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Dream Time's entries by year:
                
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Cape Lookout, North Carolina
09:36 hrs - October 14th, 2024
A Different Language |
For twenty four years we sailed Dream Time, and she spoke to us - her creaking, knocking, groaning and whirling - every noise meant something, and we knew them all. Like, “Hey buddy, ease that main sheet a little”, or “I’m enjoying this, what a marvelous sail!”
Most of her noises, the sound of teak cabinetry flexing on a hard passage to New Zealand, the stretching of a snubber with kite surfing trades building across the Tuamotus, or the harmonic whistling of following winds blowing through the holes in our adjustable solar panel frame, they were all familiar to us, and many intensely comforting, like the crackling of a wood fire on a cold winter’s night. You see, we knew we were safe with Dream Time, because she told us so. Occasionally, rarely, she would scream at us, yell for our attention with a sudden jarring crack followed by an uncertain murmur when her forestay parted, or the deep low knocking when our chain hook straitened in seventy knots during an intense Mediterranean storm and, link by link, our anchor rode tore through the windlass. Yes, Dream Time spoke to us and we understood what she was saying.
But Mana is our new boat, and an entirely new style of boat, so her noises, her language, are mostly unfamiliar to us. We’re still figuring out what sounds are OK, and which require careful or even immediate attention. And of course she is French, so it will likely take some time to fully understand what she is saying to us. But we are already really enjoying the conversation. Merci mon amie! |
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Glen Cove, New York
18:44 hrs - October 6th, 2024
Seventeen Years |
In June of 2007 we moved out of our Long Beach NY apartment and onto Dream Time to see what life could be like outside the edges of our familiar land life, and after a satisfying 14 years of circumnavigating adventures we moved back to Long Beach, with the sincere, but untested intention of settling back into comfortable landlubber living.
But as many folk will not be surprised to hear, in June of 2024, we moved out of our NY apartment once again, and moved onto our beautiful new catamaran home, Mana.
Life in NY was rich, full and deeply satisfying. Our old familiar NY friendships were reignited and new friendships blossomed, but quietly in the background of everything, was this faint but ever present and steady understanding that I was supposed to be somewhere else.
From time to time I would think about it and try to understand what I was feeling and why, and finally came to realize that I just wanted to be back on the water, I wanted to be back on a boat again, and luckily, with some gentle persuasion, Neville agreed.
So now seventeen years later we are leaving Glen Cove, once again to sail down the East River, to the Statue of Liberty, to Manhattan’s much changed skyline, to begin perhaps another circumnavigation?
Anyone who has made the transition from monohull to catamaran will appreciate the wonderful advantages of all the additional living space and comfort that catamaran living affords, but the surprise, to me at least, was the steep learning curve. Catamaran sailing dynamics and loads are so completely different from a traditional monohull, and learning how to sail Mana with the full understanding of what weather, wind and more importantly what a large amount of sea can do was intimidating, but with the advantage of some hard earned experience and somewhat advanced years, we are learning and absorbing every detail, and Mana is teaching us something new every day.
But the first leg of our journey south on Mana showed us that we still had more to learn.
The first challenge was delivered as we were getting ready to leave New York. Just before we left we found out that NYC was hosting the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, which meant that the East River, our route out of NY, was going to be closed to marine traffic starting now… for a week! But hey, no problem, it would re-open after 5pm each day and as luck would have it, that timing worked for us. So great, we’re off. But next, as we reach the Whitestone Bridge suddenly NYPD and FDNY boats sped past us emergency lights flashing, towards a small power boat near the bridge. Then we started to see police lights on the road too and began hearing radio traffic on 16. Coast guard is reporting a “person in the water”. Someone had fallen from the boat into the dark water by the bridge, and to the shock of the people left on the boat, and to us, the person, not wearing a life jacket, had fallen and not resurfaced. In the blink of an eye a sunny Sunday outing on a friends boat had changed lives. NYPD divers were next to arrive and as we listened in silence on 16, they discussed the speed of the current and where that would indicate their underwater search would begin. Stunned we realized there wasn't anything we could do to help. And were instantly reminded of why we take the responsibility for each other’s safety, so seriously.
Then next, just as we are reaching the point of no return, at the unapologetically named ‘Hell Gate’ the ominous point where turning around in that fast current becomes dangerous or impossible because of turbulent rushing water, we start hearing that our route the, currently closed portion of the east river which was scheduled to open at 5pm was now to remain closed till 10pm!?! So we now suddenly have to go to Plan B, the Roosevelt Bridge route, which is not ideal, and normally closed, opens conveniently for “on demand” requests, but inconveniently requires 2 hours notice! And we will be there in 45 minutes…
But I’m married to a genius, and the genius anticipated the possibility of a glitch and called the bridge this morning to request a 6pm opening. Just in case...
So now all we have to do is get past Hell Gate and the frequent dangerous and unpredictable whirlpools that 4 converging waterways produce and if the East River gods are with us, hopefully get to the bridge as it opens… |
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The Dawn of a New Journey
September 23, 2024
New York
Our voyage began with Dream Time and lasted twenty-four years, including a fourteen year voyage around the world, and it was a remarkable adventure. But in the Spring of 2024 Dream Time welcomed a new owner, an American we first met in Belize over sixteen years ago at the very beginning of our world journey (read 2008 blog). A man who would become our friend and who would later help us transit Dream Time through the Panama Canal into the Pacific and sail with us in Tonga and Tahiti. It seems they were destined to be together. So while it may be the end of our magnificent voyage with Dream Time, she is in caring and familiar hands, and we are grateful for that.
But our adventures are not over, indeed they have begun anew! We have purchased a Fountaine Pajot Lucia, a forty-foot sailing catamaran that we have named Mana. We first heard of mana (maa-nuh) in the remote tropical islands of the South Pacific. It is a word rooted in Polynesian and Oceanic cultures by an intrepid people who, over two thousand years ago, without charts or any knowledge of what lay over the distant horizon, boldly sailed their double-hulled canoes from Southeast Asia across the world's largest ocean. They believe mana is an energy that permeates the universe and is a cultivation or possession of power. It is an intentional force that a person, place, and even an object, like a Fountaine Pajot catamaran, can possess.
We have spent the last three months upgrading Mana and have just raised sail from New York for our first passage south where Mana will receive her second-round of upgrades and then, possibly, a little winter cruising to test her new gear in the Bahamas. Our experiences and adventures will once again be shared on the pages of zeroXTE. It will likely take us a few weeks, or months, to fully update the site with vessel details, but stay tuned, like Dream Time's five-year voyage that became fourteen, we shall get there in the end. |
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