Epic Journey, Cats, and Dog

It was now September 11, 2013, and Rick and I had arrived at my sister’s home in the Tampa area after a hectic three and a half months of prepping and selling our home in Seattle, followed by a  two week, 3212 mile journey kitty corner across country driving both of our cars, with our 11 ½ old Golden Retriever, Apollo, tolerantly abiding hours on end curled up in the back of one of our cars.

Here is some of what I learned during our cross country drive:

I actually CAN manage interstate freeways and highways at 85 mph plus on my own. I was usually following Rick who is a more aggressive driver than I. But, except for a few harrowing times when he pulled out to pass another car or truck and I was cut off by an even faster car coming up from behind, I kept up. A great feeling of accomplishment!

Dog the Bounty Hunter travels in a luxurious location van and can be found at rest stops near Missoula, MT. 

I must never, ever again carry my keys in a pocket or in my hand to be put down and forgotten, not ever again. It may look dorky, but ever since losing all of my keys (Toyota, storage unit, car top carrier, and mailbox key) in Virginia City, MT, I carry my keys on a bracelet around my wrist ~ this is helpful especially since I live around water since the only way to lose my keys is to lose me, as well, falling into the water! 

In my humble opinion, “Big Sky” Montana has less “Big Sky” but more silver and abandoned mines than the “Silver State”, Nevada.

Yellowstone Park and all of its surreal, spectacular natural beauty is actually one gigantic cone of a very active volcano. Hmmm.. just why do we think it’s not only a  good idea but actually FUN to hang out at the top of a volcano? Because the breath-taking physical beauty is like nothing you will see anywhere else on earth and because the power of the forces at work on our great and wonderful Home Planet, Mother Earth, are nowhere more evident. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMowfwENZXA Me being chased by a geyser.

Old Faithful does not erupt with an explosive whoosh, as I had always imagined, but simply gurgles for a few minutes and then subsides. Old Faithful is far from one of the largest or most impressive geysers in Yellowstone, but it is, well, faithful ~ approximate time of each eruption is posted at the lodge ~ and, even more amazingly ~ the times are accurate!

In Yellowstone, bison always have right of way. These particular bison decided the road was a perfect place to relieve themselves.

Cody, WY is a delightful treasure of a western city, founded by Buffalo Bill Cody of the Wild West Show fame (early 20^th century) and home to Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a well-designed, fun and fascinating historical museum (renowned in the museum world as one of the best) and several cafes that serve delicious espresso drinks. According to quotes displayed in the museum, Buffalo Bill was an early advocate of equal pay for equal work for both women and people of color.

Wyoming and Nebraska have way too many biting black flies and other nasty little buzzing creatures.

I had forgotten how many more bugs the East Coast has than the West Coast until we stopped at a rest stop in Tennessee. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJzk3Ye-0GE The engine like hum is actually Tennessee summer evening bugs and cicadas.

Anyway, we made it to Tampa on September 11^th, exhilarated, exhausted and nervously anticipating the next steps in our great adventure.

Meanwhile, Sweetie, The Cat (aged 15), had been delivered to my sister, Linda’s home, in mid-August because we didn’t think any of us would survive a cross country trek with Sweetie in tow. My sister has a house full of cats and we figured she would be able to break Sweetie in easily.

Not exactly. From mid-August until we arrived in September, Queen Sweetie demanded ~ and received ~ her very own section of the house where she spent most of her day perched at the top of some mostly unused stairs, was fed separately and not really equally (Sweetie eats on demand and makes very unpleasant yowling sounds until her desires have been sated, whereas Linda’s cats are willing to accept one wet food meal in the morning and nibble on dry food the rest of the day), and even had her own litter box (occasionally hijacked by her nemesis, Jill.) On those rare occasions when she did interact with other cats, it was mostly hissing, spitting, biting, scratching and then muttering her way back to her perch.

When we arrived in mid-September, complete with large, noisy canine creature, Linda’s cats took one look, scattered and hid, while Sweetie arrogantly pranced up to her dog, nudged him and gleefully welcomed her people and her dog with great joy and a “so there” attitude. From that time until we finally left to live on the boat in mid-November, Sweetie lived mostly in our room, a room that Linda’s cats are always forbidden to enter, with tentative excursions out to eat, use the litter box, and hiss and mutter at the other cats.

Apollo spent his time on leash when he was inside the house, occasionally barking and lunging at any cat who decided to see what all the fuss was about. Over the course of two months, Linda’s cats, Apollo and Sweetie, did cautiously and slowly become accustomed to being around one another and an uneasy peace was established.  This is my sister’s cat, Jack on Apollo’s blanket.

