AJ's Rainy Day Dreams, and an unintended plug for a boat designer

Rain initiates a deep psychological drive in me to get on a boat.  I don't know what it is, perhaps simple fear of everything flooding, or maybe it was my favorite experiences in open dinghies, getting caught in a bit of a squall and bailing with one hand as I ripped up and down the lake.

I want gray skies and driving rain...  cold, driving rain.  North.  The kind of sailing where I have a puffy jacket under my foulies and over my knit wool sweater and scarf.  However, I've heard of sailors being wet for days and even weeks at sea, and that seems less my cup of tea.  I envision myself feeling like a lone astronaut in a strong metal capsule hull, protected from the elements as they howl around me, and going on "space walks" outside as needed.  Think Bernard Moitessoir in Joshua instead of Robin Knox Johnston in Suhaili.

So rainy day dreaming leads me across this designer, Michael Kasten, who worked aboard some of the world's current fleet of traditional tall sailing ships, now has his naval architecture degree, and is free lance designing "nomadic" sailing craft along traditional hull and rig shapes, though converted to simple curved-plate-chine hull construction in welded aluminum (or steel) for the "home" builder.
http://www.kastenmarine.com/nomadic_watercraft.htm
Basically, craft that are designed to be nearly self-sufficient with an eye towards affordable yet everlasting build, with ultra cheap cost-of-ownership.  I love his excessively philosophic breakdown of his version of "nomadic watercraft."

Aluminum needs no paint.  It just oxidizes gray and stays that way, so the boat lasts nearly forever in its battleship gray condition.  Aluminum also cuts with common power tools and wood blades.  And because the boat ends up all unpainted metal, there is no reason to buy hardware, nor drill for through-bolting and introducing leaks.  If you need a new cleat, you just weld a few aluminum pipes in the shape of a cleat onto the deck.  Done.  Need a bowsprit?  Two welded aluminum pipes, no finish.  Pulpit?  You get the idea.

If you like a bit of steam punk, a bit of Bauhaus and shabby-chic style, and I do, and you appreciate low maintenance, and I do, then an everlasting coat of never-finish-nor-re-finish gray oxide that never needs a bolt to caulk is IN.

Then he uses a traditional gaff schooner rig, with sails that are loose-footed, and just laced up the luff around the mast.  Deadeyes and lanyards are set at the ends of rope standing rigging, instead of stainless machined turnbuckles and wire.  The whole rig is set on standard diameters of aluminum pipe for masts, yards, and booms so that the rigging tabs can just be welded on, again instead of buying marine hardware.  Seems complex with all the ropes to manage, but very few are adjusted regularly, and the jib is club-footed so it can be self tending.  It wouldn't honestly be a hard boat to sail alone.  It is rigging for "simplicity", or more accurately for self-sustainability.  Like high-tech versions of the great tea clippers schooners of the mid 1800's.

The boats can perform like (somewhat) modern watercraft on passages, but are strong as tanks, and look like the big ships with their schooner rigs and full-length flat decks.  No cockpit!  Just sail from the deck.  The flat decks also give full-hull interior living on the 40+ footers.

These are truly small ships that are modernized for fast passage-making and living aboard indefinitely.  Built with hardware-store components, skills, and materials, for the comfort of knowing you can repair or refit the boat in just about any remote part of the world.  Strong enough that you likely won't have to.  I like this guy.

Here is my favorite design:
http://www.kastenmarine.com/redpath.htm

...Sometime, in our little backyard in Thailand, using cheap Chinese aluminum paid for by the sale of our boat to a wealthy Frenchman who had to have it and stuffed my face full of euros, Sarah and I will weld up one of these schooners, sew the simple sails, outfit it with the cheap, local, East Asian hardwoods, haul it to the ocean, and sail it far away to rarely explored waters.  I wanna see some penguins...  and then some polar bears.


But my mind also wanders from the traditional aesthetic path in the "engineer" direction.  I try to use the Buckminster Fuller "Dynamaxion" approach and erase from my mind all concepts of what a sailboat should look like, and I try to describe how I would want to live a life at sea moved by wind, and how I would design a vehicle that would accomplish those goals...
Unfortunately the answer is almost always a multihull...  I can't justify thousands of pounds of lead underneath pulling down when thousands of pounds of buoyancy pushing up from the side just makes so much more sense.
But that doesn't mean it can't be totally awesome.  As we all know, the riveted aluminum post-apocalypse trimaran/dive support platform from Kevin Costner's Waterworld (...just mute it and fast forward) is probably the coolest thing since the invention of the grain-grinding windmill.

Why, if you are having a unique custom yacht made for yourself, would you not have it designed far outside the realm of traditional just so you can show off how unique it is?  It would take a special designer to realize something other than a standard mono, cat, or tri, but this is similar to what I would end up with...
Aquaspace.  Designed by Jacques Rougerie (of Seaorbiter fame) and built in the 1980s as a legitimate scientific marine mammal observation vessel...  apparently to my not-yet-specified specifications.
http://www.aquaspacebonaire.nl/en/the-history-of-the-aquaspace/

You know you want it.  It looks like it would be a ship-to-shore surface transport for the mighty Nautilus.
Looking at the hull shape, I'm guessing this displaces a similar amount as a cruising monohull of comparable length.  Perhaps then it is a hair faster, or could be made to be.  All welded aluminum structure.  Bi-mast so there are no lateral stays.  A twin staysail rig (no "main"sail at all).  Full underwater viewing/sleeping structure with a spiral staircase that ascends into the a fighter-jet-like covered control cockpit (pilot house?) in the bow, so you can play Captain Nemo all voyage long...

Now I just want to send myself to naval architecture school, and who knows what may roll out of our future little place in Thailand.

