Sailingwriter

P.S. My latest book Whiskey Creek is now available on Amazon in ebook and paperback.

AmboNomads: 2025

Christine Kling — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 23:42:16 GMT

Our view at Roadrunner Ranch

I started writing what I thought would be a quick round up on New Years’ Eve, and today, here it is January 18th and we are in Loreto, Baja Sur, Mexico. Let me back up and try again…

It’s New Years Eve, and we are mooch docking in our converted ambulance RV at our grandgirls’ parents’ house in Southern California. The wind is howling and the sky is spitting rain. We came here looking for heat. As usual, that did not work out the way we hoped.

I wanted to share all the miles we covered this past year as my husband Wayne and I, a couple of sailors, tried to adjust to life ashore. But it’s late, and midnight is approaching, so here’s a quick run-down, followed mostly by photos.

You may remember that after we sold our boat, in late 2023, we bought a cabin on an island in British Columbia. After 6 months of winter in Canada, we tropical birds started thinking about finding heat. First we rented a place in southern Oregon where Wayne worked on converting the ambulance to an RV and we adopted two new puppies.

It was colder than Canada when we moved there in spring of 2024, so we started looking further south.

At the end of 2024, we bought ten acres of off-grid desert property in Nevada, about 45 miles south of Las Vegas (near the town of Searchlight) which we christened Roadrunner Ranch. It already had two nearly new shipping containers that came with the property, as well as five UBC totes and a pump for a water system, and solar panels.

Roadrunner Ranch. You can see the two shipping containers, the end of the trailer (left), and Lance between the containers.

Wayne got us set up with a lithium battery home back-up system with inverter, and we moved into our 24-foot travel trailer which has served as our home for more than half this year. Hey, it’s bigger than my Caliber 33 sailboat which was my home for almost 10 years!

At the ranch, it’s just us and the coyotes and our neighbor who flies in from time to time in his black helicopter and brings clients to go to his shooting range. (insert scary emoji)

We left Klamath Falls, Oregon and moved down to the desert just in time to spend New Years Day, 2025 in a pontoon boat on the Colorado River. Man was it ever cold!

In Nevada, I continued to work on my book, and Wayne worked on Lance, the ambulance through the spring. It didn’t snow in Nevada - at least, not outdoors.

Then, we were invited to our niece’s wedding in Portland, Maine in June, so Wayne came up with the idea of taking a little trial trip in Lance. It turned into a 3-month, 10,000-mile test run through the US and Canada that landed us at Saturna Island in British Columbia.

Our route in June across the US, then July across Canada to our cabin in Saturna. Then in October, it was back down to Searchlight.

With no table in the truck, nor a sink, so the plastic sink on the other table was how we washed dishes for the first half of the trip.

When we left on our cross-country trip, we didn’t have 110V electricity, running water or a table to eat on, and rest stops were our go to campsites. But as we traveled across the country, Wayne continued to get projects done. We got 110V power in some state in the northeast, running water in the sink in Ontario, and later on, we got a plywood table inside truck.

Wayne on top of the ambo at work in a campground in New Hampshire

When we got to the Canadian Maritimes, however, we started mooch-docking which is defined as “camping in your friends’ driveway.”

And we were even treated to lobster in Nova Scotia thanks to friends Mike and Cindy O’Leary!

Our drive across Canada was both fun and gorgeous.

After spending August through October at our cabin in Saturna, BC we headed south to Nevada for a couple of months, and ended the year in that driveway in Southern California.

We finally found heat!

Lance located somewhere in Baja California, January 2026. We plan to boondock in the wild here until the end of March.

The real challenge for me looking forward into 2026 is how to get my writing done with this nomadic lifestyle. In the past several years, as we built and sailed on Mobius, and then tried to figure out life after Mobius, I let my writing career fall to the wayside. I missed it, though. Finally, I committed to finding a way to work in the time we are not moving. Even with all the traveling, in the last 12 months, I completed this new book. Now I am trying to embrace the digital nomad work ethos.

Whiskey Creek’s ebook version is available for presale on Amazon here, and the paperback will be available on publication day, January 27th. Check my website in a couple of weeks to see which online stores will carry the book. And an audiobook is on the way. One of my goals for 2026 is to create my own online store where I will sell all my own books.

Now, I’m ready to start the next book.

Fair winds!

Christine

From Michelin Guides to the Military Mapping Maidens

Christine Kling — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 01:19:47 GMT

I am finally getting ready to publish this new historical novel I’ve been working on titled, Whiskey Creek, and I wanted to share more about where I got the ideas for this book. Previously, I wrote about the Hooligan’s Navy, the Americans who set out to patrol our coast for U-boats.

Today, I want to write about how I like to give my characters a certain strength, or superpower. For Annie, the main character of my new novel, it is navigation and mapmaking or cartography.

I once dreamed of sailing solo around the world. I knew I needed to learn celestial navigation, so I flew to Hawaii looking to crew on a boat heading south. I found that boat in a Lapworth-designed Islander 44, and in 1975, I set sail across the Pacific to New Zealand, then back to California with Jim Kling (who later became my husband). We navigated with a sextant, a chronometer, a nautical almanac and multiple volumes of the H.O. 229 Sight Reduction tables. For my last ocean crossing in 2023, I sailed across the Atlantic on our M/V Möbius with digital charts of the world, several GPS heads, and a satellite compass. Obviously, I’ve seen a huge amount of change in the world of cartography in my lifetime, and it fascinates me.

Whiskey Creek is a World War II novel that takes place mostly on the Homefront, so in addition to the Hooligan’s Navy, I decided that Annie would become a war-time cartographer. For me, that meant I got to go to my happy place — research. Now, before I get into the role of women in the Army Map Service, let’s do a quick flyover on the history of maps and charts.

For centuries, mapmaking was mostly a maritime obsession. The fastest and most expedient method of transporting people and goods was on the water. The famous Portolan charts of the 13th century were great at showing the sea and coastlines to ensure ships didn’t crash into continents. They told you direction, but they didn’t tell you depth or height. And if you turned your eyes inland on those charts, the detail vanished.

The thing that makes navigating on the ocean easier in some ways is that it is a flat plane. Two dimensions. It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that cartography began to conquer the third dimension.

American and British mapping offices finally moved beyond just “water” and “land,” and began adding soundings (depth measurements) to keep hulls from hitting the unseen hard bits lurking below the surface, and spot elevations for coastal landmarks like cliffs and lighthouses. This allowed navigators to use trigonometry (with a sextant to measure the angle) to determine exactly how far they were from shore. If you were a ship captain in 1900, you had excellent charts of the water and the coastline.

But nautical charts still stopped at the shoreline. Interior road maps were just starting to appear. When World War I erupted, this lack of interior detail was manageable. WWI was a static war fought by line-of-sight; if you could see the enemy, you could shoot them. The range of their artillery was limited. Armies sat in trenches for years. This gave surveyors time. If troops needed to fire over a hill, you sent a surveyor to measure it first. And since the war was mostly static, the fact that all the European nations had their own internal map-making methods was not an issue. Vast swathes of the world were still only mapped in two dimensions (X and Y) showing roads and towns, but missing the crucial Z-axis (elevation).

World War II changed the math entirely. This was a war of movement (Blitzkrieg). New Howitzers (like the U.S. 105mm and 155mm) could fire shells 7 to 15 miles away. Suddenly, gunners were firing at targets they couldn’t see, over terrain they had never visited. They needed the “Z-axis.” If a map failed to show a village’s elevation, a shell meant for a Nazi bunker on the other side of a hill might slam into a school. Without accurate contour lines (elevation data) on a map, long-range artillery is blind.

When the United States entered the war, the U.S. had decent 3D maps of America and the UK had decent maps of England, but the Allied intelligence on the interior of Europe was disastrously thin. The most accurate source of data they had for many regions was not military intelligence, but Michelin Guides (yes, the tire company restaurant guides) designed to help vacationers find a good hotel, not to help a tank commander navigate a ridge or an artillery officer calculate a trajectory. Even when the Allies captured enemy maps, they were useless for American artillery.

The French used the “Bonne” projection; the Germans used the “Gauss-Krüger” grid; and the Americans used the “Polyconic” projection. It was a mathematical nightmare. You cannot fire an American gun using German map coordinates. The math doesn’t work.

So, what do you do? The US military formed the Army Map Service (AMS) to solve this problem. And with the male workforce all being drafted to the front lines, the Army turned to an unlikely group of saviors: a recruited force of women with degrees in geology, math, and art. They were officially Army Map Service employees, but history would know them as the Military Mapping Maidens.

And theirs is such a cool story!

In a massive recruitment blitz, the Army Map Service sent scouts to women’s colleges and universities across the country, places like Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, and the Big Ten schools. They weren’t just looking for warm bodies; they were hunting for specific intellectual skill sets. They recruited geology majors who understood terrain, math majors who could handle the complex trigonometry of grid conversions, and art majors who had the skill and eye for detail required for drafting.

These women moved to D.C. to live in crowded boarding houses and went to work each day creating the thousands of maps the Allies needed. Some were sent out to search libraries and universities for any maps of Europe (tourist maps, old German maps, hydrographic charts). Others figured out how to do the tedious work of grid conversion, and how to add the missing elevation data. They had to mathematically overlay the “Universal Transverse Mercator” (UTM) grid, the standard Allied system, onto these foreign maps.

Before these women could pick up their drafting pens to draw all the new maps that would be needed for D-Day, someone had to go get the data. Photography and aircraft had come a long way since WWI. The Army realized early on that a lumbering bomber vibrated too much for precision photography and was too easy a target. So, they took their fastest fighter, the twin-engine P-38 Lightning, and stripped it of every single machine gun and cannon. In the empty nose cone, they packed five massive mapping cameras.

Renamed the F-5, these planes flew “Trimetrogon” missions, snapping three simultaneous photos that stretched from horizon to horizon. To get the overlapping images the Map Maidens needed for their 3D work, these pilots had to fly perfectly straight lines over anti-aircraft batteries, completely unarmed. Their motto was “Alone, Unarmed, and Unafraid.” Because they carried no weapons, these pilots relied entirely on speed and altitude, sometimes as high as 30,000 feet. If they were intercepted by a German Messerschmitt, they couldn’t fight back; they could only try to outrun it. The pilots provided the raw intelligence in the form of photos; the women in Washington provided the precision.

Back in the drafting rooms, the women used massive projectors called Multiplexes to shine these overlapping photos onto their drafting tables. Wearing special 3D glasses decades before they were cool in movie theaters, the women could see the flat photos pop into three-dimensional terrain. They would then trace the contour lines that would show the elevations in order to guide the artillery.

By the time Allied troops hit the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, the Army Map Service had accomplished the impossible. For the D-Day invasion alone, the Mapping Maidens and their colleagues had produced and shipped roughly 70 million maps.

It is easy to look at the images on our chart plotters today and think of it as a satellite miracle. But GPS is more than just satellites in space; it is a mathematical model of the earth using the science of geodesy. The work these women did set the stage for the next and the final bit of true history that I wove into Whiskey Creek. That is the story of the secret mission to grab all the Nazi map data at the end of the war. Stay subscribed to hear about that one!

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The Hooligan's Navy

Christine Kling — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 22:06:27 GMT

This was my office on Möbius, our last boat. It was pretty great, eh?

Writers are often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” Most of the time, we don’t really have an answer for that question. Sometimes, when you’ve been working on a book for more than two years, it even becomes difficult to remember where or how you got the idea for the book in the first place. I suppose for my current WIP (work in progress), I must have come across it in one of those many books of Florida history I had on my bookshelves in my old office on board our last boat, Möbius. So, after writing three big books that dealt with submarines in WW II, it seems my fascination with subs continues.

The interesting fact that fired up my imagination was that even before the United States entered World War II, Nazi U-boats had prowled the east coast and the Caribbean, sometimes as close as a couple of miles from shore. The American people were steadfastly isolationists at the time, and they did not want their country getting involved in the European War. However, that did not prevent Americans from sending supplies overseas, and the demand for those goods in the late 1930’s was helping Americans lift themselves out of the Depression. Once outside American waters, the German U-boats considered those tankers and cargo ships fair game, and American seamen were dying long before December 7, 1941.

Here is the image I generated of a U-boat offshore. Interesting that Midjourney, an AI image generator, balked at first apparently due to the use of the word Nazi.

Once America entered the war, what was considered “fair game” changed, and we weren’t ready. The Nazis launched Operation Drumbeat sending 22 U-boats off on what they called “American hunting season.” Some historians have even gone so far as to suggest that the US military’s lack of preparedness nearly lost the war for the Allies in those first months after Pearl Harbor when so many desperately needed supplies were sent to the bottom of the ocean. We did not have the ships or planes to patrol and protect our waters from the battle-hardened German U-boats. American citizens still didn’t bother with blackout curtains, and the coastal lights silhouetted targets making it even easier for the U-boats to pick off their prey. In six months, nearly six hundred ships were sunk, most in American waters.

Of course, American shipyards were suddenly hard at work to rebuild our fleets, but ship aren’t built overnight, and the oil, gas and steel needed to build was aboard the cargo ships and tankers the U-boats stalked.

This graph gives you some idea of just how bad it was in that first year and a half. The U-boats started up off the Northeastern US, but by February, they had made it to Florida.

In those first months of 1942, seeing that America lacked the Navy or Coast Guard vessels to adequately patrol the coast, American civilian boat owners stepped forward and offered to fill the gap. From Maine to Miami, the owners of schooners, luggers, powerboats and fishing boats joined into flotillas to perform anti-submarine patrols. From Northeast’s fancy yacht clubs to the large shrimp fleets of the south, Americans assigned themselves patrols and were out working the waters to report sightings of U-boats, to tow in disabled vessels or lifeboats, and to pick up survivors in the water.

