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Dealing with Wanderlust — On a Boat

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I believe a cruising lifestyle is the answer to my current wanderlust needs.


The dictionary defines Wanderlust as a strong desire to travel. That sums it up perfectly.

I’ve suffered from Wanderlust my entire life. I blame my grandfather.

Inherited Wanderlust

My mother’s father had it bad, especially later in life when I knew him. Once he was retired to a life around his home, he used to do a lot of driving. I don’t know where he went, but I do remember him following us on vacation once. We were low budget vacationers and a typical family vacation would be a drive to a campground at a northeast US destination — we lived in northern New Jersey — where we’d set up camp and spend a week in The Great Outdoors. I don’t remember which trip we were on when my grandfather improbably turned up, hundreds of miles from home.

My dad, of course, had a case of Wanderlust, too. His case was a lot like mine in that it combined a need to travel and explore with a desire to do it in with a motor vehicle. (My family members were not fans of hiking or air travel; in fact, I probably do more hiking and air travel than my parents or siblings ever did.) When I was young, our family vacations took us up or down the Atlantic seaboard, from southern Maine to Virginia. Sometime along the way, my dad acquired the first of a handful of small motorboats for exploring the Hudson, East, and Harlem Rivers of the New York Metro area and toting along on family vacations to destinations with waterways. I can still remember the trip to Lake George in New York when a wheel came off the boat trailer and passed us on the highway, seriously delaying our arrival.


An unscheduled stop along the Columbia River near its mouth in 2018 gave me the opportunity to pick wild blackberries, which I enjoyed with my breakfast for the next few days.

For me, Wanderlust means exploring places I’ve never been before — and revisiting some of the places I have explored in the past and liked. I’ve done it in cars and on motorcycles and in helicopters and on boats. It usually starts with a map or a suggestion from someone else. A route is set down, plans and preparations are made, and a trip begins. But what makes my Wanderlust differ from most people I know is my need to change the plan and explore new things I take note of along the way. Driving with a plan of going from Point A to Point B and being led off the path by a sign pointing to a waterfall in a national forest or a date ranch in the middle of the desert or a hiking trail around a small mountain lake or a channel leading to a remote town known for good ice cream. Not having reservations so I don’t have to cancel reservations. Making it up as I go along. I can’t begin to describe the feeling I get when I discover a new place worth seeing, even if it’s just a nice place to have a picnic lunch.


Sometimes taking an unmarked trail through a coastal forest can put you on a private beach.

My Travels

I’ve dealt with my version of the Wanderlust my entire life. I’ve visited 49 of the 50 states — Minnesota eludes me — and a (rather disappointing) handful of international destinations, including Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, and numerous Caribbean Islands. And a trip to Germany when I was in my teens — don’t forget that. I traveled extensively for business during the last job of my corporate life (Career #1) and even more for business at the start of my freelance life (Career #2). In between I took numerous vacations with my future wasband that involved travel, often piggybacking a vacation onto one of my business trips. While the business travel involved metro areas and business hotels, the vacation travel often involved rental cars, camping gear, and national parks. I’ve seen a lot of America — and not just typical tourist destinations.

Understand that I am not a fan of packaged tours. While I like the concept of cruise ships — a hotel where you unpack once and visit a different city every day? Sign me up! — I don’t like the floating cities cruise ships are or the typical cruise ship mentality of the other passengers. (How many people on the Alaska cruise had booked their low-deck inside cabin just so they could tell people they’d “done” an Alaska cruise? The same people who didn’t get off the boat at port cities because they didn’t want to spend any money.) I can’t see making a trip overseas for just a week — if you’re going to go to Europe or Asia or Australia, you should stay at least a month to make that travel time worthwhile, no?

My Wanderlust needs were severely frustrated for a time when I lived in Arizona with my future wasband. I was a freelancer who, between projects, had a lot of free time on my hands. My future wasband was tied to a 9 to 5 job that left only weekends available for travel. (In the end, he spent much of his limited vacation time traveling back east to visit his family.)


Following a sign to a ghost town near Beatty NV back 2005 gave me a chance to see this building in Rhyolite before it was fenced off to prevent further damage.

