Where Should We Go Next?

One of the GREAT things about our lifestyle is that we get to choose every year where we want to go next.  For those of you who do not know we are actually trying (though not very hard) to sail around the world.  We have no dates or plans beyond that thought and simply REFUSE to put ourselves on a timetable.  That being said, the weather determines a lot of things for us because of those blasted hurricanes.  So every summer we really try to find a way to get out, or nearly out, of the ZONE.  Also when planning a serious ocean leg like any of the South Pacific one simply is a fool to travel those long distances in the hurricane seasons.  With those thoughts as background for you, here are our thoughts for this year.

We feel the need to really get moving through the canal and into the Pacific and at the same time we REALLY need to get out to Wyoming and Washington to visit our families.  It has been four years since we moved on the boat and in that time we have only seen Amy and Ellie, and Cheryl, Becky's sister, niece and Mom who have visited us both in Charleston and last summer Amy and Ellie stayed on the boat with us down in Trinidad.  When I first dreamed of moving onto the boat I really thought family and friends would use it as an excuse to come see some of the beautiful places we visit but this has not been the case so one way or another we intend to get out to see them.  Travel for the seven of us by air is pretty much out of the question so we are considering one of two options.

Option #1:  We will sail the boat in May to the east coast of the US and do a little summer cruising up to washington DC, New York City, and perhaps Long Island Sound.  Then we will head back south to our favorite little town, Oriental, North Carolina, where we will put the boat on the hard for a couple of months at Sailcraft and we will lease a car and drive out to visit our families for the rest of the summer.  In September or October we would head back to Oriental where we would do our boat work and then we would head south toward the Windward Passage, Jamaica, and on to Caragena, Columbia, and the Panama Canal.  We would then sail to Hawaii in April-May.

Option #2:  We would stay here through the summer working and braving the hurricanes and leave for a direct sail from St Thomas to Cartagena next November.  We would spend Nov. - March in Cartagena and  cruising the San Blas, transiting the canal in march and heading offshore on a straight 4800 mile sail directly to Bellingham, Washington.

The other factor is that Jimmy has decided (you have NO idea the importance of that little statement) to enter the US Coast Guard so he will need an accredited High School Deploma.  He will be moving to Wyoming for his final year of High School to live his Grandparents and finish school.  When Jimmy leaves us it will be really rough.  Not only will he be our first kid out of the nest but he has become such an integral member of the crew and a delivery crew for me that his loss will hurt us more than just in the heart.  But we are very happy and excited for him to make the choices he is and support him 100%.

So... yep we have the pleasure of decideing where we want to go next... but... the choice is not that easy.

Thanks for the comments!!! It is greta to know you all are keeping tabs on us.  Let me know what you think of our options.

God Bless,
Captain Tofer

Update from Honeymoon Bay

Happy New Year... late.

I find it difficult to blog once we get into the swing of our work months.  I forget that a lot of you still want to read about our everyday life during this time as well.  To me it seems, "same old same old" but I guess it's still different from a life on land.

November:  One stormy night a boat drug down on us in a squall with up to 50 knots of wind, it wound up getting pinned to our bow with our mooring line between its keel and rudder where it pounded our bow and bow pulpit for about 20 minutes in breaking waves of 4 to 6 feet.  Our buddy Christian was anchored out next to us and in the middle of the squall he came over in his dingy to help us but was thrown end over end by one of the breaking waves... his dingy was upside down floating away and he scrambled aboard our little hard dingy and continued to try to help us even as his own situation was perilous.  In the end, once the wind stopped and the waves died down we freed the ofending sailboat from our bow and rafted it to us for the rest of the night, Christian was ok but a little beat up and we recovered his dingy and almost all of the gear that had been set free when she was tumbled upside down.  A couple of guys from another boat got out of bed right then (1:00am) and proceeded to take Christian's dingy engine, which was almost new, appart and rinse it in fresh water, drain it and refuel it and it started right up in the morning.  Our bow pulpit will need to be rebuilt and we will probably never see a dime from the owner of the boat that dragged that night but it sure could have been worse.

