I’m quite sure the list will never end. As the old saying goes, once you “finish” your boat, it’s time to sell it. I feel like we’re only getting started with “Betty” (her nickname- proper name, “Rubicon”). But looking back over the past four years, it’s a bit startling to see how far we’ve come.

Just a few of the big things we’ve (and by we, I mean 95% John) done, in no particular order:
-sandblasted hull and re-painted four dozen layers of zinc, epoxy, and polyurethane
-new bottom paint
-repaired rudder
-replaced all running and standing rigging
-welded new exterior chainplates
-cut off all stanchions and rubrail
-replaced bow roller
-new Samson post
-relocated cockpit drains, new thru-hulls and stainless pipe
-relocated bilge pump thru-hulls (a deceptively enormous bit of work)
-new bilge pump
-new AC/shorepower wiring
-new DC wiring
-new head and holding tank, new vent
-new flanges and valves on intake/discharge thru-hulls
-cut out rust and rewelded openings for ports in main cabin
-rebedded deck hardware and boom gallows
-removed old wooden hatch trim and turtle
-fabricated, installed, sealed all new wood around hatch
-new covers for cockpit lockers
-all new plumbing for freshwater system, new pickups for tank
-new sheaves for mast
-new rollerfurling
-modified/repaired headsails
-new boom
-recovered all cushions in salon, new cockpit cushions
-an infinite number of hours of chipping, grinding, priming, painting rust spots

our big purchases:
-new VHF and remote mic
-cutting torch and tanks
-grinder (nothing but rave reviews for the Makita grinder we own. it’s a workhorse)
-new AC and DC panels
-new batteries and charger
-2 Honda generators and kit to combine their power
-portable welder (saved the day!!)
-2 anchors
-new inflatable dinghy and motor
-halyards
-rigging (holy wire, Batman!)
-tons of wood
-plastic for ports
-gasket material (holy rubber, Batman!)
-zincs
-paint paint paint
-tools tools tools
-hose clamps by the dozen
-head and holding tank
-tens of dozens of grinding discs, box after box of sandpaper
-at least a million foam brushes
-two enormous shipments of paint
-Corroseal, corroseal, corroseal
-stainless steel by the truckful
-fabric, zippers, foam
-French press for coffee

Our big projects for the next month are the engine and the propane system, along with securing the rig and working out any bugs with the sailing system. I am in the process of replacing all of the overhead and piecing together trim that is scattered across the boat. Note to self, when a boat was built with a custom interior, expect that nothing fits together logically. Things that appear the same size are mere illusions. Everything has its one particular spot and no other.

Just as we have our one particular boat. Perfect for us. Ready for us.
Our new home.

ps- I found the old post from 9/2005, when we bought Betty. And had no children. And had no idea of what we were getting ourselves into.

Chicken Tortilla Soup- serve with cheese, avocado, and lots of crushed chips.

• 3 lbs. chicken (all breast or a combination of light and dark meat)
• 16 cups water
• 1 cup butter
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 stalks celery, cut in half lengthwise then diced
• 3 carrots, diced
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 2 tsps. paprika
• 4-6 tsps. Lawry’s Seasoned Salt (or regular salt if you prefer)
• 4 tsps. ground cumin
• 2 cans Ro*Tel tomatoes (15 oz), use mild if serving kids if you prefer
• 2 cans diced green chiles (4 oz)
• 1 pint of sour cream (low fat okay)

Cook the chicken in a large pot of water. (I drop the chicken into simmering water and “poach” for about 20 minutes. Then I remove the chicken right away so it doesn’t get tough.) Chop chicken and set aside, saving all the broth for later.

Melt butter in another large pot and cook onion, garlic, celery, and carrots over medium heat until onions are translucent. Gradually add the flour, paprika, seasoned salt, and cumin (you are basically making a roux). Slowly add reserved broth, a ladle at a time, and cook until thickened, stirring constantly.

Add rotel and chiles. Stir and add chicken. (At this point, you can keep the soup indefinitely.) Just before serving, stir in sour cream and heat through but do not boil. Serve in bowls topped with garnish.

ps- another bike I love. Though I’m still planning my rickshaw.

I’ve been terrible about the blog and pictures, as we’ve been sewing sewing sewing, trying to finish our set of cockpit cushions before I lose my land-based sewing workshop. John and our rigger are putting the mast on the boat tomorrow- this, after close to a year of research and decision-making, rigging and riveting. I can’t wait to see it.

I have finally made peace with my sewing machine. This is the fourth set of cushions I’ve dared to tackle and I am hitting my stride. They went fast, and felt familiar. After my first two attempts, I decided I don’t do piping. It rubs into your legs, it sucks to sleep on. It’s pretty, but not worth the effort for me. I make a simple box with a zipper. This was the first time I’ve bought my own foam, too- usually I recycle older pieces. Dri-fast foam cuts easily with a bread knife, fyi.

(New cushions on our old boat, just before we sold her).