Apollo came with us whenever we left Tampa to work on the boat, whereas Sweetie was left at Linda’s house to cope as she could. By the time Linda brought Sweetie to live with us on the boat at Thanksgiving, Sweetie was mixing fairly well with all the other cats, including Jill, eating next to them and sharing couch, bed and lap space. Linda assures me that, while Sweetie may have been the most crotchety cat she’s ever had, they all take time to adjust and always squabble off and on.

And so, six months after our “First Contact”, Rick, Apollo, Sweetie and I are reunited in our new home onboard Kalliope.  My greatest hope/fear had come true ~ the Kalliope was still available for purchase.

The days, weeks and months between our arrival in Florida on September 11^th and move to the boat on November 20^th … well, they have their own story…

First Contact, Continued ~ Engines, Twin Screws, and Imagining Oneself Actually Living Onboard

Here I am boarding our ship on November 12^th: This is after two months of constant practice and gaining more and more confidence. Believe me, I was not quite so nonchalant and relaxed the first time I boarded Kalliope. Once we get back to Fort Myers, the plan is to dock portside-to in order to be able to utilize what was meant to be the entry door into a small foyer:

It was May 2013 and southwest Florida’s steamy summer environment was already very much in evidence.  After driving close to three hours from my sister’s home in the Tampa Bay area and one hour from Fort Myers, we pulled up to view “the beast” up close and personal. We were greeted by an extremely affable, friendly, outgoing guy and his lady friend, a woman whom, it turned out, he had dated in high school over 40 years ago, but had lost track of through the years, marriage, and one daughter now in her early 20s. After a brief introduction and clambering over the gangplank to a rather unkempt stern deck area, he gleefully told us that as they were sipping coffee a few minutes prior, they were watching a couple of alligators hanging out in the river just off the port side. Later he demonstrated his talent for imitating the mating cry of a female alligator that stirred up a couple of six foot male alligators.

We were given a quick but thorough tour of the main living areas, three staterooms (king, queen and full), three heads, one galley and dining area, as well as climbing up a circular staircase to the pilot house. Rick was giddy with excitement at the prospect of owning a boat (at the time and, in fact, until quite recently, we still called it a boat, not a ship) that had a “twin screw” control (meaning two propellers) and no key ~ meaning the two Detroit “dripper” diesel engines need to be turned on in the engine room below decks. What, you may ask, is a “Detroit Dripper?” Well, it is a powerful industrial-strength engine that has a reputation for constantly dripping oil, which, I am told, is just fine and dandy and, perhaps, just as it is meant to be. It does require that we keep a large supply of oil absorbing cloth at all times to keep under and around any places in the engines that might be secreting oil 24/7. Who knew that oil absorbing cloth is a standard stock item in any marine supply store?!  I sure didn’t. To be naively honest, the first time I visited the engine room my reaction was that I wanted and needed to stop the drips and to scrub every inch of both the engines and the room itself until they sparkled. Ummm, not really.

While Rick and the “Captain” were exploring the regions of the ship’s underbelly (engine room, water room and rudder room), I was sipping a diet soda on the main deck with the lady friend and listening to the story of how she and the Captain reunited within the past year after his wife died. The lady friend had been doing an internet search for something entirely unrelated when she happened on an article about someone with her old high school boyfriend’s name who had bought a retired tugboat and was going to convert it into a B&B in Key West. She said that everyone in their high school class had completely lost track of the Captain and kind of assumed he was dead ~ he was always a fast living/on the edge guy with a “joie de vivre” and “devil may care” attitude that informed all of his life choices. A bit of inquiry revealed to her that, yes, this was, indeed, her old high school love and she sent him an email to which he replied almost immediately. One email led to another, then a tentative face-to-face meeting and the rest appears to be a “happily ever after” story. They are blissfully reunited.

As she and I chatted, I was eyeing the abundant and large pieces of furniture that dominated each room of the ship, as well as the 30 year old carpeting that covered the main and upper decks and wondering how I could possibly ever make Kalliope feel like a home. Of course, the dirty, diesel fume and cigarette smoke infused carpeting would have to go before I would even consider living there. The dated appliances would have to go, but perhaps later (turns out, no, now!) I assumed that all of the furniture would be removed by the Captain before turning the ship over so that we could bring in our own furniture. A reasonable, but not entirely accurate assumption, as it turned out.

The entire surface of the outside of the white with blue trim ship was gray with sticky soot, apparently due to the rampant burning of the sugar cane fields surrounding this area that happens throughout the summer months. From what I was told, this is a farming technique to keep the soil rich for new crops of sugar cane, a technique that I would have thought would long ago have been banned for air quality control, but I guess not. What was clear was that one more condition would have to be met before I would live on this boat ~ a thorough pressure washing of all three levels of the outside of the ship.

As we left, Rick was doing mental flips for joy and I was secretly hoping that the other people who were considering it would buy the ship before we did.

We headed home to Seattle to take the first steps to selling our house.

