Answering Questions

Early last week, the Leonard family visited us on Sila. Dana and Whitney are each HMI alums and they brought their parents with them, Dutch and Kathy. During their time onboard, they asked a few surprising questions. Most of their questions were about things that seemed obvious to me because they are part of my everyday life.

One of the questions was,"How do you stay in bed when you are moving?" We put up a lee cloth. The lee cloth is a piece of cloth that is tied on the open side of a bed so that when the boat rolls, the sleeper leans against it instead of falling out of bed.

Another was, "How do pots stay on the stove?" The stove hangs on hinges so that it swings and stays flat, regardless of how much we are heeled. This accounts for any side to side motion, but none fore and aft. To deal with that, we have little clamps that lock a pot in place on the stove.

"How do you eat so well if the food keeps changing?" For the most part, the food has not felt particularly exotic. In most grocery stores we can find familiar foods. We have also learned to cook new foods. Sila also has tons of storage so we can store lots of our favorite ingredients for when it is hard, or impossible, to find them.

"When you have soaked clothes in a cold wet climate, how do you dry them?" The heater. We can put all the stuff in a bathroom, close the door, and crank the heater in there for an evening. We just turn off the heater for the night and by morning, everything is dry again.

"How do you store enough electricity to always be able to run lights and instruments?" We have two solar panels and a wind-generator. The engine also gives us lots of power when it is running. One of the three things is always on, or we are plugged into a marina which provides all the power we could wish for. If we start to run low on power at sea, we can cut back on the biggest power-consumers like the electric auto-pilot and the radar.

"How do you do school at sea?" Originally, we did not. Now we still do not do it on the first few days, before we have gotten our sea-legs. Later in the passage, I do all my school immediately after my morning watch. When we are on passage, there are some subjects that are hard to do, so we do not do them. An example is Spanish, which we have to do on a computer.

"Where do you get all the stuff you need for school to work?" For the first year, I have no idea. My parents must have brought it with us from the U.S. Once we were in Florida, and with all of Amazon's online store ready to fly to us, Mama and Daddy must have bought a decade's worth of school books.

"How do you stay in touch with friends?" Whenever I get the chance, whenever we have wifi, I email two friends from Leadville. They are also following the blog so they read about where I am and ask questions via email. I also get news updates on Leadville. Occasionally, I can tell my parents news before they learn about it. My parents also have a satellite phone for more important email, but it can only receive text.

During the entire time the Leonard family was here, they asked all sorts of questions, I had thought obvious. When I thought about it, I realized that many things about Sila were never mentioned in the blog. Hopefully I have answered a large portion of the questions blog-readers like the Leonards might ask. Unfortunately, I probably have answered only half of them. If you have any questions, please ask.- Porter