writing Archives - La possibilità di un'isola

Keep Swimming, Keep Rowing, Keep Sailing

By fabio@lapossibilitadiunisola.com | May 15, 2020 | Comments 1 comment

Building the hard dodger for Tranquility is a project made possible by a chain of events that stretches several months in the past. A key element to this transformation was the dinghy, also knows as auxiliary boat or tender.

Looking at this older picture of Tranquility you can notice that the plastic Walker Bay dinghy sat on top of the companionway, in a very secure spot, but making it impossible to protect the cockpit and companionway, and forcing the crew to duck considerably to get in and out. On small boats like the Columbia 29 the stowage of dinghies is not a trivial matter, as the auxiliary boat is an indispensable tool on any cruising vessel and the space on deck is limited.

The 8 feet long Walker Bay is a dependable and solid dinghy, and I grew accustomed to its carrying capacity and good rowing abilities. I was not ready to renounce such luxury. The solution to this problem appeared to be a nesting dinghy, an auxiliary boat that is comprised of two parts that can be nested one inside the other, reducing its length when stowed. It was basically impossible to find a nesting dinghy where I was on the Atlantic Coast of Panama. Building one became the only option.

I built that boat out of fiberglass and nida-core panels while in a secluded marina surrounded by jungle, a project that took a lot of time, money and energy, but that unlocked the possibility to both have a decent size dinghy (8 feet in length) and a future dodger. As I was building it from scratch I decided to make it also a sailing dinghy, putting together pieces that people almost spontaneously donated.

I have never shared the details of the building in this blog and I will not do it now. Those months spent in the Panamanian jungle coincide with a very difficult time for me.

As many key moments in one’s personal life those times are colored by often extremes emotional tones that progress on their own course. Kate and I were finding more and more difficult to work as a team in life and the dinghy project became for me both a refuge and a statement of identity.

What I will do instead is telling a story that came from that time. It does not describe technically the building process nor the chronology of the events, but it gives an idea of the motives and the discoveries that happened inside and around me while building a small boat.

THIS IS THE STORY OF ARCTIC TERN

Arctic Tern is a little boat.

She was born near Nombre de Dios in Panama, under a roof between two containers, surrounded by a 15 meter mast and assorted junk coming from boats in advance state of abandon.

Kind souls donated the elements that put together gave her wings: A fiberglass tube that a Spanish Explorer had no use for, a beautiful sail with the emblem of a horse offered by an Argentinian Sailing Teacher, a dagger board forged by a Polish Engineer in the sultry womb of a steel ship, a weird looking rudder from the nautical collection of an Australian Firefighter.

Giving birth to Arctic Tern was a lot of suffering and pain. It of course cost a lot of money to buy the materials, a lot of sweat in transporting them, and to put them together.

Arctic Tern was also the last nail in the coffin of a failing relationship. She gave her creator spiritual and physical wounds, broken hands and even a chemical burn in one eye from a drop of resin. Many tools broke and clothes were destroyed in the process.

But it was also fun. In those long weeks that stretched into months the creator was busy overcoming design and construction problems, in endless discussions with curious standbyers, crossing all the boundaries from feeling hopeless and stupid to be elated and proud.

When Arctic Tern was born she was ugly.

It is better said she was not symmetrical and she was on the heavy side, definitely sturdy.

“Ogni scarrafo’ è bello a mamma soia” say people from Naples. Every cockroach looks beautiful to its mom.

She was immediately loved. Not just by the creator who built her from stem-to-stern, but from the neighbors who saw the long process unfolding, both the enthusiasts and the naysayers.

It was a fool’s idea, with no logic whatsoever and it could not be stopped. The mothership Tranquility was ready to let go of Walker Bay, the reliable companion of many landing and explorations, and she welcomed the weird looking boat made of two halves.

The launch was a long awaited moment.

When Arctic Tern touched the water she started flying. She is very good at it.

The creator sat in her lap and he was very afraid of going out in anything blowing stronger than a mild breeze, doubting the abilities of his creature and his own’s as sailor.

Arctic Tern was born ready.

Her flat belly dances on the surface of the ocean. She almost takes off when her two wings start to act in harmony in a lively wind.

The big one opens catching the breath of the sky, the small one points down in the deep ocean gripping invisible streams.

The two wings balance each other and so the dance is possible.

The creator took Arctic Tern out for more and more dances, sitting in her lap while she was doing what boats do.

Through Arctic Tern the creator is learning to fly, and when he is with her out In the ocean, the real teachers come to see them.

Ospreys, terns, pelicans, the graceful gliding vultures. The masters of Air.

They look down to watch Arctic Tern and the creator progress.

They show them how to dance in the currents, how to float about.

They are always vigilant as they glide undisturbed.

The creator down below feels very nervous, scared of the big waves, afraid of breaking a bone or a wing of Artic Tern.

They see each other and a feeling of communion is established. They are the same even if they fly for different purposes.

They are all part of the Great Dance, a dance that follows different rhythms and that contains them all.

THE GREAT DANCE

The creator of Arctic Tern learned that in those very moments on the surface of the ocean by the rocky headland all the freedom lanes become one.

How simple it was just to be out there doing their part!

He understood that we share the dance with everybody even those who try to be small and invisible, and that everything, even his sturdy little vessel and not just himself, is temporary.

It doesn’t matter if you are on a tiny sailboat on the surface of the ocean, a petrel swooping on the crest of a wave or if you are a bluefin tuna just below it.

You are just doing your part, so why worry?

It was then that he felt bizarre thoughts invading his head, as if they were coming from the outside. He felt a question brewing.

What if the Mighty Tuna comes and swallows us all? The Slim Sardine asked in the Creator’s mind.

After few second of perplexity he welcomed this alien consciousness as a guest.

What Can you do about it? Not a whole lot, Slim Sardine. Yes, you can swim away from the Mighty Tuna mouth and look for shelter in tube-like swirling spirals, with family and friends, in your community of sardines.

But when the The Mighty Tuna is coming for you… What you can really do Slim Sardine is keep swimming, keep rowing, keep sailing.

You’re doing it good or doing it bad, but you’re doing it, as long as you won’t stop dancing.

Be a little patient and keep swimming. keep rowing, keep sailing.

It is as simple as that.

The same is true for me, thought the Creator. My hands will hurt, my eyes will be dry and red, my buttocks will be sore and sun and dry air will crack my lips and tangle my hair.

And when the storm comes I might drown. What can I do about it?

Keep swimming keep rowing, keep sailing.

The creator’s eyes turned wet by the upwelling of emotions. Salty jewels from the body poured back into the ocean.

The Heron taught him how to be patient, that good positioning and one precise strike is worth much more than a lot of fussing around. He heard the Heron’s thought merging with his own’s.

He felt this idea was beautiful and true, so he decided to address the Mighty Tuna itself…

Do you Mighty Tuna worry about the little sardines you’re swallowing whole? You follow your hunger Mighty Tuna.

But look behind your back, the Savage Shark may be coming soon for you. So what you can really do is to keep swimming, keep rowing, keep sailing.

After all, even if the shark may never find you, nothing’s going to change you are still going to disappear. Maybe you’re good. Maybe you swim fast because you are mighty. But if you’re in the wrong place then you get swallowed.

You may think you have to leave the dance floor because there are more important or more urgent things do. Serious business.

You are running and you are doing a good job, and maybe you are so good that the shark is going to miss you, and you’re not going to bite the hook. You know better than that. You’re faster than the spear. You’re the best. Nothing can touch you.