December:  Benny's Birthday on the 4th... Kristofer's Birthday on the 19th, Christmas, Kaleb's birthday on the 27th, Our 21st wedding Annaversary on the 31st....  Wow it's a hard month on our pocketbook but we had a great one and our little Christmas Tree had plenty of fun stuff under it on Christmas Morning.  (A different boat dragged down on us Christmas morning too hehehe)

January:  Kristofer and Jimmy delivery with Dick Shirley onboard his sailing vessel "Changin' Tags" from COLD and snowy Norfolk, VA to St Thomas.  We zipped along the rum line to St Thomas with the help of NW winds blowing at Gale Force for seven days.  It calmed down to 30 knots for most of the rest of the trip and we ended up doing a record (for us) 9 day trip.  We also had a passenger along on that delivery, a bona fide movie star named Patrick Houser best known for his 1984 T and A flick "Hot Dog The Movie."  He was alomng for the ride and boy did he get one but he ended up standing watch for a lot of the trip and was a great hand to have along.  It's always fun to put a liberal Californian on a small boat with no escape from a Conservative Wyomingite we had some rather heated discussions as those of you who know me can imagine.  No one was thrown overboard although I am sure Dick was considering it one night.

Today:  It has rained for the past three days and actually feels like winter to me... we have the fans off, we pull a blanket over ourselves at night, and Jimmy turned positively blue while cleaning the bottom today.  Temp: 74F ..... brrrrrrr I wore a T-shirt most of the day.  The kids all still went into the beach in the rain and Beck worked. 

If you want feel free to comment... I am more likely to blog when I get feedback sometimes I am not really sure anyone is out there paying attention to it.

God Bless,

Captain Tofer

Thanksgiving on the Beach

Yesterday Rebecca had to work so I loaded our two dingy’s with food and kids and headed to the beach where the Water Island Community Association was putting on a pot luck Thanksgiving dinner. Often when our big family goes to these things we feel a little strange and get some odd looks even if we bring a ton of food ourselves. I always kind of feel like the fat man muscling his way up to the buffet table as I head in with our 5 kids. The folks on Water Island made us all feel very welcome and there was food enough for seconds for all. Benny, of course, only wanted to eat cake. He has somehow become a VERY picky eater which makes his life a little tough on the boat because we have a set food menu and he doesn’t like most of it. We also invited a guy named Shawn who lives alone on an old ferrocement ketch here. He sat at our table and gorged himself along with the rest of us.

Thanksgiving was always a really big deal when I was growing up. It was the holiday that would draw in more of my seven brothers than any other (of course they are all BIG guys so the feast probably played a part in that. I called home to Wyoming and talked with my Mom and could hear the sounds of family in the background. My niece Dr Sara is there with her new baby and several of my brothers were there. All of my kids talked on the phone with Grandma and we all missed them just a little bit more.

Later in the evening Rebecca called her family and they got on Skype so we had the cam going on our side and they could see us. We laughed and had a grand time like we were all together. Rebecca’s sister Amy and niece Ellie were there helping the rest of the family understand our life a little better since they stayed on the boat with us for a while last summer in Trinidad.

This lifestyle is great and none of us want to move on land again yet but during the holidays it sure is hard to be far away from those we love. Our buddy Christian would say, “Hey it’s part of the price of admission.” I think that is true, no matter what life you choose you have to take the good with the bad.

We Miss YOU ALL!

Captain Tofer, Becky, Jimmy, Emily, Kanyon, Kaleb, Benny and the dog Charlie

Anatomy of an Offshore Passage

While any offshore passage on any sailboat is in one way or another noteworthy (in my book at least), an offshore passage onboard Wandering Dolphin is perhaps a little more interesting than some. Take the normal ingredients for a passage, weather window, wind direction, wave height and frequency, speed and sail configuration, crew relationships and the drama that always occurs when you put people together in a very small world that rocks and rolls constantly and where most of your time is spent trying to find a way to stave off the boredom and the rest of your time is spent fighting or holding on for your very life. These ingredients all add up to a fairly interesting yarn no matter what. Wandering Dolphin just magnifies a few things by adding five children and a seasick dog into the mix we also refuse to kick on the engine to make life easier and, at least for the last few passages have to hand steer every mile because our auto pilot is out.

One of the most important decisions one makes when planning any offshore passage is the weather window. Becky’s sister said it best when she said, ‘You guys pretty much live by the weather don’t you?” We do too. When the weather is nice living on a boat is great, when the weather is terrible it becomes scary even anchored out. Passage weather is even more critical, being caught in a serious storm offshore instantly reminds you that you are a fly speck on an enormous, heaving world that cares not one bit if you live or die. My family believes in God and can find comfort knowing that He, at least, is master of those winds and waves, but we certainly plan our trips so as not to test His patience.