These boats were often painted gray and outfitted with old machine guns from the Spanish American War, or given hand deployed depth charges. Some were furnished with radios to report back to shore if they spotted a U-boat, or heard one at night when the subs had to come to the surface to run their diesel engines in order to charge their batteries. Sailing vessels were especially good for this because when under sail, unlike any other vessel, they could patrol silent and undetected.

These groups started up in various parts of the country on their own and gave themselves names. Eventually, the commodores of yacht clubs and the Cruising Club of America started to organize the sailors in the Northeast calling themselves the Corsair Fleet. Then the US Coast Guard got involved with creating the first iteration of the Coast Guard Auxiliary, referring to them as the Picket Patrol. But given the fact that most able-bodied young men were going off to war, many of these vessels were being crewed by a ragtag lot consisting of older seamen, men classified as "unfit for service," ex-rumrunners, fishermen, and other undisciplined ruffians. That’s why they were often called the Hooligan’s Navy.

In Florida, for obvious reasons, they nicknamed themselves the “Mosquito Fleet.” These stalwart sailors organized themselves as early as 1940 in ports like Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale, and Tampa given that the state has 1,197 miles of coastline to protect.

On February 19, 1942, barely two months after Pearl Harbor, the cargo vessel Pan Massachusetts was sunk off Cape Canaveral. Three days later on the morning of February 22, the residents of Jupiter, Florida were awakened by a huge BANG when the tanker Republic was struck just offshore. The captain was able to run that ship aground before she sank. The following day, February 23, the tanker W.D. Andersen went up in a ball of fire in almost the same area off Jupiter. Only one man—who happened to be on deck and dove off when he saw the torpedo coming—survived. The war had arrived in Florida.

During the next year and a half as the Battle of the Atlantic raged on, Floridians often saw the smoke and flames of burning ships offshore. Tankers carrying oil from the Gulf had to pass through the narrow Florida Straits, and it was not uncommon for charred bodies to wash ashore on Florida’s white sand beaches.

Ernest Hemingway aboard his boat Pilar went out on patrols in real life and included his experiences in his fiction in the posthumously published book Islands in the Stream. (Photo: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

Many of the yachts that became part of the Picket Patrol were famous race boats and giant motor yachts, and besides Hemingway, some notable crew included Humphrey Bogart and Arthur Fiedler.

One of my favorite stories about the Hooligan’s Navy concerns a Fort Lauderdale character by the name of Willard Lewis. I suspect the gentleman was quite the spinner of tales, as he supposedly had not one, but two encounters with U-boats. The first time, he was out on patrol in his own boat, the Diane, a 40-foot cruiser late one night off the Hillsboro Light when he and his crewman spotted the enemy vessel. He claims that he and his sole crew member looked at each other and shouted, “Let’s go!” and took off at full throttle charging straight at the surfaced U-boat. According to Coast Guard records, when “asked later what he hoped to accomplish by ramming a steel submarine with a wooden motorboat, Lewis explained, ‘I aimed at her conning tower . . . and I might have messed up something.’ The Diane missed the U-boat by about forty feet.”

Not long after that, Lewis became the hired captain of the Jay-Tee, a 40-foot cabin cruiser with a rebuilt Buick engine. Along with his crew member, a character named Uncle Bill (last name unknown), Lewis was out on patrol on May 6, 1942 searching for survivors from a tanker that had just been torpedoed, when they sighted a U-boat wallowing at the surface. Armed with a Colt 45 pistol, the Jay-Tee headed off in hot pursuit when the sub tried to dive, then porpoised back to the surface, then submerged again. Confused, Lewis began circling in the Jay-Tee. Suddenly, the men heard a loud crash and their boat was lifted several feet out of the water. Uncle Bill looked over the side and saw the steel deck of the Nazi U-boat that was surfacing beneath them. A few seconds later, the sub submerged.

Lewis and Uncle Bill returned to Fort Lauderdale with a story that was difficult to believe. But when the Jay-Tee was hauled out to check for damages, they discovered the wooden cruiser had a cracked keel and a streak of gray paint on her bottom.

In the end, there is no evidence of any of these Hooligans, nor of the civilian vessels that were commandeered by the Coast Guard and crewed with professionals, ever having succeeded in taking out a U-boat. Probably, more than anything it was a PR campaign, although the patrols did actually save the lives of many survivors from torpedoed ships.

For writers, stories like these are pure gold. The more I read about the Hooligan’s Navy, the more my imagination began to wander. Though they don’t get named in the history books, I am certain some were crewed by women, as women were filling men’s jobs across America. I began to imagine a young woman who had grown up in Florida sailing on her father’s old converted sponge schooner as he took our Northeasterners to fish the Gulf Stream. She heeds the call to take over as the boat’s skipper when her her father goes to work in Dooley’s Drydock building sub chasers, and her brother enlists in the Air Force.

So, that was where I got my book idea.

Fair winds!

Christine

Sources:

https://classicsailboats.org/the-coastal-picket-patrol-semper-paratus/

https://www.boatus.com/expert-advice/expert-advice-archive/2015/october/the-coastal-picket-force

https://wavetrain.net/2015/07/01/hooligan-navy-sailing-yachts-on-sub-patrol-during-wwii/

The Fighting Coast Guard: America's Maritime Guardians at War in the Twentieth Century. (2022). United States: University Press of Kansas.

U-Boats in New England: Submarine Patrols, Survivors and Saboteurs 1942-45. (2019). (n.p.): Fonthill Media.

Navigating the winds of change

Christine Kling — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 20:20:44 GMT

The view from the highest point on Saturna Island looking across the the Canadian Gulf Island and the American San Juan Islands.

It’s been over three months since I last wrote about delivering Lance (the campulance) to our new home on Saturna Island, and our crazy story continues to change at a whirlwind pace.

Why is it that at some periods in our lives, the days seem to drag by ever so slowly, while at other times we find it difficult to imagine that so much has happened in such a short time?

I’ve been a sailor pretty much all my life. After learning to sail aboard my father’s various boats in Dana Point, CA, I served as the cook on my first delivery from La Paz, Mexico to Long Beach, CA in 1974, just weeks after my 20th birthday, on a boat built in the previous century that had a single-cylinder (one lunger) engine that had to be started with a firecracker!

That’s me with the Pippi Longstocking-style braids on the Sylvia, a Baltic Trader built in 1897.

A few months after that delivery on the Sylvia, I met my soon to be husband, James Kling, and sailed on the Kathi II across the Pacific to New Zealand.

Kathi II stern-tied off the island of Moorea in French Polynesia in 1974

On that boat we navigated by sextant, had a chronometer in a wooden box, only had an all-band receiver for a radio (no VHF), no refrigerator, an alcohol stove, a DIY self-steering device, and carried a mere 60 gallons of water that we hand pumped. The only electronics device we had was the Heathkit digital depth sounder that we thought was amazingly state of the art.

Möbius at the dock in Puerto Real, Puerto Rico sporting her significant array of antennas.

When I compare the Kathi II to our last boat, Möbius, a techno-wonder with a satellite compass, AIS, multiple GPS antennas, electronic charts, bottom-discriminating depth sounder, two complete electronic helm stations, more than 70 devices on our NMEA network, Starlink world-wide internet, a washing machine and heated floors — I’m astonished to think that I have lived to see so much change, and those days on the Kathi II sometimes don’t seem like that long ago.

So, there I was on Saturna Island trying to wrap my head around the idea that after a lifetime of sailing, we had sold Möbius and moved to a small cabin on a Canadian Gulf Island, when Wayne decided it was time to move again. Why? you might ask. That is such a good question.

Our plan had always been to stay nomads; we love travel but we simply wanted a home base. It turns out we found it at RavensRidge much sooner than expected — and at the wrong time of year. We are out of synch with the seasons. We knew that I, as an American, would only be allowed to stay in Canada six months of the year unless I became a resident. Our long term plan is to travel in the RV half the year mostly in the south, and to spend the other half (preferably in summer) on Saturna. To make that happen, we needed to build out the RV first. And while the cabin had a great woodworking shop, it didn’t have a metal shop, and that’s what we needed to start the build.

So, once again, we hit the computers and searched for a place to rent for 6 months or so where we could both work. There was also the fact that we were going to be buying lots of equipment and supplies for the build, and since Oregon doesn’t have a sales tax, we zeroed in on that state. We drove down on a search mission in late March and signed a contract to rent a funky little house in Klamath Falls, OR starting on April 15th.

Our home for the next six months is this 2-bedroom commercial property that used to be a car repair business and has a parking lot but no backyard. There is also a huge fire station across the street, so we fit right in.

We arrived in Oregon with our suitcases, a 2-inch memory foam mattress topper, an Ambo full of crates of tools, a few kitchen supplies, and zero furniture. We slept on the topper on the floor the first few nights, but I soon accumulated a dining table with two chairs, two easy chairs, an inflatable queen-size mattress, two desks and two office chairs — thanks to Goodwill, FB Marketplace, the Habitat restore, and Big Lots. And that’s about all we need.

Klamath Falls is at an elevation of over 4,000 feet and we have been surprised by how late the cold has lasted here. I took that middle photo above of the fire station across the street in late May — and yes, that is snow. Worse yet, today is June 15th, and we have a freeze warning for tonight. We are going to have to go back to Canada to warm up!

We have just passed the two-month mark of life in Klamath Falls, and we have adapted to this recent change better than expected. We feel like we have been here much longer than we have, but I think that is because we enjoy change and the unique quirks of each place we visit. Actually, this town is perfect for our purposes. There is a Home Depot and a Harbor Freight, as well as plenty of grocery stores. We’ve been able to get deliveries, and it turns out Oregon is full of outfits that service campers, vans, RVs, and off-grid lifestyle folks. I’ve joined the local YMCA to work out, and I’ve been riding my e-bike all over town. In addition, there are loads of trails and parks for walking and hiking.

The green box in the back by the ladder is Wayne’s new welder. The door on the left goes into a storeroom where all the parts and supplies are on racks. The 600 lbs. of 80/20 aluminum framing material should arrive next week.

Wayne has been working away on Lance. When we first arrived, he spent more than a week getting the gigantic garage pressure washed and set-up as his workshop, and doing research to buy himself a new welder. Then he spent a ton of time working in Fusion 360 first making an exact model of all the interior framing of the aluminum box, and then designing the interior that will be framed with 80/20 extruded aluminum. From the model then, he measured all the lengths and profiles in order to submit that aluminum order. During that period, we had to research and find the sink, the cooktop, the fridge, the windows, where the tanks will go, what type of head will we use, what sort of batteries, solar panels, etc. The more he can get done in the model, the easier it will be to order everything and build. The entire process really is very much like building a smaller Möbius.

But building a new boat didn’t require all this demolition. Ambulances have all these fantastic compartments that are accessed from the exterior doors, but they do cut into the inside space. We are leaving some at half their previous size, as you can see in the middle photo. When Wayne welds in the new wall, you open that compartment to an aluminum wall up top and storage on the bottom.

Before Wayne can weld in the new aluminum cabinet walls or put in the insulation, he had to remove all the wiring. As Lance was built in 2016, he was a very high-tech rig with five roof antennas for radio and GPS, three touch screens, five control modules for switching everything from lights to radios to oxygen control or locking doors. Some wires we will need to re-install for things like electronic door locks, brake lights and most of the exterior lights, but others we won’t need. He’s spent hours untangling, removing looms, labeling every wire, and coiling them up. After we get the insulation in, he will re-run the wiring inside the new cabinetry.

So, while Wayne has been very hard at work and making significant progress on Lance, I have been working at reviving my author business. With all the traveling, boatbuilding, sailing 8,000 miles, selling the boat and buying a new house — I had stopped paying any attention to my book sales and my writing was at a trickle. When we got here, I dove back into the world of writing and marketing, and what I found was a very different world. Artificial Intelligence has arrived!

Three or four years ago, I took courses on how to make Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads, and I had a whole slew of software that I had purchased for writing, editing, plotting, creating ads and tracking my sales. Now EVERYTHING has changed. New versions of the software nearly all now incorporate AI, and advertising is no longer asking us to find keywords to show our ads - the AI is finding the audience for us. I was really back to square one, and the new versions of all the software I used to use, as well as the new AI tools, required hours of YouTube tutorials and practice.

For example, the impossible struggle I once had finding stock images of women on tugboats has changed with tools like Midjourney that generate original images. This is the image that I always had in my head for the tugboat that my character Seychelle owned.

This old photo is from 2004, quickly snapped as the beautiful aluminum tugboat HERO passed on the New River in Fort Lauderdale. This boat (and photo) served in my imagination for Seychelle’s tugboat GORDA.

Today, I can experiment with creating all kinds of images. You simply describe (prompt) what you want in the image along with the style and presto, it offers several possible versions. Though I still haven’t managed to get Midjourney to come up with anything as lovely as Hero, nor the tugboat captain Seychelle and her black lab, Abaco that live in my imagination and in the pages of my books, I might consider using some of these images for advertising.

The not-so-great part of all these recent changes I have been exploring is all the controversy surrounding the creation and use of Generative AI. When I decided to restart my life as an author/entrepreneur, I went back in to my Facebook groups and started listening to podcasts. I discovered the world of creatives, writers and artists, was as divided as our political world. There were those who were pro-AI and those who were anti-AI and temper tantrums, name calling and lawsuits were the order of the day — plagiarism, not-ethical, end of the world, Oh My!

