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Embracing the Cruising Life

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Report from my first two months as a trawler owner.

If you’re looking for a blog post with specific details about my trip on the Great Loop so far, this isn’t it.

When I write it, you’ll find it in My Great Loop Adventure blog. It’ll have more pictures and, with luck, links to videos on YouTube. Be patient, however; I really do need to get stuff around the house done before I can dive into that. If you haven’t subscribed to that blog, please do. There’s no spam — just immediate notifications of new posts there.

If you’ve been following this blog and/or My Great Loop Adventure blog, you probably know that after exploring the idea of small boat cruising, going on three separate trips ranging from 12 days to 5 weeks each, and researching the kind of boat I might want to cruise in, I bought a 2019 Ranger Tug R-29 CB. I took delivery of the boat right after Labor Day weekend and have spent a total of about 40 days on board since then. The longest stay on board ended yesterday morning: 23 consecutive days traveling from Chicago to Alton, IL (near St. Louis).

I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts about my experiences so far.

It’s Like RVing — on the Water

I have years of experience traveling with various types of RVs. Cruising in my own boat is almost identical to RVing in something like a motorhome or my truck camper. You drive what you sleep in and everything you need/want with you has to fit on board.

To get from place to place, you follow navigable waterways (roads). I’m fortunate in that my boat needs only 2 1/2 feet of water to float in and can fit under bridges as low as 14 feet above the water. (This is almost like traveling in my truck camper, which has high clearance and 4WD to get me into places other rigs can’t go.) There are plenty of printed and electronic resources for finding routes and destinations. My boat has three onboard chart plotters. They’re a lot like using Google Maps on my phone to navigate on the road — they can route me anywhere it’s possible to go. (Unlike Google Maps, however, I can actually turn over control of the boat to the chart plotters and their autopilot system and let them do the driving.)

At the end of a travel day, you can either stop at a marina (campground), stay at a free public wall (truck stop), or anchor out (dry camp). You can stay as long as you want — depending, of course, on whether you need provisions. You buy provisions along the way, taking on fuel and water and groceries when you can. You need to pump-out (dump) your waste tank. Plugging in to shore power (campground power) powers your boat’s systems and charges your onboard batteries; when you’re not plugged in, you’re powering everything off the onboard batteries. (My boat has a total of 6 AGM batteries: 4 house batteries, 1 engine battery, and 1 thruster battery.) A solar panel or generator can provide power or help recharge batteries when you’re not plugged in. (My boat has 160 watts of solar on the roof and I’ve brought along my old Honda 2KW generator in case I need it.) Of course, the batteries are all charged automatically when the engine is running. All this is pretty much the same as with an RV.

There are some notable differences:

  • You do not connect to a fresh water source at a marina. Instead, you manually fill a tank and a DC-powered pump handles pressurization at the sinks/showers.
  • You have only one waste tank, which is equivalent to an RV’s blackwater tank. It needs to be pumped out with a suction hose — unless you’re a certain number of miles off shore (in the ocean) where you can pump it out in the water. (I won’t ever be that far off shore.)
  • There is no gray water tank. Water from the sinks and showers goes right into whatever body of water you’re floating in.
  • The water to flush your toilet comes from the body of water you’re in — not from your fresh water supply. Fresh water is used exclusively for the sinks and showers.
  • The water heater does not work with propane. Instead, it’s either heated by the engine while you’re under way or heated with an electric water heater when you’re plugged into shore power.
  • The refrigerator does not work with propane either. Instead, it works off DC power and is the largest consumer of power when you’re not plugged in. (I find this maddening.)

Fuel Costs

My biggest expense is fuel, which certainly does explain why so many people buy boats like this and don’t take them anywhere. The boat takes diesel and has a 145-gallon tank. I’ll let you do the math on my most recent top-off of about 105 gallons at $5.99/gallon. Ouch.

Of course, fuel consumption is somewhat controllable by moderating my speed. Yes, at full throttle the boat can go 20 knots. It also burns an absurd amount of fuel at that speed. Volvo — the maker of the Penta D4 300 engine — recommends operating at 80% to 90% RPM and that does reduce both speed and fuel consumption, but not enough to make long trips between fuel stops possible. What I’ve discovered is that a cruise speed of about 8 knots is a good compromise between fuel consumption and speed. I can go slower to conserve more fuel but I can also speed up if I need to get somewhere in a hurry. How do I know this? Well, the boat’s engine and chartplotter work together to provide actual speed and fuel consumption data as I cruise.


Why, of course I took readings of actual data and plugged them into an Excel spreadsheet so I could chart them. Note that these NMPG and SOG numbers might be a tad high given that we were in the Mississippi River when I noted them and current may have given us a small boost.

So if you’re wondering how far I can get on 145 gallons of diesel, I’m figuring about 300 miles — if I watch my speed. Yes, I can go farther if I go slower but there are only so many hours in a day and I have no plans to cruise at night.

Overnight Accommodations

My other major cost is marinas. I’ve found places to dock ranging in price from free to about $90/night. You generally get what you pay for, although location does play a role.

My most expensive marina stops have been at Roche Harbor (a vacation destination) and downtown Chicago (a major metropolitan area). Both had all facilities I’ve come to expect: 30 amp power, water, pump-out service, restrooms, showers, and restaurants/groceries within walking distance. (More on all those in a moment.)


I only took one decent photo while at DuSable Marina in Chicago — and that was early one morning. We were there from October 13 through 15 and the marina was still quite full. But on October 31 (when we were about 300 miles south), it was completely empty because it closes for the winter.


Grafton Harbor was one of my favorite stops. A great restaurant, restrooms, showers, and laundry were all walking distance and we were able to top off water and fuel and get a pump out before leaving.

On the free end of the scale, we parked at the Jolliet, IL City Wall with 30 amp power, the Peoria City Dock with no power in one spot and just 110 v (household current) power in another, and at Mel’s Illinois River Restaurant, with no power. While Peoria had restaurants and a great bakery within walking distance, it’s also the stop where someone stole my portable BBQ grill right off the back deck of the boat one night. (I was lucky they didn’t take the inflatable life jackets or my electric bike, all of which were also on that back deck and a lot more valuable.)


Buddy boats R-31 CB “Pony” and R-29 CB “Do It Now” at the free wall in Jolliet, IL. This was a very nice free stop, especially because of the 30 amp power, autumn foliage, and park for dog walking, but there wasn’t much within walking distance.


Here are “La Principessa,” “Do It Now,” and “Nine Lives” at Peoria free City Dock. The facility was designed for boats even smaller than mine so the larger boats were left to tie up on a long floating dock that could barely fit two of us. “Nine Lives” is actually parked against the wall beyond the dock and tied up to the top of it; the only way they could get on and off the boat was to climb to their command bridge and over the rail at the top of the wall.

Of course, you can save a ton of money by simply anchoring out overnight. There are plenty of anchorages along the way and and resources like Waterway Guide to tell you what to expect at most of them. The boat is completely self-contained so I don’t need to come on land if I have water on board and space in my toilet waste tank. Of course, with two small dogs on board, dealing with their waste removal needs can be a challenge if I can’t just step off the boat with them for a walk. We anchored out just one night and our spot was wonderfully protected, quiet, and dark. Unfortunately, one of my pups refused to use the special “peepee mat” I’d bought and would up holding it all in for at least 40 hours. More training is required.


Connie on “La Principessa” shot this photo of “Do It Now” at anchor. This was the first and only time I’ve anchored out and I think I could have dropped the anchor a little farther from shore. I have an app on my phone (and my chartplotters) that can alert me if the anchor starts dragging, but I still slept like crap that night, worrying about the tail end of the boat drifting into the shore and not being able to power out. Yes, a stern anchor would help, but I don’t have one.

Scenery and Points of Interest

The scenery as you cruise varies greatly on the time of year and the waterway you’re on. The Puget Sound area, where I got my first experiences with the boat, offers outstanding views of forests and mountains, with all kinds of mammals and birds swimming in the water around you. The Chicago River is a crazy combination of buildings, bridges, and other water traffic. Farther south was industrial areas. The wide open spaces of trees and farms and small towns.

The views change gradually, given the slow speed. It reminds me a lot of how I experienced changes in terrain on long cross-country trips in my helicopter. Yes, I was moving along at 100 knots or more, but the grand landscape of the west changes gradually over many miles. This is the same, but with more subtle changes over fewer miles and longer stretches of time.