When Jimmy and I arrived back from our New York to Miami delivery on S/V Marinette we were confident that Rebecca would have Wandering Dolphin ready for sea. We were not disappointed, she had had the bottom scraped (nothing slower than a barnacle encrusted hull), provisioned and filled the water tanks. Every thing was stowed on deck and below so all we really had to do was wait for a weather window. I use about six different sources online for my weather information and all of them were in agreement that although there was a low to the east that coulp possibly develop into a tropical storm it was unlikely and that it would not enter the islands until late sometime on Tuesday. The winds were to be SSE switching to East at 15 to 18 knots and since we were going to be running a line straight offshore from Trinidad to St Croix we would be sailing NNW which meant we would have a beam reach most of the way (a beam reach is when the wind comes over the side of the boat just a little bit aft of center). This is generally a very fast point of sail with only one real drawback, the wind pushes the waves so the swells would also be on our beam. When you have beam seas the boat rocks back and forth and days of it can make the best of us feel like butter in a churn.

We had our weather window and now Rebecca would choose our departure time. She has become very adept at listening to my predictions for wind, waves and my guess for the speed of our boat and then totally disregarding all of that information, punching around some other numbers and figures of the present state of the moon in transit with the fog off of Nantucket and from who knows where else in her pretty head and coming up with the best time for us to leave so that no matter what we will arrive in daylight and NEVER, NEVER have to slow the boat to wait for the sun. In her mind this is the most evil thing a man can do to a woman and she will have none of it! At any rate she decided that we would have a normal supper and watch our shows and leave just after supper.

The night was beautiful as we pulled up our anchor and motored away from our friends from the summer. The kids all came out on deck and watched at a pod of dolphins escorted us by Scotland Bay where we had spent a very happy month or more, some of it with Becky’s sister Amy and niece Ellie. The dolphins played on our bow wake and made beautiful trails of phosphorescence (or foxcrescents as Kaleb calls it). As we headed through the cut with the outgoing tide our boat picked up speed and rushed along at almost 10 knots with the help of the current. The main sail was already up and double reefed which is our standard procedure on a night passage and now we pulled out the Genoa and the boat heeled over slightly on her beam reach. Then came the moment every sailor truly loves. We shut down the engine and suddenly were surrounded with nothing but the sound of the wind in the sails and the water rushing by the boat.

I have mentioned that our auto pilot is out but to those of you who live on land this may seem to be simply a minor inconvienience. You might picture us driving our boat along as you would your car on a long trip from state to state and think… “So what? That’s what you’re supposed to do right?” While to another sailor the mention of an offshore passage of any duration without a working auto pilot is met with a shaking of the head and usually a long discussion about how it can possibly be fixed before you leave. Why is this? I have personally driven across the country in a car almost non-stop… a car drive from Florida to Montana takes 3 days with only a few hours rest in a road side pullout. It is torture but possible. There is the difference you see? We are not at sea to be tortured… REALLY… our course is often the same straight line for days on end without even touching the sails except to reef them or pull them out for a little more speed. Without an autopilot someone has to steer for 24 hours! Fortunately we have three of us to divide the night watches with and four for the day. The way we do this is two hours at the helm in the day for EmilyAnne (at 12 we let her off the hook for night watches), Jimmy, Rebecca and myself. In a lot of ways this has been good for us. We have learned to balance the sails almost perfectly now so very little help is needed from the guy at the helm. Often with no tie off or anything one can leave the helm for up to a few minutes and the boat will still be right on her course when you sit back down at the captain’s seat. We have also been able to tie off the helm with a piece of string for whole days of sailing but only when we are going to windward. This trip with its beam reach was impossible for the string to work… every time the boat was hit by a wave from the side (wave is perhaps not the most descriptive word to used there since each one is about the size of a greyhound bus) and they hit the boat about every six seconds, the boat would sheer off her course and the string would hold her on her new wave altered one. So if you do the math it didn’t take very long for the boat to be heading for Panama instead to St Thomas. So we hand steer until our friend Auto is back in service.

