Farewell to Tayrona

Author:  Pete
Location:  Coomera, Australia

Before leaving Australia for good, we went back to see Tayrona one last time. I’ve been thinking about how to say goodbye to our boat.  It’s a challenge because the role it played in our lives is fluid and unclear.  Is it a home?  An infant?  A guardian?

I’ve realized that Tayrona is the closest thing I’ll ever have to a dragon

Hear me out…  

Physically, Tayrona is a pretty good dragon match.  She’s got a pair of fifty-foot leathery wings that snap and flutter in the wind.  Her fiberglass hide, while not quite impenetrable, is tough as nails and topped by a scaly non-skid deck that has carried us to distant lands.  She accepts only those who are willing to learn her peculiarities and sends others cowering back to the shore.  Her race is of vain, moody creatures, mercurial, but without malice.  A contented purring and a silky glide under blue skies turns to a grumpy rodeo with nothing more than a passing cloud bank.  She instills abysmal fear in some, bottomless greed in others, but still, she’s an unquestionable symbol of adventure and intrepid spirit.  Tayrona possesses magical qualities too, speaking telepathically to others of her kind all over the world, and turning sunlight and wind into sweet water, tinkling icicles, and crackling electricity.

Sailboats, like dragons, are insatiable gluttons for treasure, with a ceaseless lust for that which is prized most by mariners.  Gleaming stainless, shiny black-gold, and the finest fabrics money can by: it’s the crew’s job to find such plunder, lest her humor turn foul.  But behind all this she’s a fiercely loyal friend, who would “wait dutifully at anchor” for us as long as her talons would hold her to the ground.  She’s fought across more than thirteen thousand miles of open ocean for us and she’d be ruined on the rocks before letting us come to any harm.  Does this make me sad to be leaving her?  Unequivocally.  Crushingly.  More than I can express with words.  But men aren’t meant to sail the seas all their lives and sailboats are.  So rather than mothball an immortal dragon’s wings, leash her to the earth, and make her wait for us to come back, we’ll find her new riders.  We’ll leave her to sailors who will point her bows again into adventure, who will sail her through the winding labyrinth of the Great Barrier Reef, anchor her off headhunter shores in Papua New Guinea, and send her purring out across the endless seas where she’s happiest.

So now it’s time for us to say goodbye to our good Tayrona.  Countless thanks to you for ferrying us safely to the other side of the world, for sheltering us against hammering rain and crushing waves, for the people we’ve become in two years before your mast, and for the many lives you’ve touched on this journey.  May you carry your new riders far and wide, my good friend.  Although they may call you by another name, you’ll always be our Tayrona.

Now enough nostalgia.  Go get that horizon, sweet girl!

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Busy in “Brissy”

Author:  Pete
Location:  Brisbane, Australia

We’re back in “Brissy” for a fortnight to work on some fussy logistics that will be involved in selling the boat, moving continents twice in three weeks, and changing lifestyle from a tropical ocean drifter to a euro-alpine professional.  Whiplash.  When we fly back to the Great Lakes and summer is in full swing, we’ll have no motivation to do much aside from spend time with our long lost friends and family.  Many little things in life get neglected when there are bilge pumps to fix, and it’s a welcome change to be in one spot to address them.  Miranda and I rented a flat in downtown Brisbane within walking distance of the great parks, museums, and restaurants.  The city is bustling.  It’s a great vibe to be a part of and having our own little place for a couple weeks make us feel like we’re really living the hip lifestyle.

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Living in a little apartment in the city is good for us.  It’s helping to break us of the doomsday-stockpile mentality we’re now prone to as sailors when we find ourselves in a well-stocked grocery store.  We remind ourselves that they’re not going to run out of lettuce in Brisbane, we don’t need to buy six pounds of butter all at once, and that there are several other stores within spitting distance, all which will reliably be open during “trading hours.”  Paradoxically, it’s nice to have a huge refrigerator to fill up.  Well… huge to us.

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We do make it south to Coomera to see Tayrona here and there.  She is in the show area of The Boat Works, standing proud in a line with her other gussied-up friends, smiling like they’re taking backyard pictures before prom in their suits and dresses.  It’s nice to have her close for a while as we adjust to life ashore.

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Miranda and I have been wanting to get swallow tattoos in commemoration of this adventure.  Swallows tattoos are a tradition among sailors; one is generally worn for every five thousand miles sailed.  We should be getting three, but we’ll show some humility and stick with only one lest our parents think we’ve gone off the deep end.  (How could we go further off the deep end than quitting our jobs and sailing around the world?)  The migratory birds come back to their same nesting grounds every year and so represent, among other things, the promise of homecoming to mariners the world around.  We liked that idea, and have been looking into it since Fiji.