You are just fooling yourself Mighty Tuna, you’re going to end up digested by something. Microbes, bacterias, mushrooms, something is going to chew you to bits.

And even when you are the Savage Shark you are not safe. Maybe you will bite a hook on a fishing line. Maybe it’s the Killer Whale. Maybe it’s a disease, or some plastic in your guts. It doesn’t matter.

Swimming, rowing, sailing… you skim the surface and participate in the Big Dance.

Everybody’s dancing. Birds in the sky, people holding cocktails, monkeys in the jungle.

So again Mighty Tuna, Savage Shark or Slim Sardine. It doesn’t matter what you do or what you think.

Keep swimming.

Keep rowing.

Keep sailing, and keep dancing.

Escaping death just for one day wont’ grant you a special treatment. Just do what you want. Somebody is going to swallow you and there are no medicines, Science can’t stop that.

Nothing can cure you from the disease, because there is no disease.

There’s enough beauty in a single note of the music and in each single step of the Great Dance to keep you raptured forever. Every day is a gift, and for every bad day you can be happy that you don’t have to live it again.

Keep swimming, and stretch your wings

Keep rowing, and learn

Keep sailing and dance with me.

The music keeps playing. You want change. Everybody is still dancing and you can decide to do whatever you like because this is not going to affect the dance, it keeps going with or without you

You can be in the dance or out of the dance.

It doesn’t matter what you do, all you have left is to keep swimming, keep (G)rowing, keep sailing.

The Slim Sardine, the Mighty Tuna and the Savage Shark said goodbye to Arctic Tern and the creator and swayed back into the Great Dance.

The creator realized he just lectured a bunch of fishes and a heron, who could care less about the lecture as she was catching dinner. For some reason it didn’t feel as strange as it sounds.

The creator eased the line that controlled Arctic Tern’s air wing to catch the following breeze while he raised the water wing. He felt the acceleration radiating through her solid belly as they bounced on the surface of the ocean.

He understood that the logics he told himself and others behind that building endeavor were nothing but wishy washy rationales encircling a deeper motivation. He acted and then needed to justify his actions.

He was doing his thing, taking part in the Great Dance.

Keep swimming, keep rowing, keep sailing.

The inadequate identity of Sailor (or of any other…)

By fabio@lapossibilitadiunisola.com | April 7, 2020 | Comments 3 comments

I always suffered of identity problems.

It seems self explanatory that identity is the sum of the qualities, mostly beliefs, that define a person’s image. The role this person has in society also feed the sense of identity. It is a common human perception to feel we are individual, unique beings, and we look for evidence to support this perception.

I am walking a very perilous philosophical path here, a walk that I will abandon for now while I keep pondering on it. The identity example serves me to bring you the latest news about life in the boatyard, although in a very elaborate way. This blog used to be about sailing but this deviation toward self questioning and rumination has been evident for quite a while now. Thanks for your patience. Sailing will resume as soon as possible.

Why all this fuss about identity?

I’ll answer saying that is a conceptual element that always puzzled me. I never bought the assumption that we have a true identity that define us and that we have to discover, or better assume.

Take first names. They are the first element of identity, clearly stamped on an ID card. You didn’t even pick it yourself, somebody gave it to you even before they could know anything about you. How much a Fabio am I in the end? This is a silly example that shows how identities are imposed by family and society, they depend on the fortuitous place you happened to be born in and often times they all clash with whom you really are. I can continue bringing more evidence. Are you defined by your job title? Your nationality? The color of your skin? Your gender? Your bank account balance?

Of course the answer is yes and no, and that’s why I find this fascinating. Because who we really are is way more vast than our identities, and it is our job to find out. Or not.

Deviation from the route #2

My tiny sailboat Tranquility is going through some serious transformations and I obey as her temporary keeper. Sometimes I believe the fantasy that boats find their servants by mean of seduction. Once they hooked their victim firmly they start to extract resources in form of time, dedication, labor and most of all money. The servant is usually unaware of the asymmetry of power at work and think they are the one in charge of the situation. They are not. However this relationship of convenience is one to be trusted, as usually boats give back love and dedication in time of need.

Likewise this physical transformation of the watercraft I inhabit reflects an inner transformation. I sense that from weak signals I receive from my surroundings. The fun thing about transformation is that we cannot foresee the outcome, or you would not go that way. Once you have the future it is already the past. It is like playing chess, when you know what is going to happen the game is finished and you have to start a new one.

I met a sadhu high in the Himalayan mountains long ago. He was summoned by a guesthouse mate who was very into spirituality and had met the fella on a bus station earlier that week. The guy was thrilled about the meeting and I was hanging around curious about what a mendicant dressed in orange had to say.

The sadhu looked at me in the eyes for five second at most, then uttered these words: “you are about to jump on the next level” or “this life is taking you to the next level” or something like that. The other guy received the response that he was a fresh soul, coming to earth for the first time and he missed to be with god very much. That explained why he was so spiritual at least in my mind. He was trapped in an unfamiliar reality and wanted so badly to be one with god. Then we asked the sadhu what was his duty in this life: he was here to learn how to convey the “grace” (the best word I can recall) not by words as he just did to us but by staring at people in silence.

The colorful scene happening in a cafe of a barren Himalayan village could be just a travel annedocte from long ago. It took me ten years to realize that the transformation he was talking about had happened not even one year after that “prophecy”.

One day of 11 years ago after a conversation with a friend during Easter holiday I quickly took the decision to leave my career, family and friends to move to a Venezuelan archipelago and run a sailboat charter business. We can ponder a lot about if all this is coincidence, self-fulfilling prophecy, magic, destiny and such without getting a spider from the hole (transl. of an idiomatic Italian phrase). What is evident is that the before and the after look quite different from each other, they are two completely separate identities. So which one is the right identity? Both? None?

I’ll borrow an image that Alan Watts borrowed form Buckminster Fuller (feel free to borrow it as well):

“ suppose we have a rope, and one section of this rope is made of manila hemp, the next section is cotton, the next section is silk, the next section is nylon, and so on. Now we tie a knot in this rope—just an ordinary one-over knot—and you find, by putting your finger in the knot, you can move it all the way down the rope. Now as this knot travels, it’s first of all made of manila hemp, it’s then made of cotton, it’s then made of silk, it’s then made of nylon, and so on. But the knot keeps going on. That’s the integrity of pattern; the continuing pattern, which is what you are. Because you might, you know, be—for several years—you might be a vegetarian, and you might be a meat-eater, and so on. And, you know, your constitution changes all the time, but your friends still recognize you because you’re still putting on the same show. It’s the same pattern that is the recognizable individual.”

The pattern stays the same even when conditions change.

If I looked at myself before the event horizon of my departure for Venezuela all I was good in making with my hands was rolling cigarettes and playing basketball. I was a discrete cook, a good basketball player and I smoked way too many cigarettes. In every other department my hands were clumsy, slow and uneffective.

In my childhood I used to play with my father’s tool. In the courtyard of the apartment building where I grew up I would shape scrap pieces of baseboard into medieval swords and play with other kids, or cobble up a rubber band slingshot out of wood, nails and clothes pins. It excited me but I quickly lost interest in working with my hands. I substituted it with daydreaming.

Wasn’t it much better to imagine to be a mechanical engineer and design and build car engines in the comforts of my mind rather going through the troubles of doing it for real? I had landed with both feet in the world of abstraction and I was very happy in it.