I am reminded of the arguments that arose when computers first arrived on the scene. Or when painters said there would never be anything called “fine art photography” because all photographers did was push a button. I have heard some authors talk about the fears in terms of abundance vs. scarcity. It’s as though they believe publishing books is a zero sum game, and if author A gains in her career, then all others are bound to lose. I’m of the abundance mindset, and as a techie, these new tools are really cool and so much fun to play with. I believe that most readers just want a good story to read.

As I am seeing AI rapidly becoming embedded in all parts of our world, I do not believe it is going away. I’ve had to handle a fair amount of change in my lifetime, so once more, I am going to figure out how I can make this new tool fit into my creative process to make me more productive and a better writer. As a sailor, I see this as a big storm, but this too shall pass. We will navigate our way through to calmer waters.

Fair winds!

Christine

Hello, Goodbye

Christine Kling — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 03:11:10 GMT

This is the view of Mt. Baker from Boat Pass in Winter Cove on Saturna Island.

Saturna Island is turning out to be a magical place to live. Yes, it rains a lot. Yes, it is gray much of the time during this season. But when the sun comes out, who knew this is what happens!

We spent one half of January getting to know our beautiful new Canadian island home, and the other half crossing the United States from one coast to the other, and one country to the other. It appears that our lives are now being defined by duality. Canada/America. Life on Möbius/life after. Atlantic/Pacific.

The title of this post comes from a song that those of us from my generation will remember, and I’ve found myself humming lately.

“You say yes, I say no, you say stop, and I say go, go go.”

It seems that when Paul McCartney wrote the song Hello, Goodbye, he was exploring not only duality as it appears in the universe, yes/no, stop/go, right/ wrong, man/woman, hello/goodbye; but also the randomness of it all.

Certainly part of embracing Serendipity means being willing to roll with the Randomness. That’s what I think about when I consider the past few weeks of life around at this place we’ve come to call RavensRidge. The original owners and builders named the house/cabin Raven, but we wanted to give the whole property a name, hence RavensRidge.

One of the things I have been adjusting to is cooking on the antique stove that came with the house. Called the Tappan Fabulous 400, it has a slide out set of four burners and was once the most modern technology available.

In order to get fully moved in here, and to eventually update this kitchen (sorry Tappan), we needed to go back out to Portsmouth, Virginia to collect our stuff that we had put in an 8 x 10 storage unit when we moved off Möbius. If you read the last newsletter I wrote, you will know that we were surprised right after Christmas when our offer on a used ambulance (that we intend to convert to an RV) was accepted. The ambulance, which we have named Lance, was located in Sterling, Illinois, so we devised a madcap plan to rent a small truck on a one-way rental, collect our stuff, drive to Illinois, move the stuff into Lance, and then drive back to Saturna Island in British Columbia… in January. What could go wrong, right?

First of all, we needed to get the tag and title for our new vehicle, and we were determined to get it registered as an RV. Technically, we remain residents of Florida, and we use the mail forwarding service St. Brendan’s Isle located in Green Cove Springs, FL as our address. Wayne spent weeks going through the DMV site and filling out forms, so we flew to Jacksonville, then drove to Green Cove Springs with all our paperwork. It was still a bit of a challenge, and it required getting new documents overnighted from Foster Coach in Illinois to us in Florida, but we did prevail! After successfully registering and getting our Florida license plate for our “Motor Home,” we flew to Norfolk, picked up our rental truck first thing in the morning, and drove to the storage place.

While we did have lots of crates and tools, having no furniture really does make things easier. We got away just past noon and we made it to Lewisburg, West Virginia before it got too dark, and too cold to continue.

Through the Blue Ridge Mountains and into West Virginia, we climbed higher and it got colder.

As it was mid-January, we had resigned ourselves to having to stop for weather somewhere along our cross country trip. Our next stop was at my brother’s house in Indiana, and he had been warning us about the plummeting temperatures, school closings, and lake-effect snow storm that had just come through. Normally, we choose to avoid the Interstate highways, but for this trip we knew that was the best place for us. We found the roads were well-plowed and dry (mostly) all the way to Sterling, Illinois.

Lance is a 2016 medium duty ambulance on a Kenworth T-70 chassis with a Horton box. The engine is a Paccar PX7 300hp diesel engine (built by Cummins) with an Allison 5-speed automatic transmission. The truck was commissioned by the Pewaukee, Wisconsin FireDepartment and Foster Coach was the builder.

Lance at work - before retirement.

We are the second owners. Most fire departments have a set length of time their vehicles are in service, then when the FD is budgeted for a new vehicle, they sell off the old one. In this case, the original builder Foster Coach was selling it on behalf of the PFD since they were building the new rig for them. Sometimes the vehicles have a second life with another Fire Dept. or they go to work in the patient transport business.

HELLO LANCE

When we arrived Monday morning at Sterling, Illinois, Shawn Foster, one of three brothers who run the company their grandfather started, met with us and then walked us over to this huge garage where Lance was waiting. We had asked Shawn to have his guys remove all the decals that indicated it was an ambulance, and this was the first time we were seeing the vehicle we had purchased sight unseen.

After a couple of hours of walk through with Shawn, learning about the truck, he went back to work and we started transferring our stuff. We were so happy that we were able to work in a heated building.

We were able to back the rental truck inside the giant garage, too.

We were ready to hit the road around noon, and we took off for the 80-mile drive backwards to Aurora where we had to drop off the rental truck. I drove the rental and followed Wayne in Lance. After a quick stop, I climbed into the cab and got my first chance to ride in our new rig. I pulled up our destination and Google Maps told me we had 35 hours and 2,207 miles to go to get home.

We’d be taking I-90 all the way. Wayne did almost all of the driving, but I wanted to see if I could manage the big rig. I did, but I gave up after about an hour. I have almost zero experience driving in snow and ice, so it probably wasn’t a good time to learn.

Yeah, those are some serious white knuckles and Barney is giving me a very dubious look.

I had purchased RV/Medium Duty truck Roadside Assistance policy and it turned out we needed it on Day 2 when we discovered that our rig is out of fuel the minute the low fuel light comes, before it even gets close to the Empty line. We were 10 miles from our intended stop at Blue Earth, Minnesota (real name, I swear!) We called our service and the lady helping us called us back just as darkness was falling to tell us that she couldn’t find a single provider willing to bring us a can of diesel and the local police were not answering their phone! The temperature was about 28F and falling. I was starting to calculate where the down comforters were in the crates in the back, when she announced the was going to call 911. With us on the line, she called the local police, and they told her to call Doug and gave her the number.

We were parked about 200 feet from an off ramp and it turns out that the closest places were all 10+ miles west of us. Once they got on I-90 they would have to drive more than 20 miles past our location to make a U-turn to get back to us. She called Doug and he said hell, yeah. No problem. He’d just drive the wrong way down the off ramp and along the shoulder of I-90 and bring us our diesel in about 10 minutes. Wayne hung up with a smile and said, “I like Doug. He’s my kind of guy.”

If you’ve driven I-90 through South Dakota, you will remember the dozens of signs for Wall’s Drug Store.

The days were short and South Dakota is very long, so the next day we made it to Rapid City and called it a day. The weather was holding great and though it was cold, the roads remained dry and clear

At one stop in Sheridan, Wyoming, I got Barney (after his walk) to pose next to our rig just to give it a bit of size reference.

One thing that driving across the US does, especially through the beautiful sparsely populated parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, it impresses upon you how huge and beautiful the North American continent is. We ended up being incredibly lucky with weather, even through the Rockies. Actually, it was only in the Cascades that we saw a bit of wet and dicey weather.

We had departed Sterling, Illinois on Monday, and we made it to Vancouver Saturday evening, too late to take the ferry to Saturna, so we stayed with our dear friend in the City. The next morning we were up early and waiting in line for the ferry with Lance’s big brothers and sisters.

RavensRidge has two driveways, and while Lance couldn’t quite make it up the main dirt (mud) drive, he has found his new home tucked into the trees on our second driveway.

Wayne has already started the interior demolition, but we have a long way to go. We have decided to completely gut the ambulance box down to the bare aluminum, so we can really insulate the heck out of it. He is working in Fusion 360, a 3D modeling program, to design the interior now that he has the actual vehicle here to get measurements as he needs them. It’s amazing how similar this process is to what we did in building Möbius. We need a water system, electric with solar, insulation, cabinetry, etc.

GOODBYE BARNEY

By now some of you might be wondering about the title of this post, Hello Goodbye. Life is serendipitous and random, and after Barney made this trip as navigator and co-pilot all across the US, one week later we had to say goodbye to the Yorkshire Terror, our dear boy due to an inoperable brain tumor. He had sailed the Bahamas with me on Talespinner, and he was the reason Wayne and I met. On Learnativity, he sailed from Majuro to Fiji to New Zealand, and on Möbius, he crossed the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The little guy probably had more miles under his harness than most bigger dogs and people. All I know is he has left behind an abundance of wonderful memories and a permanent hole in my heart.

Fair winds!

Christine

2023 - From the Canary Islands to Saturna Island

Christine Kling — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 02:18:35 GMT

New Years Eve aboard Möbius in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, the night before we departed on our Atlantic Crossing.

I have never been a fan of bucket lists. Most people who object to the term do so on the basis that it is morbid. After all, it is derived from the phrase “Kick the bucket," so it is a list of things to do before you die. But then what happens if you tick everything off the list by the time you are 55?

That’s not the reason why I’m not a fan. I dislike the idea because of the way it seems to value the Known and devalues the Unknown. Rather than live with a list of things I want to do or places I want to go, I prefer to live by serendipity. I’ve written about serendipity before; it is basically a happy accident.

Wayne calls this the No-Plan-Plan, but in fact, I am a bit of a planner. I enjoy making plans. To me, it’s okay to make plans, as long as you can adapt when they don’t work out. That’s something the sea has taught me. The deal is whether you can also enjoy watching life turn those plans to dust. That’s serendipity, and that is a train I am always willing to jump aboard.

So. we had a plan to build our dream boat, Möbius, and take her to the Arctic as well as to far off places that only a tank of a boat could go. It was a hell of a plan. We spent two years designing her, over three years living in Turkey while Wayne oversaw her build at Naval Yachts, and after living aboard and getting to sail her across the Med, the Atlantic and the Caribbean for almost three years, that all came to a hard stop in Portsmouth, Virginia.

Atlantic crossing downwind in the boisterous tradewinds.

The plan had been to spend the hurricane season cruising the Chesapeake Bay, but when we discovered that Wayne’s recurring bouts of vertigo were not going to get better, I said I couldn’t bear the anxiety of any more night watches with him. At that point, we knew our blue water cruising days were over. We had far too high an opinion of the boat we had created to turn her into a Marina Queen, and we had never like marina life either. It was time to sell the boat and figure out a new path.

Wayne’s son Skyler Hodgins flew in from Vancouver and helped with cleaning, removing items like the boat’s drill press, and all the pounds of scrap metal that we sold to the junk yard.

We spent most of the summer at the dock prepping to boat to put her on the market and learning all the ins and outs of selling a foreign-flagged boat in the USA. We rented a storage locker and moved lots of our gear off the boat (everything we owned in the world was on board that boat), and thanks to our two sons, we got all all the jobs done, including pressure washing the entire boat and engine room, as well as the major job of replacing our enormous battery bank with new Victron batteries.

My son, Tim Kling, at the sink, flew in and helped with the battery installation. We were very happy and fortunate to have young muscle to help.

Finally, in August, we were ready to put her up for sale. At this point, we had heard all sorts of folks, from brokers, to other yacht owners, to the online armchair experts, that Möbius was going to be a very difficult boat to sell. While this 2-cabin, 78-foot boat with a single Gardner engine might be the Goldilocks boat for us, we were the only ones in the world who would feel that way.

Most people who saw her on the dock were curious.

What happened next, just blew us away. Wayne wrote his blog about needing to sell the boat, and a short while later, before the listing on YachtWorld even went live, the emails started to arrive.

You see, first let me explain that everyplace we ever went, people were curious about the boat. Whether we were tied up to a dock, or anchored out, we always heard the voices calling out “Hello,” either from a dinghy alongside, or even over the VHF radio. They would ask if it was a converted Navy boat, or those in the know would ask if it was a Dashew boat. We enjoyed talking about our unique Turkish-built boat, inspired by Dashew, but definitely not a Dashew boat, and showing it to people. Most of the time, we invited them aboard for a tour.

Most of the emails started with, '“You might not remember us, but…” there were the people who saw the boat through binoculars out on the banks in the Exumas, the people who came aboard in Kalymnos, the ones who passed us on the ICW, the one who was a friend of our designer. This difficult-to-sell boat was suddenly very much in demand.

It all happened so fast, we barely had a chance to catch our breath. The next thing we knew there were 5 very serious buyers, and the first one who made an offer, ended up being our buyer (from the Netherlands). Three weeks later, we had moved what stuff we were keeping, off the boat and into our storage unit. We left behind all the household goods, dishes, cutlery and linens except for my nice set of Demeyere stainless cookware (once you’ve cooked on induction, you can’t go back). All my kitchen and household appliances were 240V so everything from the bread machine, toaster, hand blender to the hair dryer, vacuum, printer, everything stayed with the boat.

The last of the tools and crates to leave the boat.

I had rented us an Airbnb on Virginia Beach, and we took one last photo as we said good-bye to our dream boat, our home.

This photo was taken October 12. What you are looking at here is two people who are homeless, have absolutely no idea what is coming next, and are headed to their 2006 Honda Pilot with a couple of suitcases and a bag of kibble.

After spending a few nights on Virginia Beach in a beach condo, talking and trying to figure out what comes next, I decided we should take advantage of the leaf season and head to the mountains of North Carolina.