For me, the swallow represents freedom, agility, and fearlessness.  Far out to sea we often found these little guys zipping about happily on their own, days and days from land, undaunted by their remote and hostile environment.  The swallows’ slight silhouettes dancing over the unending ocean solidified their image in my mind as an icon of bravery, determination, and pluck.  To emblazon one on my skin is to forever be reminded of the strength and growth that this adventure kindled within.  Plus, I’ve always wanted a tattoo but never really felt like I did anything noteworthy enough to endorse such a irreversible act and my mom’s incurred wrath.  So, in the spirit of zeal and courage I braved something that chills my spine more than thousands of miles of open ocean: needles.  Ugh.  Friggin’ hate needles.  As always, Miranda is less squeamish than I am about that sort of thing.  Tough lass.

There’s an amazing artist in Brisbane named Mat Fink, who came highly recommended.  After studying Mat’s portfolio and tracking down his shop, we had to wait a whole week just for an appointment to discuss our ideas with the sought after artist.  We met him and described our sailing adventure with no mention of the tattoos we wanted.  Without pause he replied, “So you’ve earned yourselves some swallows, eh?”   Mat’s a big, soft-spoken guy, with thoughtful eyes, and roiling artwork all over his body.  He earned some swallows of this own in his ten years at sea with the Australian navy and has been all over the world working as a tattoo artist.  Seems like our man.  We showed Mat some examples of the style we were looking for, and a few days later he had his own designs for us drawn up for us.

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As you’d imagine, Mat has a quirky sense of humor and a gift with his medium.  We got on fabulously.  He blocked off the whole day just for the two of us.  Just to be safe, I sent Miranda in first to make sure everything was kosher before I jumped in the hot seat.

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Miranda, as is well documented, is impervious to pain like a Toydarian is to Jedi mind tricks.  I’d like to say that I did fairly well for my first inking and the whole thing looked like this…

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…but in reality it was probably more like this instead.

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But now it’s a done deal!  Unblemished skin?  That’s for the birds!  And now when Miranda or I are asked if the trip has changed us, we can unequivocally say, “Yes!”

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Mat worked late to get our ink done and it was dark when we left the shop.  He recommended several ways to care for a new tattoo, one of which involved cold beer immediately upon leaving the shop.  Miranda and I were famished after several hours of ab-clenching apiece so that worked for us.  We stumbled upon an authentic Asian place with people waiting in a line out the door for their Vietnamese soup.  We took the big pho que as a good sign, and jumped in to celebrate our new tattoos!

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Sydney, Australia

Author:  Pete
Location:  Sydney, Australia

We all flew down to Sydney for a couple days’ city fix before my folks headed back to the northern hemisphere.  It felt a bit sacrilegious to be flying into one of the most spectacular harbor cities in the world with a perfectly good boat just a few (hundred) miles up the coast.   But, better to see the city by land then not at all though.

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Sydney is a stunning city, perfect for a couple days of nose-following.  There are landmarks, topography, and waterfront to keep one’s orientation.  Most of our time was spent finding new places to eat!  You’d think we’d been on a diet of fish and coconut for years!

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As we promenaded along the wharves one of the days we passed a floating building which turned out to be the cruise ship Carnival Spirit.  It’s the enormous white monster in the picture that’s the as big as the Harbor Bridge.  That was the same ship that almost ran us down at night in the Tasman Sea on our crossing!  Okay, okay.  He was four miles away, lit up like a Vegas Christmas, and very courteous on the radio.  Still, I really wanted to knock on the hull and see if I could meet their radio officer.  Thought that might not go over so well.  Move along, small fry.

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Another day we walked the Harbor Bridge with its sweeping views of the iconic Sydney Harbor.  Ferries muscle through the waters throwing heavy wake and turning the protected bays into chop even on the windless day.  I didn’t want to sail into the harbor anyway, says the fox of the grapes…

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In our wanderings we met many of the white, feathered locals gathering to picnic in the parks around the city.  These rambunctious cockatoos seemed to always congregate near dusk.  Apparently people bring snacks for them often enough that the birds will alight on your shoulders or head looking for munchies.  Cockatoos love munchies.  Who doesn’t?

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We happened to be in town when a David Bowe tribute was going on at the Sydney Opera House and got tickets to see the show.  The Sydney Philharmonic was playing behind a rock band with ostentatious vocalists.  I’m not sure if the professional orchestra musicians were incensed to be performing behind the oppressive screech of rock music (“Ugh.  Really?  Three notes in the whole song?”) or loved the novelty of it (“Yes!  So sick of Chopin!“).  Some got really into it, like the timpani player, hammering away on the kettle drums and the sax player who got to rip out on a screeching, jazzy solo.  How often does he get to do that?  Others, like the bassoonist, sat stock still, even through his solo.  Bowe loved a good bassoon solo!  Who doesn’t?

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We also went to our first rugby match!  It was very exciting to watch, something like a guessing game of what the rules might be.  Despite our ignorance, it was a gorgeous evening to witness head injuries.  Plus, Miranda loves the short shorts and huge legs on rugby guys.  Who doesn’t?

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And then it was time to head out!  Back to the states for my folks, back to Brisbane keep working on selling the boat for us!  Ciao Sydney!  Thank you, and goodnight!

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