Step #4 - Preparations - Sailing Playlist!

There is nothing - absolutely nothing -

half so much worth doing

as simply messing about in boats. 

- Kenneth Grahame

One may not think that a crucial part of preparing to "sail over the horizon" would include preparing a playlist of songs to accompany 'messing about in our boat'... but we love our music and finding just the right music to listen to while... lounging in the cockpit... or swabbing the decks...or setting crab traps or fishing lines... or... SAILING!...

...requires serious and constant searching.  So if you have some suggestions please post them in comments for us and we will add them to our playlist :-)

So far we have included:

Top of the list - Jimmy Buffet (of course!!)... all songs - but definitely:

Jimmy Buffett - Margaritaville
Jimmy Buffett - Lovely Cruise
Jimmy Buffett - Take It Back
Jimmy Buffett - changes in latitudes
Jimmy Buffett - Fins
Jimmy Buffett - Landfall
Jimmy Buffett - Mother ocean
Jimmy Buffett - One particular harbor
Jimmy Buffett - Pirate
Jimmy Buffett - Sea of heartbreak
Jimmy Buffett - Landfall
Jimmy Buffett - Boats to Build
Jimmy Buffett - Sea of Heartbreak
Jimmy Buffett - Son of a Son of a Sailor
Jimmy Buffett - Boats To Build (with Alan Jackson)
Jimmy Buffett - One Particular Harbor
Jimmy Buffett - The Captain and the Kid
Jimmy Buffett - Lovely Cruise
Jimmy Buffett - Mother Ocean

then...

Beach Boys - Kokomo
Beach Boys - Sail On Sailor
Beach Boys - Sloop John B
Beca Boys - Sail on Sailor
Billie Holiday - A Sailboat in the Moonlight

Bob Dylan-  Shelter from the Storm
Bobbie Darin - Beyond the Sea
Burl Ives - Away Rio
Burl Ives- Leave her Johnny leave her
Burl Ives- What do you do with a drunken sailor

and don't forget...

Cat Steven - Longer Boats
Cat Stevens - Angel Sea
Cat Stevens- The Wind

Chris De Burgh - Sailing Away

Commodores - Sail On

CSN - Shadow Captain

CSN - Southern Cross




CSN&Y - Lee Shore


David Gray - Sail Away

Frank Sinatra - Summer Wind

Gordon Lightfoot - Ghosts of Cape Horn
Gordon Lightfoot - In the Lee of Christian Island
Gordon Lightfoot — Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald



We both adore Great Big Sea... great energy!

Great Big Sea - A Boat like Gideon Brown's
Great Big Sea - Wave over Wave
Great Big Sea - Captain Kidd
Great Big Sea - Lukey
Great Big Sea - When I'm Up I Can't Get Down
Great Big Sea - The Night Pat Murphy Died

Great Big Sea - Donkey Riding - this is a fun one:-)



Harry Belefonte- Day Oh (Banana Boat song)
Harry Belefonte- Jamaca Farewell

Irish Rovers - Drunken Sailor

Joan Baez—Spanish Boots
Joe Cocker- Sail Away

Queen - Sail Away Sweet Sister

Rankin Family - Fare Thee Well Love

Rod Stewart - Sailing

Roger Whittaker - The Last Farewell

Stan Rogers -  Flowers of Bermuda
Stan Rogers - Fogarty's Cove
Stan Rogers - The Bluenose

Stan Rogers - The Queen of the Grand Banks' Schooners Rare footage of the original Bluenose schooner, racing against her Gloucester rival, the Gertrude L. Thibault, set to Stan Roger's inspiring music and voice.  Hats off to two great Canadian icons.

Stan Rogers - White Squall
Stan Rogers - Northwest Passage
Stan Rogers - Mary Ellen Carter

Stan Rogers - (I found this old video clip of Stan and the boys having a Kitchen Party singing... you guessed it...

Barrett's Privateers





Stan Rogers -Make and Break Harbor
Stan Rogers,-  Sailing Down to Ol' Maui

Sting - Valaparaiso
Sting - Why Should I Cry for You?
Sting -  The Wild Wild Sea

Styx - Come Sail Away (here's an old video of their performance of the song!)



Van Halen - Feels So Good
Van Morrison - Into the Mystic
Van Morrison - Moondance

and to end this blog on a serious hauntingly beautiful (musical) note from Crosby, Stills and Nash

Preparations - Step #3 - Books, books and more books!

This morning Bill was able to start work a little bit later so he spent his time poring over our little book Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen: Revised Edition by Mary Blewitt (when she says yachtsmen she says it in the most neutral-gender way)...first written in 1964 and this edition is 1995.

Before Bill left for work he marked the pages that he thought would be really helpful for me to read today (read -  if you don't get going on this we will be out on the open ocean and you will still be saying I really am going to study that book and learn how to take fixes).  I am setting my goal to read (and understand!!) those pages by the end of day.  I fell in love with this little book - or at least the concept of it-  when I read in her Preface "I have written for beginners - or for those who have forgotten all they know -and I have presumed them to be as ignorant and confused as I was when I began."  My kind of expert... making no assumptions of any knowledge at all on the part of the reader!!  Yes!!  I really can do this!

This book is packed full of very understandable explanations and examples for one to work through at your leisure!  As Bill likes to say this allows for his preferred mode of learning that of ... spreading your study over time and in different ways i.e.in his words "distributed learning".  (This is not the same phrase that is popular in current educational jargon meaning 'learning online' definitely not Bill's favourite mode of learning although he seems to handle both with ease!). I prefer to read a little, do a little, watch a little, and talk about it all a lot!