The drive into the mountains was magical.

I booked us into another Airbnb, a little cabin. We were trying out different living spaces, whether we were aware of it or not.

We arrived at this cabin at dusk with the temperature close to freezing, and when we went inside, it was beautifully lit, cozy and warm. Upstairs was a sleeping loft.

When we first got off the boat, Wayne insisted he was not ready to settle down and buy a house. We talked about just living in long-term rentals, buying an RV, becoming full-time house/pet sitters. Anything and everything was on the table. We can certainly pivot and adjust.

We spent a bit more than a week in that cabin, talking and imagining what our future could look like. Wayne, who is always a man in search of a project, had started watching these YouTube videos of people who had built their own RVs by converting ambulances. All ambulances are built to survive a 360-degree roll over and the so-called “medium duty” ambulances are often built on Freightliner or International truck chassis have bigger boxes and can carry the weight of more water and gear. We started to talk about building the land version of Möbius.

This is an example of a converted medium duty ambulance RV that was done by the couple who have the YouTube channel Driven to Adventure.

However, I pointed out that it would be quite expensive to rent a house with a garage for a year (minimum) for the build. I wanted to write during that time, and I needed to have access to my books and materials and tech for writing. I’m writing a historical novel and lots of the materials I am using are not available online. I can’t work very well with all my materials stuck away in totes in a storage unit in Portsmouth. I suggested we buy cheap land somewhere, put a travel trailer and a shed on it, and we could live there while building out the ambo, aka L/Y Möbius (Land Yacht). Later on, when we tired of traveling, we could build ourselves a tiny home. We’re boat people, after all, and we don’t need more space than that.

Then it became a question of where, and we both agreed that the whole time we’d been building Möbius, we’d been dreaming of the west coast of Canada, the Gulf Islands, and the San Juan Islands.

Boundary Pass and the Haro Strait form the border. Islands to the right are the San Juans, and they belong to the US. On the upper left are the Canadian Gulf Islands.

An island would allow us to live surrounded by the ocean we love and to be more isolated, just the way we like it. Since ours is a mixed marriage, Canadian/American, we didn’t really care which side of the border we’d be on. We decided to spend one week looking around on the Canadian side, then another week on the American side just to acquaint ourselves with the area. Eventually, we’d let the property be the deciding factor. So, we left that NC cabin with a plan, which was, as sailors often say, written in the sand at low tide.

We carried on in our little old Honda Pilot down to Florida to visit friends and family, decided said Pilot was not up for a cross country trek, and we caught a plane out to Seattle November 1st.

When we had been in Fiji in 2016, just after that major refit on our sailboat, Learnativity, a Canadian catamaran docked next to us at Vuda Point Marina. We chatted with the couple aboard, and learned they were from Victoria. We shared our plans to go off to Turkey to build an aluminum power yacht with them. Thanks to Facebook and blogs, we had kept up with each other. They had sold their catamaran in Australia, and returned to the world of work in Victoria. We had met up with them on a previous trip, and learned that Mark was in the real estate business. He had written a kind note when Wayne had revealed his medical condition on the blog, so Wayne contacted him to see if he could help us in our search for land. As luck would have it, he and his wife Dee now lived on Pender Island, and he graciously agreed to help us in our search.

Riding the BC ferry to Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island to stay with friends during our search.

We set it up so that we would go to spend one day on Pender with Mark, spend the night on the island, and then go the next day to Saturna Island. We had emails out for appointments with other realtors in both the Gulf Islands and the San Juans for the following week.

The weather was gorgeous and that first day on Pender Island when we met Mark at the cute bakery and checked out the little shopping center and grocery store. The store was like a mini Whole Foods with the basics and gourmet items. The island had a population of about 2,250 full time residents, so they had a full-time doctor, a pharmacy, restaurants, cafes, resorts, community center with an arts program, and all sorts of community groups. Yet, there was still lots of rough and rural land. Wayne fell in love with several lots high on a cliff with gorgeous ocean views.

In our cozy room at the WOODS on Pender that night, we discussed what we had learned. The land we liked would need a well, power, a septic system, a road, and a flattened site for the trailer. That was a lot of building before we got started on our ambulance. And Mark had explained about the difficulties in the future for building any permanent home. I’d be happy with a tiny home on a trailer, so I wasn’t too worried about that, but the services concerned me.

The next morning we got up early and took the ferry to Saturna Island where we met Michael, a realtor who had agreed to show us property there. Wayne had emailed him and told him about our history of being boat people who suddenly had to “swallow the anchor” and how we were homeless and starting over. He explained to us that Saturna was much less populated than Pender, with a full time population just under 400. There is one store, the General Store and Freight, one lodge and a pub. Already we loved the feel of the island. We had been seeking out the isolated anchorages while on Möbius, and we were prepared for the risk factors of living farther away from health services.

He had several properties that conformed to our requests, but first, he told us about a couple who were sort of like us in that they, too, quit cruising/boating, bought bare land, Put in the well, power, septic system and hand built a tiny home cabin like a shipwright, as well as a fantastic workshop. He told us that he understood it was not what we were looking for and way more than our budget. In fact, it was currently off the market, but if we wanted to see what was possible, he would call them and ask if we could stop by. It turned out they were out on errands, but we could make a quick stop for 15-20 minutes before they returned.

Our first view of the cabin and the long driveway up the hill.

That was it. Twenty minutes. We walked through the cabin and around the 4.2 acres at a trot. It was beautiful, filled with amazing artwork and all nautical themed, but we were looking for bare land. Right? Then we walked down the hill and entered the workshop. And saw all the lumber. And the tools. And Michael told us that the funny thing was that while we had left everything behind on our boat, these folks already owned a condo in Victoria, and they were selling everything with the property.

Michael showed us several very interesting places after that, but he had to go to his second job (working for the BC ferries) at 1:00, and our ferry wasn’t leaving until 4:50, so we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Saturna Island … and talking.

Winter Cove Park, a part of the Gulf Islands National Park that accounts for a good part of the land on Saturna Island.

I remember it was Wayne who was the first one to bring it up. He thinks it was me. “What if we were to do this differently and start at the end. Start with the home and the workshop already built.”

“We’re not getting any younger, and time is the one thing we don’t have an abundance of at our age.”

“Did you see that workshop? The two drill presses? The thickness planer? The band saw? The great lighting and air filtration?”

I’m sure you see where this is going.

We spent two days shopping for bare land, found a place with an amazing cabin on day 2, fell in love with it and bought it.

Meet the Raven.

The living room area complete with wood stove. Note on the right in the photo the carving of an indigenous-styled raven.

So, somehow, after leaving Möbius in mid-October and following the No-Plan-Plan, we found ourselves first on the ferry on December 21st in our new white pick-up with our first-ever live Christmas tree on the back, headed for the island of Saturna in the mist. Owning a cabin on a Canadian island was never on bucket wish list of mine, a California girl who has only ever lived in Hawaii, The USVI, Florida, and Turkey. I’ve sailed the South Pacific Islands, the Caribbean and the Bahamas and I’ve known lots of tropical heat. But you know how there are all those people who live in Wisconsin and dream of sailing the seas? I’ve spent most of my adult life living in the heat and on the water. I am sooo ready to play in the dirt, try my hand at things I have never ever done before, and not have to sweat in my bunk all night.

Our Honda Ridgeline filled with Christmas goodies.

Here are a few more photos of the property.

Our place doesn’t overlook the water, but it is a short walk or drive to Winter Cove where there is a launch ramp. The property came with a 10 ft. Bullfrog boat on a trailer (think an aluminum bottom RIB but with hard plastic tubes) and a 20HP Tohatsu OB. Our “boat” is now this little island, and we have a dinghy as well.

But wait, there’s more.

Just in case you think I forgot about the joys of serendipity, three days after Christmas, Wayne’s offer was accepted on this baby.

So, we will soon be taking off on a cross country trip to bring our possessions from Portsmouth, VA to somewhere in Illinois, where we will transfer our possessions into this truck and drive it in January back to Saturna Island to start the build of L/Y Möbius.

Another serendipitous adventure.

Fair winds!

Christine

History and fiction

Christine Kling — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 18:29:09 GMT

When we were passing up that last stretch of the ICW approaching Norfolk, we entered into this area of shipyards where all these US Navy ships are in for rebuilds or refits. I took this photo and then showed it to Wayne saying, “Möbius will be right at home here among her bigger siblings.”

There have been shipyards here in this area since the early colonists settled this region. You can see why it was so appealing to the settlers as what we now call Hampton Roads is a protected sound off the Chesapeake Bay created by confluence of three rivers, the Elizabeth, the Nansemond and the James Rivers.

This 1898 map created by the United States War Department identifies the area as the place where the famous Civil War Battle of the Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimack occurred. Portsmouth is visible at the bottom.

Back in those early days, the easiest method of transport for the early colonists was by water, and this area with all the timber and waterways developed a shipbuilding industry early on that continues today. It makes it rather appropriate for us to have chosen this place as our summer home.

Our view from the Portsmouth side of the Elizabeth River looking across at the city of Norfolk

We are currently doing our own mini-refit to Möbius (mostly Wayne is doing it as I am writing) here at Tidewater Yacht Marina in Portsmouth, Virginia. For the past month or so, the major project has been replacing our 24 Firefly batteries with 12 Victron AGM Super Cycle batteries. We were lucky to get my son, Tim, who is an electrician to come help out for several days last week.

I have been thrilled to let the guys do the work and to be free to do my own work. However, writing involves so much sitting that I make sure to get out as often as possible to get my steps in. Lucky for me, here in Portsmouth, there is the Olde Towne, a several block area of homes built in the 1700’s and 1800’s. I grew up in California and also lived in Florida; both places don’t have many buildings that are older than the early 1900’s other than the California missions and St. Augustine, Florida, so I’m really enjoying seeing these homes built centuries ago that are still being lived in.

Both the town of Portsmouth and the local homeowners have done an excellent job of putting signs up to tell folks about this history.

The street sign hanging from the lovely old street lamp tells us that the house above was built circa 1820, and the plaque on the side of the house gives some background about the shipbuilder who built some of the last sailing ships and first steamers in the US Navy.

Several homes have large signs on the street to explain some of the more famous characters who once were entertained inside.

Some of the homes have elaborate, ornate architecture while the older homes tend to be relatively simple reflecting the Puritan outlook.

But while the homes might be old, they most definitely have 21st century residents living in them.

Another thing that surprises me about the South in general and Portsmouth in particular is the number of beautiful old churches. In 1840, Portsmouth only had a population of about 6,500 people, so for such a small city, it has quite the array of churches. Unfortunately, they are difficult to photograph with the cars on the narrow streets, the street signs and the utility wires.

One of the oldest churches in town is the Court Street Baptist Church. It also survived better than some of the others because they started out building with bricks instead of wood.

This Catholic Church is, if I am reading this correctly, the fifth version of the church, as they had to expand early on and two others burned.

The Episcopal Church below has a lovely adjoining garden.

But what I liked best was the tiny library just outside.

Nautical Fiction

I am really enjoying getting back into my writing persona, and I thought I would take this opportunity to share some of my thoughts on that with my readers. I’ve always had a difficult time describing the genre or category that my books would fit in to. In the last couple of years, some like-minded authors have organized a group called Tropical Authors, and I have joined them. They put out a newsletter a couple of times a month with news of freebies, new releases, and audiobooks from this selection of writers who mostly write mysteries and thrillers set on and around the water. If interested, you can sign up here: Tropical Authors.

When I was younger, I longed to find good adventure thriller books that were set on and around the water and were written by authors that REALLY knew boats. I simply loathe being thrown out of a scene by an author who tries to write about boats and the sea, but makes mistakes that make me groan and want to throw the book at a wall.

The first writer I discovered who did a fantastic job with his boating scenes was Sam Llewellyn from the UK. Most of his novels were written back in the 70’s and I read them as paperbacks, but he has reissued them as ebooks. I have been rereading some of them, and they hold up very well. Recently, he has released a few new ones, and I am thrilled that he is writing fiction again. If you’re a reader with salt water in your veins, I suggest you give him a try. You could start with Blood Knot or Death Roll, but really, they are all great.

If you have a favorite author of nautical fiction, please share by leaving a comment.

And finally, on the subject of nautical fiction or whatever you choose to call it, the first book in my Seychelle series, Surface Tension, is being offered as a free ebook on Amazon from today through Tuesday, August 22. If interested, you can click here: Surface Tension.

Fair winds!

Christine

Note: Any links to Amazon I include in are affiliate links for which I would earn a small commission if you choose to make a purchase.

Courageous?

Christine Kling — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 20:33:14 GMT

Möbius at center anchored off Black Point in the Exumas

Aboard our boat, Möbius, we always stick out whether it is in an anchorage or a marina. We are the weird-looking boat. Folks come by in their dinghies and ask us if the boat is military or a research boat or a government surplus vessel rebuilt. Sometimes, they look at us with an odd expression when we tell them it’s just a pleasure boat that we had custom built, and it’s our home. Other times, the folks, men more often, say she is a beaut, a go-anywhere-bad-ass-machine, and they want to know what exotic locations we are headed for.

And I don’t know if it’s the boat or the sailing we do, but often when chatting with friends, family, or new acquaintances, someone will say to me, “You must be so brave.” I never quite know how to respond. It’s embarrassing because I know the truth.

I’m a grandmother a few months shy of 70 years old, not some young brave thing.

Me? Really? Look at that photo. That’s someone putting on a brave face, maybe. But brave? No way, no how.

Feeling our way into the narrow cut between two rocks.

