time doing it.  This SeqCirc was probably the best music to date, though we were up against some very stiff competition.  The capacity of the venue is about 180 people, and we had about 100 people, so while it was never packed, it never felt empty, and nearly everyone who was there at midnight was still there at 3am when we turned the lights on, so I count that as a win.  The next Sequential Circus, SeqCircSix, will be in January.

After recovering from SeqCirc, having a few sailing missions out and around English Bay, and basically settling down and focusing on dayjob work for a while, I took off on my first big solo-sailing trip, headed for Victoria...

Things That Don't Suck So Much: