That was a strange one - I woke up last night from a dream where Frankie, Urs and I and my parents were sitting around in our living room - but we were ready to go, the kitty was full and the boat was put together and we were talking logistics. Everything was going smoothly, and we were discussing something completely unrelated, when my dad cried, “Don’t do something stupid!”.

He was on the brink of tears.

I asked what he meant, and he said, “You have a good job. You have insurance. You’re going to give that all up, and when you get back here, you won’t have anything, you won’t be able to take care of yourself, and you’re going to get sick. And you have a family - a wife and a daughter and you shouldn’t DO SOMETHING STUPID.”

And I woke up.

Wow. I mean I often dream about things that are related to my life, but it’s rarely so completely direct! And what made it stranger is that my parents are visiting us right now - so now I keep worrying in the back of my head that we are actually going to have that conversation.

And I don’t know what I’m going to say. It is stupid, no doubt, to think about leaving the life we have. We have a cute little house, right up from the beach, I have an easy job at a nice company that pays the bills, Ursula is happy and healthy and cute as a bug, we have good friends and good food and I have a great team of doctors helping me cope with this illness - to put that at risk seems absolutely ludicrous.

But…

This diabetes thing has been a reminder that we pledged not to wait to do anything in life. Frankie and I are doing this because it’s a dream we both had, and after that bright September morning in 2001 when I was walking away from the World Trade Center wondering if things were going to start blowing up all around me - you can’t wait. You never know. That morning, I randomly got off the subway downtown instead of uptown to work out at the Wall Street branch of my gym - just for a change of pace. The second plane hit as I got out of the subway. You never know. Someone might just chuck a rock at your head, and that’s it - no more dreams, no more plans, no more nothing.

So I got diabetes. What the hell? Didn’t see that one coming. But there’s no way to see everything coming, and life would be pretty damned boring if you could. This is all such a cliche, but there’s a difference in the pit of your stomach between thinking that every moment exists just once, and you should seize the day, and really feeling the transitory nature of everything - that you are always in flux, and eventually this gathering of stuff that you think of as you will be moldering in the ground. This moment is the only moment that exists, and you always have to choose what to do.

So we prepare - we don’t want to be stupid, of course, but if this diabetes is what keeps us from living our dream, well that would be a shame. And it’d be our fault, for lacking the courage to realize that we can’t control live - we can prepare, and meet challenges with the tools we have - but we can’t live trying to keep everything safe and easy, because you never know. You never know.

Last night Ursula had a hard time going to sleep.

Frankie had gotten up at around midnight to “dream feed” her, and afterwards, all she was very fussy. She wanted to feed more, but wouldn’t calm down, and finally Frankie asked me if I could take over and try to put her to sleep.

So I did - holding her, rocking her gently, singing “Stay Awake” just above a whisper…

And I almost passed out.

Now I don’t know if it was just exhaustion or what, but I have the feeling that my blood sugar levels were crashing. I haven’t brought myself to testing in the middle of the night yet - I’m testing 6-8 times a day already, and sticking the needle in my finger at 2AM just doesn’t seem like a lot of fun.

What worries me about this is passagemaking - and anchor watches, for that matter. Am I going to be able to function after just 3-4 hours of sleep? Will I have to test every time I get up and eat a few raisins or something - and what will that do to my overall glucose levels?

I’m curious if anyone else out there is in the sort of situation where they have to deal with sudden, middle-of-the-night “action stations” situations - and how they manage the wooziness…

Working on no sleep this morning. Lets the mind wander wonderfully. So here are the issues I can think of with our trip and my new diabetes:

How to store enough insulin for extended times away from “civilization” -  We will have to have refrigeration now, for sure, and will probably have to have a backup refrigeration system. Wind generator and solar panels, and a big alternator to make sure we always have adequate power. We’ll probably want to cruise in company with someone else, as a third-level backup, so we can transfer my insulin to someone else’s refrigerator.

Insurance/supplies - I have no idea if I will be able to get health insurance, and if so, at what cost - and whether I will be insurable when we get back. Suddenly the health care debate has become very personal to me. I was one of those perfectly healthy people who pays in and pays in to the system, and never takes anything out. Now I am completely dependent on my health insurance; without it, we probably would have already rung up thousands of dollars in medical expenses already. If the current system persists, I may not be able to get insurance when we get back - or my diabetes might be excluded, and since anything bad that happens to me in the future may well be related to the diabetes, well… It’s more clear to me than ever that universal health care is the only civilized solution. The point is to spread the risk and the burden out - you never know when you’re going to go to the doctor and find out you have a chronic, serious disease.

Diet - will I be able to maintain a good, heart-healthy diet that’s easy to measure against my insulin intake?

Injections - will I be able to stick myself when we’re on passage? What if it gets really rough?

Emergencies - what if the boat sinks? I’ll need to have a way to keep at least a few days’ worth of insulin below 85 degrees if we have to abandon the boat…

I’m sure more issues will come up as we go forward. This takes the level of difficulty of our dream up a big notch - but I’m not giving up on it. We can do it.