Like when we are going through narrow cuts like this one into Royal Island Harbor at the north end of Eleuthera, my heart is pounding, and I’m catastrophizing, imagining every possible, horrible thing that could happen if we were to crash into the rocks and bend our prop. That pic actually shows us leaving the Exumas earlier than we had planned because I saw this weather window that meant we could make that open ocean crossing from the north end of Eluthera across to Little Harbor Cut on a calm day.

I was so happy when we finally made it to the Abacos. It was a favorite cruising grounds of mine in the years before I met Wayne when I sailed solo on my little boat Talespinner. Visiting this island group allows for sailing in very protected waters called the Sea of Abaco. There are two larger islands on one side and a string of smaller islands on the other, which means inside there is excellent protection from wind and swell.

caption...Our anchorage off Lynyard Cay where I remembered visiting on my little Talespinner and being the only boat there.

To tell the truth, it wasn’t just the weather windows that were pushing us to head to a place where we could slow down. By this time it was April, and we had been moving fast, covering miles since October. But it was more than that.

When we first arrived in the Bahamas, Wayne had told me more about the frequent bouts of vertigo he was experiencing that had caused him to fall and hurt himself on more than one occasion. This was really bad news both because he has several cracked disks in his back from an earlier motorcycle accident, but also it fired up my greatest sailing fear.

Marsh Harbor still has not recovered from Hurricane Dorian. I saw mastless and sunken boats everywhere as I toured on my e-bike.

I’ve been blue water sailing since I made my first delivery from Cabo San Lucas to Long Beach (about 1000 miles) just after my 20th birthday. I sailed from Hawaii to New Zealand and back and couple of years later. But always, on every single ocean passage, especially when there are only two people on board, my biggest fear is not storms or hurricanes; it’s that I will get up for my watch, and I will find myself alone on the boat.

Wayne and I do 6-hour watches. If he were to go overboard, I would wake up and have no idea how long he had been gone. That terrifies me. Courageous? Nah, no way.

Our other issue was our sweet 15-year-old dog Ruby, a Cocker Spaniel-Poodle mix we called a Spoodle (much nicer than Cockapoo, right?) We called her Ruby the Wonder Dog because she was so smart and sure-footed - she could even climb up the swim ladder on her own to get back aboard our sailboat in the South Pacific. But lately, Ruby had gone stone deaf and started falling overboard -for the first time back in Algiers, Morocco, but several times again in the Caribbean and the Bahamas. Thankfully, she either swam back to the boat or we had had the tender in the water and had been able to chase her each time. But we knew our luck wasn’t going to last.

So there I was feeling not so brave at all as I felt that I just had to get my family safely across the last 1000 miles of water from the Bahamas to the US East Coast and up to the Chesapeake Bay where we intended to spend the hurricane season.

I insisted that we hang out anchored off Cooper’s Town on Little Abaco for almost a week as we waited for a series of fronts to pass through before we attempted to cross to Florida. The Gulf Stream current flows north and with the passing of a frontal system, the winds switch around and blow out of the north creating the situation of current against wind and that makes for nasty conditions.

While we were there, we got to see a Space X rocket launch that left from Cape Canaveral and traveled right over our Bahamian anchorage. A couple of days later, we got the weather window I had hoped for and we crossed the Gulf Stream.

Arriving with Möbius in the USA marked an accomplishment for us. We had crossed the Mediterranean, Atlantic, the Caribbean and arrived on the continent of the New World. There is certainly something to be said for the rush of pushing through your fears and accomplishing you set out to do. Certainly that thrill is part of what has kept me coming back to sailing.

While we were in the Palm Beach area, we got to have our grandson Liam and family aboard, and we visited friends in Florida in Jensen Beach and Cocoa Beach along the Intracoastal Waterway. However, the bridges in Florida can be exhausting going on the inside, and it looked like we could have a good weather window to make the jump from Cape Canaveral to Charleston by going outside for the 300 mile trip. I hoped this would be our last overnight passage in a while.

Our passage started out with flat seas and once we found the Gulf Stream, the current helped our speed so that we were doing over 11 knots at times.

However, we were racing a front and we got caught when the winds arrived earlier than forecast and things got a little spicy there at the end. We decided, even though the boat was very light due to us having only a fraction of our fuel and water on board, we decided not to put the paravanes in to slow us down, and to just grit our teeth and get into Charleston faster.

We made it inside by noon, and we had already decided that we were not going to stop in the city, but rather continue on to a more protected anchorage where we could find quiet and some lovely nature. Even though we were now in very protected waterways, I mostly worried about Ruby going overboard as the currents often flow very strong, and as you can see in the first photo below, there were sometimes alligators visiting our anchorages.

My fear of losing somebody overboard had decreased on those days on the ICW, but driving the boat on the twisty, turning waterway is exhausting. You can’t just put the boat on autopilot like you can when you are out at sea. There are positives and negatives about both Bluewater sailing and inland waters.

We arrived at our summer home port at Tidewater Yacht Marina in Portsmouth, Virginia in time for me to go watch the real small town Memorial Day parade.

Since we have been here, we got a medical confirmation that Wayne has Ménière’s Disease, which is the cause of his sudden onset vertigo. The vertigo doesn’t make him nauseous, but it can make him fall and injure himself. As we have come to say, it’s not life threatening, just lifestyle threatening.

As I said in the beginning, I am not a brave person. I have enjoyed sailing all my life, but I have done so by overcoming my fears, by learning how to do it safely, and often times just pushing through the fear. But when it becomes really dangerous for someone you love, the decision is clear. Our blue water sailing days are over.

Just as we had come to this conclusion, our dear girl Ruby started to really crash. She stopped eating, and she could barely balance to relieve herself. Our Yorkie, Barney, started licking her incessantly. Barney knew before we did that she was dying. So we took our girl on her final trip to the vet, and we said our good-byes. Okay, that really did take some courage.

So, our lives are changing fast, and we don’t know what will come next. But it will certainly be a new adventure, and we’re still trying to figure out what that will look like.

Meanwhile, I’m back to writing full time. The upside of being tied to a dock.

Fair winds!

Christine

Going home?

Christine Kling — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 19:48:04 GMT

Almost a double rainbow at our anchorage off Cape Santa Maria at the north end of Long Island in the Bahamas.

Möbius has made it to the Bahamas, and we are currently anchored off Black Point in the Exumas. On our passage to the Exumas, we crossed over the 7,000 nautical mile mark in our voyage since leaving our boat’s birth place in Turkey.

This afternoon, Wayne and I are relaxing and not moving the boat from point A to point B. If you could be a fly on the wall in our boat, you would see us both sitting at the main salon table working on our computers, our two dogs sleeping on the bench seats beside us. I’ve been researching the weather for the upcoming crossing to the Abacos, and Wayne has been doing the mid-month financial research and account management that keeps the cruising kitty replenished. If you were not able to look out the window at the stunning pale turquoise water around us, you would not know which of the 10-12 countries we’ve visited in the six months was our location.

Recently, I posted on Facebook this darkly funny sign I had found nailed to a light pole on Long Island.

One of my friends, noticing our location, responded with the comment, “You’re almost home.”

I responded with “Not sure home is a place for me anymore.” I mean, looking at us today sitting here at the table, we could be any place. But in the days since I wrote that, I have been thinking more and more about what home is, what that word means to me.

It is true that I spent more of my adult years in South Florida than in any other place. My son was born there, I went back to college and finished two degrees there, I owned several properties over the years, and wrote a series of novels about a woman tugboat captain deeply rooted in the Fort Lauderdale area.

This is a photo of me taken 20 years ago with the New River tug HERO (inspiration for my character’s boat) passing in the background. I’ve always had a thing for unpainted aluminum boats.

But I left Florida and have not really lived there for about ten years now. When I go back, it doesn’t feel like home.

In fact, I have lived in France, Mexico, New Zealand, Hawaii, Portugal and Turkey. And while I lived there, I considered those places home in the sense of where you live, but not in the sense of where you are from.

For some people, home is where they grew up, and for me, that is Southern California. My family moved there when I was four years old, and I attended school there from kindergarten through two years of university. I left in 1975 and flew to Hawaii looking to get a crewing job on a boat headed to the South Pacific. I found that boat (the Kathi II was an Islander 44 Jim had built from a bare hull) and the captain (Jim Kling) became my husband of 20 years.

We returned from the South Pacific and built a boat in Oxnard. After we left in 1981 to sail to the Caribbean, I never returned to live in California, and these days when I visit, it certainly doesn’t feel like home.

We are friends with the Alonso family who have been living abroad boats now for more than ten years, and I helped their daughter Jaci with college entry essay about being raised as a boat kid and being asked the awkward question, “Where are you from?” Even as a 16-year-old, she had come to realize how difficult it was to answer that simple question that nearly always makes its way into conversations with new people.

I’m with you Jaci, I can’t answer it either.

For some people, where they are from is a distinct part of their identity. They root for the home teams and have special names for the people from that town or that state. I guess that goes back to Maslow hierarchy of needs where that sense of belonging is so important to humans.

I suppose I do identify to a certain degree with the nomadic lifestyle and in particular, traveling by boat. Is calling myself a cruiser that much different than my mom who once called herself a Hoosier?

I get it that in our language, we refer to the structures we live in as homes. But the word home has multiple meanings beyond just a habitat. Since so many people today have lived in many different houses or apartments, I know that the person who commented on my Facebook post did not think I was returning to some building in Florida. For the moment, the structure I live in is Möbius, and I do call her home.

Möbius anchored out off Salinas, Puerto Rico last week. Approaching the boat in the dinghy like this, I do always feel like I am going home.

And yet, there are certain smells or tastes or memories that can in an instant take me back to some moment in time, especially my childhood. The smell of freshly mowed grass almost always makes me want to go outside and play in Southern California’s sunshine. In that moment, when you first have that reaction to a smell or taste and you are taken back to another place and time, it does sort of feel like home.

Perhaps in the end, home is just that, a feeling. When a smell takes me back to my childhood, it is the feeling of being there with my parents and my siblings, my family. When I return to Southern California now, it doesn’t feel like home because the family I am a part of isn’t there.

South Florida used to feel like home when I lived there with my son and Jim, and we were a family, but Jim is gone, and my son is grown up with a son and family of his own.

When I answered that Facebook comment with the statement, “Not sure home is a place for me anymore,” I wasn’t exactly accurate. I don’t think home has ever been a place for me.

If you zoom in really close you can Möbius just above Wayne’s right shoulder.

For now, Möbius is home for me because that is where Wayne and our puppy dogs are. They are my family, and home is wherever they are.

Where do you call home? Let me know in the comments.

Fair winds!

Christine

Caribbean cruising

Christine Kling — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 16:21:31 GMT

Wayne and I are tasting rum at a Martinique distillery with our dear Swiss friend, Philip Duss, whom I first met when we arrived in Majuro on Wayne’s boat in 2014

It’s difficult to believe that we arrived in the Caribbean at the island of Martinique after our Atlantic crossing only about two months ago. It seems like it should be longer. Wayne and I have often talked about how time passes so differently at different periods in life. This has been a very dense two months. As I write this, we are currently anchored off St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.

We decided to change our destination from Grenada to Martinique when we learned via email that our friend Philip was spending more than a month in Martinique to go kite surfing. We hadn’t seen him since his last visit to Turkey two years earlier.

I knew that Philip could also help me with a secret plan I had to surprise Wayne for his birthday on January 23. I wanted to throw him a Virtual Surprise Birthday Party. I emailed invitations to a Google Meet phone call to over 60 of Wayne’s friends, timing it for just after our dinner. Philip came over and we dined up on the Skybridge. I served up the bubbly and the homemade carrot cake to the birthday boy and his buddy, then I excused myself to go downstairs.

At this point he has no idea what’s going to happen next.

Down in the main salon, I set up my computer with an additional monitor. I logged in to the Google Meet and found that there were already a half dozen people there chatting away. I told them that I was going upstairs to get him and that they should yell “Surprise!” when they saw him arrive.

I had no idea if it was going to work, but it was amazing! More than half the invitees showed up, and we had people from the US, Canada, Europe and New Zealand. Unfortunately, there were only the 6 squares on the screen, but we could see the list of attendees on the side bar, and we tried to call out to everyone to get a chance to say hello. The whole thing was a challenge, but it worked fairly well for a first effort. Wayne and I decided a while ago that since neither of us needs more stuff, from now on we will give one another experiences instead of things for birthdays and Christmas. He really enjoyed his birthday experience.

Philip had a rental car, and one windless day, he invited us to go visit a couple of rum distilleries. The history of most of the Caribbean islands is tightly bound to the cultivation of sugar and the production of rum, and Martinique has done a good job of preserving this history through preserving the plantation estates.

The first place we visited was the Distillerie A 1710. The photo at the top of this post shows us tasting the rum inside the lovely old house. The property had never been a distillery before when it was purchased by a Frenchman who had a dream of creating a boutique, organic rum brand and distillery. He purchased the property of an 18th century home, “Habitation du Simon” that had fallen into disrepair, and has turned it into a gorgeous museum and tasting rooms. The photo at the top of this post shows us tasting the rum inside the lovely old house.

Our guide at Distillerie A1710 explained the process, and how they replicate the historic methods right down to hand cutting the cane with machetes.

We toured the old carriage house where they distilled the rum, watched them crush the sugar cane for the juice, and visited the fields where the heritage seeds of the old blue and red sugar cane grew.

From there, we got back in the car and continued on to Habitation Clément, a much larger property and bigger brand of Martinique rum.

The Clement family home.

The grounds were gorgeous with sculpture gardens and several of the old buildings, including the old Clement family home seen above, and the huge storerooms with barrels of aging rum.