Most of the towns that have marinas or free places for a cruiser to park a boat overnight also have shops and restaurants. There are quaint downtown areas, many of which have historic buildings. There are always museums. Again, there are plenty of resources to help you find places of interest for a stop or an overnight stay. I have to admit that my trip between Chicago and the St. Louis area was a bit disappointing, mostly because we found ourselves in a bit of a hurry early and late in the trip, or dealing with cold weather, and I was sick with a cold in the middle. I feel as if I missed a lot of the exploring I might have done.

Weather

Weather is definitely a factor when you’re cruising in a small boat, although your tolerance to weather depends on your boat, your experience, the severity of the weather, and the way the weather affects the body of water you’re on.

In the two months I’ve been cruising on my own boat, I’ve been pretty lucky about weather. I had windy conditions in Puget Sound one day and relatively windy conditions on Lake Michigan another day, but neither experience was beyond what I or the boat could handle. Yes, we were tossed around and yes, water came up over the bow and had me using the windshield wipers on a day it wasn’t raining and yes, I wished that part of the trip was over and done while it was happening. But nothing broke, no one got sick, and the boat was never in any danger. Wind was also a factor during our first few days on the Illinois River, but again, it wasn’t a problem other than discomfort.

And of course, no one complains when the water is like glass or has tiny ripples that barely rock the boat.

I had one day of poor visibility on Puget Sound but it never got below a mile. I used the experience to experiment with my radar system — learning to read it so I could avoid obstacles if fog came up suddenly on a future cruise. Real fog delayed my departure from overnight parking on two occasions — who in their right mind would be in a hurry to leave a safe spot when they couldn’t see where they were going? (Contrary to popular belief, I am still in my right mind.)


Fog delayed us only a short while at the $20 Mel’s Illinois River Restaurant dock in Hardin, where we stopped with “La Princepessa.” (Excellent, reasonably priced restaurant, by the way.) Our next stop was Grafton, only 20 miles away so it was a short day anyway.

We did allow weather forecasts to delay us a lot longer than we should have been delayed in Peoria, IL. The forecast called for high winds — which, other than somewhat rough water on the Illinois River, only really affected us in locks — followed by heavy rain. Rain forecasts went from less than an inch to up to two inches and then back down to less than an inch. We’d been warned about floating debris after regional rainfalls exceeding 1 inch. Another, larger boat was waiting it out and they seemed very concerned. That got my companion worried. It also got me concerned. What didn’t make things better is that I’d been dealing with a bad cold for a few days and was exhausted after even only a few hours at the helm. So I decided to wait, too.

Unfortunately, the “hazardous weather” turned out to be a big nothing burger. We wasted a total of 5 days in Peoria when 2 would have been enough. That basically closed the window for us to get much farther than St. Louis before it was time to go home. (The way I see it, 3 days wasted in Peoria plus 2 extra days spent in Grafton plus 2 extra days spent at Alton would have gotten us to Green Turtle Bay — a much better stopping spot to continue the trip in early December. Yes, logistics to get to St. Louis would have been tougher, but it would have been worth it to get what I see as the hardest part of the trip — Alton to Paducah — behind me.)

But this is all a learning experience. And I need to remember that sometimes the weather forecasts won’t overstate the hazards. Sometimes they’ll understate hazards and I could find myself in trouble. Better safe than sorry.

Size Matters

Of all the boats belonging to “Loopers” we met in October, my boat was the smallest. The second smallest was also a Ranger Tug, but it was the next size up — an R-31 rather than my R-29. All of the boats had two people on board.


Nine Lives is a 48′ 2012 Kadey Krogen. Its owners, Kenny and Rhonda, live aboard year-round and just travel along the Great Loop. I took this photo as they left Alton Marina the other day.

According to Ranger Tugs, my boat is supposed to sleep six people. This number assumes two people in the main berth (which has an odd-shaped bed), two people in the lower berth (which has a full sized bed), and two people on the table converted to a bed (which I can’t do because the boat didn’t come with the required cushion). The reality is that unless two people really, really like each other, only one person is going to fit comfortably in each of the two berths. So I don’t think I’ll be encouraging any couples to accompany me.

Although there’s plenty of space on board for a traveler to get some alone time, the amount of comfortable space varies based on the weather. Sure, on a great day it’s wonderful to sit outside on the aft deck or up on the command bridge in the fresh air. But if it’s cold or rainy, inside is more pleasant. Then there are just three spaces (other than the head): the front cabin, the main cabin, and the lower cabin. The front and lower cabins are mostly beds. The main cabin has a nice sized table and two benches big enough to accommodate four people comfortably. That’s it.

