They say cruisers lose about twenty pounds of land lubber fat when they leave the shore. God, I sure hope so. I could stand to lose at least one, possibly two, cruiser loads. I’m not seeing it happen. Yet. Ever the optimist, I’ll point out that we cut the lines less than a month ago. Losing weight any faster than a pound per week is not healthy in any case, no matter how much I’d like to do so.
I have a new reason to lose weight, however. Boat trim.
Our boat is fat. Don Quixote has a weight problem. All cats have a weight problem. Cruising cats have a particularly unhealthy obsession with their weight. To stay safe, speedy, and strong, a cat should stay well above her water line and balance fore and aft, hull to hull. We know of cruising cats who raise their water line. This is a form of letting out your belt buckle by stretching thin, worn, cotton tank top over crucial parts such as your belly roll and butt cheeks. Yeah, you can do it. But as I tell my children repeatedly, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”
Yet for all our fine words, Don Quixote lists in an obvious and distressing fashion to the forward starboard side. This is tantamount to trying to run uphill with your right leg bent and a backpack perched precariously over your right ear. Her starboard bow is at or just a hair below the water line. In contrast, she’s got her left ass cheek flying up in the air on the port side nearly 3 inches above the water line.
Easy problem to fix, neh? Just move everything in the forward starboard bow locker (a.k.a. kid’s rumpus room) to somewhere under Mera and Aeron in the aft port cabin. Not so fast. First, the idiots who designed and built this boat decided to put the only water tank and the anchor rode on the starboard side. We have 250 of heavy gauge chain up there. When they say heavy gauge, that means it weighs a metric buttload per foot. Moving either item is basically a feat of extreme nautical engineering and not something we can easily undertake at the moment physically or financially.
Another problem is the holding tanks. We’re currently only using the starboard tank -- which of course is up near the bow. Dumb dumb dumb. So next time we’re at anchor for a few days, guess who gets to tear apart and fix the port holding tank. Time to pee only on the left.
More weight? The office, shower, and pantry are on the starboard side. We’ve been using those spaces to store all sorts of crucial, need-to-get-your-hands-on-in-a-hurry items as well as all kinds of useless crap. Also, most of the galley supplies somehow ended up starboard of mid-line. It’s feels as if in a vain effort to recover from the excessively liberal left-leaning, politically correct mind set of our home port, our crew decided to put all our eggs in the Right basket.
In a fit of parental homeschoolyness, I thought it would be a great math lesson for Mera and Aeron to conduct an inventory. This consisted first of pulling everything we own out of the salon seats and pantry cupboards and spreading it all over hell’s breakfast. Then, they wrote all the items down and counted them. At this point, I pretty much despaired for the survival of my family. We somehow shipped out without cinnamon, red wine vinegar, or sugar, but we did stock six bottles of rum, three bottles of tequila, 13 packages of MacNCheese, 24 cans of tuna (in springwater), and four tubes of high quality wasabi.
The good news is we remembered to pack three jars of pickled ginger. The bad news is there is no soy sauce.
I have a new reason to lose weight, however. Boat trim.
Our boat is fat. Don Quixote has a weight problem. All cats have a weight problem. Cruising cats have a particularly unhealthy obsession with their weight. To stay safe, speedy, and strong, a cat should stay well above her water line and balance fore and aft, hull to hull. We know of cruising cats who raise their water line. This is a form of letting out your belt buckle by stretching thin, worn, cotton tank top over crucial parts such as your belly roll and butt cheeks. Yeah, you can do it. But as I tell my children repeatedly, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”
Yet for all our fine words, Don Quixote lists in an obvious and distressing fashion to the forward starboard side. This is tantamount to trying to run uphill with your right leg bent and a backpack perched precariously over your right ear. Her starboard bow is at or just a hair below the water line. In contrast, she’s got her left ass cheek flying up in the air on the port side nearly 3 inches above the water line.
Easy problem to fix, neh? Just move everything in the forward starboard bow locker (a.k.a. kid’s rumpus room) to somewhere under Mera and Aeron in the aft port cabin. Not so fast. First, the idiots who designed and built this boat decided to put the only water tank and the anchor rode on the starboard side. We have 250 of heavy gauge chain up there. When they say heavy gauge, that means it weighs a metric buttload per foot. Moving either item is basically a feat of extreme nautical engineering and not something we can easily undertake at the moment physically or financially.
Another problem is the holding tanks. We’re currently only using the starboard tank -- which of course is up near the bow. Dumb dumb dumb. So next time we’re at anchor for a few days, guess who gets to tear apart and fix the port holding tank. Time to pee only on the left.
More weight? The office, shower, and pantry are on the starboard side. We’ve been using those spaces to store all sorts of crucial, need-to-get-your-hands-on-in-a-hurry items as well as all kinds of useless crap. Also, most of the galley supplies somehow ended up starboard of mid-line. It’s feels as if in a vain effort to recover from the excessively liberal left-leaning, politically correct mind set of our home port, our crew decided to put all our eggs in the Right basket.
In a fit of parental homeschoolyness, I thought it would be a great math lesson for Mera and Aeron to conduct an inventory. This consisted first of pulling everything we own out of the salon seats and pantry cupboards and spreading it all over hell’s breakfast. Then, they wrote all the items down and counted them. At this point, I pretty much despaired for the survival of my family. We somehow shipped out without cinnamon, red wine vinegar, or sugar, but we did stock six bottles of rum, three bottles of tequila, 13 packages of MacNCheese, 24 cans of tuna (in springwater), and four tubes of high quality wasabi.
The good news is we remembered to pack three jars of pickled ginger. The bad news is there is no soy sauce.