I don’t know if anyone out there is following our progress anymore - we’re still working on Norman, and are currently planning to leave in the fall of 2009. Having a baby has really taken up our time and concentration, but we are still planning on going as soon as we can get everything together.

The latest not insignificant hurdle is that I was just diagnosed with late-onset Type 1 diabetes. Out of the blue, as a total surprise. I had a stomachache that wouldn’t go away - went to the doctor to get it checked out and ended up in the emergency room. I’m now on 5x daily insulin injections - and that’s causing us to seriously rethink the level of refrigeration we’re going to need on the boat - I think we need a primary and backup system, to keep fresh insulin on hand when we’re far from civilization.

It’s a strange thing, having this condition that makes you so dependent on advanced medical technology. If I don’t have a regular supply of this stuff, I will DIE. Not get sick, but die. If I do a good job of managing it, I should be just fine - but I can’t entertain the fantasy of being an autonomous being anymore - no living off the land, no Robinson Crusoe ideas of eking out an existence on an uninhabited island… not that any of that was truly possible, but it’s more concrete, knowing that pretty soon, my body will not be able to regulate itself at all without these regular injections of mysterious liquid.

We have lost 2 months now - the snow came early and heavy, and we didn’t get a cover on the boat. Now it’s the end of January, and we haven’t gotten the rustproofing done, nor have we reloaded the ballast in the boat. It’s depressing.

I am now investigating the possibility of moving the boat to a Quonset hut in Lewiston so that our work wouldn’t be so weather-dependent. It’ll cost some, but I’m worried that by the time the weather will be conducive to working on the boat again, Fred will be busy with work from Maine Yacht Center again.

So, today’s logistics question is how much it will cost to move the boat up there, and can Fred handle working in Lewiston (not nearly as convenient as Portland) What a pain - I wish we had just bit the bullet and moved the boat inside in the first place.

Fred Dodge is working on Norman now, fairing out the scabs in the hull. I’ll take some pix of the work this weekend. Fred’s an amazing guitarist, lead for Eldemur Krimm:

 I discovered that 2 stringers are missing, so we’re gonna have Fred weld those in, too.

Oh - and I bought a power washer and a paint sprayer - POWER TOOLS ARE AWESOME - which will speed up the coatings process on the interior.

So I have been using Ospho and Rust Bullet… and am wondering if I should really be sandblasting instead. Any thoughts?

And nobody wants to take it. This amazes me - diesel is running around $3/gallon - I’ve got maybe 30 gallons that I need to get out of a tank on the new Muffin - and I’m giving it away for free. Posted an ad on Craigslist, got some responses, but they are all falling through. FREE STUFF. $90 worth or so, just come and get it. Is that how lazy we have become?

Like I do every day, today I resolve to update this page more often.

Having the new kiddo doesn’t leave a lot of time for that, although I am making progress on the new boat. The old Muffin sold, too - to a guy from Italy, who will be picking her up next summer. He intends to sail her back across the Atlantic, I think - which makes me happy. I had hoped that she’d end up crossing oceans, as she’s meant to.

The new boat has a name now - “Norman” - after our dear old friend Felis P. Normous. Neil and Stacey’s boat is named after their cat, Zora - so if we get to cruise the South Pacific together, it’ll be “Norman and Zora’s South Seas Adventure”. Since they can’t be with us, at least they can in spirit.

Urs went sailing for the first time the other week, and she was a champ. Slept like… well like a baby. The fresh air and motion of the boat put her right out, which hopefully bodes well for her as a sailor.

So… it ended up costing us another $13,000.00 to get the boat up from Florida. I can’t even get my brain around STARTING to add up what this misadventure cost us. Remind me NEVER to take advice from anyone ever again. We got some advice from a friend of Fran’s brother’s - Nate - and it ended up costing us somewhere in the range of $15,000.00. We could have just paid off the guy in Florida. Instead, we spent an extra fifteen grand, AND Nate never checked on our boat, so it sat for a month in Florida with the main hatch wide open. I WILL NEVER TAKE ADVICE FROM ANYONE EVER AGAIN.

But, she’s here, and we can get to work on her. That’s the consolation, I guess.

So I spent Saturday grinding rust off her bottom, and last night I gave everything a nice coating of OSPHO. Interesting stuff , that - kind of nasty, but it sure seems to do the job on rust. I’m going to hit it with 4 coats of Rust Bullet epoxy now - Fran’s dad, Terry, is going to help, which is awesome. It’s nice to know that we’ve got some backup, and it means a lot to us that he’s on the team.

The thing I am pondering most now about the boat is the engine. 5000 hours on it. Wonder if it’s going to last? We might end up having to repower, huh? The Deutz/MWM diesel in her now is just a 35 HP engine, which should really be enough - the prop has got a lot of pitch to it. I don’t know if we’ll be able to find a rebuilt diesel of the same make/model - although there is a rebuilder in Belgium that seems to sell them. It’d be nice if it was just a straight swap, and not some hellishly complicated process.