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I suppose that most would consider our little family to be fairly computer literate. We have high speed internet on the boat which we access with 3 laptops and one Internet Tablet. We run a couple of personal blogs (WeLiveOnABoat.com, LifeAboard.ca) and two comercial sites (NeighboursAppliance.com, ScrapScene.com.) We use things like Skype (long distance phone calls) all the time, do our banking on-line and plan our days and lives with on-line tools such as Google Calendar and Remember the Milk. We use xDrive for our on-line backups.

I’ve been asked several times how get get internet on the boat. We have used 3 different internet suppliers here.

The marina where we are docked have a company that supplies wireless internet (for a fee) to the boaters in the bay. Their speeds are really good, especially the 2 meg uploads but their signal fades badly in various places around the marina including our winter slip here. I can use their access point in the front of the boat, but not in the back.

I also have an ‘air card’ that plugs into my laptop that I use primarily on the road at work. The speeds are Ok but not good enough for Skype - perfectly fine for basic surfing and email though. We use this connection when our other supplier is down.

Finally, our main internet supplier is a wireless modem unit called Rogers Portable Internet. The speeds are good to great for downloads but uploads can occasionally be a bit slow. It works good for Skype voice but can occasionally drag a bit on Skype video. We have it shared with a wireless router so that we can all be on the internet at the same time. (The Boy even has my old laptop which he uses to watch Bob the Builder, etc. videos on YouTube. He can pull his laptop out, turn it on and surf (via bookmarks) to his YouTube videos. He’s 3 yrs old…)

Others have expressed concerns about the moist environment on a boat being bad for computers. We have not experienced any problems with this while on board unless you count dropping a water bottle on one of the laptops shorting out the keyboard - oops. For the most part, laptops today seem to be fairly durable. The one I am writing on right now is 2 yrs old and travels with me in my service truck everyday. That means vibration, dust and constantly being slapped around and it is still working fine. Of course, tomorrow it will quit! I guess what I am saying is that we’ve have had good experiences with laptops on our boats.

There has been a couple of hiccups with the new blogging platform.  Thanks to Marc I found out my feeds were not working.  I think they are fixed now - I think…  You might have to unsubscribe and then resubscribe to get them working for you.

Subscribe away - let me know if there are any other problems.

Thanks.

We moved to our summer slip this afternoon. It’s good to be finally moved over here. It will be darker at night as we are away from the building plus we should have less bird poo everywhere for the same reason.

Tonight there was a beautiful sunset. We did not get to see much of it though because The Boy was blocking the view. Nice posterior…

Many thanks to all those of you who put in your 2 cents about our ‘crossroads’ issue. We are a little further along the path of deciding… but are not yet ready to reveal what our plans are. For now - it’s summertime and I live on a boat!!!

The mast is finally back up (I had taken it down for the winter to do some repairs) and everything is working the way it should. I’ve put on the boom and the mainsail - but still have to pick up the jib from the sail repair shop where it spent the winter. We plan to be sailing this weekend.

We have not yet moved to our summer slip which is a little further out from the main building, but plan to move at the latest this weekend. More likely Thursday.

Stay tuned for a review of the The 4 - Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.

Reminds me of a Bible verse: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6

Nice to know my boat will be clean when I get home from work today!

Our local Ma and Pa swan now have 7 little swans (signets? I have been corrected - cygnets) to take care of.

The boy loves feeding them - plus it is a way to get rid of our old mouldy bread. The swans seem to love it.

“Please sir, may I have some more?”

OK - to answer a couple of questions first…

No, the boat did not sink…
I wish we were out on the lake sailing…
My not writing anything for a while does not mean that I do not like you…(get some self-esteem buddy!)

I think those were the main ones.