We recently had some work done to our sails and visited a professional canvas shop. It was like a candy store of enormous rolls of zippers and every color of Sunbrella ever made. Her tables were ginormous and you could barely make out the sewing machines in two corners of the room. It seemed strange until I remembered how much of sewing is the preparation. The cutting, aligning, stapling, marking. That’s the headache. Once the threads are going in, and once you turn something inside out and it fits what you intended it to fit . . . it’s a good time. And really there are very few things besides a coat of paint and some new varnish, that do more for a boat’s appearance than new canvas.

My next big thing? A dodger. I have the frame in place but before we leave Marathon, there is some work to do. I’m going to need all the luck I can get before tackling that one.

In other news, does anyone need a toddler bed from Ikea, much loved by us, ready for its next occupant (local pick-up only, of course). It no longer has the guard rail, but is so low, you really don’t need it.

Happy twenty months! Twenty months sounds far too close to TWO for my comfort. How on earth is time flying so fast?

Apparently you got the memo about time and are busy keeping up. Potty trained. Speaking in full sentences. ALL. DAY. LONG. Diana said last weekend, “Imagine if you said everything that was on your mind, all the time. That’s Rosy.” Uh-huh. “Want this? Eat this? Rock. TRACTOR! Trains on trestles. GREEN train. Eat this.”

My favorite phrases of late: “What doing Mama?” “Hey, watch DIS!!” “What happen?” Oh the talking is precious precious stuff and I feel so blessed that we can hear your thoughts and not just your frustrations. There are few things in the world better than that tiny voice at 6AM saying, “Backhoe! Moving backwards. See backhoe, Mama?” Beep-beep-beep. Yep, even at 6AM.

Intelligence. What a gift. I can see already how much of a challenge it will be for you, to stay challenged. The work we’ll need to do to keep things new and stimulating. New books, new projects, new words. That you can differentiate and name complex construction equipment at twenty months is just the beginning. May backhoes be followed by quarks and ions . . . You have the world in your palms, Rosy. Anything you wish to learn, any subject you want to explore, it’s yours for the taking.

AT twenty months Rosy likes to dress as a princess, then dig in the gravel and fill dump truck after dump truck. She likes to ride Sophie’s bike and wear a helmet. She likes choc-wet (chocolate) and gummis of all kinds. She does not like green vegetables. She does enjoy rice and pasta, pancakes and oatmeal. She likes tractors and trucks of all kinds, trains, and ballerinas, running in circles, being held upside down, jumping on the bed, jumping off the bed, swinging on the big-girl swings at the park, sliding, running, and falling down. Rosy likes climbing into the windowsill to supervise the traffic outside. She notices when there are no cars- “Quiet, Mama. No cars.” She notices when poodles pass by (seriously, where did you learn to recognize specific dog breeds?). She notices. Everything.

My Roo, with a smile that spells mischief and love and happiness inside and out. With the scrunchiest faces that make us all love you more everyday. How is it possible after twenty months? But it is. We adore you.
Truly.

Yours forever and ever,
mama

Which quickly devolved to this scene.

And by the end of the walk?

Our first warm, non-rainy day in a long while. Construction vehicles, mud, flowers. It was near-perfect.

John treated me to a one-child morning last week and Rosy and I watched the No Impact Man documentary. We first read about Colin Beaven and his project three (3!) years ago when he attempted the No-Impact Year, aka The Year Without Toilet Paper, with his wife and daughter. I think like most people who read the story, we were excited about the statement he was attempting to make, and also a bit skeptical of his motives- was it simply a stunt to gain publicity and a book deal? Watching the film made me convinced that Colin has nothing but good intentions. He’s an optimist, an activist, an idealist. He admits that the extremes he and his family went to (living without electricity for 6 months, not taking the elevator to their 9th floor apartment, despite having a DOG that needed to be walked many times a day) were not meant to be replicated on a large scale. It WAS a publicity stunt; a publicity stunt for change. If we all did a tiny bit of what he did (and continues to do, on some level), we’d perhaps be a happier, cleaner, healthier society. As he says in the film, it’s not about using as little as you possibly can, it’s about using what you need in a sustainable way.

I really enjoyed the film, especially the “macro” bits, where he visits the hazmat dumps in the Bronx that are poisoning local kids, and suggests that beyond NO impact, he’d like to make a positive impact- imagine if we all took less from the environment, but worked to actually improve it! He begins to address the erosion in community- the loss of interconnectedness and this notion that our choices have no effect on our neighbors, not to mention our children and grandchildren. That’s the part I’m interested in. The idea that YOUR trash makes me sick.

Here are some links:
The No-Impact Project with its “carbon cleanse” week. I like his PDF How-Tos and the way the week is set up. He doesn’t ask you to go cold turkey (his family didn’t- they phased in new stages over the course of their No-Impact year), but rather to reflect on one piece of the puzzle each day.

The No-Impact man blog. The bits from 2007, when they were in the throes of the project, are the most compelling.

