Sundowners, Sea Stories, and Shipwrecks

By Mel Burnett and Greg Burnett

Experience the High Seas Through the Eyes of Overthinkers! And a Cat!

People live on boats.
Really!
Learn what it's like to live on a boat. A really nice boat.
Learn what it's like to explore the ocean, raise kids and a cat on the ocean, be effed over by the ocean, and still have fun!
You can learn to sail in your forties! Or fifties! Or later! That's what we did!
You just have to answer the call. You hear the call, right? So did we.
There are lots of books out there about this.
Start with this one!
We don't have all the answers. We have the introductions. Let us introduce you to life on the sea.

Read this book for pearls such as these:

• "When prepping a boat, you do not have to prep for the apocalypse."
• "Those who choose to cruise the oceans learn all the lessons of life.  And quicker."
• "Creativity is rewarded when anchoring, but not when weighing anchor."
• "Sometimes you just have to suck it up and crawl into the dinghy instead of step into it."
• "A good hostess does not allow her guests to get blown up."

Read this book.

Explore!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Snakes On a Honeymoon LLC
• Release date: May 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985825107

Book preview

Mel & Greg Burnett

Sundowners, Sea Stories, and Shipwrecks

The Adventures of The Amazing Marvin and His Crew

First published by Snakes On a Honeymoon LLC 2022

Copyright © 2022 by Mel & Greg Burnett

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

Mel & Greg Burnett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Mel & Greg Burnett has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

Website: www.burnettsahoy.com. Cover art by Sezt via 99designs.com. Marvin icon by Naeomi via deviantart.com.

Sailing is risky and you sail at your own risk. Mel and Greg are amateur sailors and are not certified captains. Any advice in this book should be corroborated by more seasoned sailors before being followed. When calamity happens, and it will, don’t blame us!

First edition

ISBN: 979-8-9858251-0-7

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

Find out more at reedsy.com

Dedicated to all of the patients who allowed me to fumble around with them during my medical training and practice, and Mom, who was always up for a good travel adventure, especially the ones where lots of things could go wrong. —Mel

&

Can I do this later? I’m reading my book! — Greg

&

To Greg, who made sailing all over the world and all of these things I could never do by myself possible, and you are so amazing and humble and would never attempt to edit my dedication. — Mel

Contents

Foreword

Preface

CAST OF CHARACTERS

ORIGINS

Preparations

Blog pain and sailing lessons

Hurricane season and other confusing things

Sailing camp and knots

Even more sailing lessons

We venture out on our own

ASA 114: Cat class!

Going back to our roots

The Annapolis Boat Show

What the heck, West Marine?

Points of sail for the spatially challenged

Boat names

Mel is a mess

On electricity…and love

Weekends are awesome!

DIY Flags

Folie a quatre

Decisions, decisions…

On cephalopods

Bam!

We love our boat!

Respect the Newton

It hasn’t sunk in yet

So this is why everyone doesn’t do this…

The Amazing Marvin: There’s no going back!

Mel uses the word Crap a lot these days

The Tiny House people are nuts!

Outfitting is Not for the Weak

Okay, so maybe not Wednesday

Okay, so maybe not Friday morning

Getting Our Feet Wet in the Caribbean

And we’re off!

I’m on watch!

We Are Fine

Feeling better

Swearing Like a Sailor

Landfall!

A salty taste of our sail

It’s starting to sink in

Jamaica Farewell

Offshore again

We made it!

The Amnazing Marvin??

Boat school!

Growing Pains

Cartagena nights

Magical realism is just journalism in Cartagena

Now That’s More Like It!

It’s Fun to Be Wrong

Photo Expedition

Boat School Update

Exploding Wieners Everywhere!

We Made It!

Hello Santa Marta!

Minca

Tayrona

Hells Bells! Ride On!

We Are Offshore

Offshore to Aruba

Aruba, Jamaica, Ooo I Wanna Take Ya…

The Hardest Easiest Passage So Far

We Should Launch Aruba Into Outer Space

We Have Become Time Travelers

Gritty Aruba

After This Is Over, Mel Never Wants to See Another F’ing Filter Again

Farewell Aruba

Country Number Four!

Workin’ Weather

Halloween, Cruiser Style

Two Roads Diverged…

Sunday in Spanish Waters

The Winds Will Be Better Next Week

On the ball in Bonaire!

Atmosphere

Cruiser’s University

What’s for dinner? Lionfish!

Last Days in Bonaire

The Burnetts are Frickin’ Close Hauled Again

Getting closer…

We’re here!

Sint Maarten is One Giant Dock

The Days are Just Packed!

There Won’t Be Anywhere to Change

Happy Holidays from BurnettsAhoy!

West Indies Story

Hangin’ Out in St. Thomas

Back in the USA

Limin’ It Up and…The Cure For Swamp Ass Ain’t No Fun

Time to Go!

Seven Months Out

Grad School: TCI

Sea Story Club

The Other Long Island

The Moody Island

Be a Dear And Get Grammie Mel Her Conception Blanket

Gotta Gotta Gotta Gotta Regatta!

Well That Went About As Well As Expected…

There’s a College Named Georgetown, Right?

That’s How Cruisers Do

Adventure at Rudder Cut Cay

Mini Bloggers

Staniel Cay!

Fish Lips, a Birthday, and Dinghy Sonar

We Wrap Up the Exumas

Coming Home

Atlantic Crossing I

The Burnetts Are NOT Dead; They Are Just in Florida

The Burnetts Can’t Wait to Start Crossing the Atlantic…So They Can Rest

About to leave the fuel dock!

All is well

It’s Just Us and the Birds

Mel Apologizes to the Ocean

We Have the Following Seas, So Where Are the Winds?

The Vestibular System is Fascinating

Everyone is Fast Asleep

And we are off!

We Probably Should Be More Superstitious

Spinnaker Is Up

And the Spinnaker Is Down!

Mel Tries to Appease the Sea Gods With Her Brilliant Prose

Adaptation

Over the Hump to Horta

Boredom is the Enemy at the Moment

The Burnetts Are NOT Bored Anymore

Morning Update

Afternoon update

We’re here!