The boat is also not designed for fat people. I’m not fat (in a rotund way), but I am overweight and I do need to shimmy through narrow spaces. They say I have a walk-around bed, but you can realize the absurdity of that statement when you try to walk around it. The door to the head is so narrow past the corner of my bed that it’s necessary to go through sideways. And I’ve stopped trying to get into the space between the helm and the back of the bench seat when the seat is facing the table. It’s almost wide enough.

Janet (who joined me on my October trip) and I called maneuvering around the boat, especially to get things out of the lower cabinets and refrigerator, “boat yoga.”


Here we are up on the command bridge while under way one morning. Do we look cold? We were! We went back inside the cabin not long after I made this selfie.

That said, the boat is very comfortable — at least to me. Remember, I’m coming to it from a slide-in truck camper. The boat is bigger. It has more windows and is brighter. It has a built-in inverter so I can use the microwave and coffee maker when I’m not plugged in. It has a generously sized aft deck with a table and seating for six — really! The command bridge seating is comfortable and a real joy when under way in warm weather. Yes, the bed is a weird shape, but it’s plenty big and I’m only sharing it with two tiny dogs.

Storage Cons and Pros

The front cabin has a clothes hanging rack that can accommodate about 10 hangers and, if they are used, the clothes block the use of some shelves and counter space there. There are a handful of other cabinets and a drawer that, if organized properly, can hold all my clothes. Or most of them. I use a large space under the bed to store off-season clothes; I have tank tops and shorts in there now. The trouble with that space is that you have to lift the mattress — which means unmaking the bed — to get into it. So it’s the kind of space where I’ll store things I can wait a week or two to retrieve — basically accessing it only when I change the sheets. The lower cabin has no storage other than a shelf along side the bed and one at the head of the bed. Whoever sleeps in there needs to stow their clothes in there or live out of a suitcase that can be taken out and placed on a table bench at bedtime.

Inside the main cabin is enough space to store dishes, silverware, utensils, pots, pans, and non-perishable foods — but not much else. The fridge is about the same size as my camper fridge, but the freezer is barely large enough to make and store ice and the door storage is very limited. There’s a compartment under the helm seat where I am storing tools and related items — including the extra remotes the boat came with for things like the auto pilot and search light. I’ve been storing manuals, log books, charts, and reference materials on the very large “dashboard” forward of the helm; that keeps them out of the way but easily accessible in transit.

There’s a ton of storage space under the aft deck — which is a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it offers space to keep relatively large things out of the way and dry but still relatively accessible. A curse because some of those things — like the generator — are heavy and they make the boat sit aft low in the water. This situation is not made any better by the fact that the dinghy, dinghy motor, and my electric bike are also in the back of the boat. There’s simply no place else to put any of these things. One of my projects when I get back to the boat later this month is to try to move things from under the aft deck to under the bed. There are a bunch of navigation reference guides in a box back there that will be the first to move.


Here’s one of my aft deck storage areas. This one is on the starboard side. From left to right is a waterproof box with the charging cable and accessories for my electric bike with a very complete Harbor Freight toolbox beneath it, an open plastic bin containing my 30 amp power cable and a heavy duty hose, my battery operated drill in its case, and a latching bin containing another hose and various hose-related items. The engine and thruster batteries are under the deck to the left in this photo and the inverter/charger is under the deck at the top of this photo.

I should add here that I’ve acquired several latching plastic bins to store loose items on and under the aft deck and under passenger bench seat on the command bridge. Storing like items together is the key (in my opinion) to organization and the ability to find things. There are a lot of things that come with the boat and will eventually be used but are not used very often. An example of that is the canvas covers for outdoor seating, the command bridge helm, and various windows and doors on board. Two shallow bins with latching tops make these easy to store upstairs under that bench seat where they’re out of sight and out of mind. And taller bins specifically chosen for the way they fit under the aft deck can store hoses, power cables, spare parts, and other smaller items that would too easily get lost if left loose.

