I feel so terrible, enjoying a lovely warm summer, riding my bike with friends, having barbecues… All the while, Constellation is battling sub-zero temperatures, snowstorms, loneliness and a lack of love…

Thanks so much to Jeff W. of Greenport for the photograph - !

Also many thanks for all the votes in my recent attempts to win over the ING $10,000 ‘My Dream Is‘ competition - [update] Winners already announced, we didn’t win! As they say in Germany… ‘Schade’. Nevermind, I’ve gotten this far; we’re unstoppable!

Now, since I’m not doing much sailing at the minute (take a look at that photo up there again), you should go and see what Lee Winters is up to - He’s just started his dream of sailing solo around the world, with Jargo his boat, and his gorgeous malamute friend Georgia. Lee is also responsible for a very possible change of plans next year… Don’t worry, the voyage is definitely not going on hold, but only getting slightly more mad. More on that later…

If I don’t post before 25th - Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate it! With particular attention to all who are alone for whatever reasons. Two Christmas’s ago I was in England, alone on a freezing boat with a stupid idea, a six pack of Tesco’s mince pies, and tea candles to heat the cabin:

Nick.

I’m not even going to apologise for going on all these blog holidays… Actually no, I can’t help myself, I’m terrible, I’m sorry… Apologies also go to all those people who write to me, and get replies weeks later, or have their words drift into binary obscurity as emails back themselves up thirty pages down. So now, from the comfort of the worlds smallest continent, I’ll try and explain.

Two Friday’s ago I had the fun opportunity to talk to a bunch of little people. While I tried to make funny jokes about visiting Columbus’s house in the Canary Islands, and the reason for painting Constellation red was purely to increase her speed, questions about deadly snakes and whether Tasmanian devils really exist abounded. In all reality, I feel that little people are able comprehend killer animals better than small boat voyages - One seems cool, and the other makes little or no sense. At my uncles school I spoke to three classes of third graders about sailing, Australia, venom and geography. It was great fun, and I’ve decided to sell Constellation and invest my money in time machine research, because having your lunch made everyday, getting half day on Friday’s, and playing with toys for 70% of your time, is awesome.

For some reason the above photo is my most viewed on Flickr - If that’s because it looks like a little person is giving me the finger, you’d be wrong - I believe I was actually getting the thumbs up for suggesting the idea that all Australian animals are either weird looking, or trying desperately to kill you.

After nervously standing among the little people to talk, it was soon time to board a Qantas 747-400 back to Australia. Oh! How did that happen? Well, the short of the long, is that one can only stay in America for 6months before overstaying a B1/B2 visa, and potentially never being allowed to re-enter. Don’t mention Canada, because their border doesn’t count for ‘flag poling’ (exiting the country to renew your visa). Therefore I had every intention of visiting Europe, as London was the cheapest destination across the Atlantic, and Australia was out of the question. That was of course until my family pooled all their hard earned frequent flyer points together, and coupled with fees & charges, I managed to buy a ticket for less than a return trip to the United Kingdom. I kept everything hush hush, poised for a great suprise on home soil, and managed to stealthily keep my arrival under wraps and shock those that thought I’d be at least another year until Constellation’s bow bumped into Australia.

It’s been a great reunion, and while I’ve just spent two years and seven months noodling around the planet, all my friends have all been doing exceptionally well in their endeavours, and it’s being such a treat to see everyone after such a long time. I continue to be essentially homeless here, and will remain so until January, when I am set to fly back to chilly New York. I’ve been propped up in spare rooms, childhood bedrooms and friends houses through upstanding generosity over the last week, and must thank all involved (you know who you are).

Coming home has also had its elements of complete strangeness. On the one hand, I need to look at my own photos and pinch myself, in order to make sure I’ve actually done what I’ve said (you know, all that sailing business) - As in, I wonder if I ever left. Yet conversely, I feel like a stranger, trapped in a familiar dream, almost as if I’ve stood still and everyone else has kept walking… Or maybe instead of walking forwards or backwards, I took a left turn down an unnamed street in an unnamed city. Really, I have no idea, and this is probably my jet lag talking… I hate jet lag, and every day at 2am New York time, I want to curl up and hibernate.

