Sailing on your own all the time isn’t easy. Nor is finding the motivation to work alone on your own boat, especially when you’re not going anywhere soon. Working alone, can be characterised as a series of events related to figuring out how things are attached to the vessel, and more importantly, how to un-attach things from the vessel. All screws are usually through-bolted on the other side, leaving you to run into the boat, put a pair of vice grips on the nut, run back out, and through great patience take something apart.

So when Mari offered to help me, I was overjoyed. When he told me he was an electrical engineer, and I glanced at my switchbox, I did a little dance inside my head. It feels like just yesterday when I had that box wide open, manually shorting wires to try and get my nav lights working again. I never did, and ghosting into Greenport with the cabin lights as a poor substitute, it wouldn’t be until several months down the track, that I’d realise that the North Fork of Long Island were not going to let me leave again without a completely seaworthy boat.

So Mari dropped by, and asked what needed to be fixed… It was difficult trying to explain that everything needed to be fixed. I didn’t want to scare him off, but I had to be honest: Constellation was built in 1972, and I had kept things barely working through lack of money, proper tools, and a second person to help me make real repairs. The Austrians are meticulous, the Australians are adaptive. I had adapted to a boat that had so many ‘quirks’, each individual system required special knowledge just to make it function, or knowledge of where the breakages were so as to be extra careful. Nevertheless, Constellation is an incredibly well built and seaworthy boat, straight off the rack. So while I may have been less than savvy from a number of different angles, my decision on her as the boat that could do it, was sound.

We carefully took each leaky window out, drove back to Mari’s workshop, cleaned, straightened, drilled and sealed each window, before mounting them back and marveling at the possibility of a dry interior. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that, taking several days of somewhat irritating and gooey labour. In the meantime, Mari either didn’t sleep, or had engineered several more hours of daylight onto the average day, and rebuilt my electrical panel. It now sports new switches, an LCD panel, displaying volage & current, both in and out (ie. charge from the solar panels), and even has descriptive labels! Not so long ago, the ‘EMG/NAV’ switch could have turned on any number of things, depending on what state of mind I’d been in at the last at-sea re-wiring exercise.

While all this was underway, the amazingly generous Mike Acebo of the Brewer Yacht Yard in Greenport, put two people on the job of sanding and antifouling the bottom with Interlux Micron 66. Mike has been instrumental in helping me out here in Greenport, yet I’ll dedicate an entire post to his generosity at a later date.

As the antifoul dried, Mark from Doyle Sails dropped by with my foresails recut to suit a furler, and a new sail cover. Mark was disappointed to hear I was trucking the boat, thinking I wasn’t a purest… He had a change of heart when told of my intentions to cycle, and so I was forgiven to contemplating the use of land to transport a boat.

There are still many jobs to complete, yet at last things are feeling more upbeat. When Constellation came out of the water, I knew it was going to take such an enormous effort to get her back in. My friend Walter and I put together a list of things ‘to do’ one rainy night, and the next day I looked at it with an air of depression… Yet now things now are coming together, and slowly Constellation will return to a state of seagoing glory.

Thank you so much to Mari, Mike, Nino, Rick, Walter and Mark for everything: Not only for the assistance, but also for the morale boost it provides. The wheels of this whole thing are still churning forward, even when at times it all seems ridiculous and even laughable!

And on the topic of ridiculous, I’ve put together a new video about my trip from the Caribbean to New York. It somehow blew out to 33minutes in length, and I apologise profusely for even thinking I could entertain you for that long, while I gawk and moan at the camera for 28 days.

nick.

When I flew to Vancouver for a wedding some weeks ago, a friend said to me “have fun on your vacation from your vacation!”, which I thought was quite hilarious. Is that the general consensus?

It’s been almost exactly one year since I set sail from Monnikendam, Holland, singlehanded, and here I am in New York. When I re-read the post about my departure, it genuinely felt like I’d left just several hours ago. I can still smell the hickory in the air from the Eel smoke house; I still remember shaking the dockmasters hand as I left on that rainy day; a line squall on the horizon… There was no one else around, it was a weekday, as I pushed out the bow and jumped onboard, motoring out through Amsterdam and the North Sea canal. It rained like never before, and I whistled a happy tune as the rain trickled down my neck, and ‘August the mighty Yanmar’ powered us through the centre of Amsterdam.

It wasn’t long before that, when Constellation was sitting on jack stands in a marina in England. I was living onboard, working part time in a pub so I could work on the boat, climbing the ladder every night, waking up to sand the hull, and then repeating the previous days schedule. Every day felt heavy on the one hand, yet full of endless promise on the other. I had this lovely boat, and a wonderful dream, yet we’d never sailed together before, I had no cash reserves other than my weekly paycheck from the pub, which was quickly spent at the chandlery. And still I told everyone who asked, that I was sailing to Australia.

