It’s a rather black-humored joke in our family that when Matthew and I get to that place of old age we’ll launch our boat and sail for Tahiti. (Never mind that Seashell is not a blue water sail boat, but this is a plan in the works, keep in mind.) We might need to have our boys drive us to the coast and point us in the right direction too. They both swear they would never be a part of such a scheme, so that is another glitch we’ll have to work out but hey – anyway: If we don’t make it to the south Pacific, then the sea will have taken us and we won’t be a burden on our kids – if we do make it, then we’ll be in Tahiti! I know, it’s weird silly, but then the other day Aly saw this comic on Married to the Sea and it was just too funny. You’ll have to click to read the caption.
These folks are trying to raise awareness of the plastic chaos loose in our oceans. They are going to Hawai’i on a downwind sailing vessel composed of discarded plastic bottles. Lots of them. Contrary to popular belief most all that plastic comes from land; garbage washing down the watersheds, and not from fishing vessels or ships. Industry reports 120 billion pounds of plastic was produced last year. That is double the amount of plastic produced since 1992. Whoa, it is a lot of oil used so we can drink our beverages out of plastic bottles and cart our groceries home in plastic bags. Learn more from this video. Here is the YouTube of their departure on June 1, 2008 from San Nicholas Island. They have a blog too called Junkraft and it was just up-dated on Sunday. Plastics is forever.
This is a view from inside our newly acquired into-the-family, antique sailboat Seashell. The cabin is actually quite roomy once we removed all the “stuff”. Right now Matthew is working on installing new oar locks and we did have to purchase some oars. We might put a small engine on it eventually, but for now we will try the manual method of launching and docking. It’s all new to us, therefore the slower the boat is being maneuvered the better, at least for the time being until we get our sea legs. You can click on the photos to feel like you are inside the boat. As long as the hatch is open I probably won’t get claustrophobia – as long as I can see the open sky.
Speaking of sea legs, my Dad was telling me about his big passenger ship trip back from Germany in 1954 when they docked at Halifax, NS. He and a friend obtained one day passes so they could go sight seeing in the city. They got off the boat and walked around on land for awhile, but pretty soon they both started feeling weak and queasy and were forced to go back on ship. They hadn’t considered the fact they wouldn’t have land legs after being on the ship for over a week. Our visual perceptions and balance are intricate mechanisms. I forgot to ask him how long it took before he felt normal again on land.
I don’t suppose that will happen to us sailing on Flathead Lake, but who knows! We might get obsessed. Nah, we wouldn’t do that…