Still Recovering

Arrived in Sao Miguel

The Nerds Abroad

The Mid-Atlantic Chill Pill

Offshore to Lagos

We’ve Got Whale!

The Offshore Cleanse

Arrived in Lagos!

Circumnavigating the Med

A Dinner Party in Lagos

Getting Used to Really Old Things

Really, Really Old Things

Atlantic Crossing Summary

Party Between the Pillars of Hercules

Rockin’ the Rock

Happy Independence Day!

Offshore to Sardinia

VHF 16 is NOT Your Personal Radio Station, Mario!

Getting There

Sardinia!

Exploring Alghero

Soaking Up Sardinia

The One-Year Itch

First Impressions

The Burnetts Romed It. They Romed It HARD.

Water Days!

NOT a Toothpaste

Let’s Go Shopping in Italy!

Power Tourists

Sicilian Hospitality

Nerds Afloat — Literally!

Greece!

Patras Personalities

A Confused Goose, and Mel Consults the Oracle

The End of the Tunnel

Come to Greece: You Will Have a CHEESEGASM!

Sour Grapes!

Visitor’s Page

Mel’s Sailing Playlist, Annotated

Grateful

Doing Laundry in the Cathouse

The Liquid Gold in Santorini Isn’t Wine; It’s Cactus Juice

There Is Nothing to See in Crete

Reflections on Modern Versus Ancient Civilizations, While Greg Fixes the Head

Welcome to the Zoo

In Search of Falcons and White Fluffy Dogs

The Amazing Marvin Gets the Eff Out

Reflections

Allegory

The Burnetts Wrap Up the Med

We’ve Stayed Somewhere Longer Than a Week and We Are Going Crazy

Preparing to Cross the Atlantic…Again

Surprised in Morocco

There’s Nothing to Buy in Morocco

Thoughts Upon Leaving Morocco

The Appeal of Flat Lowlands, Strict Building Codes, and Formidable Mustaches

Smashed

Christmas Winds (Wonky Mix)

Okay, Mr. Pissypants: You Have Your Pig, Now Where’s Our Wind?

The Disaster

It’s a GO!

It’s a STOP!

Sixth Grade Memoir: The Crash, by Allison Burnett

Quick Update

The Crash

Four to Eight Islands

Land Life, and a Video

Meet Our Ant Family and Watch a Haul-out Video!

We’re Gonna Need Some More Scotch

The Sewer Gas Is Turning Us All Into Mutants

Mel Blames February for Everything

An Ode to Marvin

All Crated Up and Ready to Go

This Better Be the Effing Low Point

Mel Joins the Merry Tribe of Ignored Sailing Philosophers by Coming to Yet Another Bizarre Conclusion About Life

Yay!

Expert Provisioning in Gran Canaria

This Time, For Sure!

Atlantic Crossing II: Finally!

Day 1: We’ve Made It Through Day 1!

Day 2: Working Out the Kinks

Day 3: Happy Birthday, Greg!

Day 4: Flying Squid

Day 5: Toilet Troubles

Day 6: Introducing Our Crew!

Day 7: Useful things

Day 8: The Awesome Power of the Great Blargh

Day 9: Halfway Point!

Day 10: Swimming!

Day 11: Smack Dab

Day 12: Happy Easter!

Day 13: Stir Crazy or Content

Day 14: A Captive Audience

Day 15: Me Time

Day 16: Going on Island Time Early

Day 17: Almost There!

Day 18: We Made It!

LANDSTAND! Atlantic Crossing II Summary

Caribbean Reprise, and the Slow Sail Back

Barbados is a Vortex

The Steamy Greenhouse of St. Lucia

Hanging Out in Martinique

The Maple Game

Everything’s Better from the Topsides

Dominica: See Greenery! Take a Nap!

Dodge ‘Em and Eat ‘Em!

Antigua: You Can Actually Get Candy Corn Here!

Feeling Festive in the BVI’s

Our Happy Place

Oh, Samana!

Good Times With Bob

Eleutheran Adventurers

Cat Days

Tick, Tick!

Mel Reflects on Cruising with the World’s Greatest Thinkers

Reflections in the Abacos

Happy Ending

Back to Port!

Denouement…and Hurricane Irma

The Burnett Family Truckster!

Mel HEARTS Packing! So Fun!

Ocean Farewell

Culture Lag

Sailing Into the Heart of America, Where We Do American-Type Things

Ex-cruiser Blues

Lethal diagnosis?

Irma Prep Update

Irma You Beeyach

MARVIN SURVIVES IRMA! WHOOP WHOOP!

Leaving the Land Behind

The End

Appendix: Technical Bits for Future Cruisers

Travel Map

In the Wake #1: Cruising Lessons Learned

In the Wake #2: Kids and Homeschool Wrap-up

In the Wake #3: Medical Stuff That Actually Happened

Stuff. Really Cool Stuff.

Why You Should Buy a Used Leopard 48

Boat Repair List

Take home message: One should not cruise if one does not like messing around with boats!

About the Author

Foreword

Ahoy there, good readers! Most likely, you are reading this book because you are a frustrated explorer who yearns for something different. You might share the author’s love of experiencing different places with the same eyes, or the same places with different eyes. Perhaps you, like Mel, your good author, are so tired of sacrificing your family time and personal growth to meet the demands of an increasingly absurd corporate bureaucracy that you are willing to learn a huge set of new skills, face significant personal and financial risk, and take your chances with Mother Nature, just to get away and be a human again for a while.

Or maybe you are just curious as to how people go to the bathroom on a boat.

Whatever the reason for your interest, sit back, relax, grab a G&T (gin and tonic, or ginger ale and taco – whatever suits you), watch the sun sink into your current horizon, and prepare to experience the thrill of wet glamping through the peri-Atlantic world.

That drink at sunset? We sailory types call that a Sundowner!

This book holds tales of an American couple who once sailed a catamaran around the Caribbean, Mediterranean, and Atlantic Ocean with two kids and an arthritic cat. Much of this material was previously published online in the BurnettsAhoy! blog, an online journal Mel kept of their sailing adventure between 2014 and 2017. Previously unpublished material includes additional commentary written after the conclusion of the trip that highlights lasting impressions and fills in the holes. Because stories about boats shouldn’t have holes.