Marina Life

So far, most of our overnight stops have been at full-service marinas. Slips or dock spaces include 30 amp power and water spigots. The marina facilities usually include restrooms and showers which we try to make use of. Marinas also usually have fuel and pump-out service; I like the idea of topping off when I get below 2/3 tank if the next fuel stop is more than 50 miles away.

Using a marina restroom means making less deposits into the toilet’s holding tank so I can do pump-outs less frequently. Regular use of the toilet means pumping out once every two weeks for just me or once a week for me and a friend; using the marina restroom 50% of the time doubles the amount of time between pump outs.

As for showering, the boat has a decent little shower that I’ve used exactly once. The water is plenty hot and the water pressure is good. The space isn’t that small, either. But you I usually get a better shower in the marina’s facilities. (There was one recent exception to this when I had the worst shower I’d ever had anywhere — at a marina.)

The boat’s galley is complete with a refrigerator, microwave, sink, two-burner stove, and oven. (It actually has two refrigerators and a wine cooler, but I keep that second fridge turned off for now.) I also brought along a one-cup electric coffee maker, a small Instant Pot, and a stick blender. So I can make just about anything in the galley that I can make at home. Still, it’s nice to go out for a meal once in a while. The marina at Grafton had an excellent restaurant right on the premises and we ate there three times. I had my first oysters of the season and first crawfish in years.

Making and Learning from New Friends

A marina’s amenities are part of the reason I like staying at marinas. The other part is meeting and socializing with other boaters.

I hosted my first ever “docktails” with folks in a Ranger Tug named Pony that was parked next to us at DuSable Marina in Chicago; it was their first ever docktails, too. We traveled together from Chicago to Ottawa, IL. We met their friends in a 42 foot Grand Banks named La Principessa (the Princess) at Jolliet and played tag with them at marinas, docks, and anchorages in Henry, Peoria, Barstow, Hardin, Grafton, and Alton. We met the super experienced owners and full-time liveaboards in the 48 foot Kadey Krogen named Nine Lives, sharing lock space and marinas with them several times on the Illinois River. Then there was the weather worried folks aboard the 40 foot Kha Shing Vista named Balclutha Too; I just discovered today that they lost one engine 100 miles north of Grafton — in an area with virtually no services — and managed to get to Portage du Sioux (between Alton and Grafton) for repairs. (If the timing is right, I might resume the trip with them at month end; it depends on how long their repairs take.) We also met sailors who were motoring with their masts stepped down in Black Majik and Yuca. I can track all of these people on the Nebo app and message them in the app or via text. It’s great to get news about conditions and facilities ahead of me on my trip from others as they pass through.

Most of these boaters have far more experience than I do and are willing to share what they know to make my journey easier. It’s a real pleasure to have them point out things I could do better or differently. I’m trying to be a sponge that soaks up experiences and information. These folks have been invaluable to me as sources of information and moral support. They’re one of the best things so far about my cruising life.

40-Day Opinion?

So far, I have to give my cruising life a two thumbs up. It’s not all sunshine and glassy smooth water, but it is the comfortable, doable, rewarding challenge that I hoped it would be.

I’m home now for three weeks to sell some jewelry at two shows, prep my house for its winter occupant, and touch base with local friends. I’ve already got my plane ticket back to the boat. Frankly, I’m counting the days until I can get back to it.

Never Stop Thinking

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I think of an experiment to test a theory.

As I age, I find that my mind often wanders into different directions, normally unbidden. I think it’s because I have very little in the way of distractions in my home: I live alone and I don’t have a TV going all the time. This gives me time to think — and sometimes I think about unusual things.

The Science of Hot Coffee

This morning, I thought about why it was so important for me to warm my coffee cup before brewing coffee into it and why it was equally important to get the metal teaspoon I use to add sugar and stir out of that cup as quickly as possible. It all has to do with temperature: keeping that coffee hot as long as possible so I could enjoy it at my own pace before it got cold.

The warmed coffee cup is pretty obvious — we’ve all had the experience of putting a salad on a dish still hot from the dishwasher. The salad touching the plate isn’t as cold as the salad that isn’t. This is why they chill salad plates (and forks) at good restaurants. It follows that putting something hot into a cold vessel will do the same. I guarantee you’ve experienced this yourself. I know only one other person who takes the time to warm his coffee cup before putting coffee in it.

(And yes, I know a lot of folks don’t give a damn about what they likely consider a minuscule temperature change. But I do.)

