If you think we have this whole life thing figured out, don’t let us fool you! We constantly feel like we’re never getting enough done, that we’re falling behind, and that life is moving too quickly. Anyone else feel like it’s a struggle to find balance in life?
In this episode, we arrive in Marathon with high expectations of finishing our bimini within a couple weeks. No surprise, it ends up taking a lot longer than we originally anticipated. But there’s not much point in beating ourselves up about it, is there… It’s a lesson we seem to be learning over and over again. Hope you enjoy!
Lauren & Kirk
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NOTE: This was filmed well before COVID-19 was an issue. We’ll discuss the timing of our videos soon in a future episode.
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Learning the Lines – https://www.youtube.com/learningthelines
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Music:
@6:53 “Shifting Sand” by Steve Plein — https://captivaecotours.com/
Theme song: “Adventures” by A Himitsu — https://youtu.be/8BXNwnxaVQE
All others: artlist.io <—— Use this link to get 2 months free at Artlist.
We’re always looking for music! If you or a friend, relative or acquaintance makes original music and would like to feature it on our channel, give us a shout at hello@sailingsoulianis.com.
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Subtitles: by REV try.rev.com/H2dsg <——- Use this link to get $10 off your first order!
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Camera Gear:
Thinking About Buying a Boat?
Episode Dialogue
– [Kirk] We’ve been stuck in the mooring field for the last week and a half. Get to the Dinghy.
– [Lauren] Get to the Dinghy. Off to the races! Whatchu doing love?
– I am attaching our new mooring buoy snap shackle. Open! Dang that thing is beefy.
– Yeah it is, super beefy. To two, three stand mooring lines
– If I can sneak into the cockpit, here, I’ll sit with you my dear. How you like that? Couplet.
– Couplet? I don’t know. I don’t know, I forgot my high school poetry terms. I just rhymed, it’s all I did. So we just got a mooring buoy assignment in Boot Key Harbor and we’re both very delighted because we’ve actually only spent one night out here, anchored outside the harbor. And I don’t really know exactly what body of water we are in, whether it’s considered the Gulf or the Atlantic.
– Maybe south side of the Keys.
– South side of the Keys but still west side of Florida and it’s been rolly. We’ve been bobbing all around all night. Sleeping wasn’t ideal but I guess that’s what being on a sailboat is like. The reason we’re going into Boot Key Harbor is to get a mooring buoy at the City Marina where they’ve got a bunch of work spaces that we can finish sewing our Bimini. The goal is to get that done in a week. Kirk thinks three and so hopefully it’ll be two. That was our little UV cover that we had tented over the boom and then we got our Bimini frame up. and we went out to Sombrero Reef for the day and it was getting mighty hot in the cockpit and so it’s been our pretty weak Bimini for the last two weeks. Time to sew the real one. That’s where we just anchored. It’s totally unprotected except for the east and even that’s that’s pushing it. So we’re very excited to be getting into the harbor. That’s a lot of boats. There’s boats as far as the eye can see. This is our home for the next two weeks, week? I don’t know. However long it takes. Look at that. It’s our new dinghy! You want me to help you put her in the water?
– Yes please.
– [Lauren] New Rahm is a Highfield Ultra Light 260. It’s one of the lightest, rigid inflatable dinghies on the market. This was very important to us since we’d be primarily storing him on the foredeck. New Rahm is a bit heavier than our old Rahm, our little Zodiac. So we haven’t tried yet to just lift it ourselves without the halyard. I think it might be right on the edge of us being able to do that. But, this works.
– [Kirk] Got it?
– [Lauren] Yeah.
– [Kirk] You got the dinghy, I got this.
– [Lauren] Paired with our Spirit 1.0 electric outboard, we have it very easy to handle combo. Here you go, one-handed.
– [Kirk] Yes.
– [Kirk] Get to the Dinghy.
– Get to the Dinghy.
– [Kirk] Now! It’s so quiet. We need to go out and scrub our bottom. Need to go Sombrero Reef.
– [Lauren] Really, you think it needs more?
– I don’t know, I was just looking at it and I saw a bunch of little white stuff on it, so.
– [Lauren] Bye boat!
– [Kirk] See ya boat. Make the powers for us, solar panels. We need it. I feel so good in this dinghy, not like the last one where I thought we were gonna sink at any moment.
– [Lauren] We’re so much higher than the waters here.
– Yeah we are.
– Kind of feel a little spoiled.
– [Kirk] Yeah.
– It almost like we should feel like we’re gonna sink in our dinghy. That’s just how you feel in a dinghy.
– [Kirk] That’s cruising.
– [Lauren] With the frame built and the template made for the Bimini, the first step of sewing was tracing and cutting the fabric. It’s super sweet.
– So we just dropped anchor. We did a little sail out to Delta shoal in the afternoon because we’ve been stuck in the mooring field for the last week and a half and we wanted to come out and check out our bottom and see how it was looking. We’ve now been in the water for over a month and we haven’t cleaned the bottom at all. So we just wanted to see how well the Coppercoat’s doing. Behind me here, we’ve met up with Learning the Lines. Jordan’s gonna do some spearfishing, see if we can catch some food for dinner. Right now we’re gonna go dive on our anchor cause we dropped the anchor under sail so we can back down on it. We’re just gonna make sure everything’s looking good down there. It’s under some sand.
– Yeah, this is just our fun and games now.
– [Kirk] What’s that?