What kept me solidly anchored in the world of abstraction was another element. I was fascinated with the study of language. I took pride of reading books when I was a little kid and I would devour many good and not so good novels and stories and when I earned the title of kid who read the most I went to the trouble of lying about reading a long not so exciting novel about a prehistoric saber tooth cat to keep said title. The teacher gave me a pass on that but I remember from a look in her eyes that the jig was up.

Writing was a direct consequence of it. I of course dreamed about being a writer, and particularly a famous novelist. Not a best seller writer but a novelist whom both critics and public praise for depth of thought, irony and for creating marvelous worlds that stretch our sense of reality. Maturity and input from society values quickly made me understand that investing in such a path would be risky in its outcomes and very likely lead to being poor (something tells me that it was my destiny anyway…). I resorted to other occupations, deciding that being a psychologist was a good way to use language for something socially useful and make a living with it.

Life decided otherwise and this process of transformation brought me back to use my hands in conjunction with my mind to transform reality. The smooth surface of my palms began to show sign of hard spots. Knuckles quickly developed wounds one after the other, with open ones taking the place of old scars. My nails became in need of serious cleaning all the time. The perfectly comfortable dreams of designing custom made objects and structures faced the obvious lack of experience, training and skills. I learned that sailing is hard on your hands, and hard on your mind.

This transformation for sure affected the reality of my identity in a deep way and it was not foreseeable when the sadhu spoke to me. If I knew what was going to happen I would have started to ask myself questions, make judgements and ultimately give up the entire idea thinking that I could do better taking a different path. I am happy I did not, because ultimately I am at best marginal if not naive when it comes to making judgement on what’s good or bad for me.

Putting it all together

The liquid consistency of contemporary life finely expressed in language by Zygmunt Bauman certainly affects identity, it stretches boundaries and allows degrees of freedom that were unthinkable in the past. At surface this whole identity business is still chaotic in my mind as I reject definitions of nationality, age and such as important individual traits. However I recently realized that the knot that slides through the imaginary rope, the never changing pattern, the ultimate identity that works no matter what changes I go through in life is the identity of Writer. Writing has always accompanied me and it will, both as an urge and as a pleasure.

The fact that I am without any doubt a Writer is corroborated by at least four other people. One is a talented world creator who weaves poetic images and hallucinatory quests in the realm of fantasy. Another is a published science writer who likes to express his talent in fictional adventures. There is also a professional designer who uses words to draw humorous and moving pieces. Finally, a student and teacher of language in a rogue mission to shock and awe you through a mix of erotism and wit. They are the Rebel Writers, and I am a proud member. The proof that I am a writer is that I belong to this group of writers, because only writers, and a very special kind, are allowed.

Whatever the next level, whatever transformation is happening I will keep writing about it.

Estuarine Ode

By fabio@lapossibilitadiunisola.com | March 31, 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

Beneath spanish moss and up in reeds

My soul runs over

moments of wonder

Communion of intentions breeds

A place unifies souls

Another tears them apart

The recursive spiral path

From tender love to brawls

Whatever longing I trace

Cools down and dies

Where the huge owl flies

And the storm takes place

Binding metal hoops sink

In a muddy tidal pool

As I emerge anew

Grieving songs unwind

Ceremonies over and over

Witness the ascending of soul

And take me past the shoal

Where reigns the plover

In mud and tide and sweat

Gnats and dust above

The juicy terroir of love

Forgiven is all debt

Spent passions fertilize

The ground I walk on

In mud I bury the carrion

All things the tide equalize

New structures sprout

Over good old bones

While a solid form arises

A bird of prey comes out

On a ocean journey I go

Transforming once again

All the crap I am carrying

Away I vow to throw

Transforming a beaten up Columbia 29 into a seaworthy liveaboard sailboat

By fabio@lapossibilitadiunisola.com | June 12, 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

[This Article was published in Good Old Boat magazine, Issue May/June 2017 . The following is the unedited version]

I could find many reasons behind our decision to purchase a Columbia 29 for bluewater cruising. Her presence on many of the most popular internet lists of small-go-anywhere-sailboats was a supporting evidence of her qualities.

She appeared on James Baldwins’ list on the website Atom Voyages, that we found particularly sage on the subject of cruising on small sailboats.

Another guideline was the mantra received by Dave, one of my favorite sailing instructor and talented racer, who once told me that designer Sparkman&Stephens never failed a boat.

Third, and very important for our budget, was Tranquility’s bargain price.

Questionable decisions

Spending part of my career as skipper of busy charter sailboats gave me knowledge and experience on equipment update and ordinary maintenance of a sailing vessel.

While shopping for a boat I was aware how an inexpensive, turn-key boat is nothing but a mirage. Even few years old boats can give the new owners a lot of headache as the marine environment is pretty harsh on equipment.

In the face of this knowledge, I should have known better what a tremendous task was to bring such an old boat back to life.

Tranquility is a Columbia 29 MKI built in 1965 in Portsmouth VA. From the scant information we could collect about her history, she had been based in the New England area for most of her life and she was sailed to the Caribbean (via Bermuda) and Nova Scotia by one of her owners before she started to pass in many hands in the most recent times.

What was left of her was a boat in need of a serious rehab. We knew that if we wanted to achieve our goal of living aboard and sailing offshore, we had to pour a lot of sweat and finances into that good old boat.

At least with Tranquility we had the opportunity to start from scratch. Laying on a private yard under a plastic tent, she set off our wildest fantasies on how we would transform her in a live aboard long distance cruising sailboat.

The bare naked condition of the boat made our survey easier, and we were pleased with her general sound structure.

The hull was sound and the deck didn’t show any particular weakness. The main spars were also good, and we had already in our mind to replace the standing rigging anyway.

The line and the proportions of the design conquered our hearths and we felt the interior had a rational layout.

During a holiday trip in Italy to visit my family, Kate and I decided to make our offer.

Getting ready to work

The deal was closed during the snowy New England winter and we became the new owners of a boat with primed hull and deck, standing and running rigging laying on stands and an electric inboard motor with a dubious battery bank.

The rest of the parts had been disassembled by the seller during his refit and included in the deal, but it was only after tackling the first projects that we realized that some of them were outdated or in need of a replacement.

He had advised us not to buy the boat in the first place, but Tranquility’s call was irresistible, so he followed up trying to give us another good advice: pick your battles.

The interior was kept original, with a slightly offset teak companionway giving access to a long side galley and an ample dinette / settee on the port side.

The floor had some visible rot, probably from water coming from the mast wires entering the cabin sole. Electrical system and plumbing needed a complete overhaul.

We had to wait few more months for winter to dissipate and to save enough money before we could lay our hands on her.

I sailed to the Caribbean on a yacht delivery and kept working the winter season on big yachts on the islands. Kate was still working in NYC, preparing to leave her apartment and implement all the necessary steps to move from a life on land onto a future afloat.

The boat was moved to a boatyard and as spring came we began our feverish work on her.

We budgeted 6 months for our refit project and during this hard work time we had to learn a lot about our new boat.

We soon realized that if we wanted to leave New England before the icing winter, we would have to cut some corners and make compromises, working fast in certain departments, and definitely following the advice of picking our battles.

First refit: May 2013 – November 2013

The very first project was to remove the wheel steering system and replacing it with a tiller.

Fortunately the rudder stock was still coming through the cockpit floor as an emergency backup. All I had to do was to remove the pedestal, wheel, pulleys and quadrant, cables and fiberglass a pipe to the cockpit sole in place of the old and worn out shaft seal.

With this modification we gained more leg room in the cockpit as well as more space underneath the floor.