Don’t worry – this is not your neighbor’s tortuous vacation slideshow, nor is it a preachy tome stuffed with clichés the sea taught us. (Okay, fine, there’s some; YOU try to resist!) It also is not a working travel guide, nor a polished narrative memoir. Instead, imagine this as a heavily-annotated scrapbook, tossed off the saloon table by a particularly large wave from abeam, splayed open to a page portraying foreign lands or a lifestyle in a way you hopefully may not have encountered before. Go ahead, pick it up and flip through it a bit. Get away for a while.

But when you’re done, please stow it properly so it doesn’t go overboard. If you don’t understand why proper stowage is so important now, well, dear readers, read on.

Preface

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Mel: First Mate. Ship’s Neurologist. Trained hard at elite schools and then burned out after just 5 years of practice. Duties: helming, sail planning, provisioning, excursion planning, homeschooling, documenting, restraining oneself from throwing shipmates overboard. Creative, funny, sometimes too intense, detail-oriented, sensitive, compulsive, cyclothymic, gawky, a tad weird. It turns out Mel is a little crazy. She even refers to herself in the third person.

Greg: Captain. Ship’s Physicist. (You can see how useful our professional skills are on a boat.) Got Applied Physics PhD, helped found tech company, invented things, traveled many miles, sold stock options, quit. Commercial-licensed, instrument-rated airplane pilot with over 3000 hours in the air. Duties: helming, sail planning, weather prediction, general problem-solving, fixing everything, homeschooling, disciplining children, restraining oneself from throwing shipmates overboard. Brilliant, handy, observant, passionate, short-tempered, yet calm in crises.

Tommy: Swab. Ship’s Zookeeper. Duties: cat smuggling, learning, entertaining guests, galley cleanup, boat detailing. Gifted, talkative, opinionated, reluctant traveler, reader, gamer, musically-inclined. Similar in temperament to his mother. Age 11 at start of journey.

Allie: Swab. Ship’s Ambassador. Duties: remembering to take seasickness medicine, learning, entertaining guests, galley cleanup, boat detailing. Gifted, social, creative, artistic, disciplined. Similar in temperament to her father. Age 9 at start of journey.

Gypsy: Unranked. Ship’s Counselor. Duties: Protecting the deck from the warmest bits of sun, keeping the floors uncluttered by peeing on anything resting there for too long, and comforting the tired, frustrated, and sick by sleeping on their lap. Similar in temperament to a crotchety old lady who has yet to forgive her family for making her live in the frozen north for most of her life, despite this trip. Around 15 years old at the start of the journey.

ORIGINS

One day, sometime during the Great Minnesota Winter of 2014, with temps hovering below zero Fahrenheit for weeks, Mel came home from work at her usual time (8:30 PM, after 13 hours away from home) and pulled on the same god-awful Land’s End polar fleece pullover she had worn EVERY SINGLE NIGHT for the last 5 months. Walking past her vomiting cat and her two children, who were oblivious to her presence as they were busy constructing an aquarium in Minecraft, she found her husband Greg and said, You know that thing that we thought would be fun to do someday, in the future, when we had nothing else to do? Let’s do it NOW!

And so it began.

Immediately, our friends and family had so many questions. Not without reason. Here’s a good one: How do two scientifically-inclined forty-something professionals without any sailing experience decide to one day to turn their lives inside-out, like every piece of clothing that kids put in the laundry, and do something that few know that people can do?

Surrounded by disbelieving professionals seeking that answer one night at a goodbye party, Mel put down her cocktail and began to make stuff up.

"We have always loved the tropics, taking trips to warm, beautiful places whenever we could. We read about flying to the Bahamas in one of Greg’s flying magazines, and one winter when it was 20 below in Minnesota, Greg flew us down to the Bahamas in our trusty Cessna 172 airplane. This was our first ocean crossing. Mel, 5 months pregnant at the time, donned her life preserver and nervously gripped the arm rests as we traversed the blue waters from Fort Lauderdale to Nassau. (Author’s note: Crossing the ocean this way takes 45 minutes. In a boat it is a full day. Sigh.)

There we met interesting characters, including two wonderful cruisers (thank you Claude and Wendy on the SV Wend!) who introduced us to their way of life: living and traveling on a boat. In other words, cruising. We had no idea that you could do that. Afterwards, we got a subscription to Cruising World magazine, devouring it cover-to-cover as soon as it arrived.

Living on our own boat for a year became a fantasy that we would develop during the cold Minnesota winters. The Burnetts are not winter people. Plus, Mel has Raynaud’s…

One vacation, we chartered a boat with a captain in the Exumas and went island hopping. We started to realize that sailing was something we enjoyed and could do.

Finally, some cash came our way via Silicon Valley and Greg’s ingenuity. Then, one winter day, Mel officially burned out. And that’s that."

As with most answers given to often-asked questions, though, this simple background story was deceptive. No one embarks on a major life change for a single reason. There are always about twenty reasons, which makes for a tedious answer at a cocktail party.

It was not until years later, when going back through the stuff she stored before she left on the Big Trip, Mel realized that her origin story was a lie, and her fascination with the sea actually began in 1992 while in Texas, when she read the book The Happy Isles of Oceania by Paul Theroux. Here is a story written by a man paddling around in a kayak in the South Pacific, literally butt cheek-to-cheek with wild Nature, experiencing unpredictable and crazy things at every spot he stopped. Sure, some of the long periods between islands when he reflected grumpily on his divorce got a bit hard to read, but Mel ignored all of that as she discovered the allure of the incalculable wild. Her imagination was fired up by the thought of the unscheduled, unhurried exploration of the sea. After all, whales do not book breaching appointments and get grumpy if you run late. So it was a book, not a great vacation, that planted the seed that someday would grow into a giant mangrove, its arms stretching all the way inland to Minnesota, pulling all of the Burnetts into the brine.