Rainy Day Dreaming

So where are we off to once we finish this boat? It's something we've been talking about a lot recently, and something we haven't talked about much on the blog yet. We've been too bogged down with boat work (and fear of failure) to make any meaningful plans. And that's still largely the case. But I'll share our recent musings on the topic.

First of all, there is no plan per se.  We are not really planning a trip around the world. We are planning to be nomads in order to eventually see as much of the the world as we can.  I think the term "travel" and the phrase "sail around the world" can be misleading because many people immediately associate them with permanent vacationing.  Which is where I assume all the "but you can't possibly" "how can you afford?..", "Well if you stop to work you're not really continually traveling are you?"  questions and accusations come from.  And they are right.  You can't permanently vacation.   99% of us can't afford an extended world tour with our current account balance, and living/working in a foreign land isn't exactly traveling in the vacation sense.  So I understand the protest, never the less it's surprisingly difficult to break the "vacation" interpretation of travel and explain nomadic life to a lot of people. That home is where the boat is.  We do not want to visit anywhere. We want to live everywhere.  We call people with this inclination drifters, vagabonds, long haired pinko commie scum, gypsies, nomads...travelers.  I believe a person becomes nomadic for two reasons.

1. They must see the world.

2. They can't afford to.

Rectifying this seemingly mutual exclusivity inevitably leads to nomadic life, whether by bike, boat, backpack, RV, planes, trains, automobiles, or working abroad.  Those who must go go, and worry about the rest when they get there. They rightly have faith that the good people of the world won't let them starve.  They do not identify with or need a home base or home culture.

"Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home."
~ Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

When I first found a copy of The Sheltering Sky long ago, I was mesmerized by the sense of timelessness Paul was able to impart through his storytelling. He captured the infinity of the slow travel experience. Cesar was onto the cause of this phenomena.

"Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends.
You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential.
Air, Sleep, Dreams, The Sea, The Sky
All things tending toward the eternal or what we imagine of it."

~Cesar Pavese

I believe this feeling, this pace of life, this possession of your own time, is the proverbial dragon chased by nomads, drifters, and travelers.  AJ and I were hatching the plan to turn nomad before he was stationed in Germany.  But living there for 3 years and getting a taste of life abroad nailed that plan down.  You either enjoy culture shock and navigating new and different ways the world can be run, or you don't.  You could say AJ and I are addicted to culture shock.

So the plan is simply to drift from place to place lingering where custom and culture eludes or inspires us until we've seen it all or tire of it.  It may not all happen on S/V Robin, or even on a boat, but that's the 20 year plan.  

Where to go first has been an ongoing discussion for years.  The Bahamas and Caribbean will be first by default. But once we have our sea legs do we go to the Atlantic or Pacific?  The Atlantic is smaller, and on the other side are the familiar comforting western cultures of Europe ripe with marine support. But there's also a lot of bureaucracy, fees, fewer work opportunities, expensive western goods.  All the expenses of western world.  So it may not be the best place to start out. Plus, we just came from there.  So to the Pacific!

But if I'm going all that way across the South Pacific to that side of the world, I'm not missing India or Japan. Seeing all of Asia that I'd like to, would basically force a Pacific loop. Sending us back to North America from Japan, then through the Panama canal into the Caribbean and maybe then over to Europe.

But even with Europe tacked onto the end, this route leaves a lot to be desired. Two continents to be precise: South America and Africa.  I never hear about sailing in South America.  Maybe because I'm only surrounded by annual Caribbean sailing bums, or maybe because it's on route to nowhere but the cape from here. I heard in passing that the sailing "sucks down there", but recently I looked it up, and the South American coast is littered with yacht clubs.  Can you imagine Buenos Aries without sailboats!?  So once we started seriously considering following the out islands to Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina we were faced with the cape conundrum or going back north to the canal to get to the Pacific. Then we realized there's a quicker route East than going West.  South America to Africa in the Southern Westerlies arriving in Walvis Bay Namibia.  From Namibia around South Africa to Madagascar, then up to Sri Lanka, India, Thailand... something like this:

The only thing this route excludes is the South Pacific. Which I hear is pretty ... empty.  

This plan really excites me.  Practice a little Spanish, Portuguese, and Salsa, Then our first ocean crossing ends in African safari.  Then Baobab trees, swimming with Asian elephants, stopping by the Cheoy Lee shipyard in Hong Kong to say "what's up?", getting down with whatever the Japanese and south Koreans are doing these days... Then back to North America, through the Panama canal and up the eastern seaboard to Nova Scotia. Then across the north Atlantic to the Europe we haven't seen: Ireland, Scandinavia, Portugal, Greece, Istanbul.  Stopping everywhere in between of course.

Or, after sailing Scandinavia we could trade the sailboat in for a riverboat and take the Rhine-Danube river system to the Mediterranean.

Then dump the boat, take flying lessons and do Africa right. By plane! Camping, flying, and video taping... (Knowing AJ, we'll probably have to build the plane.) 

Or maybe we will fall in love with some place along the way and decide we were meant to be farmers.  Or restaurants or carbon fiber fabrication-ists  or documentarians, or tree house dwellers, or start a non-profit... Or maybe we'll build our own self-sustaining island out of plastic water bottles, bamboo and dirt like that guy in Mexico.  And add some floating shipping containers full of dirt strung together for farming.  Get some chickens.  Or end the voyage and decide our hearts belong to the grey skies and rocky shores of Ireland. 

...or maybe we'll end up begging on the street in an exotic local for a while, or shipwrecked on a desert island, or get crushed by a depressed whale, or maybe we'll find out the mysteries of the Bermuda triangle never to be heard from again.

There's really no telling.