A tiller was also preferred as an easier installation for a wind vane self steering gear, that we were intending to add in the future.

Before starting to re-installing deck hardware, deadlights and portholes, we proceeded to paint the deck and the hull.

We chose one part enamel for the topsides, so we could work a little faster. We had to put together electrical system, plumbing, and invent most of the solutions without having the chance to sail the boat first.

Some of the fixes were considered “temporary”, and they were done considering time of execution and prioritizing safety over aestethic.

The interior was kept original, mostly because we had no time to deal with it and Kate made her best to infuse some cuteness into those fifty year old surfaces.

In the galley we modified the existing layout to install a two burner propane range with oven. I had found a great deal on a second hand Force 10 stove and I took the executive decision to buy it.

Kate and I had a bit of an argument about this project as she put a lot of value in the storage area we were about to sacrifice. I was sure about the importance of a good stove for living aboard and insisted. She and I never regretted the decision.

Used and new items started to arrive from the internet, chandlery stores, marine consignments, friends and acquaintances, without much time to think.

The feeling that we were randomly slapping things on the boat started to creep on us, however we made sure before setting sail that three departments would receive most of our attention and funds: rigging, sails and auxiliary propulsion.

Inboard electric motor

One major gamble was the electric inboard propulsion Tranquility was equipped with.

I never had experience with such set up before and I felt completely illiterate.

After hours spent researching about electric propulsion, mainly on the internet, we decided to go ahead and give it a try, knowing that it would be easy to place an outboard engine on the transom if we were not happy with it.

The motor installed is a brushed system assembled and sold by Electric Yacht, with the maximum output power rated at 5kW.

The conversion happened in 2008, and we found an interesting video on You Tube about it.

The very first step was to assess the battery bank. The eight 6v golf cart batteries that came in the deal were spent and one froze during the winter.

We searched the best solution we could afford considering all the available options on the US market.

I spent the nights after working on the boat to read as much as I could on the Internet and made several calls to the major battery manufacturers and distributors.

Kate made cardboard mock ups of each each different brand and model, trying to fit the necessary power and voltage in the available space down below.

The best solution appeared to be a 48v LiFePO4 battery bank, but unfortunately it was totally out of our budget.

For practical reasons we picked 6v lead acid batteries. In case of failure of one of the batteries, a typical 6v “golf cart” battery would be less hard to find in different place of the world than a more sophisticated and expensive alternative.

Finally we purchased, transported, lifted and installed a total of more than 500 lb. of Trojan T-125 6v batteries, connecting them in series to obtain 48volts and a total capacity of 240ah.

New battery compartment were created in the engine room and under one of the settee in the main salon.

Although not ideal, the new set up had a more balanced distribution of the weight onboard, as well as a better access to key parts of the interior like the propeller shaft, that was completely inaccessible with the previous installation.

In theory and considering ideal conditions, we were expecting a range of 15 miles and a cruising speed of 3,5knots from this set up.

Cutter rig

The Columbia 29 was originally designed as a sloop but the rig of the boat was later modified by designer Eric Sponberg to satisfy the desire of a previous owner who wanted a cutter rig.

According to the drawings that the designer kindly mailed us, the rig was beefed up with external chain plates thru-bolted to the hull and backed with thick stainless steel plates.

The diameter of the shrouds was increased to 1/4 inch, and an inner forestay and two lower aft shrouds were added for the staysail.

The headsail had a roller furling system, an old continuous line Hood model, but in good working order.

The mast itself had been replaced with one from a different sailboat and had fixed steps on it.

We thought that this rig configuration was sturdy and redundant, ideal for us, and I always thought that the practicality of mast steps overtake the disadvantages (rig noise and windage).

On our side we sought the experience and the eye of a professional rigger to measure and order new cables and fittings that we later installed by ourselves.

Sails

With the limited range of our motor it became important to give Tranquility a very good set of new sails. We chose to order from Lee Sails in Hong Kong after a recommendation from a friend. We ordered a 100% furling yankee, a staysail and a full battened mainsail.

It was kind of awkward to take measurements with the stick down but with the careful advice of the sailmakers we came up with a successful set of brand new sails, that were promptly manufactured and delivered.

Once we dressed our boat with the new sails we were so pleased that later we chose again Leesails for a cruising gennaker and a storm staysail to completed our sail inventory.

In search of better weather

With the boat put together as quickly as we could, but with the most important departments covered, we had to sail away fast as our 6 months project had stretched to mid November and the South Coast of Massachusetts started to turn very unwelcoming to boaters.

With an experienced third crew member, my friend Roberto, we left Fairhaven MA on November first sailed to Block Island and waited there for a good weather window that came luckily a couple of days later when we set sail to Norfolk, VA.

From there Roberto left and Kate and I continued to play “cat and mouse” with the polar vortex fronts that were making incursions south during that winter, alternating between offshore passages and ICW runs.

With our limited range under power we had to cover most of the distance sailing offshore. After a cold but beautiful offseason cruising along most of the East Coast, we eventually found safe harbor in Brunswick, GA.

There we resumed the customization of our little boat, while also replenishing our pockets with temporary jobs.

Second refit: January 2014-May 2016

After living and sailing on Tranquility for six months we gain a better knowledge of the boat and we started to tackle all the problems we didn’t have time or money to address before.

In particular, we knew where the leaks were and what we didin’t find safe or comfortable.

The South Coast of Georgia offered year round fair weather for boat work and the local presence of James Baldwin was a good benchmark for our ideas and their realization.

Before we knew, we were landlocked in our new location, but we were motivated to keep working hard on our little vessel. The company of fellow boaters and new friends made the task less arduous.

It took us more than 2 years of part time boat work (with the last four months working full time on the refit) to reach a satisfactory point.

Since the day we bought the boat, almost everything onboard has been replaced, patched or restored.

Interior

As we stepped back to live on land it was easier for me to deal with the more dusty and destructive jobs.

We started working inside the boat, fixing an issue with the compression post and rotted floors.

Kate had noticed a little flex in the cabin sole right under the mast during our progress south. After tearing apart the old plywood floor, it turned out that the rot was attacking a hardwood beam propped across the bilge, that was the sole support of the compression post.

Digging a little more into the floor I discovered a gap between the structural beam and the bilge floor. I decided to fill the void with a solid teak wedge, that I glued with epoxy and fiberglassed on top of the bilge to prevent any further compression from the deck.

The rotted floor and other parts of the cabinetry were then rebuilt using new plywood saturated with epoxy.

This open heart surgery around the bilge was also a good opportunity to clear up some fiberglass peelings, reinforce tabbing around the bulkheads and give the bilge a final fresh painting, using two part primer and two coats of Bilgekoat.

On port side right after the companionway, the chart table area, engine room and battery storage needed a new more rational design that maximized space and weight distribution.

The goal was accomplished modifying the companionway ladder, building a new wider floor, new battery boxes to house the eight batteries for the electric propulsion and new cabinets.

Most of the job was done utilizing plywood for the panels and teak hardwood for the trims. The new chart table is bigger, with two level of storage below it and in the surrounding paneling that accomodate instruments and hide the electrical wiring.

The Jabsco Marine head with holding tank and all hose was removed and we installed a composting toilet wedged in the V-berth cutout.

We planned to build our own composting toilet, but time constraints and the need to finish other projects made us choose a commercial one.

C-head offered different sizes, and we picked a model that would fit in our V berth since we are not using it as a sleeping area.

The space freed was transformed into storage. Later during the yard period, the two thru-hulls of the old head were permanently glassed.

