4/24/2015 0 Comments A Re-Imagined Future It has been two months now. Two full months and some of you have asked how we actually are aside from all the ‘jobs’ we have been doing.
The answer is, life has really settled into a normal routine for the three of us (oh and Capt’n Jack of course!) on board Argos! We have begun to become part of the little community of live-aboard sailors in Southport and have the experience now of going out to the grocery shops and bumping into people we know all the time! We have people over for meals and go out to other’s boats for meals. We get rides to hard-to-get-to shops like Bunnings, and meet up with friends at a local café. The children go swimming with other people from other boats and in so many ways we have come to feel at quite at home. I wrote a few months ago about the idea of re-inventing yourself – it’s a subject that really interests me – and once again I find myself doing exactly that! But with a twist this time. Many years ago I made a decision – after working on recovering from the childhood abuse I had experienced (you can read more about that on my other blog at www.milesawayfromabuse.com) - to never again be anyone’s victim. I have experience the loss of my marriage and all its associated hopes and dreams but maintained a very strong sense of okayness. I have felt contented that despite the many moments of sadness, despite the practical difficulties of actually managing the boat without my former skipper, that I have only felt the occasional drag down into a dark and gloomy place, and on the whole I have been able to maintain a pretty positive outlook. I have been living from that place I discovered when I worked on recovering from my childhood abuse and doing okay. I am so glad that during the recovery program I worked on that I learned to be real and honest and to connect with people during the painful experience of grief. I have remembered tools that helped me before and made sure I used them again – tools like writing about my feelings, allowing myself to own whatever feelings I have, allowing myself to cry when I feel sad and when I am watching movies that have nothing at all to do with what happened (!), allowing myself to grieve however I want to, reminding myself that there’s no right way or right process to follow – just allowing grief to unfold as it will and accepting it for what it is. And allowing myself to feel okay too and yes, to even notice moments of joy in the midst of the pain. And I have allowed the same for the children who of course have also had their own processes to work through and ways of dealing with things. In the past I have re-invented myself many times. I went from being the abandoned mother of 8 children to being the recovering survivor of abuse. From finally identifying as a co-dependant to being a recovering co-dependent. I went from being all of that to being a writer about abuse and recovery, a single and working mother and then out of the blue, a happily re-married and loved woman and then on to becoming a sailor! I am re-inventing myself again now but at a whole new level but re-inventing isn’t quite right the word for what I am doing as much as re-imagining. Because I feel a like I am in such a different place right now and the future is opening up before me in a way it never has before. I would never have imagined myself sailing – and the thought of me being the skipper of a boat would have been about the furthest thing from my imagination! I have discovered more capability than I would ever have imagined myself to have and while I do still feel scared in storms, I have learned that so do many fellas! In fact I am not very different to many of the guys I meet – we all have areas we are good at and things we are not so good at and my inabilities are not so much impacted by my gender as much as by my lack of experience. And this doesn’t just apply to me – we are all finding that we are re-imagining ourselves – Liam as a capable young man able to locate and handle the tools to follow through on many tasks and Erina just yesterday managed to reposition and install our very own anchor light – climbing the mast, drilling, sealing, joining wires…..you name it! What we can do today compared with what we have done for the last few years is out of the realms of all of our imaginations! And the thing is it’s only been two months. I can’t even begin to imagine what the future holds for us – but I have some inklings and it’s pretty cool! Becoming Mrs Argos may make it into print and just this week I have been informed that something I wrote last year has been included in the soon-to-be-released book ‘Simple Reminders for Health, Healing and Happiness’ by top-selling author Bryant McGill due out later this year and already on the New York Times Best Seller list for pre-order sales! It is absolutely awesome to have this kind of recognition, especially as my own book 365 Days of Hope in Recovery will be published later this year too! Doors are opening that I would never have imagined and I am thrilled! My article Should I stay or should I go now? Is in this month’s Cruising Helmsman magazine and next month another will be published. It is true that not all transformations are pleasant – as the caterpillar no doubt thinks when it enters the cocoon! But the opportunity to not just take a step forwards, but to leap into a unimagined future does not always have to be scary, that’s what we have been discovering on Argos!
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4/11/2015 4 Comments Mrs Argos and her crew! I was working on something for my page Miles Away From Abuse earlier – something about change and how sometimes we welcome it and invite it in because we are ready and hopeful – and other times change comes as an unwelcome guest creating only discomfort and frustration.
