Category: Status Update

Checking in from the land and the sea!

Onwards

We sold our house and left San Jose, CA on October 22, 2022 to pursue my nearly lifelong dream of cruising on a sailboat in the Caribbean. I get bored with the same-old and we’ve been living in California for nearly 18 years but now it was time for something new. Something to push us out of our comfort zone. Something that was going to introduce us to new people and places.

For months prior to October, we spent our time packing and planning. Packing a house of 3500 sq. feet and things we and our three kids have acquired over 18 years was much more challenging than I had imagined. We finally packed up the U-haul on October 22, 2022 of the items we staged to go to the boat and some things that didn’t fit in the Pod that we were sending to Sarasota, FL, our new residence. At the time of writing this, we have 4 storage rooms. Three in Virginia and one in Florida. Two of the storage units in Virginia will ultimately be emptied when we finally return to Virginia to put While One on the hard in June. JK Moving has the rest of our household belongings for long term storage.

I thought I’d start this blog to capture all of the places we’ve either visited or passed through since starting this adventure. This will be a living blog, updated as we visit new places.

San Jose, CA to Sarasota, FL 2022 — 4000+ miles

  • Gilroy, CA
  • Los Banos, CA
  • Kettleman City, CA
  • San Fernando, CA
  • Glendale, CA
  • Pasadena, CA
  • San Bernardino, CA
  • Palm Springs, CA
  • Palm Desert, CA
  • Blythe, CA (The last place we got Gas at and paid California prices!!!)
  • Quartzsite, AZ
  • New Hope, AZ
  • Phoenix, AZ
  • Tucson, AZ
  • Benson, AZ
  • Wilcox, AZ
  • Bowie, AZ
  • San Simon, AZ
  • Lordsburg, TX
  • Deming, TX
  • Las Cruces, TX
  • White Sands, TX
  • Santa Rosa, TX
  • Tucumcari, TX
  • Amarillo, TX
  • Pampa, TX
  • Canadian, TX
  • Enid, OK
  • Tulsa, OK
  • Little Rock, AK
  • Memphis, TN
  • Nashville, TN
  • Hendersonville, TN
  • Cardiff, TN
  • Knoxville, TN
  • Asheville, NC
  • Statesville, NC
  • Cornelius, NC
  • Charlotte, NC
  • Kannapolis, NC
  • Greensboro, NC
  • Durham, NC
  • Raleigh, NC
  • Wake Forest, NC
  • Richmond, VA
  • West Point, VA
  • Mathews, VA
  • Williamsburg, VA
  • Yorktown, VA
  • Gloucester, VA
  • Beaufort, NC
  • Jacksonville, FL
  • Tampa, FL
  • Ocala, FL
  • Sarasota, FL

Sarasota, FL to Fort Lauderdale, FL (214 Miles)

  • Venice, FL
  • Cape Coral, FL
  • Naples, FL
  • Fort Lauderdale, FL

Bahamas 2023

  • Alice Town, Bimini
  • Bailey Town, Bimini
  • Great Harbour Cay, Berry Islands
  • Chub Cay, Berry Islands
  • Spanish Wells, Eleuthera

The Transition is Hard

It’s 75ºF at 5:30pm as I sit in my bean bag chair, eagerly awaiting yet another peaceful, beautiful sunset. I’m not sure what I expected at this point transitioning into a new lifestyle.

Despite folks repeatedly telling me how relaxed I look, I’m not sure I completely feel what they suggest they’re saying. It must be true…at least, I must be way more relaxed than I presented when I was working full-forced at Apple in Cupertino. However, I’d be lying if I told you I felt completely relaxed. Why? What’s going on? Where did I think I’d be in terms of my mental health sitting at Great Harbour Cay in the Bahamas at the end of January?

Clearly, I had a lot of expectations. Winding down my employment at Apple has been far harder than I ever anticipated it would be. I did expect some of the feelings that I’m having, but I guess I didn’t think they’d be so pronounced. It’s tough. After working nearly 18 years at Apple, I don’t know why I think I’d be able to unwind in a few months or less. I’ve spent my entire career at Apple and prior literally killing myself, giving everything I could to the company that fed my family.