And that is one reason Mel decided to turn a free blog into a book you must buy. Because books have power, and holding something in your hand and feeling the pages (even electronically) makes something more real. And let me tell you, it is a rush to realize that this story is real, that all of this is possible, and that normal people really can do something like this.

Well, mostly normal people. Good reader, that means you. Probably.

So where are we on this adventure? Let’s see.

Step 1: Decide to do it. Check.

Step 2: Resignation letter. Check.

Step 3: Start a blog. Check.

Step 4: Learn to sail. Not checked yet. Let’s go!

Claude and Wendy on SV Wend, our inspirational and first-ever cruiser friends. And yes, that is the gorgeous waters of the Bahamas. How can one resist?

Preparations

Your good authors: BEFORE.

Blog pain and sailing lessons

July 24, 2014

So Melinda (Mel) has been ignoring her family the last couple of weekends as she executes the first step in her master plan to live life to the fullest by setting up this blog. Because here’s something practicing medicine in America taught her: if you don’t document something, it doesn’t exist.

It’s terrible. The kids can’t can’t stand it. They (an 8-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy) have played Minecraft continuously as they have no idea what else they can possibly do without Mommy’s help in a house filled with Legos, Barbies, stuffed animals, books, crafting kits, robots, trampolines, Nerf guns, and everything that Target sells to people with disposable income.

Setting up a blog is worse than shopping for a wedding dress. There are too many options, and everyone is out to make money from your ignorance. People offer you free software, but then you have to give them money to actually get the software to work right. Being extorted is so stressful. Mel almost threw her computer across the room the other day. This should not be this hard!

On the upside, Greg and Mel are learning to sail! We went to Northern Breezes Sailing School and five lessons later got ASA (American Sailing Association) certified in Basic Keelboat. Mel found that she was especially good at the following skills: accidental gibing, accidental tacking, killing the engine, and really messing up a bowline.

When we soloed the boat, we learned the following things: If you don’t control the boat, you can drift outside of the marked channel. The depth of the water outside of the channel is just 5 feet, which is the same depth as our keel. And we are very lucky.

Author’s note: So how does one learn how to sail in the middle of America? The American Sailing Association! Getting formal training is the smartest way to go for those late in finding their calling. Our ASA classes, which mostly took place on the glittering pond rimmed by million-dollar houses that is Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, were well-organized and low-key. We quickly learned that sailing is a skill that requires strict adherence to a limited number of rules to assure the safety of all aboard. Outside of those rules, however, one has a surprisingly large amount of room to wing it! Learning this was quite liberating for Doctor Mel, used to having to comply to a huge set of rules, the violation of which could have deadly consequences. Having a lot of wiggle room to screw up? Liberating!

We should clarify things from here on out. Sailing for cruisers means using the sail when you need it and using the engine when you need it. Most cruisers dock and undock under power, reserving the sailing for the straightaways. However, it is possible to finely maneuver the boat while under sail. Just not for Mel. She will explain tacking, gibing (jibe-ing), and bowlines (bow-lins) all in good time.

Captain’s note: We really were a mess the first time we went out on our own. The two-stroke engines on small monohulls are notoriously poor idlers, and ours would die without warning. We had to use the engine to maneuver from the dock through a narrow, winding inlet into the main body of the lake, and it chose to die halfway through with 12 knot winds. We immediately began to drift out of the dredged area toward the shallows, with Mel frantically paddling with her hands and me desperately yanking on the starter cord trying to restore the ancient and stubborn two-stroke back to life. It finally restarted before we ran aground and we made it back into the pier without breaking anything, AKA a successful docking. We were not always successful! But everything can be repaired. Even pride.

Hurricane season and other confusing things

July 29, 2014

So we did some sailing lessons again this weekend. Mel is not going to talk much about it. Weather was not good. Mel learned three things: 1. When backing out, control of the motor is opposite of what one expects. 2. Mel HATES the whistling of the shrouds. Sounds like a ghost is going to eat everyone on board! 3. Securing the halyard (the rope that holds up the sail) BEFORE raising the sails is VERY IMPORTANT.

On another note, I would just like to point out that the good people that came up with the typical US school year, from September until May or June, really screwed up. You see, all of the logic that went into that — good time to work in the fields, too hot to learn anything, can work a summer job, was faulty. For the one reason that matters only to us, and only right now: those landlocked farmers did not consider hurricane season.

You see, we plan to begin our voyage once the kids complete their next year of schooling. Allie will be done with third grade, and Tommy with fifth. Unfortunately, the school year ends just as hurricane season begins. How inconsiderate! June 1 through November 30 is apparently the high-risk zone for cruising the Caribbean. Oh bother!

So Greg has been making fun of Mel for fretting about this. He thinks it will work itself out. Mel, however, has a different approach. If we are going to plan anything too far ahead, it might as well be this. So far she sees the following options:

Screw insurance coverage and go to the Caribbean anyway, staying in protected anchorages with low rates (historically) of hurricane hits and running like hell away from any emerging tropical storms.

Hightailing it immediately from Florida through the Panama Canal and spending the next several months in places like the Galapagos.

Hanging out in the southern Caribbean in countries with low hurricane rates, such as Colombia or the ABC’s (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao, small islands off the north coast of Venezuela.) Note this also entails getting down there somehow without dying.

Putting the boat on the hard somewhere safe and either living in it anyway or renting out a place somewhere, on land, for a while. As long as it is different, it will be fun.

There are of course other options. For now, Mel has resigned to discussing this further when we attend the Annapolis Boat Show in October and nerd it up by going to seminars on this sort of thing.

In the meantime, she has learned some new vocabulary. Trade winds, Gulf Stream, and Horse Latitudes. There are useful sailing tidbits in the awesome magazine called Blue Water Sailing.

You see, if we go down, at least it won’t be without doing our research. And nerds can’t ask for much more than that! That reminds her…must make a checklist for boat launch that includes: Double check the security of the halyard shackle…

Author’s note: The American Sailing Association classes focus on sailing monohulls from the beginning. Monohulls are what most people picture when they think of a sailboat. A single hull with a sail sticking out of it, with, relaxed at the helm, a man with medium-length curly hair waving in the wind, a drink in his hand as he makes minor rudder adjustments. The challenge of learning on a monohull is that the single engine and prop tends to pull you in one way or the other depending on where you are going, which takes some getting used to and is one of the reasons docking, even with the engine, is so hard for novices. If you are used to driving a car that doesn’t pull one way or the other depending on which direction you are going, it is disconcerting.