We have been very happy with the modification and the choice of a composting head.

Deck

On deck I proceeded designing a new layout and removing the hardware.

I wanted to restore the beautiful teak that was on the fore hatch, companionway, sea-hood, and the lazarette hatch.

Even if they served us during our maiden trip it was clear they would not last much longer.

The fore hatch and the lazarette hatch were rebuilt from scratch with new teak and plywood, while later I salvaged some of the still solid teak of the companionway and the sliding hatch and using new wood for some too worn out parts.

Luckily most of the solid teak had weathered but maintained its strength and beauty.

The old toe-rail also was made with teak that needed a lot of work. The protruding fiberglass bulwark was covered with three strips of teak forming a horseshoe cap. Age and stress had splintered and ruined the wood that needed to be replaced.

After purchasing cheap teak (beware, there is no such a thing!) I decided it wasn’t good enough to keep it bare, so I opted for a mixed approach: I glued a sandwich of teak strips to the fiberglass bulwarks with thickened epoxy; the wood was kept in place by more than a 100 fasteners while curing and later was covered by two layers of fiberglass tape. Fairing a painting with two part marine paint completed the job.

The bulwarks are a nice feature on the Columbia 29, as they give a secure footstep when the boat heels. There were few places where the bulwarks became an obstacle though, and that was mainly the bow, where anchor roller, bow stem and bowsprit where, and the corners on the top of the transom.

To improve those areas I cut off 1 1/2 inch of bulwark with an angle grinder and created a surface glassing solid teak scrap pieces on the deck.

At the bow it created an easier surface to install the anchor roller and the new retractable bowsprit to fly light air sails; on the stern I had a better place to attach the two bow cleats.

Cockpit

I built an integral fiberglass tank under the cockpit floor, accessible through a sealed aluminum hatch and made with plywood bulkheads, fiberglass and epoxy.

The new tank has a capacity of 32 gallons bringing the total fresh water supply to 57.

The outside lockers (lazarette and cockpit locker) were also improved: made watertight and isolated from the rest of the boat.

New cockpit locker drainage channels, fabricated using fiberglass on an improvised mold, were added with a built in inclination to allow water to drain even when the boat is heeled.

Painting

After the projects on deck were completed it was time to paint the deck with two-part marine paint. We chose Perfection by Interlux, Oyster White color.

The choice of the two-part paint is due to its superior adhesion and strength compared to the one part paints we used before that was already peeling off.

The heavy traffic and stress that the deck supports require a more tough coating. A left over from a friend’s boat project provided the fire red paint that we used for the toe rail.

After the paint job was completed we proceeded reinstalling all the deck hardware, including the new staysail blocks moved inboard, the new retractable bowsprit designed by me, a new 60W solar panel mounted on a tracker (to be oriented perpendicular to the sun at any given moment).

Boatyard time

The final part of the refit happened in a boat yard in St.Mary’s GA, not far from Brunswick.

The liveaboard-friendly yard allowed customers to use the shop and many of their tools, expanding the amount of work we could do on site.

We took care of the projects we could not do while in the water, plus all the unexpected collateral work that arise every time you touch something on the boat.

In particular, we fixed few stress cracks in the rudder area with a fiberglass layup, better sealed the stern tube that passes through the deadwood, replaced the tiller head for a new one with a square key in it, installed the Norvane Self Steering wind pilot, permanently glassed the thru-hulls for the marine head, replaced the propeller for a new one, and much, much more.

After two maintenance coats of one part paint on the topsides and new ablative bottom paint we re-launched Tranquility and started again our life afloat.

The list of projects we realized is extensive, I hope this recap and the pictures give a brief summary of what happened.

Of course there are few more projects that we set aside for future completion or that will linger into the “Never list”.

It is now time to sail rather than do boat work and we hope we set the clock back enough to enjoy some quality cruising time aboard for a while.

Our little boat has now all the qualities to keep us safe and happy at sea and we feel incredibly fortunate to have realized our dream of transforming her in our unique small bluewater sailboat.

For a detailed list of the projects mentioned in the article visit the Columbia 29 refit page

Escape velocity

By fabio@lapossibilitadiunisola.com | April 6, 2017 | Comments 5 comments

We are back from where we started.

Well, to be precise we are back to one of the places from where we started. Our sailing trajectories often look like orbits and a big point of attraction is Brunswick Georgia.

Brunswick is where we stopped longer than anywhere else so far on our Tranquility tour. Incidentally, Brunswick is also where I lived the longer since I left Italy.

The perfect excuse to come back was the participation to the 1 Day Play, a theatrical event in which we took part two years ago when we were regular residents. We had such fun and gathered so much positive energy in that event that when we heard the call for writers, directors and actors we could not resist.

In the last edition Kate acted and I wrote one of the plays. The leopard does not change his spots, and so we did the same again.

As the name implies the 1 Day Play happens during a 24 hours span: producers, writers, directors and actors all meet Friday evening, bringing random props and costumes with them. The producers Evy and Emmi shared a schedule that would guide the efforts of everybody to be ready on stage at 7 pm on the very next day, having written, directed, rehearsed and produced the six short plays, just 22hours after the first meeting.

At 10pm I joined the group of six writers in the Old City Hall to write a 10 minutes play with three female characters (we had a shortage of male actors). The result was a sci-fi thriller set in a distant solar system where the three characters need to find a way to repair their ship and leave a hostile planet.

I am once again impressed with the magic that I witness in the 1 Day Play. The limited time works like a catalyst in the artistic chain reaction, forcing the writers to a simple and raw script that then get refined by the intervention of directors and actors, who have to do their best with limited time and technical resources. This teaches us an important lesson on how limits become opportunities.

I am thankful to director and actor Betsy who curbed the roughest areas of my dialogues, and Fredi and Jessica for their acting, and to Peggy for coming up with an incredible Jello-Brain!

So as often happen one thing leads to another and after our successful artistic endeavor we found ourself sleeping on our old couches in Susan’s place and varnishing and painting the interior of Tranquility with some nasty paint. We also indulged in eating our favorite food all over town, visiting friends, building safety bars for our boat, and other million entertain

As soon as we got back, we are stuck in a whirpool of maintenance and upgrades, and social life.

This final preparation is important though. We decided we will sail soon away from shore, probably for a long time, and in order to do so we have to build escape velocity to win the pull that this place is exerting on us.

The idea of snorkeling, eating tropical fruit and discovering new places and cultures are equivalent to strong propulsion jets that are helping us knocking out the departure list.

We will reach the point where careful and thorough preparation will become just an exercise of obsessive behavior and resistance to change. That will be the very moment when we will have to push harder and defeat the gravitational pull of comforts, friends and family, and what is known to us and head into something a little different, that we have longed for.

You are going to hear about our trip soon.

Hermine meditations

By fabio@lapossibilitadiunisola.com | September 4, 2016 | Comments 6 comments

There is a still atmosphere in Tranquility’s cabin. Kate tastes her latest culinary feat and approves it. <<It’s very good!>> I can hear her saying. Tonight we are going to have polenta and chickpeas and sardines fused in a tomato sauce, a revisitation of an old recipe from a camping trip in the woods of Maine.

Food is ready, deck is secured for what Hermine will decide to throw at us during the night and Labor Day’s morning, as we rest a little while the other boats around us hurry out for the last hours of nice sailing, before it gets too windy. Rest, after all this is what I am supposed to do. I have a cold.