I did a lot of travel on my own in those days. I made three long distance helicopter trips in my Robinson R22 helicopter in the early 2000s: around the Grand Canyon airspace, to Eagle CO, and to Placerville CA. In 2005, I took a 19-day solo road trip through the western states in my little Honda S2000. One of my publishers sent me to its locations in Ventura CA and Colorado Springs CO to work for them and I’d usually turn that trip into a mini solo vacation. In 2008, I started traveling seasonally to Washington State (where I now live) to do the agricultural work I now rely on to make a living — I traveled more around the area then than I do now.

 
A trip around the Grand Canyon’s restricted airspace in the early 2000s in my R22 had me spending a night at Marble Canyon near Page AZ and remote Bar 10 Ranch 85 miles south of St George UT.

Getting divorced freed me to do more travel. I no longer had a whining, needy man child at home to hold me back. I visited family and friends all over the country. I did cruises. I did road trips. I enjoyed traveling more than ever.

But gradually, over time, I fell into a rut: stay at home all summer where I was on paid standby for my agricultural work and then travel south with my RV, usually to Arizona and California, to escape the winter dreariness of central Washington State. Sure, I did other trips once in a while, but I was definitely feeling the restraints of a routine — the one thing I just can’t tolerate in my life.

Cruising

I started thinking seriously about cruising — no, not the kind you do in huge floating cities — back in 2017 when I went to stay with a friend out at Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands of Washington. The trip didn’t go the way I’d hoped, but I discovered a lot about myself and other people and began to realize what I really wanted to do with my time: small boat cruising.

Of course, back then it was just an inkling of an idea. Since then I’ve done a lot of homework and taken a handful of trips. The homework taught me more about what was possible in a boat to cure my Wanderlust. I learned about the Great Loop, for example, which I saw as a lengthy exploration of waterways on the east coast without having to double back to a starting point.


Sunset from the dock at a state park marina in North Carolina, Spring 2022.

You need to experience it to understand it

There’s something about being out on the water on a quiet morning, watching birds and water animals while the day is born. There’s something about motoring slowly up a channel, rounding a bend to see something unexpected, waving at other cruisers you pass, watching dolphins play in your wake. There’s something about pulling a trap full of crabs out of the water and cooking them for lunch, or catching a salmon you’ll have for dinner. There’s something about meeting other travelers for “docktails” in the evening at a marina and sharing stories about the places you’ve been and the people you’ve met along the water. There’s something about watching the sun sink down into the horizon, hearing the clanking of pulleys and creaking of boats against fenders when a gentle wave comes by from a passing boat.

The trips taught me other things:

  • The 12-day Learn to Navigate the Inside Passage cruise with Northwest Navigation taught me all kinds of things about cruising slowly up the inside passage from Bellingham to Ketchikan: navigating waterways (of course), dealing with severe tidal currents, using autopilot and AIS, anchoring out, using tenders to reach shore, handling customs and immigration when crossing borders, etc, etc. I cannot say enough good things about this cruise and I hope to do it again one day, perhaps when my own cruising days have ended.
  • A 5-week crew member gig on a 27′ Ranger Tug on the Great Loop from Jersey City NJ to Alpena MI showed me the Hudson River, Erie Canal, Lake Erie, and Lake Huron, with many points of interest along the way. I also learned how the Great Loop could be done at a quicker pace, with few stops longer than a day. It was also my first taste of marinas and public docks for overnight moorage and the challenges of ground transportation at destinations. And finally, I learned that not all adults act like adults — which is why I didn’t stay on board beyond Alpena when I was supposed to be on board three more weeks and depart in Chicago.
  • A 5-week crew member gig on a 36′ Aft Cabin Carver on the Great Loop from Charleston SC to New Bern NC showed me how the Great Loop could be done in slow motion, with lengthy stops at marinas along the way. I learned a lot about navigating the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), the kinds of conditions I could expect with its tides and inlets, and how pleasant it was to drive a boat from up on a fly bridge. It was just me and the captain on board and we got along well, but I have to admit that the slow pace we kept was agonizing to me — I was really hoping to see more and get farther along the Loop.

David B at Garrison Bay
The David B at anchor in Garrison Bay. I was one of only four passengers on a 12-day trip in this 90-year-old wooden boat from Bellingham to Ketchikan.


A stretch of the ICW from the flybridge on a 36′ Carver.

These three trips helped me come up with a plan for my own travels: spend two to three years cruising on the east coast, mostly along the Great Loop, and then bring the boat back to Washington to explore waterways closer to home: Lake Chelan, the Columbia and Snake Rivers, Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands, and the Inside Passage. By the time I’m done with all that, I should have the cruising thing worked out of my system — or be too old and crotchety to enjoy it.