Life on board the S/V Strathgowan is good. We have finally shed our winter shell and have got most everything ready for summer. All that is left is for the mast to go up and some small odds and ends. To make excuse for why I’ve not written, I have to refer you to my wife’s blog ScrapScene. (I’ll explain more on that in a minute.) I’ve been writing, stumbling, SEO’ing, etc. - all the things that one must do to get a blog up and running. All this takes time and kind of sucks my writing well dry. But, I’m back! - for now…

We have decided to stay at our winter marina for the summer this year. In the past we’ve moved between two marinas for the summer and winter. However, everything is just closer to the marina where we winter. The grocery store is just across the road, the mail box is a 5 min walk and there are lots of little restaurants within shouting distance. Never thought that I would want to move closer to the action, but here we are. We will move to a different dock which is further out away from the building which should give us some summer breezes and get us away from the bustle of the marina itself. However, the dock is not yet open due to repairs that are still taking place from the wind storm this past Feb. It really did a number on the docks here and the repairs have been going on for several weeks now.

I still have to pick up my jib from the sail repair shop where it spent the winter getting a couple of seams repaired. I really should learn how to do these types of repairs myself - but then I would not be able to store my sails at the repair shop. It will be nice to finally get the boat out on the lake and sailing again - hopefully this coming week.

OK - on to other news.

My wife (A) is pregnant again. She’s due in the fall and that means that means we’ve got about 5 months to figure out what we are going to do regarding our living arrangements. Is an Alberg 30 big enough for 4 people? Ha - some would say that it is not big enough for 2! I don’t mind living in a small boat (which is kind of weird, ’cause I’m a big guy) but A is not too enthralled with the idea of adding another person to our already cramped space. So, what to do…?

We are heading toward a major crossroads in our lives. This fall we will have the opportunity (or necessity) to go in any of several directions. Here are the options that we are considering:

• Status Quo - stay where we are on the Alberg 30. Just make it work.
• Buy a bigger boat to live on.
• Move on land - i.e. buy another house, rent an apartment, etc. (actually, we are not really considering this, but it is an option.)
• Move to another part of the country - buy a house, rent an apartment, find another job and generally rejoin the ‘normal’ life.
• Move all our stuff off the boat, pack up our Boler camping trailer and head out on the road - visiting my family in Manitoba for a while then heading south for the rest of the winter. (My personal favorite.)

There is a common thread throughout this list of options - that is: money. How does one finance: a new boat - a new house - a move - or a mobile lifestyle?

Enter ScrapScene.

If, (and it is a big if) we could generate an income from ScrapScene - an income that is large enough to support any of the above options, then our decision becomes one of choice. Because ScrapScene is a web-based blog we could conceivably operate it anywhere that we have access to the internet. That would enable us to live a Mobile Life - as long as we could tap into the Internet at regular intervals. When, at any time in the past, was this an option for a young family? Especially a family that is not supported by a trust-fund or old money. Never. The old terrestrial model of work and life is changing. There are options to those who want to reach out and take them.

While A. and I have been developing our designed life for well over a year now, a book came out recently that really put down in black and white a prescription that shows what A. and I have been working on. The book is called The 4 - Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. It is a wonderfully inspiring read and really shows how a mobile life and a life free of a ‘job’ is more possible than ever in this day of technological advancement. I will write more about Tim’s book in another post.

But for now - that is where we are at. Working hard on hardly working. Ok friends and family … what are your thoughts, ideas or comments on this? Let us have it!!

The recent post on my late night swimming episode generated a surprisingly large amount of discussion and comment. We were even contacted by a journalist who wanted to do an article on our unique life style here on the boat (we turned it down for reasons that I will expand on in another post.) What is surprising about the emails and comments is that there are at least as many about how I wrote as about what I wrote. (Hmmm - Mr. Hildebrand, my high school English teacher would be happy to know that I finally seem to be getting it. I’m not sure where IT came from - I certainly wasn’t getting IT in his class and have the marks to prove it. A current grade 10 teacher gave me an A+ for the post. Thanks Mrs. Muth - I don’t never have got a A in Engleesh before.)

See the quote in the post Crossing the Atlantic on an Alberg. The description of being out in the middle of the Atlantic surrounded by nothing along with the interaction of the waves, sky and light is awesome. That paragraph is so well crafted that it actually evokes feelings in your heart and pictures in your mind. Now, that’s what I’m talking about.