First Contact

The person from whom we purchased the ship is a retired Merchant Marine who has owned his own tugboat company and purchased Kalliope about three years ago with the intention of converting it into a B&B in Key West, FL. There was evidence that token renovation steps had been taken, such as relatively fresh paint in one of the staterooms and two heads and freshly painted name boards on the bow and stern that indicated that her temporary name at the time was Supertug, hailing from Key West, FL (to our knowledge, Kalliope has never been remotely near Key West and, in fact, was re-registered in the state of Alabama because the registration fees are much less expensive there.) So, at the moment, we are the proud owners of a ship registered in the name of Kalliope that hails from Demopolis, AL, a place to which we, number 1, have no clue of its location and, number 2, have no intention of ever visiting. Re-registration will ensue once we get settled.

When the B&B venture fell through, he decided to sell the ship and move on to other ventures.

In early May, Rick and I flew from Seattle to Florida to have a first-hand look. I was expecting to see this:      when what we found was this:

The ship had been moved from her bright, inviting, city berth in Fort Myers to an extremely remote snow bird RV resort up river to keep her safe during hurricane season, even when no one was aboard. We were promised that the Fort Myers berth was being reserved for our return in late November (on which we are most definitely counting!)

I grew up in Ithaca, NY, which, though admittedly small and somewhat rural, has the considerable advantage of boasting two renowned institutions of higher learning ~ Cornell University and Ithaca College. The constant flow of people to and from places like New York City gives Ithaca an air of sophistication and urbanity that might not normally be associated with a city of its size. I loved growing up in Ithaca, but when it came time to raise my own family, I was ever grateful that their milieu was the exciting, edgy, culturally rich environment of Manhattan with its tremendous diversity of ethnicities, experiences and opportunities. I loved watching fellow New Yorkers living their lives on the street and hearing English spoken in dozens of accents from around the world every time I stepped out into the streets. After three and a half years of our newlywed lives in Connecticut and northern California, the instant Rick and I moved to Manhattan, Rick’s home town, I fell in love with the City’s vibe and knew that I would never, ever want to stop living there. Well, as my mother used to say “never is a long time…”

But, the point is that, basically, I am an urban animal, through and through. Even Seattle, at first, seemed suburban to my Manhattan sensibilities. My favorite bedroom views were in Manhattan where we could see the Twin Towers (another story, another day) and the view from our temporary home in Vegas (Henderson, actually) ~ the neon lights of a movie theater a few blocks down the road. I feel safe when I am surrounded by activity and knowing that my neighbors are always nearby. I thrive on bustle, activity and noise.

So, imagine my sinking heart and increasing dismay and alarm, as we drove beyond Fort Myers to the RV resort, about an hour further east. The landscape evolved from acceptably populated for my comfort to offering mostly ranches, cows and emptiness. The nearest town to the resort is a 20 minute drive back towards Fort Myers. The town boasts a hand full of local eateries that serve tasty meals, at least a dozen fast food chain restaurants, but nothing that even resembles a Starbucks.

The nearest convenience store/gas station/bar and grill is about a mile away and is called Gator Bait. It has taken some getting used to but, as I interact more and more with the locals, my respect and admiration for who they are and the lives they have chosen in this remote location continue to grow. I like them. They are warm, welcoming, kind, friendly, intelligent, hard-working and genuinely interested in other people. They are upfront about who they are with no frills and no pretentions. They are fun to talk to and have much to add to a conversation. As my sister says, “they’re just people ~ nothing to fear, but never, ever talk politics or religion.”

Here is a picture of the slightly improved (by us) gangplank that greeted us for that first visit: 

To be continued…

A Bit of History

About Our Ship

Fat Lady Pie (I kid you not ~ that was her original name…) was built and commissioned in 1954 by the Sinclair Oil Corporation (the one with the dinosaur logo) to haul oil barges up and down the Mississippi River. For those of you who understand anything about marine vessels, she is 85 feet long, 28 feet wide, 175 gross tons and has a 6 foot draft. When she was a working vessel there were three gigantic engines which have since been downsized to two smaller engines. It still freaks me out that we have three huge diesel oil tanks at the back (stern) of our home, two large diesel engines below decks and a 500 gallon holding tank which, when hooked up properly, has the capability of being its own mini-sewage treatment plant. For the meantime we will be pumping out on a regular basis. As Rick says, you don’t have a garage or a basement ~ you have an engine room downstairs ~ nothing to freak out about. Hmmm..

Of course, we also have chains and lines on the forward deck that weigh hundreds of pounds and were used during the working life of our vessel on the Mississippi. Not exactly your typical “home”. Not exactly in keeping with my dewy-eyed vision of a floating home along the lines of Tom Hanks’ floating house on Lake Union in “Sleepless in Seattle.”