It’s so very tough to be working right now. Despite my best efforts of setting expectations to my management and with myself, I find it so very hard to walk the line of earning my paycheck and putting in the 100% I’m accustomed to giving my employer and completely divorcing myself from all that I work on. I don’t know how to do it. I’ve not had to do it before. To be fair, I’m very gracious that Apple has provided this opportunity. I don’t want to leave on a bad note.

I suspect that once April comes, I’m going to go through yet another phase of this lifestyle change. No paycheck. Nothing to schedule may day around other than what I want to do. Until then, I find myself teetering between eagerly anticipating April yet trying to remember to live in the moment and appreciate now for what now is.

29 Day Check-in

We showed up at Zimmerman’s marina in Mathews, VA on November 4th. Today will be about the 29th day I’ve woken up on the boat and so I thought I’d capture some thoughts on this journey.

We’ve had several interruptions along the way. The first handful of days were spend on the hard trying to get the boat ready. Then, there was a couple weeks of waiting for the weather to leave Virginia and round Hatteras. A week or so waiting around in Beaufort, NC before finally throwing in the towel and renting a car to be able to take delivery of our POD at our Sarasota house. Then we had several weeks waiting for the weather in Sarasota before finally making the crossing to Bimini.

A little less than a week at Bimini and back to the states we flew to spend Christmas with family. Good grief, it’s been a tad bit crazy. An now we’re getting ready to close up the boat again for a week as I need to fly back to Cupertino for work.

Suffice it to say, Sherine and I are still trying to figure this whole thing out. We have to remind ourselves this break in ritual is exactly why we set out to do this. We get board with the monotony of the same-old schedule week after week. I’d be lying if I said juggling work with the necessity of traveling back and forth to the states or waiting for the weather wasn’t difficult or a tad frustrating.

I’m starting to recognize now that many of the frustrations, anxieties and challenges I feel now I’ve brought with me and that they haven’t been caused by this new lifestyle. I guess I always had the sense this was the case but had somehow convinced myself this new lifestyle would resolve everything.

Don’t get me wrong. This lifestyle has been doing wonders. While I sit here and complain about the stress, frustration and anxiety I still have, it’s not to say it hasn’t gotten progressively better. At least for me, it takes work and that for anybody considering this lifestyle, don’t be trapped into thinking it will solve all of your problems of your conventional life.

So, there are a few things I can note that we need to work on.

  • Sherine and I are still working and since Apple is 3 hours behind us, this is particularly challenging. We have not been very good at communicating and planning this time in the morning before which Cupertino finally wakes up.
  • The time difference also makes it difficult to plan for exercise and also meals. 8pm EST is 5pm PST and to wait until then to eat doesn’t sit well with my stomach. As a result, I’ve not been a particularly good partner in the making of meals. I’m not sure what the right answer here is other than to try to do better on my end to re-schedule my evening meetings — something which has proven to be difficult to do.
  • We’ve got to figure out how to get regular exercise into our life. On one hand, we are a tad bit more active than when we’re on land, I think. Boat life is not easier than on land, it’s harder…even if it’s just by 10%. That said, one of the reasons for getting out of the rat race has been to focus more on our health and this new lifestyle has been far from successful in allowing us to do this.

Sarah Creek Anchorage

We splashed yesterday morning but the winds were quite brisk and gusty. Upon speaking with Steve, the Yard Manager, he seemed to suggest he needed us out first thing. Once we dropped in, however, he delighted us with allowing us to stay the night. I can’t say enough good things about just how polite, kind and professional the folks at Zimmerman Marine are.

37º15.3846’N 76º28.5840’

I awoke to a knock on the hull at 7am this morning with a few guys going to help put the jib back on…turns out, the halyard and the painter wouldn’t feed into the mast so they had to go up the mast to aid…1:30 later we were off on our way to York River Yacht Haven. We had a nice sail with just the jib, barely used the engines the entire way.

We have a slip until at least the 18th to wait out Nicole. Unfortunately, the marina is closed on Wednesday so we’re anchored outside in Sarah Creek. The water is thin and there’s not a lot of room. We were the third to anchor and just now another catamaran came in to anchor. It took us about 6 or 7 passes to get out anchor set….noobs! I’m much closer to shore than I want to be but anchoring always gives me anxiety….I hope that gets easier. I’m envious of the spots the two prior boats got first!