When Rebecca was doing all her mojo to figure out the best time to leave she told Jimmy and I that she was figuring on an average of 6 knots… figuring there would be hours of 3 to 6 and hours of 7 and 8… Jimmy and I looked at her, looked again at one another and broke out in knee slapping, high fiving, laughter. “ Eight knots! What a dreamer!” We guffawed. But she stuck to her guns having apparently had a little girl talk with the Wandering Dolphin and made a secret pact that we guys knew nothing about. So on our first night out within minutes of turning off the engine I began to call down or speed and it sounded like this,
“We’re cruising at 7 now… Uhhh 7.5… 8… hey guys we’re going 8 knots… wait 8.5…. Hey what’s going on we are doing 9 knots and holding?”

And we did… it seems that our boat goes a lot faster with a clean hull and empty cupboards… we usually cruise with her all provisioned for months at sea rather than just enough food to make St Thomas… and she loved that beam reach she clipped right along doing 8 to 9 knots for the first 24 hours with a double reefed main and full Genoa.

During that first 24 hours of sailing we had our usual queue start up at the aft rail where the leeward side of Wandering Dolphin was repainted by Kaleb and Benny in modern pinks and browns as they succumbed to Mal de Mer. This trip was a little rougher than most because of the side to side motion of a boat on a beam reach. Jimmy and I having just returned from a rougher than usual Marinette delivery only suffered mild headaches in the first 24 hours. Rebecca just felt a little under the weather with a headache and lethargy. She never had to bow the knee at the scuppers to sacrifice her supper like the little kids though. Kanyon has a rock hard stomach and has never been sea sick he just gets sleepy and crawls into his bed like a bear going into hibernation. EmilyAnne was fine for days actually until she saw me up on the heaving bow with the video camera… for some reason watching her father lurch and sway his way forward and back with a video camera sent her right to the rails.

By far the biggest sufferer on our boat is our poor dog. As soon as Charlie heard the anchor coming up and the boat began to move he ran into Kanyon’s berth and hid at the very end of the bed, but we were hardly out of the harbor before he was up on deck spilling his dog biscuits. He stays sick for a day at least and is a truly miserable sight as he crawls around looking for a hole to hide in. I have never really thought it possible that a furry white dog could actually look green… but he does.

On the second day right before lunch we caught a nice Mahi Mahi. We always sail with two line dragging lures. Sometimes we make our own out of candy wrappers and tin foil but this time it was two store bought squid things in bright yellows and reds. I have been told that Mahi are always hungry and will strike at pretty much any colorful thing pulling through the water, this has not been my personal experience though. We seem to be missing something because we rarely catch fish. This one was a beautiful 15 pounder, just enough to feed our brood. I filleted the fish right in the scuppers and we wrapped the filets in tin foil with spices and oil and put it right on the BBQ. Beck made a pan of rice with soy sauce and that was lunch.

The first night we had beautiful sailing under a starry sky. Benny stayed up all night with the people on watch and he counted 11 shooting stars. He was a jabber box on my watch telling me all about the spacemen that lived on other planets and flew from star to star in their ships… the more I listened the more detailed the stories became. He loves to have an audience and the person at the wheel is captive.

On the second morning we were visited by a pod of spinner dolphins. I thought these little dolphins were only found in the Pacific but there was no mistaking them. They are tiny little dolphins with a mask and they leap into the air and do tight spins. I saw one as he came out of one wave do a double spin before entering the next wave. We all sat at the lifelines clapping and shouting encouragement just like the audience at the Olympics. On a side note I have to put in a little sad fact for those of you who do not know… the Tuna fisheries use these little dolphins to track schools of tuna, who for some reason, love to hang out with the spinners. The tuna boats then encircle the pod of dolphins with huge nets in order to catch the tuna. In this way hundreds of thousands of dolphins are dying every single year sometimes over 1000 dolphins die in a single tuna take. PLEASE check your tuna for the dolphin safe marking on the can, it is generally a little more expensive but certainly the least we can do to help these amazing mammals.

The second night we ate freeze dried food left over from my backpacking days…. Yep it’s still good and it’s easy to fix offshore as it only requires hot water. Rebecca was only appearing to take her watches, the rest of the time she was in lala land dreaming of soft meadows and hard packed earth. Everyone went to bed early and little Kaleb slept up in the bouncing v-berth where he had two fans blowing on him and could wedge himself between the sailbags.