Sometime in the late 1980s, Fat Lady Pie, since then renamed Kalliope, thank the Lord, was decommissioned and converted into a live aboard home by the retired captain and his wife. Décor has remained pretty much the same since then ~ vintage 1970s/early 80s, for some odd reason, RV wall paneling, dreary carpeting and garish light and ceiling fan fixtures (all of which are being replaced ~ another story, another day). The galley (kitchen) had vintage 1980s black appliances, all of which had been neglected for some time and were, well, disgustingly dirty and dysfunctional. The vintage wooden cabinets remain (thoroughly scoured, sanitized and Contac papered) but everything else in the galley, literally including the kitchen sink (rusty, discolored stainless steel, complete with dead bugs), has been replaced with white, making the galley (to me) much more inviting and bright.

Here is a clip of Fat Lady Pie (now Kalliope) making her final run down the Mississippi from St. Paul, MN to Galveston, TX in 2009 to be refurbished before she was sold to the colorful retired Merchant Marine who subsequently sold her to us.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei1dF761EcA

How did we get here?

Be Careful What You Wish For …

Somewhere out of the blue, at the age of 43, when we were living in the heart of Manhattan with our growing family of three wonderful daughters, I decided that my life dream was to be captain of a tugboat. I used to gaze dreamily at the East River near our apartment, watching the Moran tugs go back and forth and longing to have the sweet brackish winds blowing my hair back as I offered assistance to the many barges on the river. Perhaps it had something to do with my lifelong love for the story of Little Toot, that intrepid little tug who saved the day by blowing “S.O.S” out of his cute little smokestack, proving that he wasn’t just a silly, frivolous kid. Perhaps it had something to do with my lifelong sense of restlessness, ever pacing and wanting to see just what is around the next corner.

I never did pursue that dream (way too busy at “midlife” with school volunteering, church activities and on and off full time jobs as an office manager/development coordinator/bookkeeper for various NYC businesses and non-profits.) Too risk averse. Too nervous about going back to school for anything whatsoever. After graduating from Cornell with Distinction twenty-one years prior, I had opted never to pursue grad school due to years of PTSD-like anxiety dreams I had of ending the semester and sitting for the final exam after not having read one word from the course syllabus nor attending any class, feeling helpless and terrified. I always said (and believed) that my family was my career and that any paying jobs I picked up along the way were simply something that needed to be done to help with the family income.

My husband, Rick, while not sharing the dream to be a tugboat captain per se, spent his childhood weekends boating on Long Island Sound with his family and, as an adult, always longed to get back to the water and to owning his own boat. Life in Manhattan was expensive and putting that much capital into a money-gobbling boat seemed foolish for our growing family.

So, in 2000, after two of our daughters were out of college and the third one was 12, we decided to venture out to the “left coast” ~ specifically, Seattle, a city that is surrounded by and filled with a number of bodies of water and, I believe, has one of the highest per capita boat ownership rates in the US, with the hopes that the slightly lower cost of living and easy access to both fresh and salty bodies of water would enable us to spend lots of time on the water.

It took us six years, but in 2006 we did buy a tiny little tug named Rascal aka Little Toot, and spent a fun, glorious summer tootling around Lake Union, Lake Washington, and going back and forth through the Ballard Locks to Puget Sound. But in 2007, Rick accepted a three year assignment in Nevada working as the contract manager for the bridge that was being built over the Colorado River to bypass the Hoover Dam. (Totally worth visiting, by the way!) Selling our own “Little Toot” seemed to be the only smart thing to do.

The Hoover Dam, of course, being 20 miles south of Las Vegas, is in the middle of a desert, making boating somewhat problematic, though we did manage to steal a few days over the course of two years renting boats on the Colorado River and in Lakes Mead and Mojave.

At the conclusion of the Nevada project, we moved back to our house in Seattle in 2011, and Rick went back to his daily scouring of the internet for possible live-aboards in the San Juan Islands about two hours north of Seattle.

And, then, one day in late April, 2013, Rick called me in to his office and showed me pictures of, well, to be perfectly honest, a ship that was for sale on eBay. The ship was berthed in Ft. Myers, FL, offering me the bonus that I would be just two hours away from my beloved sister whom I visited two or three times a year from Seattle. It seemed just, perhaps, maybe, maybe to be a feasible venture, though it would mean that we would sell our house in Seattle and purchase the boat with some of the cash proceeds. It offered living areas that at least equaled our living areas in Seattle, three staterooms (bedrooms), two and a half heads (baths), a fully equipped galley (kitchen) and even a dining area that would accommodate our dining room table. It also offered lots more for which I certainly never bargained, but that’s for another day.

I had just returned from my most recent visit to my sister’s when Rick suggested that we fly back down, stay with my sister, and take a look at the boat. And so the adventure began …