Finally! We’re Moving Out Today

We’ve literally been packing this house since March. The POD is fully packed…and I mean FULLY but somehow we still have to find room for another half-dozen items or more. We were unable to bring our bikes and a few other items so I guess we’ll be hauling them to Virginia and storing them until June when we sail back to haul While One out.

It’s a little surreal. I’ve been working towards this day for probably a decade or more and to finally see it come to fruition is a huge pile of emotions. I thought I’ve feel relief by now. Perhaps it’s due to lack of sleep. I can’t remember the last time I’ve slept through the night and the past handful of days, it has spread to Sherine as well. I’m excited to do something new yet, at the same time, sad to see this chapter of my life done. Scared that I’m making the wrong decision. Worried about everything that’s going on in the World and in the United States.

The sorting, selling, packing, giving away and moving stuff from one room to the next, to a storage room and back to the house and between storage rooms has been exhausting. We have probably dozens of man/woman days invested in this move and we’re not quite done. In December we have to unload the pod and try to make our new house a home. We have a storage unit in Sarasota because, let’s face it, the 900 sq. ft. house we’re moving into isn’t going to come close to holding our stuff…even after splitting it between long term storage with JK Moving and our boat. I’m trying to live in the moment and appreciate this for every minute…I’m not likely to experience anything like this again in my lifetime. On the other hand, when I’m finally at anchor or at a marina in Bimini in December, that’s when I think it’ll all sink in.

Yesterday evening my retirement was communicated to the greater Apple Watch System team. It was emotional…I expected it to be so but even so, it’s hard to prepare. Looking at a picture shown taken at the factory with iPhone ready to be shipped…a few more pounds, a lot more gray, less hair on my head and no beard. It was a great time. Apple’s been so good to my family and I and I’ve been so fortunate to have had the opportunity to work on two highly successful products that have literally changed the world.

10 Days to go and we’re closing up the door on the U-Haul trailer and heading cross-country.

A Bird in the Hand…

While we weren’t planning on starting to sell our house until much later, the sale of a couple properties near our home piqued our interest. The home across the street sold for significantly more than we had believed our our was worth at the time and we had spent significant money upgrading our bathrooms, installing solar and putting a pool in, among many other upgrades.

I’m sure most folks in the World have probably heard how notoriously expensive Bay Area Real Estate is and how competitive it is to buy a house. We’ve been very fortunate. When we purchased our first home in 2005, we paid way more money than I ever thought we’d pay for a home…and it was a VERY modest home. Suffice it to say, that even with the Pandemic and the 2008 housing crisis, that home (which we still own) is significantly higher than what we paid.

Homes pretty much sell themselves here….at least they used to. As such, we teased the idea of selling our home by ourselves and avoiding the sum 4.5%-6% Real Estate commissions. But, we ultimately decided not to.

In March, the market was hot. We listed the home as “COMING SOON” but as a started to prepare for my trip from St. Augustine to Norfolk, VA, I began to get worried. We had the continued lockdowns in China, the Ukraine crisis and now crazy high inflation. We needed to get it on the market FAST!

After some 48 days or so, we finally got an offer on August 2! However, it was way below what we were hoping for and it was with contingencies, something relatively unheard of in the Bay Area.

After a couple of counters, the Buyers put their final offer in and Sherine and I needed to make a decision. Selling a home can often be an emotional experience. When the market is in decline, comparing our home value to others that were sold weeks and months earlier is a challenge, to say the least. Trying to convince Sherine that while she may be right in thinking our home is worth more than what was being offered, that doesn’t mean there’s buyers ready, or able, to spend the money we think it’s worth.

We can’t complain although sometimes we all do. God willing, the house sale will go through but we have a little less than 3 weeks to go to see if the Buyer’s house will close. Assuming it does, we’ll walk away and would have done alright. It’s good to not make home buying/selling personal, in my opinion and in times of a market decline, A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Exciting times await!

Flexofold Props On Their Way

After finally figuring out which size of props I needed, I finally pulled the trigger and ordered a pair of Flexofold 18x13x3L. I want to thank my contact at Nautitech, Paul Colin, who has been an absolute Godsend. He’s exceptionally responsive and goes out of his way to answer all of my questions. Thank you Paul!

Of course, I forgot Europe shuts down for holiday in the summer for a month. For Flexofold, this was from July 8 until August 1st.

Finally on Wednesday, Marlene at Flexofold told me the props are packed and ready to be shipped!