The following Sunday, Philip invited us to go with him to his kite surfing location located off a point close to Le Vauclin. It is located on the Atlantic side of the island, but a string of barrier reefs makes for flat water close to shore, and it is a world renowned kite surfing location. We had learned from some folks at one of the distilleries, that during the winter tourist season, they also have a Sunday jazz concert out there called Jazz a la Pointe.

We all had lunch at one of the restaurants along the beach, and then while Philip joined the other kite surfers, we enjoyed the music.

All too soon, it was time to say good-bye to Philip and to Martinique and start making our way up the island chain. Our next stop was Dominica, which has long been one of my favorite islands. From the friendly people to the gorgeous nature, Dominica is unlike any other island, not least of all because it is the poorest and least developed island in the Caribbean chain.

We anchored off Portsmouth where the locals have made life easy, safe and fun for the cruising boats. We contacted Cobra, a very entrepreneurial character, who came out to meet our boat and arranged to clear us in and out of Customs and Immigration, and to handle any tours we wanted. We usually handle our own clearances, but I am always so much happier to spend money when I know it is going into the islanders’ pockets. Dominica still hasn’t fully recovered from the devastation from the Cat 5 Hurricane Maria in 2017, so I told Wayne we would kick back and make us of the services Cobra offered.

Cobra sent Albert to pick us up at the boat and take us for a cruise up the Indian River. It was late in the afternoon and raining, which turned out to be perfect.

Because the island does not have any long white sand beaches, Dominica has not been developed to the degree that the other islands have. I’ve always viewed that as a plus. It means the island is gem for those looking for a eco-tourist experience. Instead of big corporate resorts, Dominica has small inns and guest houses, and for the boaters, there is the option to go on various tours of the incredible rain forests, rivers and waterfalls. Our first tour was the trip up the beautiful Indian River with Albert as our guide.

The next day we went on an island tour with Cobra himself as our driver. We shared the tour with Elise, a lovely Norwegian woman sailor. We were gone from the boat for 10 hours and we learned so much about the island - and about Cobra’s life.

Then we hiked up to Trafalgar Falls. Click on any of the photos below to see them full size.

And just when we needed to relax a bit, Cobra took us to Wotton Valley where there are hot springs everywhere. We hiked around a bit, then went to a place where a family had created pools for soaking. We changed back into our suits and tried the various pools that were at different temperatures.

Cobra showing us the burbling, spitting mud at one of the hot springs. He warned us not to get too close or we might get burned.

The next island on our trip north was Guadaloupe. After a sporty crossing of the channel between the islands, we anchored off Base Terre to clear in.

Möbius anchored out among the sailboats.

Once we were cleared in, we motored a few miles north and anchored off the village of Bouillante, where a power plant generates electricity through the water from a hot springs, and the locals and tourists alike enjoy swimming in the warm water that flows into the sea.

I paddled our inflatable kayak to shore on the Sunday that Bouillante was going to have their Carnival Parade for Mardi Gras. I was surprised to see lots of little boys cracking whips, so I did some research into this practice. Since Carnival is partly a competition between different groups to have the best floats and the best music, it seems to have become a way for young men from rival groups to prove their manliness. They are booed by the crowd if they are not very good at cracking their whips, cheered if they succeed. Some local people hate the practice, finding it dangerous and wondering why they needed to revive this object which was used to beat the African ancestors during slavery. I found it strange, I admit, but that is part of what travel is all about: learning about other people’s customs.

The wind increased while I was on shore, and the parade start was on island time. The crowds, the noise, the cracking whips and the wind drove me back to the boating we watched from a distance.

I am always the weather router and planner on board, so when I saw a particularly good weather window approaching for a sail to St. Martin, we decided to pass on visiting Antigua and to go straight to the half French, half Dutch island. After an easy overnight sail and a night spent anchored in Simpson Bay, we lined up for the 9:30 opening of the drawbridge to enter the lagoon.

There are far larger boats than ours that go through this bridge, but it doesn’t make you feel any better when you are approaching that narrow gap.

The lagoon at St. Martin is a fabulous swell-free anchorage and has for decades attracted boats of all shapes and sizes.

On this chart you can see the large enclosed lagoon on the west (left) end of the island. There is one bridge on the south (Dutch) side and another on the north (French) side. We entered south and exited north.

As a result, the marine industry has grown there too. Add to that the fact that it is a duty-free port, and you will understand why it attracts so many boats.

One of the many dinghy docks around the island. For us cruising sailors, our dinghies or tenders are like our cars.

We took advantage of our time in St. Martin to reprovision at several of the many fabulous grocery stores, to rent a car and tour the island, and to order ourselves some new equipment.

Our cellular Internet was barely useable in Guadeloupe and St. Martin, so we took the plunge and went for satellite. It has worked amazingly well!

After more than two weeks, we once again saw a perfect powerboater’s dream weather window for an overnight passage to the Virgin Islands across the notorious Anegada Passage.

Looking aft at the moon rising over the island of St. Martin on the right and the lights of Anguilla island on the left.

That night the sea was so calm we never even considered using our paravanes. We had an absolutely perfect passage and arrived at dawn off the island of St. John in the US Virgin Islands. For the first time, after sailing Möbius all the way from Turkey, we had brought our new boat to the shores of the USA.

Fair winds!

Christine

Möbius crosses the Atlantic!

Christine Kling — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 19:27:05 GMT

Okay, I am getting a little ahead of myself. Yes, I am writing this aboard Möbius and we are anchored in a little bay called Bouillant off the western side of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. But when I last wrote you all, we were still in Tangier, Morocco, so let me back up to there and tell you how we got to the Caribbean.

In the end, we spent three full weeks at the Tanja Marina Bay waiting for good weather to make the 675 mile passage down to Las Palmas on Gran Canaria island. You can see in the sunset shot below how we were the boat closest to the walkway on the left and there were several restaurants on the upper floor of buildings there.

In the evenings, the people of Tangier loved to stroll along that walkway and they often took selfies with our boat in the background. One evening as I was cooking dinner, several men on the dock started shouting and whistling and pointing at the water. I went out and looked and there was our dog Ruby swimming frantically. Ruby is able to climb the companionway stairs and go out on deck on her own. I will never figure out how she fell overboard for the first time in her 15 years of sailing, but I was so thankful those guys saved her. She is deaf, but she saw me, and when I ran aft to the swim step, she followed, and I was able to haul her back aboard and hand her to Wayne who hurried her inside to a hot, fresh water shower. That was probably the most heart-thumping moment of our stay in Morocco.

But the city of Tangier was certainly great for photos. On my bike, I visited so many cool sites like the Railroad station below where they have a Starbucks (my guilty pleasure).

And below is the 90+ year old Gran Cafe de Paris, once a hang-out for beat generation artists and writers like Tennessee Williams and William Burroughs, and known to the current generation for a mad motorcycle chase scene through Tangier from the 2007 Bourne Ultimatum movie starring Matt Damon.

But the most scenic place of all is the Medina. I loved to walk through the narrow streets and explore it from the heights down to the sea. Here is a gallery of photos from the Medina, the city streets, and down to the camels on the beach.

Friends asked us if we had been enjoying the great Moroccan food, and the fact was we were having trouble finding it. We tried several restaurants, and the food Tangene and Couscous was not that good. Perhaps it was because it was the city and too touristy. In the end, our last night there, we ended up in one of the marina restaurants and while it wasn’t Moroccan food, Wayne certainly enjoyed it.

Finally, the morning of Dec. 20th, we motored over to the Customs dock and officially cleared out of Morocco to head for Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. For the most part, it was an easy powerboater’s passage with light winds and little swell. We felt sorry for the sailboats that left at the same time. We passed one boat en route and he was trying to tack in the light air, meaning he was headed west. That’s one good thing about motoring, you get to go in a straight line.

We arrived in Las Palmas on Christmas Eve, and we thought that we might have to go to the anchorage next to marina because it is such a busy time of year for boats crossing the Atlantic.

However, they gave us a great slip that was a side tie on the long dock that was part of the fuel dock. In that marina full of sailboats, we attracted many stares.

The night of the 26th a big storm rolled through with winds that we were later told the Search and Rescue boat clocked at 44 knots. Many of the boats out in the anchorage dragged or their crews decided to come inside the marina to get out of the huge wind waves, and they began rafting up ahead of us at the fuel dock. By morning it looked like this out our front windows. Five boats ahead of us, two on the other side of our dock and one even ended up side tied to us. Any port in a storm!

With the winds being too spicy for our taste, we were in no hurry to leave, so we relaxed and enjoyed the Canary Islands which are part of Spain. That meant there were some great food shopping opportunities to provision for the passage.

And beaches to explore.

Finally, we saw a weather window opening up and our last night in Las Palmas was New Year’s Eve. We stayed up to watch the fireworks.

And the following morning, we were off on the Atlantic crossing.

Most bluewater motor yachts prevent extreme rolling by something called active stabilizers. These are fins that protrude out from each side of the hull and they move to counteract the rolling motion. On Möbius, we decided to go the old school way that is used by most fishing boats, and so we have paravanes. These are triangular-shaped (think like a B2 Stealth Bomber) so-called “fish” that we suspend in the water on either side of the boat from our paravane poles. You can see those poles deployed in the first photo of this post. And here is a pic of the “fish” in the water.

We were very thankful to have those paravanes to soften the roll, because roll we did! For the next two weeks, we saw from 18-25 knot trade winds as we motored our way towards Martinique.

We have a tracking page that we share with friends and family, and I posted updates from the passage most days. Here are a few samples:

Jan. 7th: “Last night on my watch, we had one of the plexiglass windows in the flybridge opened up by about a foot-wide gap and a flying fish smacked into the edge of the glass and landed right next to me. I think it is about 12 to 15 feet off the water! I chased the slimey flapping guy around and finally tossed him back into the sea. We found lots of his brothers dead on deck this morning, but that high flyer deserved to live another day.”

Jan. 10th: “We were extremely happy with the paravanes until we arrived in Sargasso waters. This yellow seaweed grows in clusters on the sea surface, especially in calm areas. Last month, the calms had been prevalent in this area and there is tons of this seaweed in the water. Our paravanes have lines that snag the sargassum create drag. Yesterday we had slowed a couple of times to clear weed, but last night a weed ball actually broke the shackle at the end of the boom while clearing it. I was on the helm and trying to slow us enough for Wayne to work, but not so much that we would turn sideways to the seas. I didn’t realize we had 11 meters of floating rope in the water. We were very fortunate we did not foul the prop.

We ran the rest of the night with only one paravane in the water, but this morning Wayne had a plan (of course) that involved him climbing up the arch and looping the line over the top of the paravanes boom. While I was at the engine control watching him prepare on deck, I looked aft and I saw a whale body surfing in a wave off our the starboard quarter. In the next few minutes we saw several whales swimming around us, but not surfacing to breathe. They were only about 35-40 feet long, and they were very curious about Wayne. As he climbed the arch, one swam alongside and rolled onto his side, showing his white belly, and watching the crazy human trying to put a loop of rope over the top of the pole with a 12- ft boat hook.

The plan worked and we once again have two working paravanes.The forecast continues to tease us with suggestions of lighter winds, but such remain elusive.

Time to feed the puppies and to start dinner. Tuscan chicken pasta is on the menu.”

Jan. 12th: “At our 7:00 am shift change this morning, we discussed the possibility of trying to run without the paravanes and decided to give it a try. We were super disappointed to find we were still going 2 knots less than we usually do. I went down to try to grab a couple more hours sleep, and Wayne sat at the helm contemplating the issue. When I came back up to the skybridge around 9:30, Wayne announced he had a plan. Sound familiar? He said the only logical thing could be that we had a whopping amount of weed or some fishing line or net that causing drag. First we would slow and then go in reverse to try to jettison it. We prepped the boat for extreme rolling in the 2 meter seas and gave it a try. There was a small improvement. Not enough, said Wayne. Second half of the plan? I need to dive on it. Oh boy, more prep. This time we would completely disengage the clutch because a CPP continues to turn even when in “neutral.” Then stern of the boat lifts and slams as this 78-foot beast goes up and over these waves, and watching Wayne trying to get down the swim ladder and in the water to see, was scary. Finally, he crawled back up the ladder and told me to get it back underway. Back at the helm, I engaged the CPP clutch and revved the engine and set the pitch. Soon we were doing the speed Mobius is capable of. When Wayne came up, I said, “I don’t know what you did, but it worked.” I’m sure he will explain it in a future blog, but I’m going with “that old Wayne magic.””

Finally during the early morning hours of January 15th, we sighted the lights of Martinique. I was on the dog watch and I decided to let Wayne sleep as I rounded the light on the Ilet Cabarets off the southern end of the island. As light started to creep into the sky, I woke Wayne up and we slowly motored into the anchorage at St. Anne.

The silence sounded odd when we finally turned off the Gardner engine, AKA Mr. Gee. We’d just crossed the Atlantic on a single engine powerboat with passive paravane stabilizers. Damn!

On the run

Christine Kling — Sun, 18 Dec 2022 15:16:05 GMT

Wayne and I have been living “across the pond” somewhere in Europe for over 5 years now. We spent about 5 months living in Portugal before driving across Europe and settling in Turkey for the boat build. Yes, we were able to fly back to visit friends and family at least once a year, but it is difficult watching your grandchildren grow up from afar. So, when we left Kalymnos, we had decided that we really wanted to cross the Atlantic back to the other side. And after building our “high latitudes” expedition boat, we found that so many European winters had made us long for the tropics. The islands of the Caribbean had become our goal.