The halyard is the rope that holds up the mainsail. There is usually a connector, or shackle, attaching it to the sail. If you pull on this rope with the connector loose, you can pull the halyard and its shackle right through a hoop at the top of the mast. Then you end up with a flaccid sail in one hand, a rope in the other, an empty ring way up at the top of the mast, and poop emojis coming out of your mouth. You then get to watch your boat school staff tip the entire boat on its side so that they can re-attach the halyard for, like, the thousandth time. In Minnesota, they are very polite about this and do not let you see them rolling their eyes. Oofdah!

Captains comment: It is a good idea to get as many screw-ups out of the way as early as possible. Mel enjoys fretting, although she calls it planning.

Sailing camp and knots

August 6, 2014

Greg and Mel took the kids out the other day to show them the glories of sailing. It did not go well. There was no wind. It was hot. The motor and Mel’s arm wrestled, and she lost. By the end of the day, Lake Minnetonka almost became the Kid Latitudes. Look up the origin of the name Horse Latitudes and you’ll understand.

On the upside, the kids are currently in sailing camp. They sail around chaotically in their dinghies as an instructor furiously paddles around them, shouting things. It somehow works out! Hmmm…I wonder if we can get the instructor for our trip. She could just yell at us from her canoe if we screw up. She could live in the dinghy. I’ll ask her price…

Mel is not bored while the kids are in camp. You see, she has Greg’s fancy Sailing Knot Practice Board to work on. He overbuilt it, of course. She doesn’t think it is necessary to have a knot practice board built from half-inch plywood. When she gets frustrated, it is too heavy to lift up and bang against things. Oh wait, I see… Greg is a brilliant inventor!

Author’s note: Yes, that’s right. Mel almost threw the kids overboard.

Captain’s note: The kids’ sailing lessons were the funniest thing I have ever seen. I came early on the last day to see what they had learned. Ten-year-old Tommy was at the helm, and eight-year-old Allie was manning the jib lines. In twenty minutes, there was not a single pause in the rapid-fire argument that escalated after every poorly-executed tack or accidental gybe. I could not stop laughing until I realized that I would have to spend two years no more than twenty feet away from these insane monsters.

The sailing knot practice board. Complete with trucker’s hitch. Oh so nerdy!

Even more sailing lessons

August 22, 2014

After a few solo outings with a keelboat, Greg and Mel signed up for the next step - the ASA 103/104 course on cruising. We did it on Lake Superior, near the Apostle Islands, with dreary, cold, overcast weather every day. Mel has heard the Apostle Islands are quite beautiful and relaxing, but her experience of them was a brief panicked glimpse of rocks, docks, and other obstructions as she cruised by, her focus entirely on using all of her strength to center the mainsail. Not exactly your typical summer vacation. However, Greg and Mel learned a lot! For example: Prop walk can be your friend. And: the boom topping lift is a handy tool to use to keep the boom away from Greg’s head. I think the final count of Greg’s head/boom interactions was nine.

Cheers to our tireless leader Gerry from Northern Breezes Sailing School! He even gave us a lesson on how to use the dinghy in the bonus Boathook Overboard drill. In this exercise, we learned what it was like to watch a valuable tool slowly sink. Gerry called such adventures: Sea stories.

In addition to learning how to dock, tack, and jibe a Hunter 34, we learned that we can’t stand mildew. We all came up with alternative names for the perpetually-moist jalopy Taboo. Allie: The Mildew Express, Tommy: Mildew Demon, Me: Candida, or even better: Stachybotrys. While technically we were supposed to anchor out and sleep on the boat, after the first night sleeping on the boat, surrounded by mold spores, we voted to stay at a B&B in Bayfield, Wisconsin instead. That was a great decision. Our wonderful hosts at Ole & Lena’s Place got Greg Sudafed for his massive sinus infection and regaled us with stories of crossing minefields to escape the Soviets during the Revolution in Hungary. Yes, Ole was not a Norwegian, but a Hungarian name Frank. In Wisconsin, apparently, people just call themselves whatever they want.

This was good for us, though. Mel now plans to make mold destruction a priority. And she must say she was quite proud of herself when, asleep in her B&B after classes were over, she heard a booming horn from the water: long blast, then short, short, short. Aha! she thought to herself, That means, ‘I can’t see anything, but I’m backing up anyway!’ Hope the people near that boat knew that. Otherwise, they’d have a good sea story.

Captain’s note: This boat with its leaky hatches made us very paranoid about moisture on Marvin, and so we never had any issues with mold. I have never been as sick as I was during this four-day course. Except for the mold, we had a great time on our first cabin-class boat. The kids endured the first day and thereafter were content to hang out with Ole and Lena, who treated them like their grandkids. After a hard, cold day at sea, we happily returned to our comfy B&B to shower off the lake water and fungal spores and be greeted by stories and pictures of the brown bears that frequented their back yard that day. The kids did not have to be told to stay inside.

Gerry shows Greg the ropes. Ahem.

We venture out on our own

August 24, 2014

So we chartered the Mildew Express for a solo sail the day after our lessons completed. It was very educational to practice things without our noble instructor Gerry. Mel left the dock without crashing into anything! We also learned a bit about wind. Like how it can really rush along when squeezed in between islands. We had to put in a second reef! And the most important lesson? There is a downfall to an accidental jibe preventer. YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER THAT YOU PUT IT ON. On the upside, we learned exactly how much the boat can heel without sinking, and Mel learned how fast she can swing the boat through 360 degrees.

Author’s note: Reefing means making your sail smaller to reduce the strain on the rigging by ensuring that the boat doesn’t go too fast for the conditions. Jibing is turning the boat while moving the sails when the wind is coming from behind you. Also, good luck trying to spell the word, jibe.Or is it, gibe? Or gybe? It is ridiculous that there are multiple ways to spell this word as it is basically a potentially dangerous swing of the boom when one turns a certain direction relative to the wind. It’s as if multiple spellings existed for gun (gunn? ghun?) or poison (poysun? poizin?)