Rebecca had the early morning watch on the third day and Jimmy and I were awakened by her calling all hands to reef the sails. As I came up the companionway I noticed a full blown squall rushing down on us… it had snuck up on Rebecca from behind and before we could get the Genny in it hit us with 45 to 50 knots of wind… the main was already double reefed but with a full 140% Genny flying that much wind was enough to drive the rails into the water on the lee side instantly… Rebecca had the crash course in rounding up under sail rather than trying to fight the push of the wind against the sail. Once she rounded up we were able to wrestle the sail in. I had to go all the way forward and pull the reefing line right at the furler while Jimmy helped Beck control the loose sheets… at one point the jib sheet got away from him and pulled right through the blocks ripping out the end of the sheet which had a figure eight stopper knot tied in it… by the time the sail was reefed the squall had passed over us and we had to clean up the mess.. The jib sheets were a tangled mass of knots and my hands were blistered from wrestling the reefing line. The rest of the day proved to be very squally and everyone was now watching behind them for the sneaky squall to come eat us for lunch. Rebecca is now a firm believer in REEF EARLY – REEF OFTEN!

That evening found us approaching home waters of St Croix and during the night we faught three more squalls, reefing in the sails, getting drenched, pulling out the sails, reefing the sails, getting drenched… Jimmy took over in the morning and he balanced the reefed sails and we zipped on over to St Thomas anchoring in Honeymoon Bay by 9:00am.

No passage is complete without the cleanup which took most of the day. We washed down the decks and all of the gear with fresh water, cleaned up the mess below, and put up the awnings.

We had a great summer but every one of us smiled ear to ear as we sat on deck in the sunset and looked at the perfect little crescent beach and the aqua blue water surrounding Wandering Dolphin… It really felt a lot like coming home!

Just some fun photos

Just some bits and pieces of our summer... enjoy and we miss you all.

The Burton Gang, Kristofer, Rebecca, Jimmy, EmilyAnne, Kanyon, Kaleb and Benny

Love life and never stop dreaming!

Trash

We always feel guilty when we are offshore and we take out the trash. It’s also one of those things offshore sailors try not to talk about with people who don’t ever leave sight of land, especially in today’s world of increasing environmental awareness. It’s a fact of life though that we humans create an inordinate amount of waste as a species and most of us in our homes on land think little about it after we take our trash out in our super duty black plastic bags which are made so well that they will protect our precious waste for hundreds of years in much the same condition it was when we threw it out and the garbage guy came and hauled it off for us. Some of us now have three or four different recycling bins in our homes and diligently put glass in one, plastics in another and metals in yet another. I applaud those folks who go through the effort and am even more amazed when I read about a city like Fresno, CA that actually follows through with these high ideals, unfortunately most cities end up throwing even the recyclables that folks have gone through the trouble to divide for them into the same old landfill. (On a side note the state of California has more cities in the top 10 of recycling than any other state.)

What do we do offshore? Well it’s a lot like the whole recycling thing as far as the dividing goes… on our boat we have two trash bags, one for the plastics and one for everything else. Cans are sunk to dissolve in the saltwater (I know the pop cans probably never will though, the aluminum will hang out on the bottom in 2000 to 7000 feet of water.) The glass is crushed with a hammer and thrown into the briny deep, while paper is ripped into small pieces to dissolve in the water after it floats around for a few months depending on its thickness. Plastic is NEVER thrown overboard it is kept to be thrown out on land where it ends up in a landfill buried with all of the landlubber trash. I know there are probably some of you, possibly even cruisers who think we are terrible to throw anything into Mother Ocean. Let me assure you I feel bad every time I do it and I actually believe it is the best thing we can do. I have seen far too many garbage dumps on beautiful little islands that are simply taking over a large portion of a place with far too little space already, places where the locals really could care a less and give very little thought to what they are doing to their island. I have been to at least three islands that actually take their trash to the windward side of the island where the waves are the biggest and a cliff keeps the trash from washing back ashore and they throw it ALL into the sea, plastic included, and watch as the tide takes it all out. One of those islands accepts trash from sailboats for $5.00 US and then they promptly truck it to the other side of the island and throw it into the sea. On this island we were chewed out by a fellow cruiser for throwing our trash (not plastics) into the ocean… they were very proud that they had saved it all in a huge stinky heap until they reached land… only to have the locals take $20.00 from them for four bags and throw it into the ocean still in the nice black bags.