When crossing the Atlantic Ocean from east to west one has take the hurricane season and the North Atlantic winter gales into account, therefore most boats don’t cross until November and then the season is considered best through the end of January. First, they ease their way down south along the African coast to the Canary Islands and sometimes on down to the Cabo Verde Islands. By leaving Kalymnos at the end of October, we were already way behind in that schedule. We had nearly 2,000 miles of Mediterranean to cross before we could even reach the Atlantic, much less cross it.

The day we left Kalymnos, we were delayed as we had to get permission to leave the port. We had declared our boat essentially “out of commission” to the Greek Coast Guard both to avoid paying a cruising tax and to try to stay longer in the country, and then we had to get it declared back in commission by a demonstration to a surveyor that our new engine was working fine. We were finally able to get underway around 1:00 pm on October 30. We traveled about 70 miles and crept in to anchor that night at an anchorage at Ios island around midnight to catch some sleep before continuing across the Aegean.

It’s always a surprise to see what a place looks like when you pulled in the night before in the pitch darkness.

We put another hundred miles under our keel and anchored in the dark again in a cove off the south end of the Peloponnese peninsula. We were trying to break the engine in slowly, but by the third day we ran for 36 hours straight across the Ionian Sea and morning saw our arrival off Sicily.

At dawn, Mount Etna was visible in the distance with smoke pouring out the top of the volcano.

We arrived at Marina de Ragusa after doing over 600 miles in 4 days, including two brief sleep stops. We were very pleased, and we had arrived on the day that technically was our last day allowed in the Schengen region. Thankfully, no one asked to see our passports. We had only intended to stay a day or so to buy some Italian groceries and visit with our friends on S/V Speed of Life, but a weather front came through bringing rain and wind, so we waited.

Our friends’ boat is the Amel with the tallest mast that touches the rainbow.

As Ragusa was not a port of entry, we could not clear out of the EU there, so we left when the weather cleared and motored the boat to Licata Marina. There they allowed us to tie to the dock briefly while we took a taxi to Immigration. By this time we had overstayed our permitted time in the EU by five days, so we were thrilled when the gentleman at Immigration returned our stamped passports with no mention of our having over-stayed. Whew! Fines avoided!

Next stop Tunisia! Most folks would think that going from Italy to North Africa would mean going south, but actually, it was about 200 miles almost due west to get to Bizerte, Tunisia. We got away from Licata by 3:00 in the afternoon and almost exactly 24 hours later, we tied to the dock at the Bizerte Marina.

I would have liked to have stayed longer and seen more of Tunisia. Wayne has traveled more than I have, but for me it was a very exciting first - a new continent I had never visited. The people were friendly and helpful, I got to practice my rusty French, and the marina was modern and pleasant (and inexpensive). The country has so much to offer but we were on the run.

We went out to dinner one night in the old part of town on the Vieux Port. They had this big old Phoenician-style ship made into a restaurant. Usually those sorts of places are better to look at than eat at, so we chose a little dockside cafe and had a fantastic fish dinner with frites - which was also the only thing on the menu.

The town was a photographer’s dream, but I must admit even I was taken aback when I looked up one day while doing the dishes on the boat and saw camels walking along the raised outer breakwater. That was when I really knew we were in North Africa.

Since I am the official weather router on board Möbius, I spend a lot of time with online weather service we use called PredictWind. Our boat is super strong and can take most any weather, but we - and our two elderly dogs - choose not to. We do this to have fun, not to beat ourselves up on purpose.

Our next trip was going to be our longest passage yet because we had decided not to try the rigorous process of getting a visa to visit Algeria. They ask that people apply at an Algerian Embassy in their home country, and it can take several months. So, we would not be allowed to stop. We would have to run the whole coast of Algeria in one passage. Did you know Algeria is the largest country in Africa? I didn’t either, but I do now. With a passage ahead of us of roughly 620 miles, I would need a 4-day weather window. As most of you certainly know, the weather forecast gets less accurate the farther out they go. But when it looked good, we had to go.

It’s difficult to get good photos of what it’s like to be on night watch on Möbius, but this is the best I could do. Wayne and I split the night with 6 hours on and 6 hours off. I was surprised at how populated the coast of Algeria was. We stayed about 8-15 miles offshore, and each time we passed a major port, the Algerian Coast Guard contacted us on the radio (they could see us through the AIS a system that broadcasts our position to other ships) and asked for our info - boat name, flag, destination - in perfect English.

We saw many gorgeous sunrises and sunsets.

Our last day we angled south along the coast headed for the first port inside Morocco, Saidia. The marina was nice and quite large, but no more than half full of boats. Perhaps it would have looked better in August during tourist season, but when we were there, it felt almost deserted. It looked as though someone had built this really nice place in the hopes that people would come, but not many did. And no maintenance had been done in the meantime.

Most of the shops and restaurants in a big shopping center next to the marina were closed.

Only 36 miles further down the coast was the intriguing city of Melilla. It is actually part of Spain, but a little piece of land on the North African coast surrounded by Morocco. We’d read that they didn’t care about EU visas and Schengen, so we decided to give it a try.

We had a fabulous time in Melilla. True to the reputation, they did not care about passports, and the marina was really reasonably priced. The city was beautiful and fascinating with the cultural mix of Spanish Christians, Sephardic Jews and Moroccans. The buildings were architecturally more like Barcelona with awesome murals and parks, and there were several enormous real European-style grocery stores!

On our second night there, our Yorkie Barney kept me up half the night retuning over and over to his on-deck pee-pee pad, but only producing a few drops. I sat up with him, trying to calm him, but clearly he was in pain. Using Google Maps, I located a veterinarian about 3 kilometers inland (which means uphill), and with Wayne’s help, I turned by e-bike into the Barney mobile.

With his diagnosis of a urinary infection, the vet gave him two shots and told me to bring him back the next two days for two shots a day. He was great in his basket with his ears flying in the wind, but I kept humming that bad witch tune from the Wizard of Oz knowing that I was taking him to be poked again.

The real stunning parts of Melilla are to be found in the fort and the old town.

The day we left Melilla, we were amazed that we had managed to stay for 6 days at the Spanish enclave and our passports held no evidence of our having entered Spain.

The passage from Melilla to Gibraltar was a mere 135 miles, but we had to cross the famous Straits of Gibraltar with all the shipping traffic and the notorious currents. The weather was supposed to be calm for the trip, but we had some odd local winds that kicked up off and on. I went down to sleep around 11:00 that night and got up at 5:00 so as to be awake when we crossed the straits. Our chart plotter screen was covered with all the little triangles that represented giant ships traveling at twice our speed, and I have to admit, I was really nervous about trying to get across that busy strait. In the end though, it turned out to be easier than it looked, and before we knew it, as dawn was breaking, there was the Rock.

Not long after I took this photo, we hit the strongest currents and tide rips and for a while there the boat was headed at what looked like about 50 degrees off course in order to crab our way into the port.

You can see Möbius just to the left of the blue-hulled sailboat. This was the first marina where we felt like one of the smaller boats.

November 25th, less than a month after leaving Kalymnos, we were tied up at the Queens Way Quay Marina in Gibraltar. It was one of the more expensive marinas we had stayed in, so we were determined to get our sight-seeing and shopping done and head across to Tangier in Morocco to wait for a weather window for the passage to the Canary Islands.

Of course we had to take the cable car to the top of the Rock, to see the fortifications, the Nature Reserve, the monkeys,

St. Michael’s cave

the view

The orange arrow is pointing at Möbius.

and to have lunch while the monkeys strolled past our table just outside the window.

Down in the town, we walked the streets, had Eggs Benedict for breakfast, and I enjoyed shopping at the huge Morrisons grocery store. My bike’s saddle bags were so full and heavy, I was afraid to try to go down the ramp to the boat at low tide. I had to call Wayne to come help me.

On November 30, we crossed back over the straits and pulled in to Tanja Marina Bay in Tangier, and three weeks later we are still here. All the pilot charts indicate that “normally” at this time of year, December would see a majority of winds from the north, but it has been blowing gale force from the south instead. Apparently, the jet stream moved way down south, so the high pressure that usually sits over the Azores, was hanging out down in the trade wind belt and the weather has gone a bit haywire. It doesn’t matter to us, as Tangier has turned out to be a fabulous place to rest after our sprint across the Med and we have been able to take part in the joyful celebrations as Morocco made it to the semi-finals in the Men’s Soccer World Cup. I have so many fabulous photos of this city, I will have to save them for a post of their own.

It looks like we might be able to leave on Wednesday, so we might be arriving for Christmas Eve in the Canary Islands. To all of my readers, friends, and family wherever you are, here’s wishing you all joyful holidays filled with family and love.

Fair winds!

Christine

Moving on

Christine Kling — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 17:13:54 GMT

My last newsletter told the story of our getting kicked out of Greece and sent back to Turkey - without our boat. Thankfully, our exile from the EU ended on October 18 when the Greeks allowed us back into their country. Yippee! After packing our bags and loading the pups into the doggie travel bags, we were able to hop a couple of ferries to get from Bodrum to Kos and then on to island of Kalymnos. We’d like to think Möbius missed us.

We were only allowed back because our new engine had arrived from Gardner Marine Diesel in England, and Wayne had to get it installed, tested and ready to go by November 2nd, the last day we would be allowed in the EU. There wasn’t much I could do to help him, so I continued my work on our navigation, weather routing, and provisioning for our upcoming sprint towards Gibraltar. In addition, I enjoyed getting my steps in and going on bike rides around Kalymnos.

One place I had really been wanting to visit was the island of Telendos which you can see on the left side of Kalymnos on the map above. I left Pothia on my e-bike up and rode up over the hills and down the switchbacks to the village of Myrties. From there, a tiny little ferry crosses over to Telendos every 30 minutes

The view above is on Telendos looking back at Kalymnos. You can see how quick the ferry ride is - the distance is swimmable. There were a few restaurants and a couple of tiny hotels on the island.

Some of the homes were so cute, they looked like they might be Airbnb places. It was already late in the season, so there weren’t many people on the island, but the water certainly was inviting. And there were many interesting benches that I needed to try out.

Every day when I returned from my walks, I could tell that Wayne was making very fast progress with the new engine. I may not be much of a mechanic, but I can recognize a pretty engine.

During the four months Möbius had been docked on that commercial wharf in Kalymnos, we had had several visitors on the boat. Due to the heat of summer, we usually left the door open at night. I began noticing dusty little footprints on the wood tops of the galley cupboards. Then one evening I caught a rather bold visitor who was ready to come in before we had even finished dinner.

Of course our “guard dogs” were totally useless, and our feline guests did nothing to stop us from getting a brief visit from mice. Fortunately, the mice were not the brightest, and three nights of peanut butter in traps took care of that problem.

As our departure date neared, I discovered that Friday, October 28 was going to be a big holiday, and we hoped to leave on Saturday or Sunday, so we would have to plan the final fruit and veg shopping and clearance out accordingly. I didn’t realize what a big deal Ohi Day is in Greece, but I was soon to learn. I suppose you could say it’s like their Fourth of July.

The holiday commemorates the day in 1940 when Mussolini’s representative brought an ultimatum to the Greek Prime Minister demanding Greece allow Axis forces to enter Greek territory and occupy certain unspecified "strategic locations." The Prime Misiter allegedly answered with one word- όχι - which is Greek for NO! Thus began Greek’s participation in World War II, and though many parts of Greece, like Kalymnos were eventually under Italian occupation, the spirit of the Resistance remained strong. Ohi Day is a holiday with military parades, children in costumes, and a celebration of the culture that refused to bend under the force of the Italians.

Of course, I had to go to town to check out the crowds and the parade. For a small island with a total population of about 30,000 people, it seemed like the whole island was in the main town of Pothia, and at least half of them were in the parade.

The parade went on for hours, starting with little kids, then teens, then adults in local costumes, then fishermen, then various branches of the military. A local marching band played (with players aged 6 to 60), and while they may not always have been in tune, it was all so delightful and authentic. I’ve put together a couple of minutes of video to give you a feel for it. Enjoy!

On my bike ride back to the boat, I threaded my way through the crowds most of whom were carrying Greek flags. In the harbor, every boat was flying the flag. One fisherman was even getting his flag up on his covered boat.

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What a way it was to spend one of our last days on the island, but there we were wanting to leave, and the entire place shut down for the holiday weekend. Finally, on Monday, Halloween, we were able to fire up the new engine and start our journey west across the Mediterranean. More on that to come.

Fair winds!

Christine

Life in Exile

Christine Kling — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 08:03:44 GMT

My first view of Kalymnos on my return from Florida.

In September, I returned to Greece after a quick two-week trip back to Florida to visit family and friends. The trip there and back was not quick and required 2-days worth of travel each way. The closest large airport to our boat is on the neighboring island of Kos, and it was already dark as I waited for the last ferry to take me back home to MÖBIUS, still tied to the pier in Kalymnos.

I was so happy to be back home on the boat with Wayne and our (geriatric) puppy dogs both of whom would be celebrating October birthdays soon. The little guy would be turning 11 while Ruby was about to be 15 years old.

Ruby, the Wonder Dog and Barney, the Yorkshire Terror.

The weather had cooled, but it still felt great to be back on my e-bike on my favorite Greek island. The reason that we were still there is that it turned out that we had to have a complete factory rebuild of our engine and had shipped the whole thing off to the Gardner Marine Engine works in Canterbury, UK. You can’t exactly move a powerboat without an engine, so, oh poor us, we’d been “stuck” on a Greek island for almost three months.

The hole where our engine used to be

However, that can be a problem as we were nearing the end of our 90-days that we were allotted under the European Union’s Schengen visa regulations. These regulations can be confusing because not all EU countries are part of the Schengen region, and not all Schengen countries are part of the EU.