So other than general strangeness, what else has changed? Well, it seems everything is 30% more expensive, and by the tone of my friends, their wages have not increased in equal proportion. Which is of course standard story - If you artificially increase the price of things just a little bit more every month, no one notices, and no one complains. There also seems to be a myriad of fresh petty laws, Police Hummvees lining the city streets, and a wave of inner city violence to boot. Maybe it’s connected to the price increase of sausage rolls ($3 guys, where are the protests!) and rent… From the looks of things, the only safe activity these days is to stay at home and play Nintendo Wii.

Anyway, it’s definitely a clear sign of old age when you complain about the cost of living and violent crime… So, before I begin ranting and raving, let’s leave it at that!

More frequent updates on the horizon, promise.

nick.

Wow, sorry for being so terrible on updates… I’ve been busy with a new job (yes, I have a job - More in another post!), a little traveling and more work on Constellation, as she continues to get revamped for the voyage ahead. While I haven’t been great on posts, I do upload photos and other things periodically - The frontpage always contains all updates related to my trip - Photos, twitter, blog etc.

Mari, who has been dedicating a lot of time and effort to help me over the past month, continues to assist, and Constellation is really coming together. We’ve even managed to build a new boom from a Catalina 30, that was lying in the yard in gross disrepair. With all manner of noisy tools, we cut two feet off the end, re-fashioned the end-boom roller fitting, and made various other modifications. With most of the new boom finished, we mulled over how it was actually going to connect the boat, at which point Mari disappeared to his computer and made an Autocad drawing of the stainless pieces we needed. He then emailed off to his friend Peter in another state, who had the pieces made and Fedex’d back - Genius! Thanks so much to Peter for helping out! If I hadn’t ended up being surrounded by engineers, I would have been left to fashion it Nick style, which no doubt would have involved lashing the boom to the mast with tin wire and electrical tape.

While Mari did beautiful things with hot air guns and soldering irons:

I pulled the starboard toe rail off, and re-bedded it in an attempt to stop the mysterious leaks I’m encountering. Constellation continues to look forlorn on land, but, of all the boats in the yard, she definitely looks like she’s sailed the furthest, and in my opinion, looks pretty cool with all that gear hanging off the stern (not including the fenders)!

My new job allows me to work from anywhere (perfect!), so I took the opportunity to visit Cape Cod in Massachusetts. I’m really falling in love with the North East of the USA… And I’m putting on weight as I sample as many New England Clam chowders as possible. I’ve even had lobster roll or two, in attempts to make up for overdosing on Ramen for the past year. I might grow a big bushy beard and start wearing flannel.

More photos in the usual place

The US media continues to attract my attention with its madness over the economy and the election. I remember how lucid and relative things felt, when I was somewhere about here. It’s places like that where you have happy existential moments, if you can imagine such a thing.

As to how Constellation will get to the Pacific, I still don’t really know. I do hope with my new job I will be able to save enough to truck as planned, and as the petrol prices seem to have plummeted of late, maybe it will become more affordable. I’ve recently heard rumours that boats have traveled overland via the Canadian railway, but I can’t really find any clear evidence or services. Is there anyone out there that knows something about this?

I’m very much looking forward to some deep offshore sailing with Constellation, and I really just need to get to San Francisco for an April/May 2009 departure. I now look at a map, and while we have a long way to go, sailing direct from San Francisco to the Marquesas, or even Fiji direct chops off a massive part of my voyage in a single stretch. If all goes to plan, I may very well be in Australian waters by this time next year. That may sound like a long time, but it isn’t - It’s just around the corner… Around this time last year, I was in France just about to do my first big offshore leg across the notorious Bay of Biscay, and I remember it like it was yesterday. Back then, I was terrified but adamant… Unsure of how I could keep things rolling. But we’ve come a long way since then, and now it’s all just a matter of more hard work, time, and good fortune.

Thanks everyone for your continuing support and good wishes - I continue to get emails every week from well wishers, and they never cease to amaze me!

nick

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.