Tranquility sits in Newport Harbor, holding tight to a mooring ball that a kind friend, Clarissa, is letting us use. It sits right in the center of the carnivalesque parade of Labor Day tourists, super yachts, and classic racing. There are better days to visit Newport, but our un-planable voyage doesn’t take into account what’s better or desirable. Things just happen. And so this is going to be the place where we will weather this weird Tropical Storm that just brought destruction to what used to be our home port, Frederica Yacht Club.

We held our breath when we got the first reports from Georgia, while our brave friends were doing all they could to save the salvageable. The impact was severe and a lot got lost or damaged, but luckily our closest friends weathered it fine. Hermine shouldn’t have the same impact up here, but we hold tight as this one already showed its capricious character.

I did not retrace the steps that took us here in Newport yet. The story of our cruise North is stuck in Ocean City MD, and a chapter or two are still due. I haven’t yet found the time and energy to bring you up to date. I will comply with my intentions, but this time it may take me longer than expected.

I am not in a creative drought, nor I am too busy sailing. My mind is focused on a new writing project, and so this blog is affected. I am trying to develop a new blog, and this time I am want to re-start from scratch. The best gift that long term cruising has given me so far is some time and tranquility to grow a seed that was probably inside me for a very long time.

Time doesn’t erase older parts of you and so I have to eventually deal with whom I used to be, or to be more precise, with what I used to do. I used to study and experiment with human behavior. From a selfish point of view, I tinkered trying to change myself. For my paycheck, I helped others face change. In either case I discovered that change is inevitable, sometimes sudden, and when I was exposed to sailing for the first time, some unexpected reactions transformed me.

The aim of my new project is to see how well Psychology and Sailing mix. Not very much is out there on the topic. My research found that most of this hybridization consists in Sport Psychology applied to competitive sailing. After all, even racing is a discipline that rests on mental pillars, like strategy, decision making, coping with stress and team building. But I suspect there is more.

Ok, I spilled the beans, would you follow me on my new course?

East Coast Northbound: Leg 0, False Start

By fabio@lapossibilitadiunisola.com | August 9, 2016 | Comments 4 comments

It’s time for me to write about our journey from Georgia to the New England area. We decided this is going to be our summer/fall cruising ground, so for a while our sailing will be shorter and local. As we came to a soft landing in Buzzards Bay I found more tranquility within to review our progress and Kate’s impressive photographs also helped my memory, so in the next few days I’ll recap the steps that brought us here.

Sailing has a beneficial effect on my writing and I am actively working on different topics. I am trying to publish an article about Tranquility’s refit and working on a science fiction novel I’ve been on for a while. Besides, I am attending an online course on how to monetize my blog. It seems that the first important task in this process is to “find my niche”. I have no clear ideas of what is my niche yet. Do you?

From Frederica River anchorage to Frederica River anchorage, 14NM

I start this recap with our first fail of the trip. Back at the beginning of June we thought we were ready to catch some good South Easterlies and start our climbing along the East Coast. The expectations about starting the journey were heavy on us, especially after being tucked in the marshes for the first two Tropical Storms of the season. We felt anxious and wanted to leave very badly, feeling disgusted by any extra job list and preparation routine.

Blog1 — The view from Tranquility’s cabin during Tropical Storm Colin

We picked an afternoon departure with an ebbing tide to weigh anchor. The sailing in St.Simons Sound, was promising and Tranquility moved fast and secure in the smooth waters, but as soon as we entered the inlet things started to get hairy. Big steep waves lifted by the wind blowing against the tide crashed on our bow as we were trying to keep Tranquility close hauled in the long shipping channel out of the Sound. Shoals on both sides did not allow for any leeway and soon we had to start tacking.

During the first tack we go stuck in the trough between two waves. As the boat stalled the jib started flogging very hard and by the time we got control of the boat again I noticed a rip in the fabric in the vicinity of the clew. I ran to the foredeck and while Kate was controlling the jib sheet I furled the sail. I immediately hoisted the staysail and tried to make up my mind on what had just happened.

It was clear that there was no other call than to go back to the anchorage, as we needed our jib for the miles on. We knew that in Frederica River at least we had the resources to fix it. We turned around and with following wind and tide we rolled on the big waves until we were safe in the lee of Jekyll Island.

Sailing back in protected waters, our minds were focused on how the departure was a failure. Instead of being out sailing we had once again to deal with few more issues, more work to do. We were happy that after all nothing too bad happened but we were definitely bummed and demoralized as we were again dropping anchor in Frederica River, the curse was still on.

In the next couple of days Kate dropped her phone in the water, making us a one phone family. Our old android tablet that we use for navigation decided to give up, the display no longer responded to our finger touch. Two foam cushions that form our sleeping bunk blew off the boat during a squall as they were left on deck to air out. I was able to retrieve one of them during my row back to the boat but the second one was lost forever. Instead of one step forward we were three steps back.

Blog2 — Our friend Bill helped repairing our jib

We thought we were ready, truth was we needed more preparation and time. With the not so happy mood of who has no choice but keep pushing the stone uphill, we put together some a work and a shopping list, restock our supplies, sew a strong patch in the jib with the help of our friend Bill and his good sailmaking skills, and we were ready to try again, with a mission to stay out as long as we could on our North East quest.

Cockpit locker drainage channels and existential concerns

By fabio@lapossibilitadiunisola.com | October 27, 2015 | Comments 12 comments

Lately the tone of my blog posts have assumed an unprecedent technical twist. I have always found hard to describe the refit of Tranquility in great detail, and most of the countless jobs proceeded unaccounted. What’s exciting about writing posts like “laminating fiberglass backing plate for deck hardware (and achieving physical flexibility during installation)“, “sealing umpteenth hole in the deck with thickened epoxy” or “screws and bolts inventory: am I missing any“?

Moreover I am a former psychologist and my education and training concernes things like “emotional defense mechanisms“, “coping strategies” and “cognitive fallacies“, and I used to handle tools like “active listening” “participant observation” and “network analysis“. The language of the master shipwright is still an uncharted territory and the rules of technical writing a mystery.

I also assume that the reader (you) is not very concerned about a bunch of technical digressions on boat construction and repair. It may be a wrong assumption in the end, as the whole point of taking an old boat and sail it through the horizon on a budget requires being able to perform a thorough analysis of the weak points of “the old lady”, and perform satisfactory upgrades with little or none adult supervision. Funny enough “How-to-Do-It-Yourself” articles are the ones I seek with a certain continuity online, to find inspirations about designs and building techniques, so I may fall out of the group of representative readers of this blog according to my idealistic audience.

These are some of the reasons why I find very difficult to write about boat projects and improvements but despite of that not much else is happening in my life and so I would either shut up (possible) or keep telling the story of the countless jobs that are going on inside and on Tranquility.

Selecting few specific jobs and turning them into a narration is becoming an usual activiy, so hopefull it will be less and less hard. It turns out it’s also a good way to keep track of how long these project are taking, which is very long. As soon as one is finished it has a slingshot effect to the next one and helps bringing enthusiasm to my work and to the overall goal, so I would be happy to see more and more of these posts appearing on the blog.

Lately the speed of work increased and people at the dock are noticing Tranquility changing face and stops for few words about what’s next and where are we going to take the boat (well where she is going to take us…). Kate also had some time to dedicate to Tranquility and this was another huge help to the overall project. She has a great ability for planning and in just one hour spent in the garden with a calendar in her hand we enlighted the next three weeks projects and tasks down to plankton size. With this new clarity it seems we have a possible deck painting date on mid November, and few days when we will be actually both working on Tranquility.