But the spoon? Why is it so important for me to remove the spoon quickly?

This morning I thought a little about that. I’d always assumed that the stainless steel teaspoon would act as a heat sink. One end is in the hot coffee and the other is in the relatively cool kitchen. The heat from the coffee would heat up the spoon, which was made of metal — an excellent conductor of heat — and that heat would travel up the spoon handle to its end. The handle, which was constantly being warmed by the coffee would be constantly cooled by room temperature. That heat energy that is lost would have to come from somewhere: the coffee.

This is something I’ve always assumed. It makes sense to me. But this morning, for some reason, I wondered if I was right. And then I came up with an experiment to test my theory.

The Scientific Method


Scientific Method diagram by Wikipedia user Efbrazil used via CC 4.0 license.

I was in fifth grade when I learned about the scientific method. That was a long time ago and, not being a scientist or in any way involved in lab work my entire life, you’d think I’d forget it. But some things just stick with me. I think the scientific method stuck with me because it made sense logically — and I’m definitely a logical thinker.

Don’t worry — I won’t go into the scientific method in detail here. I’ll just focus on this diagram, which shows all steps to the method. The important concept to take away from this is that it starts with a question you might want answered and then goes through the process of coming up with a possible answer (hypothesis) and testing that answer (experiment). If the results (analyzed data) support the hypothesis, you might be done; if they don’t, then you’re definitely not done. In either case, you’d likely explore other hypotheses, going through the process again (and again and again, if necessary) until you either couldn’t get an answer — i.e., the experiment results simply do not support any hypothesis — or you were confident that one of your hypotheses was correct.

When I thought up an experiment to test my theory about a stainless steel teaspoon as a heat sink, I realized I was using the scientific method. In real life — not in a lab, not as a scientist. It was a great example about how some of the stuff we learn in school that we don’t think we’ll ever use in life does become relevant every once in a while.

Want to see the process for my experiment? Here are the first four steps:

  1. Observation/Question – More of a question: does coffee get cold faster if you leave a teaspoon in it?
  2. Research Topic Area – Well, understanding what a heat sink is is probably important to forming a hypothesis.
  3. Hypothesis – Yes, coffee does get cold faster if I leave a stainless steel teaspoon in it than if I don’t. (This would not apply to a plastic teaspoon since plastic is a poorer conductor of heat than metal.)
  4. Experiment – Take two identical cups. Add an equal amount of boiling water to each cup. Put a room temperature teaspoon inside one cup. Take temperature readings every 5 to 10 minutes to see if the one with the teaspoon gets cold faster. (You could expand the experiment to include three cups and put a plastic teaspoon in the third to test the hypotheses that plastic teaspoons would not have an effect.)

That’s as far as I got. I thought up the experiment but I didn’t do it. It simply isn’t that important to me to know, one way or the other, if I’m right. But it might make a nice at-home experiment for home-schooled kids if you happen to know any. Science is important — and heat sinks are a part of our every day life — they’re inside every computer we own.

Why Blog about It?

Why am I blogging about this? Well, I think I surprised myself this morning by my train of thought and where it led me. I wanted to share that with other folks who might find themselves consumed with things that prevent them from thinking for themselves.

All for clicks and likes

Let me take a moment to mention how outside pressures, especially from social media, get people to do things just for clicks and likes. Just this morning, I read another gender reveal tragedy story — too many gender reveals exist solely to impress others with their outrageousness. People are dying because a blog post that went viral has convinced people to make their own viral moment centered around the gender of their unborn child. Are we really that dumb? That 15 minutes of fame can put lives at risk?

This is an extreme, of course, but think about the not-so-smart things you’ve done to impress your friends and others over the years. Those “watch this” moments. Ever think of why you were really doing them? Or what the consequences could have been if what you did backfired? Is it really that important to impress others?

How about impressing yourself instead?

Every day, we’re faced with a barrage of inputs from family, friends, strangers, advertisers, and the news media. Direct conversation, text, and email; social media posts by people with their own agenda; print, audio, and video advertisements on billboards, in magazines, and everywhere online and on television; network and cable news broadcasters. Too much of that input is trying to fill your head with someone else’s thoughts and ideas and manipulate your opinions. If you follow politics at all, you know exactly what I mean. It’s hard to have a moment to yourself, a time to just think based on verifiable facts and to form your own ideas and opinions.