Fast forward to today, Friday, August 5, I received a call this morning from someone who allegedly worked for UPS. Apparently, the declared value of the props of $5352 is some $2500 or more above the limit of importation without duty…or something like that. I didn’t research it and I could barely understand the woman who called me. Frustrating.

Anyways, she went on to say that she needed a Tax ID number from me. I told her this was not a business and she suggested my SSN would suffice but, of course, if I wasn’t comfortable giving it to her over the phone I could call Customer Service. I thanked her and, of course, told her I was uncomfortable giving her that information. That started to be what turned out to be a very frustrating 40 minutes of my Friday morning.

Calling UPS’s Customer Service was futile. There was simply no phrase which could get me to speak with an actual person nor was there any means for me to clear this problem up. I tried at least three times before finally giving up. Finding the Contact Us page, I saw there was an International Shipping Customer Service number. However, I met the same fate as with the other Customer Service number.

Then I proceeded to setup a MyUPS account…or whatever it’s called. I was successful. I could see my shipment but there was absolutely no way to pay duty or put my TIN into the system. In fact, the Website seemed to suggest that the packages were en-route and nothing was wrong.

Then I noticed one more number on the Contact Us page for Technical Service. Might I be able to worm my way through Technical Service and finally get this thing cleared up? Success! After speaking with 4 people, repeating the story 4 different times and repeating the tracking numbers at least 8 times, I was finally able to give a credit card number to pay the $39 needed for Duty. No TIN was needed.

Now, I recognize the volume of packages UPS ships. I realize that customer service must be very expensive but, I could not have imagined a worse customer service experience. Here’s a vendor that is likely making several hundreds of dollars to ship a package from Denmark to the United States and this is how poor you treat your customer?

UPS is not alone with this approach to Customer Service. Many companies nowadays have resorted to voice recognition systems at least for the initial customer service contact. They’re all horrible and I think it sends an absolute terrible message to your customers. by adding insult to injury.

I don’t know what the solution is. I suppose that ultimately natural language comprehension will become almost as good as a human…I guess that’s the holy grail. But, until that happens, we’re all going to have to suffer or protest with our pocketbooks and pray for change.

One Month to Taking Full Posession

It was almost one year ago when Sherine and I flew to Florida to check out some boats and to test sail a Nautitech 46 Open through Performance Yacht Sales. During the weekend of March 19, 20 and 21st of 2021 we visited quite Catamarans.

Early on the morning of the 19th, we landed into Miami after taking a red eye from SFO. We were picked up by a driver that took us to Riviera Beach Marina.

We met Nico and Nicholas and had a handful of hours sailing out off of Palm Beach. Upon return, Sherine and I grabbed a few Painkillers at Rafiki Tiki Bar and grabbed a few tacos.

Getting a ride back to Fort Lauderdale where we rented an Airbnb was a challenge. After several Ubers which bailed at the last minute after waiting for 10 minutes apiece for them, we finally landed one. It was early to bed that night after a red eye and a day of sailing.

The following day we viewed a Hylas 48 and a few other Catamarans. Loved the Hylas and got a view of the Hylas 57…wow, what a boat. I refused to ask for a tour…didn’t want to be temped.

That said, we ultimately decided a Catamaran suited the type of sailing we intended to do and being full-time live aboard.

Following day brought us further up the coast to view an Anteres…and debated whether or not to make a bid while having an early lunch at the Sea Watch Restaurant. Got there early and grabbed a great corner table outside…what a day!

Certification of Documentation

After returning home from Florida last night after two weeks of vacation, visiting my folks and our shakedown cruise of While One and found a letter from Annapolis Yacht Documentation in our mail. While One’s Certification of Documentation has been obtained!

While One is the first and only registry!

Next step is to obtain a MMSI number for our EPIRB, MOB PLB’s, AIS transceiver and for setting up Digital Selective Calling in our VHF’s.

According to: https://www.boatus.com/products-and-services/membership/mmsi we are required to obtain a ship license from the FCC. I remember doing this once with Farraige but had forgotten the conditions which required a ship license.

According to the FCC: https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-divisions/mobility-division/ship-radio-stations a vessel is required to have a ship license since we have the intent to travel offshore to other countries. If we had no intent to travel offshore, we would be considered a “voluntary ship.”