Drainage channels for watertight cockpit locker

During our Atlantic Ocean offshore passage and in other legs of Tranquility’s voyage from New Bedford to Brunswick rain and occasional crashing waves found their way into the cockpit locker and sloshed into the bilge. After coming to a rest on the Georgia Coast and contemplating the idea of more offshore sailing in the near future we wanted to make sure that we are not taking in water from this or other openings on the boat.

Tranquility has a cockpit locker on port side accessible through the cockpit seat via a very heavy door. The starboard side has no opening as a sleeping quarter bunk lies underneath it. None of these setups were original from the builder: the whole port quarter side was modified by one of the previous owners to fit the locker, which is divided from the interior by a bulkhead that would host the chart table on the cabin side. On starboard side, somebody did the opposite, fitting a bunk where it used to be a cockpit locker. These and other amenities are some of the surprises you could find when you buy a fifty years old sailboat.

Unfortunately for us the cockpit locker/chart table modification was very poorly done and gave us a lot of headache when it was time to improve and eventually redesign the area. The separating bulkhead wasn’t even tabbed (permanently fiberglassed) to the hull and allowed the locker to drain straight into the bilge soaking everything was lying in its path. The chart table would make claustrophobic a 5 years old kid with the resuslt of being perfectly unuseful on board. Finally the cockpit locker door was resting on a very sketchy support that was conceived with the idea of draining extra water sipping through the door sides, but that in fact was a simply terrible half-finished solution that failed completely in its purpose.

Earlier on the projects timeline I adressed the bulkhead problem tabbing it to the hull and making the entire locker a watertight section of our ship. Not communicating anymore with other parts of the boat, the locker will contribute to the buoyancy of the vessel in case water finds its way into the boat. Last spring I also rebuilt the chart table / nav station with the idea of increasing storage and housing the battery bank for our electric motor.

The Lousy cockpit locker drainage system — The lousy cockpit locker drainage system and a pathetic attempt to fix it

A detail of the draining channel as found on Tranquility.

The drainage channel we found on Tranquility was one of our least favorite part of the boat but it was also something we couldn’t handle during our first refit in New England, so we just tried timidly to improve it along the way when the real only possible way to fix it was to tear it apart and redo it from scratch. Finally after spending a lot of time designing ideas and procrastinating any concrete action in favor of other projects, I finally started to stare at the problem directly. At the beginning I was in favor of epoxy coated plywood construction, but then my friend Fernando talked me more and more into trying with fiberglass construction. Ultimately fiberglass is for life! After a lot of time spent in woodworking projects for the companionway I figured it was healthy to switch paradigm and tackle a messy fiberglass project. I think I am a messy enough person for such a task.

**Mold construction for Fiberglass channels**

After looking at examples of drainage channel systems on other boats I finally came out with a design and I decided for angled lateral channel that will allow drainage even when the boat is heeled. Building the molds for the fiberglass construction wasn’t hard at all as I had some rounded corner molding in my woodpile that happened to be just perfect for the job. Two pieces side by side would form a round shaped channel about one inch and a half wide. I successfully mounted them on two pieces of 3/4 of a inch thick PVC or Plywood screwed together and taped with adhesive packaging tape (cheap and easy to use). Epoxy won’t stick to plastic so if you cover anything with packaging tape or any other plastic wrap it will released the impregnated fiberglass once cured.

Fiberglas molds ready for laminate — **Fiberglass molds ready for laminate**

Fiberglass channel — **Out of the mold fiberglass channel**

I then laminated fiberglass cloth and mat onto the molds forming a slightly bigger shape than the desired part. Once the epoxy cured I popped them out of the mold and shaped them to the final measurements using an angle grinder with a cutting disk, before final sanding and cleaning. Some of the channels reminded me of delicious tacos but I restrained myself from eating them.

Fiberglass components of the drainage channel — **Components of the drainage channel sanded and cleaned**

Together with the three channels I laminated some 90 degrees shaped pieces that helped to fit the parts to the deck for final assembly. Screws held the structure in place while thickened epoxy cured overnight. The following day I removed the screws and engaged a grinding match in the confined space of the locker, making sure to wear all the possible protective clothing and gear for this miserable job. After clean up of both my persona and the locker I proceeded challenging the law of gravity with the messy job of fiberglassing the structure to the deck alternating several layers of fiberglass mat (for waterproofing) and cloth (for structure), and trying my best to avoid the epoxy resin dripping from the overhead.

**Screws hold the channels in place while epoxy cures**

All the parts are dry-fit before being fiberglassed in place — **All the parts are dry-fit before being fiberglassed**

With this last upside down job accomplished it was time to fit a lip that will give enough surface for a gasket to make a watertight seal. I had some long and thin pieces of teak lying around on Tranquility (what’s not on Tranquility?) and so I decided to epoxy and fiberglass them around the internal perimeter of the locker. To have a perfect seal with the overlying door I used again thickened epoxy placed on top of the lip. This time I let the law of gravity work for me placing the original lid on top and protecting it with with packaging tape (my new best friend). In this way the still soft thicked epoxy adheres to the door contour forming an even surface of contact after the extra material squeezes out.

The lip for the channel is made with teak strips glassed in place — **The lip for the channel is made with teak strips glassed in**

**Lip is epoxy fitted and then laminated with fiberglass**

Two half inch sized holes at the lower end of the inboard channels drain the water into the cockpit and then in the ocean through the cockpit scuppers. Next, in this multi-stage multi-level project a whole operation of fairing and sanding will culminate with the paintjob soon to happen on the entire deck. For now I am glad enough I can leave the boat under the rain without having to empty a swamped locker and in perspective I feel confident that less water will find its way in the boat during blue water sailing and foul weather.

Bliss recharge

By fabio@lapossibilitadiunisola.com | September 3, 2015 | Comments 14 comments

The last post of the delivery trilogy was holding up my writing and creativity for too long, and writing it was like a big let go. There was also something else occupying my resources: our wedding re-enactment in front of family and friends. We called it “Family blessing and feast” because technically speaking we are already married.

We didn’t have a public celebration when we walked in the Woodbine Courthouse a little more than one year ago, just a handful of witnesses who had a free day and a secret but lovely suprise party from local friends when we got back. Even if for “The Law” we are a family we felt important to celebrate our union in front of our kin people and also to check if our families were somehow compatible. We had some good vibes about it but you are never sure until you try so why not try to organize a family blessing and feast in La Cialvrina, a wonderful resort in the Lys Valley?

Kate and I have been busy planning a destination wedding for 80 people in the Italian Alps, with guests traveling from all over, one of those things I loved but that I really hope I would not have to do again. We were in Italy for a month to give us enough time to put something together for the people traveling and to try to make that a vacation for them. The amount of stress and work involved grew as we approached the event, and beside some invaluable help and support from our friends and family (and the amazing staff at La Cialvrina!) we did it all by ourselves, planning, executing and improvising. And we did a darn good job!

Kate is a terrific planner and organizer and I like to work with groups of people, especially leading tours and organizing transportation. But that should be a well-paid job because it’s a lot of work that really wore us down. I understand now why people who get married do honeymoon… We really need a vacation! Unfortunately our honeymoon will be delayed to Spring 2016 and between here and there there is a big chunk of work to be accomplished. We hope it will coincide with our departure on Tranquility, the original project that exists since before we decided to get married.