I do this a lot. Yes, I spend a lot too much time on Twitter but that’s the only social media I allow access to my brain. (Seriously folks, #DeleteFacebook.) And even then, I’m careful about who I follow. I don’t want a diet of political nonsense from either side so I tend to avoid accounts that post just politics. Instead, I try to get tweets from fellow thinkers — or at least from folks who have a life that doesn’t revolve around cable news and the latest political/celebrity scandal. And when I’m not on Twitter — which really is most of the time — I keep active and work on ways to make my life fulfilling.

I think therefore I am. If you can’t think for yourself, do you really exist?

Anyway, does leaving a stainless steel teaspoon in your coffee make it cool faster? If you do the experiment, let me know.

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.

Some Thoughts on Self-Awareness

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I give some thought to the meaning of self-awareness after a discussion with a friend.

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I ended my big Great Loop boat trip three weeks early because of a personality conflict with the other crew member. You can read about the trip on the blog I created for all of my Great Loop endeavors; this post gives you a list in date order of each daily blog post from the trip. If you don’t feel like reading a ton, read the posts for Day 34 and Day 35, which sum up the situation once it came to a head. (I won’t go into a lot of detail about the actual problem here since that’s not the purpose of this post.)

Sharing the Problem

Conversation
A text discussion I had with a good friend back in August, not long after I started my trip. (To my knowledge, he did not kill anyone in Oregon. And yes, I used a decibel meter on my phone to see exactly how loud my roommate’s snoring was.)

In general, I wrote very little in the blog about the problem as it was developing. I didn’t want to sound to readers like a whiner. I wanted the blog to be a useful tool for others contemplating their own trip on the Great Loop. I wanted to provide valuable information about navigation, stops, and facilities along the way. I wanted to share data that might be useful in trip planning — and to remind me what we did right, what we did wrong, and what I might want to do on my own journey.

But I did write quite a bit about the problem in texts to friends as it was happening. And one of those text conversations stuck in my mind because of something my friend said. He used the phrase self-awareness and I realized that I’d never really given that concept much thought. So on Wednesday afternoon, when I realized I wasn’t going to get any more real work done in my garage, I dug through my messages and found the conversation. I’ve shared it here so you can see the discussion in context.

(Do I care if the problem crew member reads this? Not one damn bit. The way I see it, it could help her learn something about herself to make her less of a problem in the future. But I seriously doubt she’s able to take any criticism at all. She’s more likely to throw a tantrum when she reads this than objectively consider anything I’ve written.)

What I find amazing here is how early on the problem with the other crew member manifested itself. I joined the crew on August 10 and by the end of the next day I was already griping a bit about the woman I had to share a very small space with. Nine days later, I had recognized that I had a real problem on my hands and even mentioned the possibility of dropping out. I proceeded to list a few things that were bothering me then — the list got longer as time went on, but I don’t need to discuss that here — and that’s when my friend replied, “Some of us are more self aware than others.”

And that got me thinking about self-awareness.

Self-Awareness, Defined

My first (admittedly paranoid) thought after reading his comment was, is he also talking about me?

I can be quite the gabber. I think that’s because I live alone, work from home, and have few opportunities to converse with others. I also think a lot about all kinds of things. There’s a lot of crap that accumulates in my head and when I get with someone who might be the least bit interested, a lot of it comes out. I had already talked this friend’s ear off about some of the weird stuff that happened during my crazy divorce and although I’d gotten all of that off my chest, I know I still tended to talk a lot when we were together. I was working on it, though, and making some headway.

Yet here I was, ironically complaining about someone who “never shuts the fuck up.” Was he hinting that I lacked self-awareness?

To answer that question, I needed to better understand what self-awareness was. I worked my Google skills and came up with a bunch of results from what I believe are reputable sources.

An article on the Positive Psychology website titled “What Is Self-Awareness and Why Is It Important? [+5 Ways to Increase It]” wins the award for the simplest definition:

Self-awareness is the ability to see yourself clearly and objectively through reflection and introspection.

While it may not be possible to attain total objectivity about oneself (that’s a debate that has continued to rage throughout the history of philosophy), there are certainly degrees of self-awareness. It exists on a spectrum.

