Aren’t you scared?

Aren’t you scared? I seem to get this question a lot when people hear our story. I think my natural state might be scared. It’s definitely an emotion I am very familiar with. Given this question comes up so often I think maybe that when others anticipate fear, worry or being scared this may be a natural inhibitor from continuing. Often for me it does distill the extent of my activity, for example I snorkel rather than dive, I ski but only the green runs, I sail but I don’t race ;-). You get the gist. I tend not to go full throttle on things but still get to dip my toe in. Sometimes with this lifestyle though it’s difficult to be this cautious. Sometimes it feels as if I have my mischievous brother Rob behind me as I try to dip just my toe in and he pushed me in. It is exhilarating to do something I thought I couldn’t but yes it is also “scary”!

This past week has been full of firsts with Alisa and with firsts comes fear. I try to combat the fear with preparation and planning but this never completely rids the feeling.  Launching Alisa and bringing her to the dock was our first challenge. The

spot they had for us meant we had to parallel park between a 60 foot monohull and a huge catamaran. The wind was also slightly forward of our nose pushing us away from the dock so we would need momentum to get up to it but also not too much momentum as not to hit the boat in front. And just to make the whole experience more fun for us a Caribbean squall was bearing down on us. If you haven’t seen a squall before on the water its basically a literal line of weather moving fast towards you. You see the rain wall and wind line on the water coming at you from light to grey. 

Docking for the first time means not only boat handling but also placing all your bumpers (fenders) at the right height for the dock and having all your dock lines attached and ready to throw to the dockhand. We had our friend John with us on board to help out with lines. He had the stern line and I had the bow line. We also both had a fender not tied on just in case we needed to fend off another boat or the dock. As Graham got closer to the spot, slowly, cautiously trying things out, John says “You have 5 minutes to get onto the dock before that squall hits”. My stomach lurches and I looked up to see the Caribbean squall line coming at us. Oh lord, here we go again. The wind was pushing us off the dock, so Graham was trying to figure out the bow thruster so that he wouldn’t need to drive forward but rather just push us to the right to the dock. The learning curve with our big heavy boat was steep though as she doesn’t respond as quickly as our previous light Jeanneau. As Graham ease us slowly closer, I had the long dock line all coiled up and was preparing to throw it but knowing there was no way in hell I could make the 10 feet distance to the dock at this point. Luckily John came up and grabbed the line from me and threw it like nobodies business. I literally clapped my hands as Jose caught it! Jose began to pull us in and John threw the stern line and just like that we were on the dock with only a moment to spare before full torrential rain!

Our new home was now our new floating home. Man does she look pretty on the water. After a few days at the dock, checking systems, getting comfortable and having Amelia and her partner Elliott join us on board it was time to move to the mooring field. Unfortunately we had been backed up on the dock as the catamaran behind us had left and we were now boxed in a bit. Another challenge.

We had everyone with a fender in hand and we managed to eek our way out and just like that we were off and motoring through the fleet to our mooring ball off a little island not to far away. Getting on the ball was fairly easy with the help of our friend in a dinghy and now for the past few days we have been getting use to being self sufficient…Making power with our solar farm and making water with this power! We have been checking jobs off our list and preparing for our first sail!! Tomorrow we head off to Carriacou. It’s about a 6 hour journey. We are pretty excited and of course I am a little bit scared but this hasn’t stopped me yet. 

-Check out pictures and short videos here of our past couple weeks