Farewell to Tayrona

14. Jun. 2016
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Australia, The Boat
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7 Comments

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!

Busy in “Brissy”

07. Jun. 2016
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Australia
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2 Comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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

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!”

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!

Tayrona’s Last Haul

12. May. 2016
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Australia
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5 Comments

Author: Pete

Location: Coomera, Australia

The last days have been spent readying Tayrona for show. We purged the boat again of our old sailing belongings, goods, food, tidbits. All our sunburned clothes, salted footwear, and tattered hats not even worth donating went overboard. The ocean is a tough place for leather, cotton, metal, skin, electronics, zippers, plastics… It feels decidedly good to shed our worldly possessions like lizards doffing cracked skin, cathartic somehow. We didn’t have too much clutter or junk aboard really, but without the little bits of our personalities spilling over into the cabins and salon it feels empty. Maybe not empty so much as awaiting.

Miranda and I did some deep cleaning, fixed this and that, met with brokers and workers. We were at it from sunrise well into the night. That’s not too great of a feat, seeing as the sun sets at five, but after a few days we felt the fatigue of cumulative grind. I was almost too wiped out to have a heavy heart when suddenly it was our last night afloat.

The morning came and I pulled Tayrona around and docked her for the last time. It makes you feel like a docking hero when there’s no current or wind and four line hands are helping bring the boat in. The travel lift hauled Tayrona from the water, drove her by remote control (!!!!) for a few hundred yards, and gently placed her in the work yard next to several other boat friends. These guys at The Boat Works are pros.

Miranda and I too made boat friends in the yard as we worked on peeling off the old blue bootstripes and putting on spanky new silver ones. It was our last big project, a nice mix of geometry and turpentine. We’re having professionals bottom paint and buff the topsides while we’re gone. She’ll look a lot better when we get back!

We worked into the evening on the bootstripes, packed or jettisoned a few last tidbits, and then spent our very last night aboard our fearless Tayrona. Laying in our cozy berth where we had sheltered through so many miles of ocean, we sleeplessly recalling all the glittering memories she has given us, revisiting stories, sorrows and triumphs until our eyes would stay open no longer and we slept without rising to check the anchor.

When morning broke, we emptied Tayrona of our last vestiges and left her in the hands of our capable brokers. It’s not yet goodbye; we’ll see her again in a few days after some touristing along the coast, but we need to let Tay-Tay speak for herself in the upcoming boat show without her obnoxiously proud owners glowing all over her decks. Shake your tail feather, pretty girl!