That feeling has returned: Constellation is back up on jack stands, only this time, on another continent. She’s beaten and battered, we have over 6000 nautical miles under our belts, and yet there is a heavy feeling in the air again… It’s that same sense I had every morning I woke up in England - Of impossibility, yet an unnerving compulsion to keep going. In England the challenge was to just to get the boat in the water - To see if she floated, and to see if we could float together. Amazingly we did, and in the end we floated all the way down the coast of Europe to the Caribbean, and then north again to New York.

So as the leaves change colour again, Constellation is on land, and the new challenge is to put her on a truck, and go overland 3000 miles to the Pacific. That challenge is the new weight on my shoulders, as we battle on to keep the voyage going. I was laughed at for suggesting I was going to sail across the Atlantic, and now I’m being laughed at for suggesting I’d truck a boat across America, following closely behind on a bicycle. In fact, when I say it out loud, I can really see the absurdity of it all, and do seriously spend days wondering what exactly it is I’m doing. The large majority of my friends are well placed professionals; some have kids, others have husbands and wives, and some even have dogs and houses. I mostly shudder at the thought of having any of that, yet the built-in societal sanity checker is in overdrive - Lately I can’t help but wonder if I’ve surging ahead, or being left behind. In my days of great realisations, I know there is nothing to be ahead of, or behind, yet we all have periods of self-doubt, and mine are triggered by seeing a small red boat out of water.

So in the midst of all this, I recently received the “Seamanship Trophy” for my voyage so far, from the Contessa Association in the UK. I was never one for awards, nor for trophies, yet receiving unsolicited pats on the back from sailing associations is certainly rather nice. Special thanks to Jo Mooring Aldridge for accepting the trophy on my behalf, and thank you to the Contessa association for their support of my endeavours.

And so the vacation continues… Yet, as far as I’m concerned, vacations are lovely periods of sitting on the beach, spending the first week in utter relaxation, and the last week thinking about going back to work. Technically I have no job to go back to, yet the past year has been in that latter mode of vacation - You’re not at work, per se, yet your head is totally consumed. This last year has been the greatest, as well as the hardest in my life, and I’m not even half way, with every spare brain cycle dedicated to continuing this journey. Since this projects inception in mid-2006, it’s all I can think of, it consumes me every single day, it’s what I dread most, and it’s all I can do.

Thank you so much to everyone who’s been following so far,

nick.

Several weeks ago, a small powerboat arrived in the marina, with its occupants holding up a picture of the article recently published in the Suffolk Times newspaper here on Long Island, asking for the ‘guy on the frontage’. That was me, I was found, and so there I met an incredibly lovely family who wanted to hear more about my voyage. As they left the dock, they exclaimed ‘you should come around for a BBQ!’.

A week later, they were back with a crazy idea: What if they were to throw a party, to raise money for Constellation’s trip across America? I thought they were joking. But, it was no joke, and so a stunning party was held at a gorgeous house on the shores of Greenport:

Trina, me, Carolyn & Joe

All sorts of people came, amazing food was laid out, money was raised, and I was amazed.

Not long ago I met someone whom I told about my trip, and about the generosity of people along the way. They looked at me, and said I must have such a different outlook on life, because so many people help me, and so many people are interested in what I’m doing. I’m not sure if my entire perception has changed, but a life where you’re regularly helped by strangers certainly changes your view of people in general. This party was no exception, and what a generous gesture - Thank you so much to the Ferrara family for reaching out to me, and to everyone who attended and chipped in.

At the party I also had the opportunity to announce a new addition to my travels: (Drum roll… !) As Constellation is trucked across America, I will follow by bicycle, riding from Long Island, to San Francisco. This new portion of the ‘voyage’ will turn my trip from Europe to Australia, into a wind & human powered expedition, making it unique among similar endeavours. I had hoped to start the bicycle leg of my trip in October, but as of today, I don’t think that’s possible. I still have money to make for the transportation of Constellation (among a dozen other things), as well as many logistical problems to solve with regards to repairs on the boat, and now also for cycling. I hope to ride across America spending one day a week working on Habitat for Humanity construction sites, as well as doing talks at schools in landlocked states about the sea. This all takes a great deal of planning and forethought, and so I suspect it will not be until spring that I’ll be able to depart.

With this addition of the trip, I now am in great need of cycling equipment - If anyone has any ideas, or things lying around they don’t use which you might think could be useful for a 3000mile cycle across the country, let me know!.

nick.

P.S Thanks to everyone who left really nice comments about the short film I clipped together.