Oh, and what really happened here? Mel turned the boat a full circle with the sail tied down a certain way the entire time. This is not how it is supposed to go. The boat groaned its protests. Luckily, no one went overboard into the frigid waters. Learning is fun!

Captain’s note: This was our first introduction to high winds (> 20 knots) and seas (only about 3-4 feet, but they felt pretty big!) The kids were champs down in the hold, reading while we wildly circled the ship in our attempt to jibe. Little did they know what was to come!

It’s best to train in imperfect weather!

ASA 114: Cat class!

Sept 16, 2014

This past weekend Mel took a day off from work so that she and Greg could finally learn to operate the best kind of boat: the cruising catamaran! Mel tried to not psych herself out about the obvious fact that it was awfully crazy to think she could steer a 38-foot catamaran when her previous experience with large vehicles was limited to driving an automatic transmission, 18-foot Penske truck filled with her late mother’s massive collection of antique glassware 12 hours across the Ozarks, panicking all the way. Sure, she got pretty good at parallel parking her two-door Saturn in tiny spaces on the steep hills of San Francisco 10 years ago, but she was unclear if the same I ding you, you can ding me karma that transpired between all San Franciscan car owners would be so readily accepted by the yachties of the North Woods, whose glistening boats with undersized rubber fenders she was soon to be careening near.

Nevertheless, loving grandparents spoiled our kids while we again made the trek up to northern Wisconsin. We arrived at our temporary home and met our noble Captain Steve. We settled into his lovely 38-foot Fountaine-Pajot, met our fellow trainees Dick and Marlin, and then began a couple of intense days of education. Mel had to revive all of her medical school learning skills to absorb everything, but in the end she and Greg passed the weird-ass ASA catamaran test. Why weird, one may ask? To paraphrase: Place this in order of priority should the ship capsize: locate flares, locate people, stay with the ship, operate EPIRB, put on life vest, locate lifeboat, gather supplies, eat the weakest ones. Mel added a few in there, but you get the picture. Mel’s answer of: ALL OF THE ABOVE AS FAST AS YOU CAN did not count.

In the end, we heard many colorful sea stories from Captain Steve, who has a long sailing history. Apparently, the water will give you as many varied experiences as the number of hairs on your head. We also had a few adventures of our own. We managed to snag the most bizarre and twisted piece of driftwood when we anchored, which was the best picture that Mel never took the whole time. We also got to see an experienced diagnostician in action. Mel’s list of diagnoses for why we couldn’t tack once was basically limited to: Broken Rudder, or the new entity Mel just learned about: Driftwood Problems. With a quick and thorough exam, however, in which Greg had to stick his head outside of the bimini to look at the sails, the problem was diagnosed: Jib Caught on the Spreaders. Jibs and jibsheets are quite the troublemakers!

Always do a thorough exam!

Author’s note: The jib (or jibsail) is usually the sail at the very front of the boat. Believe it or not, jib is not short for anything. It’s like that dude you know whose full name is actually Bob.

Captain’s note: It was 33 degrees F when we woke on the boat our first morning, with 20+ knot winds. A typical fall morning on Lake Superior. It was too windy to sail that morning, so we practiced docking. The Fontaine-Pajot is what I think of as the second generation of modern cruising catamarans, and as such has one engine in each hull but is woefully underpowered. Trying to dock by swinging against the wind took all the available power in the port engine and taught us that sometimes it is better to drop anchor rather than attempt to dock when the wind is too high. We would learn this again (and more forcefully) in Cadiz, Spain. Yes. We made it to Spain.

Captain Greg learns what windage means.

Going back to our roots

Sept 17, 2014

The day after our cat class, we decided to go back to our Minnesota sailing school and practice our basic sailing on a rented Ensign. We took Greg’s stepdad Bill, a long-time lake sailor, along for advice. What started out as a cold, overcast, blustery day turned into a cold, sunny, blustery day, with the noise of the wind whistling through the shrouds outmatched only by Mel’s screams as Bill showed us what it really means to heel over. You see, Bill is an inland American sailor, taught how to sail not by people, but by catamarans that want to go as fast in those sprawling reservoirs as they can. Lesson: when a thrill-seeking lake-cat sailor gets on a monohull, expect to heel!

Afterwards, Greg contributed to Mel’s horror by forcing her and Bill to do repeated crew overboard drills. Alas, Mel has no skill yet to use as a weapon for revenge, and so she resorted to falling down, legs akimbo, into the bottom of the boat when trying to tighten the jibsheet and causing a slight delay in the tack. Take that!

To our fascination, we managed to circle an island in a close reach the entire time without tacking. I think the lake thought it best to keep us restrained.

In the end, it was clear that Bill had a great time racing around with the boat, and Greg and Mel have learned a lot since we first ventured out on our own.

Author’s note: Tacking refers to turning the nose of the boat through the wind, so that you end up with the wind hitting the other side of your face and the sail. Both tacking and jibing require dreaded multi-tasking, where you have to move the helm, the mainsail, and the jib all at the same time, in a coordinated fashion. Getting good at this is sort of like being able to just zoom through an intermediate Zumba class. Basically, tacking and jibing is one reason why singlehanding a boat is such a badass thing to do. Of course, you normally don’t think of a one-man band, you know the guy on the corner with the harmonica in his mouth, cymbal on his knee, and guitar in his lap as a badass, but in the sailing world, well, that guy is a badass.

Captain’s note: Practicing the man-overboard drill is a great way to practice changing sail conditions quickly as well as bringing the boat to a stop and heaving to. On small boats you can just luff the sails right away and stop the boat not too far from the crew in the water (which is what most lake sailors do), but on large boats it can take some time to adjust the sails and bring the boat to a stop, so it is good to have the procedure drilled into your head. The flogging of the jib and its sheets luffing in a strong wind feels a lot more violent than it is and is not something pleasant to hear, but it is good practice. Be aware that when the sails are luffing the whipping sheets can snag an unsecured boathook from the deck and fling it into the water (see the sea story above).