Plans in Motion

To that end, I’ve begun making plans to acquire a suitable boat. After a lot of research, I’ve settled on a Ranger Tug R-29 CB, a 29′ tug/trawler style boat with a command bridge. The boat has all the features I need to handle something that size on my own — GPS navigation, auto pilot, fore and aft side thrusters, and command from indoor and outdoor stations — as well as the kind of amenities that will make cruising comfortable — full galley, head with shower, comfortable walk-around bed, accommodations for guests, large aft deck, solar panel. And did I mention the wine fridge?


This is one of the boats currently available. I like its price and its low engine hours, but it’s missing a lot of little amenities that I need or want: a Bimini top for the command bridge, screen enclosure for the rear cockpit, generator, air conditioning, and trailer.

You can see a new version of the boat on the Ranger website. But no, I’m not buying a new one. (My budget is large, but not that large.) I’m looking at model years 2018 to 2021. The 2017 models have a Volvo D4 260 HP engine; Ranger went to the Valve D4 300 HP engine in 2018. Right now, there are 5 boats available and, as the market softens — mostly because of inflation and higher interest rates — I expect more boats to join them and prices to go down accordingly. The market was crazy tight back in the spring with boats selling nearly as quickly as they were listed.

(If you’re paying attention and have been reading my blog, you may recall my preference for 27′ Ranger Tug. I’ve gotten over that. After being on a 2017 R-27 with two other people last summer, I’ve decided that it’s simply too small. I know the R-29 sounds like it’s only 2 feet longer but it’s also 1 1/2 feet wider (8 1/2 foot beam vs 10 foot beam) and it has the command bridge space up top. Combined with that is the fact that the 2018 and later R-27s have an outboard motor, which limits living amenities such as hot water and battery charging. It’s designed as more of a day tripping or weekend boat than a serious cruising boat — something that was brought to my attention by the captain of the 2017 R-27 I was on last summer.)

I’m currently planning to make my purchase in September, so I’m trying hard not to dwell on the boats that are currently available; chances are, they’ll be gone when I’m ready to buy. I’ll spend the month of October getting it settled at a marina on the east coast, probably in Florida, where I hope to get some hands on training with a qualified instructor. Or, if I buy it in Washington, maybe I’ll get that training here in Puget Sound before having the boat moved to the east coast. This boat is trailerable and I do have a truck big enough to pull it. What I don’t have is a boat trailer big enough to carry it. I need to figure that — or the cost of having it moved — into the purchase price if I buy on the west coast and need to get it across the country.

The ultimate goal for this coming winter is to cruise long enough to get the experience days I need for my boat captain’s license. I’ll sit through a classroom course on the east coast, take (and pass!) the test, and submit all my paperwork to the Coast Guard. Then back home in spring for another summer of cherry drying standby service to earn a living. Then, in August, back to the boat and possibly take on paying passengers or crew members as I continue along the Loop. I’d love to spend August though October along the New York State and Canadian canal systems.

On the Water

I’ve created a brand new Category (or Topic) for this blog: On the Water. That’s where you’ll find posts about my boating activities. As I write this, this is the only post there, but I’ll try to go back to previous blog posts related to boating and add them to this category.

And if you’re interested only in Great Loop related posts, I hope you’ll check out the My Great Loop Adventure blog. That’s where I share day-by-day accounts with photos of my travels on the Great Loop.

There’s more to report — like new relationships with publishers that will help me fund my travels — but I’d rather save that for when it becomes a reality. Right now, it’s just a solid lead with a great outlook.

Making It Happen

There’s a lot to juggle here but challenges in logistics that require thinking outside the box really appeal to me. So I’m treating it all like a challenge with a specific, well-thought-out goal. And I’m going through the steps to make it happen.

I hope you’ll come along for the ride. Maybe you’ll discover your Wanderlust, too.

On Home Ownership

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I become a real homeowner for the second time in my life.


I got this letter in the mail yesterday after making a final lump sum payment on what I’d always thought of as my “mortgage.” (Technically it was a land loan; I never had a mortgage on this home.)

On July 14, 2022, I officially became a mortgage-free home owner for the second time in my life. That’s the date of the letter from my bank confirming that the lump sum payment I’d sent in June had paid off the balance of my land loan.