Of course the change that came to us recently was something we were neither expecting nor ready for but I have to say how very proud I am of my crew and the way they have responded to our changed circumstances. Because the thing about change is that whether it is something we are ready for and welcome or not, it is still always up to us as to how we deal with it – how we respond to it. And what has happened for us here is that we have responded to the challenge of change by lifting our game hugely and taking on more responsibility and doing a good job of it! Today was an excellent example of what I mean. I have been working on areas around portholes and hatches that had been leaking – they are repaired now with new rubber seals and I have been taking care of the wood surrounding them – sanding back, sealing edges and varnishing. I was feeling very happy with the work I had done. I came down to the rear cabin (our living space) to find Liam surrounded by coils and coils of cable! It belonged to the internet antennae which had been looped up outside when we installed it back in Airlie Beach last year as there was more than we needed. It looked ugly but also had been fed inside through the exhaust fan opening and then wound its way through the galley in a most unattractive way! Liam has a to-do list these days and when not reading (which he does a lot of) is often pottering about with a drill or screwdriver in his hand fixing doors that jam, or other things! The transformation from oft-time-assistant-to-the-skipper when required to man-about-the-boat, responsible to make sure we have water, fuel in the generator and dinghy tank and a whole host of other boy-ish things is very well under way! So there he was, working away at a task from his to-do list, to re-route the cable and store the excess inside and out of the way. I have always been proud of my kids but I get prouder all the time! At the same time Erina was finishing off some brownies she had cooked for our electrician, Craig. We ran into him on our way to the grocery store, and he had mentioned that he had had a very quiet birthday - on his own on a neighbouring yacht – oh that’s a bit rough we said and then suggested that perhaps the cake-fairies might have to do something about that and invited him to drop in on his way home so we could give him some! But it’s not just her awesome cooking skills and her capacity to make sure our boating life is like living in a top restaurant that impresses me about her - she has also become the chief rigger, as she is the only one comfortable up the mast! We are still working on the mast light – which has proven to be a bit trickier than first thought as it can’t be installed where the ancient and unused one was – but she is determined to find a way to install it herself. When she isn’t up the mast taking awesome photos she is checking for chafing and fixing things herself. We continue to appreciate the help and support of the local boating community. This week a big shout out goes to Carlos who came and showed Erina and Liam a lot of things about outboard motor maintenance and my brother in law David for also helping us work out why the motor was causing us issues – working out that the water inlet was clogged with barnacles and to Robin and Sue who came down from Brisbane over Easter who have shared coffee with us and supported and encouraged us no end! Craig our electrician has become very well acquainted with the engine room and now feels that he has got to the bottom of every problem – we no longer hear him call out ‘Oh no, I just found something else!’ We still have to program some of the devices and install one more device that allows for the battery charger to automatically switch between batteries to receive the solar charge – but our power system is working so much better and we look forward to a time in the near future when we will be able to add more solar panels enabling us to rarely need to run the generator! This will involve an initial outlay in cost – when we can manage it - but a long term saving on fuel. Craig is also Jack’s latest favorite person - making it a challenge for Craig to work with Jack rolling over at his feet constantly waiting for him to rub his tummy! The transformation of Argos that began when we went into the Boatworks and started working on her hull, continues daily in some big and some smaller ways. But in addition to the transformation of Argos, there is definitely a corresponding transformation of us on board. At first it felt like the most massive challenge to stay on board and manage her on our own, but every day we increase our skills and it becomes more and more normal for us be pottering around in the engine room and fixing things and getting excited about trips to Whitworths or Bunnings! We are becoming Mrs Argos and her crew! 4/1/2015 0 Comments Wires and Fuel! It was our intention, when we got Argos back in to the water after the time we spent cleaning and painting, antifouling and fixing things at the BoatWorks, to come down to the Gold Coast Broadwater and practice our motoring and anchoring skills and just spend a bit of time relaxing after all our hard work!