Since we have started this little project of preparing for our 'Big Cruise' I would say we now own a most extensive library of books (and DVDs) that relate... sometimes in the smallest of ways... to sailing.... and it continues to grow by the day (I believe we are now waiting for another 6 books to arrive in the mail!  Don't you just love Amazon???)  Some of them, like Mary's little book, are very technical packed full of valuable information that we read, write in the margins, fold over the corners (I know, I know, as I just heard the collective intake of breath in shock... we do mark up our books!) and study in great depth.  Others are both historical and present day novels and yet others are reference books that are to be dipped into at moments of need.  Then there are those that are a wee bit more philosophical, meant to inform and even inspire sailors of all shapes, sizes and knowledge such as my favourite... written by a woman who really understands me!!   

It’s Your Boat Too:  A Woman’s Guide to Greater Enjoyment on the Water by Suzanne Geisemann

is a must read for any woman who is thinking about and might be really, really uncertain, a little bit scared, and overwhelmed with the concept of spending months at a time in a relatively small, hopefully watertight, floating home...  Suzanne Geisemann, the author, writes in a voice that is not only reassuring, but inspiring!!  She talks about having a mind-set that will give you strength and confidence in really becoming a successful sailor, co-captain and last and certainly not least highly competent off shore cruiser!  

Yes!  I know - all this just from reading a book???  Really, you have to read it to believe it!  I sat up and read late into the night and most of the next day getting more and more excited about my possibilities for my success in this whole wonderful project!  Okay, enough gushing... but really it is a great book!


Now, throughout this blog I will mention the latest books or videos that we have discovered or are re-reading/watching... since I don't want this entry to be a comprehensive, extensive annotated bibliography (although I will create one to eventually have available for those of you who would like to see what our library really looks like - and you might even want to read a few yourself!).  


But before I leave this topic for today I must mention our cruising gurus... Lin and Larry Pardey (click on their names and you will see their website)  We have all of their books and DVDs and we not only voraciously read them as soon as a new one arrives we are constantly re-reading the ones we already have.  This couple has been cruising around the world full time since the early 70's (What were you doing in the early 70's??  I was heading out for my first big adventure in New Zealand where I first learned to sail!!).  They believe in the concept of "small is better" and to that end for many years they owned and sailed their self-built 24′4″ cutter Seraffyn until they built a bit larger boat Talesin which they still own and sail in their homeport in New Zealand (hey, remember this is our ultimate destination for this little trip of ours... in a later blog I will outline in detail our intended route).  Here's a little video introduction to this incredible couple :




Well, I think I better get reading Mary's little book so that by the end of the day I will be able to talk navigation stuff with Bill when he gets home ... won't he be surprised :-)

Well, must go for now and..."talk to you when I talk to you"... (in the favourite bidding farewell words of my sister Carole :-)

Cath

Preparations - Step #2

Ok... now that we purchased the boat of our (read - Bill's) dreams... we need to get to know her.  Even though there may be many boats like ours (we have hull # 231) each one has its own delightful idiosyncracies.

Now we needed to sail, sail and more sail in all kinds of conditions...

1) Light airs - in the Quadra May Day Race - this was a view from our deck to the three boats in front of us.  Racing really makes your learning curve steepen (at least it did mine!).

2) Moderate winds -  while sailing down to Port Townsend to have our new sails 'bent on'...

3)  Really light airs (aka 'can we really sail in these conditions?') -

4) Heavy winds and seas - during our trip back from Port Townsend in late March and early April (we were sailing in the northern part of the Georgia Strait while hurricane force winds created havoc)... hard to capture on film!

Of course this part of our preparation will be ongoing!

Beginning our preparations... Intros and Step #1

Cathy (aka Catherine)
















Bill (aka William)










I've been meaning to start this blog for a few months (just ask Bill, my dear hubby, who keeps saying "Why don't you set yourself a deadline" which means "Stop procrastinating and Just Do It [apologies to Nike]"). Well, I am now officially - ... Just Doing It!! Yay!! No more procrastination!

First things first... Introductions:

Bill, or William, Norrie (see photo above as I still have to figure out how to embed the photos exactly where I want them!)...

... passionate sailor, anesthesiologist, mountain climber (has climbed over 50 11,000+ ft. mountains in the Canadian Rockies and elsewhere in the world, including Bolivia and New Zealand!), gardener, reader and music lover including playing classical guitar (he will deny that he plays if you ask him to play a tune but he really is very good!)...

Cathy or Catherine Norrie...

...retired teacher-librarian - passionate about getting kids and books together (so still available for contract work in school libraries!); sailor (on a steep learning curve - Bill's a wonderful sailing instructor!), chef, gardener, writer, reader and music lover (especially loves to listen to Bill play his classical guitar!)...


I guess I should provide a bit of explanation for this blog and why I am starting it now... Bill has been a sailor/racer for many years and was even part owner of a sailing racer (a 38' C&C)for a number of years. His dream always has been to "sail over the horizon" in his own boat. When I became a permanent fixture in his life and he shared this dream with me I said "Well, let's do it - we are definitely not getting any younger!!" Now you have to know Bill to understand that when he hears encouragement like this he really gets into gear. The long and the short of it is that Bill and Cathy (i.e. William and Catherine) are now taking a 6 month leave of absence starting June 1, 2011 to "sail over the horizon" in their own boat!

We have been in the process of preparation ever since we made this decision (which was during fall of 2008)...