Experienced cat sailor Bill scouts out the fastest way across the lake

The Annapolis Boat Show

Oct 20, 2014

So we packed up the kids and flew ourselves in Greg’s dream-plane, our Cessna 210, to the Annapolis Boat Show, pushed there by 50 knot tailwinds in just over 4 hours. The time is drawing near when 50 knot winds will not be so welcome…

It’s very intimidating to start up a new hobby mid-life, especially one that can be so expansive that it becomes a lifestyle for many. Walking along the downtown streets of Annapolis, the nexus of US sailing, past store after store of nautical-related items, past Naval Academy midshipmen out in their very impressive being seen by civilians outfits (my college being seen by civilians outfit was a pair of jean shorts and a faded Lovett O-Week T-shirt), past the crew of big sailboats with their matching jackets and sea stories, was overwhelming enough. Then we arrived at the US Sailboat Show.

Mel never saw so many shackles, ropes (er, lines and sheets), and specialty gadgets in her life. You don’t need regular paint; you need Marine Paint. You don’t need a rope; you need 56 feet of 5/8" polyester double braid spinnaker sheeting. Or maybe it should be nylon, Vectran, or Dyneema? There were at least 5 companies selling the same thing, all with their own spin on why theirs was better. Unable to sort out even what kind of dinghy we should buy, we left with some heavy weather gear (clothes — Mel can handle buying clothes), some life jackets with harnesses, and a nice, old-fashioned analog barometer. Oh, and a giant spinnaker.

A few times during our conversations with the salespeople, our future plans came up. The response was an interesting mixture of envy, excitement, and negativity. For some reason, many felt compelled to educate us on everything that could go wrong, assuming that we were going into this blindly, not realizing that things could be stolen or we would need spare parts. They boarded my friend’s boat in St. Martin, beat him up, and left him for dead. But you’ll have a great time! and You will get struck by lightning and then won’t be able to find a competent person in any boatyard ever to help you fix things…Boy, am I jealous! and Be prepared. Your heads will back up and your boat will be flooded with shit. Boy, you picked a nice boat!

Mel was worked up about all of this, of course, but then she went to a talk by the awesome Matt Rutherford, the guy who sailed single-handed around the Americas. He was calming to her, largely because he was clearly a smart, motivated guy who started out a tad ignorant about cruising but figured it out by making a lot of mistakes. Mel was planning for that to happen to us. And he survived. He offered up many common-sense tips such as this:

We also went to a talk by the darling and ancient Don Street, whose lack of knowledge of how to maneuver through a .pdf to make a presentation was more than compensated by his decades of experience cruising the Caribbean. This pulled Mel out of her worries about how many extra crap buckets we should bring and reminded her why we are doing this: To explore new worlds (to us) and boldly go where we (and our spoiled children) haven’t been before.

The highlight, of course, was that Mel finally got to see the type of boat that Greg bought for the family on a trip to Florida in the Spring. More on that later…

We also met up with some lovely people who own the same kind of boat and started another of hopefully many great friendships with fellow cruisers. We dutifully recorded their boat squawks, hoping to avoid some of our own pain by learning from the pain of others. Michael and Cassie, may your new fuel tanks have tailwinds!

A surprising education occurred when Mel took Allie on a Pirate Adventure Cruise through the Chesapeake Bay. About 25 kids were dressed in eye patches and do-rags and piled on a 40-something foot monohull, run with two large outboard engines. As Mel stood back by the captain, who must have been in his late 20’s, she filled with envy watching him expertly manipulate the dual throttles to back the boat out of the tiny slip it was in, missing the giant cat parked behind it by inches, all the while shouting at the college kid running things up front, Patches! Patches! What are you doing? You don’t hang kids upside down from the boom! Mel longed for the day when she could multitask silliness with precision.

Thinking about how she learned medicine, she realized that what she wanted was instinct. The kind of instinct that comes when you have trained so much that what was once explicit is now implicit, and for reasons you can’t sometimes explain even to your resident, you just know there is going to be clonus in that right leg and the patient is going to be dead in 18 months. Mel has already learned the hard way that knowledge is no substitute for experience, but having gained that instinct in one aspect of her life at least made it possible that she could do it in another, which was comforting.

So all in all, the Boat Show was an education! Oh, and we also learned that Boat Show Discounts are BS.

Captain’s note: Of the things we bought, we used the heavy weather gear on our north Atlantic crossing, the life jackets with harnesses every time we were offshore (so get good ones that are comfortable), the analog barometer as a comfort item when it got cloudy, and the very expensive Parasailor spinnaker… well, that’s a story of majesty and tragedy yet to come. We became big Dyneema fans, though!

Useless directions at the Annapolis Boat Show: My boat’s the one with the flags on it.

What the heck, West Marine?

Nov 2, 2014

So Greg and Mel shopped for heavy weather gear at the Annapolis Boat Show. We basically wandered into a store that looked like it had nice stuff and bought the most expensive raincoats ever made. Because waves have a lot of rain in them.

It was only after Mel bought these things that she decided to go online to see if she bought something good. Normally, she does this the other way around, but that’s what boat shows are for. One of her sailor friends had recommended the West Marine website for a place to get advice on products. Mel was happy to see that our brand of jacket was one of the West Marine-recommended brands for heavy weather. However, when she followed the link to heavy weather gear, this is what she encountered:

What the heck, West Marine? Mel knows Musto makes gear for women — we saw it at the show. So where is it?? She didn’t click on the shirt, but she can imagine the description:

Now you can cower in style below decks in your cute striped top while your man is at the helm, handling the heavy weather in his Musto gear! You won’t need to worry your pretty little head about anything as you warm up a nice cup of tea for him in 35-foot seas! Just don’t spill the tea on your cute, new shirt! Because women dissolve in water!

Musto isn’t off the hook, either. Mel had to buy a men’s jacket, because at the Boat Show they didn’t have offshore women’s jackets with Gore-Tex. You know guys, safety harnesses and tethers are probably a lot happier with only 150 pounds to hold down instead of 220. Just sayin’.