I bought the land nearly nine years ago, the day after my divorce was finalized. It was a long story and crazy process that you can read about in a blog post I wrote about it. It wasn’t a cheap lot, but the view from those 10 acres made it worth every penny. I’m generally a debt-adverse person, so I put 50% down on it and borrowed the rest. The owner financed until I could get my paperwork in order and get a loan about a year later with Northwest Farm Credit, a company that specializes in farm loans. My lot, zoned Rural Residential, met the criteria for lending. The terms were a fixed rate for the first 7 years, adjustable annually after that, with a balloon payment at the end of 10 years.

Amortization was based on 30 years, keeping the monthly payments low; for the first 7 years, my monthly payments were just $501. I kicked in an extra $500 toward the principal every month for at least 3/4 of the months over those 7 years. The goal was to pay down the principal quickly so I wouldn’t get hit with the kind of huge balloon payment the bank estimated. When the first interest rate adjustment came, my monthly payment dropped to less than $300/month. I honestly don’t know the exact amount because I kept paying the $1001/month that I’d been paying. Now I was kicking in more than $700/month to principal only.

With my June birthday coming up, I noticed that I owed less than $12K for the property. Rather than let my regular payments pay it off in just under one more year, I decided to make the payoff a birthday present for myself. So I wrote a big check, got a $14.90 refund for my overpayment, and received the letter saying the loan was paid off.

I’m a mortgage-free home owner.

The Money Stuff

Now if all this is gibberish to you and you’ve got one of those 30-year mortgages on your place, you might want to chat with an accountant or financial advisor about the possible benefit of paying extra toward the principal on that mortgage.

I remember my first mortgage with my future wasband. It was a 30-year term because that’s all we could afford when we bought our first home. We paid what was due — on average about $1200/month — every month for 11 years. When we sold after 11 years, we’d only contributed about $16K toward the principal — that’s after paying over $158K. Where had all that extra money gone? Mortgage interest, of course. Rates were a lot higher then, but still! We had a house but very little equity in it.

I think that experience is what woke me up to the realities of mortgages and home ownership. If you have a large loan and pay it over a long period of time, you’re likely to pay a lot of money in interest without increasing your equity in the home by very much. In that case, what’s the benefit of buying over renting? When you own a home, you’re responsible maintaining and repairing it. When you rent, you’re not. And when you’re paying 90% of your monthly mortgage payment toward interest instead of principal, it’s like paying rent without the benefit of a landlord to take care of the home.

Home ownership remains a goal of many people. It’s a great goal, but it’s not achievable unless you are able to maximize your downpayment, minimize your loan term, and pay down the principal as quickly as possible. Otherwise, you’re basically paying rent to a bank with the added expense of home maintenance, repairs, and property taxes.

When my future wasband and I sold that first home and moved to a new home in Arizona, we quickly refinanced to a 15-year loan term. Sure, the payments were bigger, but each payment applied more money to the loan principal. And with the lesson learned from our first home, I (the debt-adverse person in charge of household finances) would send additional principal payments for the loan to the bank a few times a year, when there was some spare cash in the household account. By doing so, we managed to pay off the loan in just over 11 years.

And that was the first time in my life that I was a mortgage-free home owner, at the age of 50 — although I was just half owner on that particular property.

My House

My house, of course, has been paid off since it was built. Because of the construction style of my home — post and beam construction — a building loan was not possible to get. So I had to pay cash as it was built.

On May 20, 2014, I began blogging about the construction of my new home in Malaga, WA. You can read all of these posts — and see the videos that go with many them — by clicking the new home construction tag.

Yeah, that was a challenge. Fortunately, my decent income and low cost of living rose to that challenge. I was living in my 36-foot fifth wheel, the “Mobile Mansion,” on my property at the time so there was no rent to pay and that likely saved a ton of money that could go toward construction.

I had the house built in stages starting on May 20, 2014: first the building shell and then the living space upstairs. I did a lot of the interior work myself: electricity, flooring (wood laminate and tile), and deck rails/floor. I subcontracted out to a framer and plumber and insulation/drywall/painting guys. I designed a custom kitchen with granite countertops at Home Depot and let their guys install it all. I bought my appliances at a Black Friday sale and, again, let them install. The place came together bit by bit over the course of two years. I wrote a lot of checks. But in the end, it was done and it was paid for.


The Great Room in my home. I really do love it here.

The Lecture

I know that what I’ve achieved is beyond the means of many people. I don’t want to say I’m “lucky” that I could do this because I truly believe that we make (most of) our luck. (And besides, I’ve had a bit of bad luck, too.) I’m not rich, but I do know how to work for a living and manage my money.