And what the heck is Schengen anyway? It’s simply the name of the city in Luxembourg where the original treaty was signed. These countries have agreed to abolish the national borders among themselves, so that now when you travel from say Germany into France, you no longer have to go through customs and immigration. As you can imagine, this has really made trade easier among these countries, and anyone who is a citizen of a Schengen country can go work in another Schengen country without any visa or green card.

What this means, for non-Schengen citizens (like us) is that we are granted a visa good for 90 days when we enter one of the member countries, and when those days are up, we are supposed to leave. If we had exited the region during our 90 days, those days spent outside the region don’t count. So, as they say, we are allowed a rolling 90 days out of 180, or for every 90 days in - you have to spend 90 days out. As a result, my time out on my Florida trip had granted me about 17 extra days, but Wayne was quickly running out of time. But hey, we’d been through this before, and we applied for visa extensions in Portugal, and we were granted them with no problems. So, I gathered all our documents and a few days later, we were off to the island of Kos (the administrative center) to apply for our visa extensions. We applied for 90 day extensions, and since Wayne’s was expiring sooner, they processed his application first.

Wayne had taken the ferry to Kos a second time, presumably to get his visa approval on Friday, September 30. I was standing in line at the Cosmo cell phone store trying to top up the boat’s cellular Internet service when my phone rang. It was Wayne.

“Hi. What’s up?” I said.

“We’re f#@*ed!”

“What?” My Canadian rarely uses language like that unless he’s in the engine room.

“They denied my visa extension and told me I have to leave the country now. Like today! I’m supposed to go straight to the dock and get on the ferry to Turkey.”

We hadn’t really even given much consideration to the possibility that they would refuse our applications for extensions. Clearly, the boat cannot be moved, and it is our only home. We had demonstrated that we more than met the financial requirements for an extension, we had bought extra medical insurance, and we had a place to stay - our home.

Just two years ago, Greece was suffering from the lack of tourism during the height of the pandemic. They were desperate to revive tourism, and even today, their economy is still reeling. We were asking nothing more than to stay in their country and inject our American dollars into their economy. But, if there is one thing I have learned in my travels, it is that when it comes to bureaucrats, looking for logic is hopeless.

“Listen,” Wayne said. “They aren’t joking. They said if I stay, I could be subject to fines or even jail. I’m going to try to get them to agree to let me to stay for 24 hours more, though, so I can at least go back to the boat and pack a bag.”

And that’s how fast things can change when you live this Nomad Life that we live.

I peddled my way back to the boat, and Wayne came across on the ferry from Kos. I hugged him extra long when I saw him, then we looked at each other and exchanged wry smiles. In this life, we learn to switch gears fast.

“Ready?”

“What other choice do we have?”

We started shutting things down on the boat that would not be necessary in our absence. I defrosted one of the fridges and threw away stuff that would go bad. I got on the computer and started looking for an Airbnb in Bodrum, Turkey, then I packed my bags. We pulled out the dogs’ airline bags and packed the canine supplies - for how long? We didn’t have a clue, but since I still had more Schengen days available, I would be able to enter back into Turkey in the next week or two if we needed something more from the boat.

The Kalymnos mermaid waves good-bye to us.

And so it was that early the next morning, we were on the ferry to Kos and catching one last glimpse of our home squeezed between a tugboat and a tanker on the inside of the breakwater on Kalymnos.

If you look closely you can see Barney’s little face looking out the end of the bag second from right.

We transited Greek immigration at the docks and got stamped out of the EU, then we boarded the high-speed ferry with suitcases, backpacks, and dogs. In less than an hour (at 26 knots), we were back in Turkey in the city of Bodrum.

We landed with all our bags back in the country that we had called home for the past 4+ years, also the country where we have long-term visas until December 2023.

Bodrum castle in the middle of the harbor.

And just like that, we had once again traded church bells for the call to prayer.

The first Airbnb we tried was in the touristy part of the Bodrum old town, and while it was close to the ferry dock, it was too small and the environs too crowded. I got back online, and we moved to the smaller seaside town of Bitez, just a couple of bays to the east of the main town. Here we have a real kitchen, so we aren’t always dependent on restaurants even though there is a lovely waterfront filled with cafes as well as a small marina. And we have high speed Internet for work and entertainment.

I’ve been researching digital nomad visas for the EU, and I even wrote to the US Embassy in Athens from whom I got this reply:

“Thank you for your email. We empathize with your situation, however, we cannot intervene in matters of local law nor can we influence the local authorities with regard to their decision making. We would encourage you to continue to work with the local authorities on Kos as they have sole jurisdiction in this matter.”

Gee, thanks.

Whenever we find ourselves in some new place for some time, I really enjoy exploring the new spot. Since I no longer have my e-bike, and frankly, my meniscus-tear knee surgery is so well healed I really don’t need it, I am enjoying long walks exploring our area.

This photo was taken from the far side of the bay. Our little apartment is a couple of streets off the water about one third in from the left.

We can actually see the Greek island of Kos from the beach that is closest to our place. This is the view from the hill behind the village, looking out to sea.

The light blue island seen on the left side of the horizon is Kos in Greece, about 25 nautical miles away. Kalymnos is behind the Bodrum Peninsula on the left.

Shortly after our arrival here, we got word that our engine had shipped and departed the UK on a truck on a ferry across to Calais. Now, two weeks later, we are awaiting confirmation that it supposedly arrived on a different truck on a different ferry from Athens to Kalymnos - last night, which of course means it has to clear customs today, a Friday.

The way we left things with the immigration agents in Kos was this: they said once the engine has arrived at the boat, we are to reapply and request two weeks to return to Kalymnos, install the engine, and then leave. They were adamant that there was no guarantee that their boss would approve this, but it was worth a try. So, hopefully, Monday, we will get confirmation of the engine’s arrival and we will make that try. Fingers crossed that the crew of MÖBIUS will be allowed out of our current state of exile.

If Wayne is not allowed back into the EU until 90 days have passed, that will mean the end of December, and we will be homeless until then. Our plan has been to cross the Atlantic this winter, and it will be much more difficult (though not impossible) to pull that off by starting out from Greece in January.

We have been having fun floating all sorts of versions of Plan B:

I will go back on a very calm day, launch the tender with its 110 HP Diesel engine and jet drive, and tow the big 78-foot MÖBIUS (with the new engine on deck) the 24 miles from Kalymnos across to Bodrum Marina in Turkey.
Wayne will swim out several miles from Turkey, and I will pick him up in the tender and smuggle him in to Greece.
I will go back for my extra 17 days and Wayne will instruct me via phone video how to install the Gardner Diesel engine. Who? ⊙▽⊙
Wayne will go to the Canadian Embassy in Istanbul and say he lost his passport and get issued a new one. They literally do this visa thing by counting the stamps in your passport.

If you have another wacky idea for how we can get out of our EU-imposed exile, please share it by clicking on the comment link below!

Fair winds!

Christine

Kalymnos, Greece is Dy-no-mite!

Christine Kling — Sun, 28 Aug 2022 12:23:37 GMT

Wayne, the pups and I are almost starting to feel like locals here on the Greek island, Kalymnos - it’s a curiously fascinating place. Most people when they think of Greek islands might be able to list Mykonos or Santorini, or the bigger islands like Crete or Rhodes or Corfu. I’d never heard of Kalymnos before last month, but we have come to call this place home for a while.

This is our sunset view looking across the harbor to the main town of Pothia from our vantage point aboard MÖBIUS tied along the outside breakwater. Or our night view below- notice the little church on top of the mountain. More on that later.

Kalymnos is one of the Dodecanese Islands, on the far eastern side of the Aegean, and quite close to Turkey, though farther north of our old home base there, Antalya. You’ll find the island of Kalymnos on the upper left sector of the map below.

Every morning, the Pirate-themed day-tripper boats arrive from the bigger adjacent island of Kos and disgorge hundreds of tourists into the little town. The waterfront is mostly restaurants and tavernas, and they fill up with the pinkish tourists already sporting the jaunty hats they bought on Kos, and ready for their Greek lunch on the waterfront.

It would be easy to dismiss Kalymnos as a cheesy tourist spot if that was the way one arrived and all one saw of this place....

I’ve been wandering the streets of this island for weeks now, mostly on my trusty e-bike, and there are so many amazing little quirky sights. The town, like many Greek towns, is built on the island’s steep hillsides, so in addition to having to build stairs everywhere, they have some pretty serious gutters for allowing the rain to flow downhill.

And the churches! Tiny or big, they are everywhere.

The island was once the center of the sponge diving in Greece, an industry that dates back to Ancient Greece, as sponges were mentioned in the writings of Homer and Aristotle. Early divers tied themselves to stones and walked the ocean bottom collecting the sponges into baskets.

At one time there were reports of over 300 sailing ships in the Kalymnos sponging fleet. In 1865, they started using the hard hat diving suits, which sadly caused the deaths of hundreds of sponge divers throughout the next hundred years.

The two world wars stopped the sponge trade in the Med, and it never really came back due to pollution that has nearly destroyed the sponges. Sadly, the sponges they sell on the island today in shops like the one above are mostly imported from Asia.

This monument was built on the waterfront in 2019 to honor “the anonymous Kalymnos sponge diver who struggled in the depths and the waves of the seas, against incredible difficulties and dangers. He has forged and supported for many decades, life on our island.”

But this isn’t the only bronze sculpture I’ve seen here in Pothios.

The two little blond mermaids are our granddaughters who visited us here in July.

The sculptor who created these works was born on Kalymnos, Sakellarios Koutouzis. His works are in galleries all over the world, but today he resides back on the island and has his studio here. Bet they don’t tell ‘em that on the pirate ship!

I got to know the town pretty well, so I decided to ride my e-bike farther afield. I bought this Alba e-bike in Turkey, and it has 8 speeds and 5 levels of pedal assist. It’s awesome and I call it my freedom machine. Even recovering from my meniscus tear knee surgery, I can go up hills like you wouldn’t believe. I visited the Archeological Museum of Kalymnos and then ventured halfway across the island to the ruins of the Basilica of Christ of Jerusalem.

Just like we used to find all over Turkey, ruins in this part of the world are always layered. This church was built in the 5th century using many of the stones and inscribed marble that came from the original temple of the Delian Apollo, the patron olympic god and protector of Kalymnos which had been built more than a thousand years earlier.

However, when I decided to ride up to see this castle built by the Knights of St. John, I had the bike on the lowest gear and highest level of pedal assist, but the super steep gravel road slowed me down slower and slower until I just toppled over like that guy on Laugh-In (if you don’t get that reference, you are too young, which is a good thing). I fell into a small ditch on the side of the road and cracked my head on some 2,000 year old rocks. But not to let that darn hill beat me, I brushed myself off and limped my way up those stairs to the gate.

The view at the top was worth it. If you follow the yellow grass down, you can make out two towers which are actually the bases of old windmills.

By now you may be wondering what the story is with the title to this post - Kalymnos, Greece is Dy-no-mite!

One of the most intriguing events on this island is these occasional explosions from dynamite. You know immediately that this is not just some M-80 firecrackers. The first time we heard it, even across the harbor on the seawall, I thought it sounded like bombs or missiles from war. Your body feels the impact, and even the boat would shudder in the water.

What the heck is going on? we wondered. I’m not sure we’ll ever understand the complete story, but this is what I have learned. There are men on Kalymnos who just live for the thrill of lighting and throwing dynamite off the top of a rocky mountain.

Here’s how it started. Before the First World War, Kalymnos was part of the Ottoman Empire. After that war, they were under Italian occupation from 1914 until 1948 when they became part of Greece. The men on the island, most of whom are fishermen, are fiercely independent, and they began to harvest the dynamite from the mines and torpedoes they found on the sea floor. The explosives were used to fish for years before that was outlawed, but they also used them to set off explosions from the two mountains on either side of Pothia.

These are the two mountains on either side of the town and the one on the Left has a monastery near the top while the one on the right has a small church.

Initially it was to demonstrate their resistant to the occupiers, but today it is part celebratory ( they do it mostly at Easter, but also for weddings, engagements, funerals, holidays, and greetings for visiting dignitaries), part to demonstrate their unique individualism, part competition, and part thrill. Apparently, there are two secret groups on the island, and they are mostly made up of fishermen and construction guys, but there are all ages and occupations involved. Each of the groups “owns” one of the two mountains as their dynamite throwing spot. Kalymnos is the only Greek island that does this, and even here, the island is evenly divided between those who hate it and those who do it. The haters want the island to develop more and attract more tourists. The dynamite throwers are very proud here that this island has not totally succumbed to tourism as their way of life, and they will continue to resist and follow their fishing heritage. Judging from the number of boats in the many harbors around the island, I’d say every Kalymnian family owns a fishing boat.

On the writing front

Lest you think I spend all day every day out exploring the island, I am working on a new book. At last. Between not wanting to have to write about the Pandemic and being surrounded by so much history, I have decided to write a historical novel. My Shipwreck Series books were semi-historical, but this one is totally set in Florida in 1941-42, and it concerns the civilians who ventured out aboard their own power and sailboats to patrol the waters of the Florida Straits searching for U-boats. Many Americans don’t know it, but German submarines were blowing up ships within sight of the Florida coast for months, and the mangled bodies were washing up on those white sand beaches.

I’ve been having so much fun doing the research and inventing the characters. I think it is my most favorite part of writing fiction. If any of you have any stories from friends and family related to this period, I would love to hear from you! Please share them in the comments.

Stay safe and healthy everybody.

Fair winds!

Christine