Points of sail for the spatially challenged

Nov 17, 2014

Mel is trying to refresh her sailing knowledge over the Winter, since winter has already started here in Minnesota EVEN THOUGH IT IS STILL FALL. One thing she struggled with learning was the Points of Sail, which is a diagram that demonstrates the different angles that the boat can take to the wind. You do slightly different things at each angle. This diagram normally looks something like this:

This is a nice, organized diagram that Mel has found to be COMPLETELY USELESS. Why? Because this diagram is wind-centered. But Mel is self-centered. And so having to orient her mind to the wind, figure out the reach, and then extrapolate back again to her visual field so she can answer the question, If I want to turn that way, will I have to tack? was way too confusing for her. You see, she is spatially not the sharpest. It once took her 15 minutes to make it from the 7th floor of St. Mary’s Hospital to the 8th floor, and her ill-conceived route took her through the same door six times. Luckily, the patient she was trying to get to was already dead.

So Mel once again made a Rosetta Stone that she uses to translate a perfectly good diagram into a language her screwy brain can understand. It’s an even more complicated diagram. She is going to put it by the sink and stare at it while she brushes her teeth. Now all she has to figure out is how to remove the conditioned learning part, so she doesn’t have to brush her teeth while sailing in order to know what reach she is on. Because that would be weird.

Author’s note: Reading this post in retrospect is hilarious. These diagrams ended up being absolute crap. To learn this stuff, you basically have to get out there and try to turn the boat wherever. The boat will teach you what you need to know. This means that the sails yell at you whenever you do something wrong. After a while, Mel would feel a virtual slap in the face by the wind if she imagined turning a certain way without executing the required tack or jibe. Basically, the wind makes you its bitch. It’s like a nun with a ruler. Horrible, but effective, so you learn a lot, and it sticks.

Captain’s note: If the boat is unhappy, listen to it - there’s a reason, even if you don’t know it yet. Sailing will help you learn to feel what your boat is experiencing and there is no substitute. However, 10 days of intense sailing with a captain under difficult conditions is better than a year’s worth of weekends sailing in benign weather. Get a captain that you click with and get out there in some weather. That’s when you learn. And put a reef in as soon as you start to wonder if you should. Your boat will thank you.

Boat names

Dec 16, 2014

And so it’s out: our boat will be a Leopard 48! Just got word that manufacturing will start soon! We are quite excited!

Usually there is a long story about how we spent months researching, inspecting, sailing, and otherwise testing out potential boats. Well, that wasn’t the way it happened with us. We did plenty of research online and with magazines. Then, Greg flew down to Florida and took the potential candidate for a test sail. Before he knew how to sail. And then he bought it. See? We are learning how fun it is not to overthink!

Of course, we may regret this impulsive decision later, when we actually know something about boats, and sailing, but 8 months of continued good press regarding our choice has been comforting. We also have learned to have realistic expectations. It won’t be perfect, but so far it looks like we made a good choice.

Introducing the Burnett family boat…the Leopard 48!

Zebrawood interior, of course.

Of course, even before we picked the boat, we have been pondering boat names. This decision is remarkably much harder than picking the actual boat. The main reasons are the family rules:

Boat name will not have pun in it. (Greg’s rule)

Boat name will not be cheesy reference to some sort of cat, just because it’s a catamaran. (Mel’s rule)

Boat name will be easy to spell and say over VHF radio. (General commonsense rule)

Boat name will not be ostentatious. (Boat will take care of that all by itself!)

Boat name must be agreed upon by all family members.

The above rules therefore have excluded a number of neurology-inspired boat names thought up by Mel’s excited colleagues: Migratory paresthesias, Witzelsucht, Doc’s Holiday, Oscillopsia, Hydrocephalus, Synapse of the Sea, and Seanaptic Plasticity.

Of course, rapidly rejected were some medical bureaucratic inspirations: Burnout, RVU This!, Top Box, and, of course, the corporate slogan of oppression: Working Differently.

Mel was really into Super Happy for a while. Alas, everyone else was NOT.

Greg thought of a nice one: Kipona Aloha, Hawaiian for Deep Love. However, none of us are Hawaiian…

The kids and Greg liked Adventure Time, after a favorite TV show of theirs. Mel does not like Adventure Time. It is too weird!

We could reference our self-proclaimed appellation with Nerd Alert, or, Nerds Afloat, but then we might be dooming the kids forever…

One day, we realized we all liked Calvin and Hobbes. The kids therefore wanted to name the boat Hobbes and the dinghy (small boat attached to big boat) Calvin. A quick Wikipedia search revealed we were not opposed to the philosopher Hobbes’s ideas on society, so that would work. Mel is the only one with reservations about that one. It is so simple that it feels like a missed opportunity somehow…

Still in this idea stream, Mel proposed Tuna Fish Sandwich and, Lucky Rocketship Underpants. No one wants to be known as the Underpants people when in port, so that was nixed. But she still likes the idea of rolling out this beautiful new boat next to Sea Wind and Prometheus Unbound and Soliloquy II and saying loudly, I name thee, ‘Tuna Fish Sandwich’! Take that, stuffy naming conventions! Oh wait…we would be the Tuna people.

And so we are still tossing around a few survivors of this months-long process: Hobbes, Tuna Fish Sandwich (Okay, Mel is the only one clinging to that one,) Nerd Alert, and the one I haven’t mentioned yet, because it makes no sense:

The Amazing Marvin.

Oh yes, there is no sense behind it. Tommy thought it up one day at lunch and we all cracked up. We do not know a Marvin. None of us does magic, or acrobatics, or stunts. It’s just intrinsically funny for no apparent reason, like waddling ducks and irritated cats. Of course, Allie is worried people will think we are magicians, but that will be easy to clear up when, instead of returning the coin extracted from behind the ear, we pocket it. And when I brought the name up again after a long hiatus from being considered, Tommy exclaimed, dumbfounded, Are you seriously considering that?

So, we still do not have a boat name yet.

Author’s note: We bought a nice, big, expensive boat, out of the reach of most. You don’t have to buy a boat that nice to cruise. However, we fortunately