His bike. I WANT a rickshaw. So enormously cool. I have my Mamabikeorama sticker on my bike. But imagine the possibilities on this thing.

When I get down on the green stuff, biking around thinking we’re such a drop in the bucket (seriously, what I wouldn’t give to see one more family, ONE more family biking around the Keys on a regular basis), I see things like this and realize that there is a movement underway. There is community. I try to remember the small stuff people are doing: the neighbors are recycling more, so many of my friends are using cloth diapers, look at all the organic milk on the supermarket shelf! There are things to celebrate, just as there is still so much more to be done.

Happy Treehugging Tuesday.
ps- John got 47 mpg on his last tank in the TDI. We had a cocktail to celebrate that little bit of sustainable practice.

I have read Siblings Without Rivalry and think the Farber/Mazlish way of communicating has a lot of merit. If only I could remember it in the moment. Buddhism for Mothers. The Creative Family, and Amanda Soule’s blog- though not necessarily advice-driven, I like the way she lives her life with her kids.

I am a big Mothering Magazine reader (duh) and soak up the stuff that reinforces what we’re already doing. Because four years of sleep deprivation and sleeping with babies is perhaps starting to get to me? How people have three and four children, I salute your stamina. I haven’t read a ton since the babes were born- I’m finally getting back to it now. I can get easily overwhelmed with the advice and should-be/could-be of parenting books. The internet is a blessing in the way it lets me find what I need, when I need it. It connects me with like-minded people even when I’m feeling a bit alone on the island here. Truly? I can’t imagine parenting without it.

Also on our shelves these days?
Sophie is heavy into The Tomten, a Valentine’s Day gift from us. She loves that story to no end. It’s a sweet one.
Rosy? Trucks, trucks, trucks. I love this Byron Barton book. We read it tonight, along with a fairly technical book about equipment. She looked up at me as she was nursing to sleeping and said, “Jackhammers, Mama. Jackhammers.”

The other obsession of late? Trains. Rosy has a book of the Thomas the Tank Engine characters and can name them like pictures in a dictionary. They have a half dozen engines at this point and play with them constantly. Rosy likes to name them and click them all together until it gets unwieldy- ‘Dis train TOOO long.” Sophie takes them to school and gives them lessons in stopping, rescuing, whistling. We had a small wooden train set when she was Rosy’s age that rarely got played with. The Thomas characters, with their faces, are right up her pretend-play alley. They have personalities. It also helps to trash the track. Liberated from the rails, trains can make their home anywhere in the house, in the company of all sorts of other vehicles, robots, little people, fairies, loader-backhoes, dumptrucks . . .

We had a really wonderful Valentine’s Day- a gorgeous sunrise and then present opening in the morning light. Our Valentine mailbox was a big hit and something we’ll make a tradition. It doesn’t have to be holiday specific, but something about the special heart box and love letters combined to send Sophie into a writing frenzy. One of those moments when the best learning happens because you’re not trying too hard to make it happen. And it’s fun!

We drank coffee and streamed the America’s Cup race, only to see the USA prevail!! It was like watching sailing redefined- boats going 30 knots in a relatively small wind. They were flying, and it was just beautiful. What we wouldn’t give to see the next race held in a lovely place like Newport . . .

Sophie designated Valentine’s Day as Mike, the bird’s, birthday- which is brilliant because we’ll never forget it. Rosy has been singing Happy Birthday every day for a month now, so it was about time to put the song into action. They fabricated gifts from birdseed, toothpicks and play-dough (Rosy calls toothpicks, “pickles,” which I always want to remember). We made party hats. We made a great cake, of Sophie’s invention, that tasted like strawberry shortcake (but without whipped cream, which she’s decided she abhors, weirdo).

We took a walk to oversee the construction equipment in the neighborhood (more on that soon). We ate kale soup and homemade bread. Our friend brought us little gnomes made of Hershey kisses. We Skyped the grandparents in snowy Atlanta. We were sending and receiving the love. It was simply nice to put the boat work aside for one precious day and be us. It was a simple, good time.

“Dr. Glass explained that nothing is wrong with a married person launching a friendship outside of matrimony- so long as the walls and windows of the relationship remain in the correct places. It was Glass’s theory that every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world- that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimate secrets of your marriage.

What often happens, though, during so-called harmless friendships, is that you begin sharing intimacies with your new friend that belong hidden within your marriage. You reveal secrets about yourself- your deepest yearnings and frustrations- and it feels so good to be exposed. You throw open a window where there really ought to be a solid, weight-bearing wall. Not wanting your spouse to feel jealous, you keep the details of your friendship hidden. In so doing, you have just built a wall between you and your spouse where there really ought to be free circulation of air and light.”

John and I are both intensely private people. I always wondered if other people kept as much within the bounds of their marriage. It felt good to read that not only was it normal, but it was healthy to keep the windows cracked, not thrown open to the world.

May the houses, and the boats, we build in the future continue to be sound structures. I love you, John.