Unfortunately we have had on going issues with the engine and batteries and we have not been able to actually move much at all without help of the towing variety! But we have been doing a bit of relaxing and calming and that has been lovely and provided us the opportunity to breathe and de-stress and let some of the pain and angst of the past weeks begin to fade. We have had a little practice with anchoring – once when the large old fishing boat next to us was dragging his anchor and we asked him if he could move a smidge as we couldn’t, and he turned out to be a young fella on his own on the boat, with not a lot of capacity to anchor by himself – so he asked if we would mind moving instead and then he ended up towing us to where a nicer spot had emerged – closer in and a bit more comfortable for us! He runs a surf taxi service and we spent a few fun evenings listening to his stories about meting people like Kelly Slater and adventures he has had! And then this week we have been fortunate on two counts to get some work done on our power supply by a local electrical business and by having some help from a retired boat builder who helped me finally understand how our complex fuel system works. So we are now able to start the engine and keep it going and we moved across the Broadwater on Monday – and today we plan to move back into Bums Bay so we have ended up getting a bit of practice in after all! We have had excellent assistance from Daniel and Craig from TechMarine (www.techmarine.net.au) a marine electrical business located here at Southport. Craig has spent a little bit of time on board just trying to figure out why our batteries don’t hold their charge and how we can improve the system. He has tried to make sense of the years of wiring and re-wiring and layers upon layers of obsolete systems with new things just kind of added in on top and tried to make things actually work. We have learned a lot in the process and Craig has been lovely at showing Liam what he is doing and encouraging him with how he can manage a lot of this stuff. We are not done yet – we need new controllers for the solar panels which were wired in wrongly so that they were losing power before feeding in to our batteries, and with an automatic isolating switch that will ensure power is supplied and switched over to where it is needed and a new display that will enable us to actually know what power levels we have and when something needs attention. This will take up the last of the money we have and we still haven’t got the heat exchange fixed but that may need to be a job we postpone for a while and we may need to nurse the engine a little longer! In addition to the work done by TechMarine, we had a great visit from Bruce Legg who is a boat builder, and experienced sailor who saw our Save Argos page and offered some of his time and knowledge to lend us a hand! He has been able to finally help me understand the complexities of our fuel system, worked out where our tanks are, how they are fed, how they are filled and why we have had issues with what we thought was fuel sludge. It turns out that our fuel is fed somewhat differently to what had been previously thought and that we have never really understood the system at all! Bruce, with his experience and having built boats himself was unfazed by the panel of switches and levers in the engine room – and tracked back the hoses to the tanks. He worked out why we get gurgling air up the pipe when we fuel up and how to stop it – he was able to understand our system and explain it very well to me and so now I understand what things are and how to make it all work. We had what we thought was an issue with fuel sludge as we crossed the Mooloolaba bar last year and then again just two weeks ago when I came to anchor here in the Broadwater – but the situations were different and the problem recurring didn’t make sense - now we understand properly how the fuel flows it makes a lot more sense and it is clear that it was a fuel flow issue at Mooloolaba too! Bruce also helped with some other niggly issues on board – fixing portholes that have always leaked, helping us get a proper mast light set up, issues with the dinghy fuel, and shared a myriad of things with us about Argos and her systems that we never knew. What a blessing! So as Easter approaches we are beginning to feel a little excited that it won’t be long before we will be beginning to make our way north! We are planning on heading off from here and making our way up the windy passages towards Brisbane. We hope to stop in Brisbane a couple of weeks and then, with the assistance of a new crew member, we will head hopefully as far as Hervey Bay (via Mooloolaba). From Hervey Bay we hope to be joined by another new crew member who will come with us all the way to Airlie Beach where we will then go it alone and practice anchoring and sailing and living in the calmer waters inside the reef, and where we have a bunch of cruising friends to learn from! We are slowly coming to terms with all that has happened in the last month. We have begun the journey of emotional healing and while my physical health has not been as good as I would like, I am hoping things will settle as time progresses and I develop more confidence in myself as skipper Sue and commander of our little life on board Argos! We have been so encouraged by the support we have known and been so blessed by the way so many people have shown us kindness – we still have a ways to go but we are so glad we made the decision to stay with the boat and not abandon her as we were abandoned. |
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September 2017
Our life aboard Argos has been seriously challenged this year with the surprise departure of our skipper. As a writer, diesel mechanics and the complexities of many aspects of Argos’ on-going maintenance are way beyond me! We would like to see Argos continue to sail and eventually hope to use her to offer support, encouragement and a break to people who are struggling in their lives. Any on-going help towards maintaining Argos would be greatly appreciated and enable us to achieve this goal.
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