This is what my friend was saying. “Some of us are more self aware than others.” It’s a spectrum. We should all have some level of self-awareness, but some have a higher level than others. I believe he was suggesting that she (or I?) ranked low on the spectrum.

The article then goes on to discuss self awareness theory:

Self-awareness theory is based on the idea that you are not your thoughts, but the entity observing your thoughts; you are the thinker, separate and apart from your thoughts (Duval & Wicklund, 1972).

We can go about our day without giving our inner self any extra thought, merely thinking and feeling and acting as we will; however, we also can focus our attention on that inner self, an ability that Duval and Wicklund (1972) termed “self-evaluation.”

When we engage in self-evaluation, we can give some thought to whether we are thinking and feeling and acting as we “should” or following our standards and values. This is referred to as comparing against our standards of correctness. We do this daily, using these standards as a way to judge the rightness of our thoughts and behaviors.

Using these standards is a major component of practicing self-control, as we evaluate and determine whether we are making the right choices to achieve our goals.

The article contains a lot more and I highly recommend it if you’re interested in this area of psychology, whether it’s to understand yourself or others better.

In my situation, I don’t think the crew member I had problems with did any sort of self-evaluation. I’m not even sure whether she was aware of her own standards and values. I honestly don’t think she gave much of that any consideration at all. I believe that she used the same methods of communication with us that she used with everyone else and flat-out failed to see how she was often being rude or a nuisance. She came across as selfish and immature. I don’t think either of those traits are compatible with self-awareness.

As for myself, I am aware that I run off at the mouth a lot and that I can annoy some people. I have theories on why I annoy some people and those theories vary with the person. (I think what tends to annoy a lot of women is that I’m not a typical woman, I have very little in common with women (I have no kids or grandkids and did not have a traditional married life), I know a lot things that are beyond their realm of experience, and I share a lot of interests with men. I honestly believe some women feel threatened by that.) I think that bothering to develop theories at all is a part of being self-aware or performing self-evaluation.

But the one thing I try hard to do — really! — is change my behavior when I’m dealing with someone who obviously doesn’t like me. I try to be aware of how my interactions with others are seen by others. Whether I succeed or fail miserably is the big question.

One thing I don’t do: let other people dominate me. (I think that bothers women, too, since so many of them are so accustomed to playing second fiddle to someone else. And yes, I’m putting that kindly.)

Do I actively engage in self-evaluation on a regular basis? I don’t think so. But I think I should.

After all, how can we understand other people if we don’t understand ourselves?

Other Resources

Of course, I found and read more than just one article on the topic. Here are two more that you might find interesting.

An article in the Harvard Business Review titled “What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It)” approaches the topic, as you might imagine, from the business and productivity point of view. The summary states:

Although most people believe that they are self-aware, true self-awareness is a rare quality. In this piece, the author describes a recent large-scale investigation that shed light on some of the biggest roadblocks, myths, and truths about what self-awareness really is — and what it takes to cultivate it. Specifically, the study found that there are actually two distinct types of self-awareness, that experience and power can hinder self-awareness, and that introspection doesn’t always make you more self-aware. Understanding these key points can help leaders learn to see themselves more clearly.

The article goes into a lot of detail about the study and its results. Along the way, it presents a 2 x 2 grid identifying “Four Self-Awareness Archetypes” and how each affects things like leadership, success, and relationships. I won’t reproduce it here. Go check out the article for yourself.

Another article, on the NBC News site, is titled “What is self-awareness? And how can you cultivate it?.” It talks about recognizing and managing emotions. It quotes psychologist John Duffy:

In effect, self-awareness is the recognition of one’s own emotional state at any given point in time. The argument suggests that we are, far too often, wholly unaware of the emotional state we are currently in, and the degree to which that state influences our behavior and thought process. To the degree that we can manage our emotional states, we are better able to manage these other elements of our lives as well.

This is yet another way to look at this topic. I think it hearkens back to the concept of self-evaluation discussed above. How can you be aware of your emotional state if you’re not constantly evaluating yourself? Maybe we all need to just count to ten and think periodically thoughout the day, especially when we might feel as if our emotions are controlling our words and actions.

Me?

I came to the conclusion that my friend was not commenting on me and maybe not even the bothersome crew member. I believe he was making a general statement that applies to all of us.

But it got me thinking — and realizing how important the trait of self-awareness and the act of self-evaluation are in becoming a well-rounded person.