– [Lauren] See if we could actually get down there and move it around. It’s hard moving a forty-five pound anchor.
– [Kirk] Yeah under water.
– Wow. So now we know what the anchor looks like, when we set it with just the jib, not really setting it at all. Kirk’s up in the boat right now. He’s gonna turn on the engine and back down on it. We’re just gonna go have a look and see how it performs. We never got to see it underwater like this before so it’s pretty sweet. Ready?
– [Kirk] I want you to go be close to it.
– [Lauren] I know.
– [Kirk] Yup I’m ready.
– [Lauren] Kay. I can’t hold my breath very long. It’s in.
– Cool, I’m gonna turn it off then.
– Okay.
– [Lauren] After a month in the water without any scrapping or cleaning, the hull was still looking fantastic. So far, we’re quite pleased with the Coppercoat. Dang, look at that color.
– [Kirk] That’s beautiful. We’re gonna use our new Mantus dinghy anchor here which is pretty sweet, it comes apart.
– It’s adorable.
– [Kirk] It is adorable.
– Look at that little thing.
– [Kirk] Snap them together. This is gonna be the first time that we use this guy.
– [Lauren] Look at that line of rope. It’s never gonna look like that again.
– No.
– Does our little anchor have a name? Our big anchor doesn’t even have a name.
– [Kirk] No.
– Sailors seem to name a lot of things on their boat. I wanna know where you would draw the line. I think we just drew it.
– [Kirk] Yeah. I think people do name their anchors though.
– Really? I feel like it either has to move or-
– [Kirk] It’s just gonna take care of you I think.
– Has to move you, I think. Your Dinghy or your boat, your engine, your autopilot. We have now named both of our outboard batteries. Wall-E.
– [Kirk] Wall-E.
– It propels us, so. Well this is a first.
– [Sailor] Who’s gonna know what this is?
– [Lauren] Oh, not us. They’re the divers over there.
– [sailor] Ah! Gone.
– [Sailor] He got crazy, nevermind.
– Now there’s gonna be sharks in the water.
– [Lauren] Nice!
– [Kirk] That wasn’t bad at all.
– [Lauren] Yeah.
– [Lauren] I’m tryna-
– [Kirk] Grab up here. Yeah that’s good.
– I need to use your-
– [Jordan] Use your feet to kick as you’re coming up.
– [Kirk] Very graceful. God, the water is so beautiful.
– I get a lot of water in my ears.
– [Kirk] Yeah I do too.
– [Kirk] Coming to get you. He’s right underneath you now. Yeah he’s a big guy.
– Oh wow, yeah.
– You’re not gonna continue that plan to catch Learning the Lines in our dust?
– [Lauren] You can’t even see them, they’re so far back there. We’re such jerks.
– [Kirk] Yeah. Oh well. Hey, that’s one of the benefits of having a diesel, is you can motor without worrying, “are you gonna drain down your batteries?”. Sorry guys.
– It is loud and obnoxious.
– [Lauren] It is, yeah. So this is our typical routine in Marathon. We’ve got a ton of stuff that we have to load into the dinghy, all depending on what various jobs we wanna do during the day. And today we’re trying to do everything. We’ve got to fill up our water tanks cause we’re running low. We’re gonna go to the grocery store, cause our fridge is empty. We’re gonna be working on our Bimini project, which means we’ll be hauling the sewing machine. And everyday we bring a dry bag with all of our shower stuff so that at the end of the day, right before we leave, we’ll take a quick shower and only have to do one trip into shore and back because it’s a fifteen-minute dinghy ride to our mooring buoy cause we’re way at the end of the mooring field. All right boat, see you later. I’m wondering, has anyone who lives on a boat ever found a rhythm? At all, in life? As far as all the things that you need to do during the day, all the things that you need to do to keep your boat floating and yourself fed and clean and I feel like we constantly struggle with that. I think I’ve heard from other people that they struggle as well but we haven’t talked to that many people. We don’t have a big sample of all the cruisers out there. And I think it’d be easier if we weren’t working. It’d be easier if we weren’t filming. And it would be easier if we were done with all our major boat projects. So maybe that’s just what we need to keep plowing towards. But until then, seems like a sprinting marathon. Off to the races, every morning. Now my lover is gonna go make me a cocktail. He’s gonna cook me dinner while I edit some more video.
– Give you Wall-E here. Wall-E.
– [Lauren] Wall-E.
– okay.
– [Kirk] This was the first of many times test-fitting the Bimini. It had been almost three weeks since getting our mooring buoy and marathon and while we didn’t know it at the time, the project would take another two weeks to finish. Our project list has been full of high priority items since the day we bought the boat. And if we tried to power through everything we needed to do all at once, we’d most certainly burnout. Yeah, no, there’ll be some wrinkles in it but it’ll be awesome.
– Let’s get the backstay slit in and then we’ll really see how it fits.
– Tomorrow, we will know. Finding our rhythm in life is all about having the patience to slow down one part to enjoy the rest, and knowing that that’s okay. Happy Birthday to me.
– [Lauren] Yay!
– [Kirk] Put up the hair to put up the Bimini.
– [Lauren] Yeah.
– [Kirk] Business time huh?
– Business time.
So glad to see you back on the water sailing. Such beautiful pics and love the comments. Keep sailing and be safe. Thank you for taking me along.blessings, Linda Eaton Brenizer
Thank you Linda!