The topic of writing well was blogged about a couple of weeks ago by our Blog Consultant, Alister Cameron. (We hired a Blogologist to help us with A.’s website Scrapscene.com that we are trying to develop into an income source.) Quoting from his post, he says,

“Dear fellow blogger, I beg you not to underestimate the importance of good written expression. I personally do not think good blog writing is the same as good journalistic writing (although granted, it can vary from blog to blog). I rather see skilled blog writing as a kind of middle road between uncomplicated stream-of-consciousness, conversational-style writing on the one hand, and the more evolved, colourful and even poetic style of a magazine feature writer, on the other.”

Please take the time to read the complete article and visit his site. He is a great guy and has been a real asset to A. and I as we develop our on-line presence.

We all enjoy a good story, but a good story that is well written - that is a cake with icing. (Mmmmm, cake.) The web and blogging in particular have in many ways done a disservice to the art of writing well. The ease of being able to just fire out any sort of sniveling drivel and seeing it in black and white on the web has promoted a culture of lazy writers. Of course, kids today don’t learn how to write right, not like when we was in school. (Every generation seems to say this - logically speaking, eventually humanity will lose the ability to write completely.)

So what does this all mean? I guess I am saying I want my cake with icing, thank you very much. If you take the time to write something, you might as well write it well.

Ok - back to living on a boat…

Our neighbour just sent this picture and email to A. I won’t reveal who actually sent it, but she is my swim buddy. She went in last week…

“Don’t worry [A...], I was keeping a look out, doing my best Baywatch imitation.”

Nothing like a late night swim to bring ones self face to face with ones own mortality.

Last night the ice slabs were pounding the bow of the boat. Every ice slab contact is a boat shuddering, sledge hammer force that causes you to pause for a second to listen for the sound of running water. I put on my boots and parka and went out to push away the piece of evil that was currently percussing on the hull. I’ve done this dozens of times; a 2×4, lean into it, sending the ice off into the night for my neighbours to deal with. So with typical male macho gusto, I leaned in to it - getting the momentum of the ice moving away from the boat, then pulling back to admire my work … ooops.

There is a point of no return, I know, because I found it.

Eager in its attempt provide tangible proof of evolutionary theory, Darwins hammer reached out and tapped me lightly on the backside. I stepped out … my mind screaming “noooooo” and began to dance. It was a slow motion number, composed primarily of a pirouette with arms wheeling but catching nothing. With the ever so coherent thought ‘I can’t believe I’m going in …’ I stepped sprightly away from the safety of the dock.

So there I was, gazing up through the gloom, the pale yellow haze of the surface of the water some 3 or 4 feet above me, experiencing this ’shock and awe’ of my own creation and wondering what to do next. The cold hit as I was kicking to the surface and reaching for the dock. The cold was heart stopping.

Looking down at the water from the dock you don’t really get a sense of how far above the surface of the water the top of the dock really is. Looking at the dock from the water level will change your perception perceptibly. There was no way I was going to be able to heave my waterlogged, and shall we say fleshy frame, back up onto the dock. I hollered for help, wondering if anyone would hear me, my mind instantly snapping back to the problem of how to get back onto the dock. That’s when it hit me - the tangible realization that I was indeed mortal. The exact thought did not have any words, but was composed of the emotional realization that I was actually in a position here where I might not make it. It was all very new and rather stunning - this whole mortality thing.

Something just touched my back! I spun around to find the slab of ice, that evil beast of monstrous proportions coming back to sniff at its thrashing victim. Then in an unbelievable act of silent benevolence it presented its own back as a scalable surface, a stepping stone to that cliff towering above me that was the dock. I clamored up onto the the ice and gingerly stood up. Experiencing the joy of rebirth and with new found ease and grace I stepped back onto the dock. Taaadaaaa. Ya, I meant to do that…

Now I have the shakes.

Shamefaced and embarrassed, I scuttled back to the safety and warmth of the boat. Ahhh - heat, the smell of lake water and the gentle sounds of ice slabs grinding the hull. Home, sweet home.