Living within my means is step 1 — and that’s the step most folks can’t seem to manage. They buy things they don’t need or can’t afford, relying on credit cards and loans to make it happen. Soon, every penny from every paycheck is spoken for and still some of them keep buying. They live in a world of never-ending debt by making minimum payments on every debt they owe. And then they complain that they’re broke.

That’s not me. I learned my lesson about debt TWICE when I was in my twenties. The second time did the charm. Years later, I realized that the first step to financial security — especially in retirement years — is having a paid-for roof over your head. That’s what motivated me to get the house I owned with my wasband paid for. And that has definitely been on my mind over the past 10 years as I get ever closer to retirement age.

I’m 61 now and starting to think seriously about life in retirement. Getting that paid-for roof over my head was a good start on the things I need to do to achieve my retirement dreams.

Living in Beauty

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I realize yet again how fortunate I am to live in such a beautiful place.

It was a little over 10 years ago when I discovered the 10 acres of land where I’d build my home. I’d been doing wine tasting tours with my helicopter during cherry season, ferrying couples from a winery in Quincy to one in Malaga. Along the way, I took note of the road the winery was on. I liked its remoteness and the way it was so sparsely developed. I had friends in Quincy who owned land on the road and I called them to ask who their realtor was. To my surprise, they told me they’d decided to sell. I landed my helicopter out there for a closer look and decided I wanted to buy.


This picture dates back to June 10, 2012. I’m parked about where my driveway apron is today; my house would be built between the helicopter and the spot I shot the photo from.

I was still married at the time, but that didn’t last much longer. I showed the property to my future wasband when he came to Washington to discuss our upcoming divorce. He didn’t see the potential I saw — which was really not surprising. He was determined to end the marriage. That turned out to be a very good thing. I know from experience that if I had to compromise with him, I never would have built the home I really wanted — the home I live in now.

I started construction on May 20, 2014. I was living in my old fifth wheel trailer, the Mobile Mansion, on the site and made daily time-lapses that I combined into a movie — the construction folks still show it at home shows. As the general contractor, I learned a ton about building and did a lot of the work myself — I wired the whole place, laid down the flooring, and worked with friends to install doors and fixtures. Although I’m allowed to have two homes on my property, I knew this would be the one I lived in for a while, so I included everything I wanted: granite countertops, custom cabinets, and a soaking tub with views of the valley below. With plenty of large windows, decks on two sides, a 4-car garage, a large RV garage, a shop area, and the privacy I can’t live without, it was my dream home. I moved in in spring 2015.


This shot from June 9, 2017 shows my home from the road. I call it the Aerie because of the way it’s nestled on a shelf overlooking the Wenatchee Valley.


This shot from May 20, 2016 shows the side of my house facing the view of the valley. My living space is above the car garage, which is completely invisible from the road. The covered deck on this side of the house is where I hang out on cool afternoons and evenings. The cliffs behind my house, on the other side of the road, are home to bighorn sheep that occasionally come down and graze in the neighborhood.

I can’t quite express how much I love living here. I’ve always been a view person and I don’t think I could ask — or ever get — a better view than this one. Day or night, no matter what the weather is, there’s always something amazing to see outside my windows. I share ton of photos on Twitter — so many that I expect people to start complaining. Today is especially awesome, with my 10 acres full of lupine and other wildflowers waving wildly in the wind as the sun rose, revealing snow-capped peaks to the west.


I shot this photo this morning when I took my pups out for their morning pee. The sun’s first light was just touching the tops of the lupine and illuminating the hillsides down in Wenatchee.

I thought of the Navajo prayer, Walking in Beauty. It begins:

In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again

Although the Navajo concept of walking in beauty goes far beyond the aesthetics of a nice view, I believe that finding and appreciating beauty in the things around us is the first step to achieving emotional and spiritual peace. I look out the window and I see the river, mountains, orchards, and sky and I feel overwhelmed sometimes by just how beautiful it all is. Even at night, when it turns into a sea of lights, it’s awe inspiring. How can I not just sit down and take it all in and let it calm my inner mind?

And I get to see this every day, every time I look out my windows.

I think that moving here and being able to build the home I really wanted was probably the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. The peace, privacy, and beauty of this place feeds me a simple diet of joy that makes the challenges of life part of my own formula for happiness.