So now we are back in Brunswick, with the jetlag gone trying to pick up life right where we left it before the “Italian affair”. The restoration projects on Tranquility need a restart and this time of the year the priorities are set by the weather: because of the frequent thunderstorms passing everyday over the Golden Isles I must do a good job in waterproofing the last leaks on the boat. A boat with dry interior is a luxury we are ready to pay the price for, even if it’s hard to stop leaks under huge rainfalls.

But it’s not just that. We now live on land, in a nice house with a wonderful and popular roommate, a band of happy animals, a backyard a bathtub and many other luxuries. Over time we got used to certain comforts and we also accumulated junk to store and maintain. The plan to go back to a full time living in a 29ft. boat requires a re-downsizing and re-organizing of our life and this takes some serious work too. Not only muscular work but also mindset work. Luckily we did it once already.

We are trying to figure out “how” but the important step is that the “what” is pretty clear. As happened during past endeavors planning, executing and improvising will happen if we keep our eyes on the goal, and the holy energy emanated during the “blessing” is the fuel we need to get us there. I promise to post a little more about the how when I figure it out myself a little better.

In praise of Public Libraries

By fabio@lapossibilitadiunisola.com | October 16, 2014 | Comments 1 comment

Public libraries are the best places in the whole civilized world. You may think I am exaggerating here, but the service they provide is invaluable, and I am very happy to visit public libraries wherever I roam.

Libraries have always been a friendly place to me, where I can find entertainment or do some hard work, or simply spend time. In fact, they served many time as harbor of refuge and nomadic workplace during my travels.

You really enjoy libraries only if you have spare time, a luxury that few people in the world can afford nowadays. For this reason children and kids are natural inhabitants of public libraries, as well as older people.

Public libraries are one of the few last public spaces in this privatized world, where you can walk in even if you have no money, and you are not invited to buy stuff. A wide range of services are available: a collection of media for any use, free access to the internet, toilets, water fountains, comfortable seats and warm/cool space. All for free.

I experienced libraries from different point of views, throughout my life. As a little kid in Limbiate, my hometown in Italy, I was an avid reader of Game books and mystery novels, expecially the Alfred Hitchcock presents series, the one with the three little detectives.

I clearly remember walking to the library every Saturday morning, listening to my walkman, present my unique library card and swap books. I was a better reader then than I am now.

When the wastrel era of adolescence arrived, the library became the perfect spot to meet friends and to squander time. I was quenching my thirst of knowledge wandering around the shelves without a plan, and absorbing what was catching my attention. I have always had this feeling of wonder when facing a wall of books, with my eyes and my legs following the succession of titles.

Few years later, when studying was not optional I joined group of college kids preparing their exams at the library, far away from my room and videogames. The presence of a group of peers with a common destiny reinforced the motivation to study.

Finally I also realized one of my dreams: after being a user for many years I had the opportunity to work for Limbiate’s library, and there it’s where I started to deal directly with users.

Because libraries don’t make distinctions of age, race, mental and physical ability, class or income, the users of a public library constitute a rich and heterogeneous group. And that’s where a good librarian has the most arduous task.

Managing the human relationship in such a diverse environment is no joke. Sometimes I think that the job of a librarian incorporates the one of a social worker, a cop, a psychiatrist, a nurse. He/she is not only a person who knows how to catalog media and knowledge and where to find what you are looking for (an incarnated Google). Librarians also have to deal with the humanity that finds refuge in this last outpost of public space.

Libraries are free public spaces but this doesn’t mean they don’t have rules. The most important rule, which is the fundament of this institution, is to be quiet. I find this truly revolutionary.

You can’t have this in Starbucks or any other secular place. Everywhere else, there’s violent chatter, loud speaking on the phone, blasting music. What’s better than having the right to say <<Shh!>> to people who threaten your concentration and peace?

Beside this very important one every library has its own set of rules, which are often very different. I spent some time online reading some of the rules and regulations of different libraries. There are pretty common ones but also some funny rules.

Sleeping is usually forbidden and enforced by staff,as I witnessed in Savannah, GA at the local library. Now I consider myself lucky that nobody kicked me out for sleeping with my head on a book more than once during my study time. It probably makes a difference if you are holding a book or a newspaper, or if you simply crashing in an armchair. In Boulder, CO Public Libraries, it is forbidden to “down, doze or sleep in any library facility except this rule shall not apply to children“.

Rules of Common Decency are requested to all visitors everywhere but some libraries gets very detailed as it happens in New York Public Library “you must wear clothing and shoes in the Library, and your body odor must not be so offensive that it disturbs others.”

Lakewood Public Library, OH prohibits “loitering in the Library without making use of its materials is not acceptable. Aimless wandering through the building or anywhere on the grounds is likewise prohibited“. I am guilty of this one because I wandered too without making use of the materials, but maybe I looked like I was in search of a book.

There are so many funny rules out there, if you want to read some more here is a link.

Today, in the era of Internet and E-books, public libraries are facing difficult times, as some people may think they are becoming obsolete. However there is a great difference between server stored digital media knowledge and libraries.

A library exists inside a physical building, often a fine example of architecture. It has bones and muscles, but it also has heart and blood, the real people that keep alive this important institution. We surely can keep studying and reading books even without libraries, using screens instead of book pages. But we would be terribly alone, isolated and lost in a digital void.

That’s why, whenever I have a chance, I go to public libraries. They serve me well and they are beautiful places.

We all should support them.

An improbable playwright

By fabio@lapossibilitadiunisola.com | September 16, 2014 | Comments 0 Comment

“Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.”

**Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living (1935-1950)**

Writing the play in Old City Hall, Brunswick GA

The last time I wrote a theatrical play I was a student, probably ten or more years ago. Nonetheless when I saw the opportunity to do it again I responded promptly even if this time I had to write it in a second language and a third language too (I wrote few lines in Spanish). This invitation was conformed to my umpteenth and most recent re-statement “I have to write more”.

24 Hour Play is an event that took place last Saturday in Brunswick, GA when six writers, six directors, and a bunch of actors gathered with only 24 hours to write, direct, rehearse and stage 6×10-minute plays, and with the mission to make it happen. I did my part writing “Wanderers” from 10 pm to 4 am. Writers were given very few rules and a lot was left to pure imagination. Kate also participated acting in one the six plays, called Noir-esque, and showing a great talent on stage. You never stop learning from your partner.

Theater is magic. I have very few stage related experience but every time it is a great emotion and a personal success that I can’t explain. There is a chemical process that happens all the way from the script, to the production, the direction and the acting. In every passage things are refined and polished.

The first time I experienced this process we were a bunch of youngsters randomly assorted to set up a show with only one prompt: the main theme had to be “Black&White”. It was an event organized in a dormient neighborhood city of the Greater Milan. The event featured a B&W photo exhibit, African percussion and choir concert and, of course, theatrical performance. I had no previous experience in theatre thus I was nominated as producer, writer and actor. We couldn’t find many volounteers so somebody had to cover multiple roles. We gathered as many experienced actors as possible and they really taught everything to novices like me. The result was a show of four plays divided in two acts that was very successful.

I witnessed this thing happening again during the 24 Hour Plays. My script mutated through this process as better lines for memorization (and sense!), new ideas on how to set the story and new stage elements appeared along the way. These mutations bred a hybrid that really pleased my senses and understanding. I have to thank the director Megan Desrosiers, and the team of actors Itzel Fernandez, MacKay Hall, Bill Piper, Elliot Walsh who transformed my script in a living creature. I also have to thank Lulu Williamson, Evy Wright and Emmi Shepard Doucette for the big job of making all this happen. I would do it again tomorrow!

“Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.”

Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living (1935-1950)

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**Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living (1935-1950)**