Sailing – Page 16 – disengage.ca

I need to escape the house more often.

Seriously, it’s turning out that my “22h/week” job actually means sitting in front of my computer 40-50 hours a week, but only actually working on “work” for twenty or so hours. It certainly doesn’t help that the crazy winter weather has started – well, winter in Vancouver, that is, which means it has begun to rain and won’t let up until – oh, May or so.

Well – let’s just do an update, then. Still working for the media company, still mostly doing crazy celebrity gossip server admin stuff. Still living in the basement. Currently in negotiations to purchase a large sailboat…

Yeah, that’s right. I won’t give *too* many details, just in case I might jinx the whole thing, but here’s what I will tell you:

She’s big. Really big. Like, sleeps six people comfortably, but could potentially carry a lot more.
She’s in pretty rough shape. She’ll need a looooot of work before she looks as pretty as she can, but 90% of the work is scraping, sanding and painting.

My intention is to continue to negotiate the sale, to see if I can get the price down to something semi-reasonable. If everything works out, hopefully by the end of the year I’ll be moving out of my basement and onto a sailboat!

The downside is that there are a lot of hurdles – for instance, while she’s got a stove and a toilet, she doesn’t have a shower or a refrigerator. The shower can be retrofitted without too much work – there’s space for one – but the fridge is a bigger problem. Fridges consume a *lot* of electricity, which, on a boat, is a big deal. She does have an icebox though, and really, refrigerators on sailboats are kind of a new invention anyway, they’ve only really been possible for the past ten years or so. Using an icebox will be a shift in thinking, but one that I won’t really have to worry about for at least the next few months – I can keep things nice and cool just by putting them in a cooler outdoors.

Speaking of which, one might question the wisdom of moving onto a sailboat right at the start of winter. Well, rightly so – boats aren’t exactly known for their insular capacity. One might even consider them downright cold – but wait! This *particular* vessel was used as a live-aboard in Alaska for the past few years! She’s got dual diesel furnaces, fore and aft, and she’s been insulated against the bitter cold of the Alaskan winter. Actually though, I think I’ll probably have to rip out all the insulation and repaint her, but I’m quite looking forward to the work.

I’ve been taking a CYA (Canadian Yachting Association) Coastal Navigation class from the same guys that held the CYA Basic Cruising course I took over the summer. It’s been excellent, I highly recommend it – if you want details, feel free to email me and I’ll fill you in. The course is teaching me all about using charts and compasses and navigating the waters of the Georgia Straight – one thing the teacher said that I found particularly interesting was that the Straight (and surrounding waters) contain practically every kind of cruising waters that you’re likely to encounter anywhere in the world – if you learn to cruise here in British Columbia, you can pretty much cruise anywhere.

Anyhow – batteries are running low, and I suspect so is my welcome. I’m typing this in ‘Re-Entry’, a wicked little espresso place on Main Street. Time to pack up and go back out into the pouring rain…

David Allen’s excellent book “Getting Things Done” has a chapter on defining goals prior to doing any actual work. While that would seem to be common sense, keeping that simple bit of wisdom in mind has already saved me from more than a few cases of working my ass off without having a clear finish line in my mind.

So, this post is to define for myself a few short and long term goals.

This list is by no means complete, and perhaps I’ll edit it as the year progresses, but we’ll see.

Ongoing goals, with no set duration:

to enjoy every day and live without fear, shame or regret,
to neither seek approval nor fear disapproval,
to be active every day and continue to improve my physical self,
to work efficiently and productively, smarter not harder,
to continue to reduce my footprint towards becoming nomadic,
to have the maximum flexibility in my free time, and
to recognize adventure when it presents itself.

Short term goals, ie this year:

to subtract the “home” from the “home office”,
to find a balance between productivity and sociability,
to automate all financial responsibilities, bills, etc,
to sail to Desolation Sound,
to build and perform a new live-pa set,
to learn to do handstand pushups without the support of a wall,
to bike around the Fundy Trail in New Brunswick,
to get my busker’s license and busk on Granville Island,
to learn to play my mandolin better,
to learn to cook better and cheaper,
to minimize my stuff and rent out my apartment, and
to backpack around Southeast Asia for six months or so.

Long term goals:

to build a business that provides income with minimal input,
to own a sailboat, and perhaps live aboard it for a while,
to learn to fly and eventually own an ultralight airplane,
to buy property in the Gulf Islands and build a home on it, and
to eventually settle in that home and raise a family.

Category: Sailing

Argh!

Restatement of Goals