Why did I even decide to write about this tonight? Because we heard a thumping against the hull this evening and when we went up to see what it was we were distraught to see this whole anchorage full of trash… It seems that sometimes when there are heavy rains the rivers overflow and all of the trash from upstream is washed into the ocean and when the tide turns it flows right up into all of the pretty little bays here. In case you think this is unique to Trinidad and decide to make it one of the reasons why you shouldn’t come here… we saw the same thing in the Dominican Republic, St Georges inner harbor in Grenada, St Vincent, and Dominica. I have noticed that the poorer the country the more noticeable their trash is as well. In more developed countries or islands we may be better at hiding our trash from view but it’s still there. Those plastic water bottles you insist on buying every time you are thirsty because you are afraid to drink the water… they will still be around in a thousand years.

What is the answer? Man… I am just a sailor… but it seems pretty simple to me… we need to start seriously recycling and stop throwing the stuff that can be reused in the ocean and in landfills and we need to start buying stuff that will actually dissolve away in time… hmmm Coke in a paper box? Maybe not but I bet if it actually cost them not to do it they would figure out a way.

The one thing I was glad to see was the look of horror on my little kid’s faces when they saw this pretty little bay turn into a garbage slough. Maybe someday they will find the answer to this problem since the grownups can’t.

Captain Tofer

An E-mail and Answer

To: sail@wanderingdolphin.com


Hello,

I have been talking to my wife for quite some time about sailing like your doing. She is interested but being the realist that she is she keeps bringing the question of money up and how that we would afford to keep sailing as neither of our jobs (aircraft mechanic and nurse) are mobile. So I was wondering are you able to work at some kind of job while sailing? We are currently saving as much as we can to make this dream come true but it is a SLOW process and we would like to do this while the youngest (currently 7yrs old) is still young.

Sorry if this question was answered in some earlier post that I haven't seen.

Thanks,
David Gillum and Family

ANSWER:


David,

Thanks for your e-mail. The whole money issue is probably the biggest set back people fac e when cutting the ties with land. This is a real lifestyle change... we went from owning our own buisness and having several car payments, credit cards etc to now having only about $150.00 per month in bills (bills that have a payment date each month that is) We no longer own a car or have a house payment (we own our boat outright). Our only two big issues are food for our huge family and boat maintenance. We have to stop and work for part of the year to do the work that needs done on the boat and to put enough away for food and living expenses for the months we are out cruising.
(A delivery with Changin Tags)
Jobs:

I have been delivering sailboats for about 3 years now so my oldest son and I head off every year for about 5 deliveries... either up and down the east coast or to and from the Caribbean. The money from these deliveries tends to all go right into the boat every year. We are always in need of new stuff and repairs to old stuff on the boat. I think most people who dream of living on a boat are unrealistic when they think of how much it costs to maintain a boat in "ready for sea" condition at all times. Owning it outright is the only way to go.. we also cut costs by anchoring out all of the time and doing all of our own work on the boat.


Rebecca has been a waitress for the past few years and has earned far more than she ever has before. The key is to find the right place during the right season. She earns more per day in tips in ST Thomas than I do as a Captain.

That being said, you have perfect career jobs for cruising... a nurse could have worked at any of the places we have stopped to work. She would have had a job on day one at any of our work stops... she could get a job here in Trinidad today where neither my wife or myself could. Your job as an Airplane mechanic has SERIOUS potential... we have a cruising buddy who is an airplane mech. and he does free lance work for some stateside company... they fly him back and forth to work on the planes when they need him... another friend of ours is a helicopter pilot who works in British Columbia during fire season every year and he and his family commute to and from their boat for half the year. Here is another thought... it surely wouldn't be a big deal for you to get certified on marine diesel engines... if you did that you could work anywhere cruisers are anytime... I would hire you this winter if you were anchored near me in St Thomas hehehe. Engine work is ALWAYS needed everywhere there are boats.

As a final thought... if this is a dream you share as a family and you are determined to do it, the hardest thing is to risk it all and just go... find the right boat that is seaworthy and that you can aford to buy... she may not look great when you buy her but with love and work you can turn her into a beauty... be willing to go through the stage of getting used to living in small space together... that really does go away eventually... and do what you love to do... work to live... don't live to work.
(Wandering Dolphin Before refit) (Wandering Dolphin After refit)

Good Luck!
Captain Tofer