Back around the end of August I wrote a post called “Time Keeping”, where I talked about keeping track of time back in the old days, “Ships Bells”, and so forth. I recently became aware of some other ways besides hours and minutes that one can keep track of progress.
One way is to chart your progress on a map:
I love to play with Google Earth, and I’ve found all sorts of fun tools on it to play with. This is a map I did today, showing our progress down the East Coast since I wrote that Time Keeping post. From Bar Harbor Maine to Savannah Georgia in 48 days. I don’t know about y’all, but I’m impressed, if I do say so myself.
Here’s an odd way to gauge progress: I use the NOAA/ Nat’l Weather Service website for lots of weather info- one of the pages I use is here, if you’re interested:
https://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/marine/forecast.htm
The part of that page I use every day looks like this, and when you click on one of the blue strings of code, it pulls up a text version of forecasts for that area:
As we have made our way south from Bar Harbor to here, it quickly became apparent that we were making progress to our goal by the fact that every couple of days, I’d have to switch to the next box down the list. Progress!
We started this summer in Salem, spending about three weeks finishing the major projects to make Gabrielle seaworthy. We left Salem in mid-July, comfortable that our floating home would keep us safe, and yet we still had lots of projects left to do, things to make our life aboard more comfortable, or handy, or attractive (Kate is up in the forward cabin as I write this, weaving a rug from old rope that the previous owners left aboard). As we cruised Maine, we had three or four big plastic tubs we called “Project Boxes”, with all the parts and pieces we needed to continue making upgrades to Gabrielle.
As we have knocked things off the list, Kate, in her role as “Queen of Stowage”, has continuously consolidated all the parts and pieces. A few weeks ago, she commented that we had whittled the projects down to being able to cram all the stuff into ONE plastic tub, which was progress of its own- and that has also given us more storage space, something that is always at a premium on a liveaboard boat. Progress on two fronts!
Similarly, our food supply is a good gauge. We made several big Costco provisioning trips before we shoved off- filled the freezer, and stuffed the dry goods and canned goods lockers to overflowing. I’m terrible at finding things (it’s the XY chromosome combo), so a common refrain early on was, “Kate! Where did you stash the <beef jerky/granola bars/pickled okra/etc.>?”
I don’t have to ask much anymore, and it’s not because I’m any better at finding stuff- it’s just that there’s a lot less stuff to dig through to find what I’m looking for (and it was a sad day when the last pickled okra went). To be sure, we supplement our groceries as we make our way, but the overall state of our food stowage plan is a good indicator of progress, even though we still eat out more often than we budgeted for when we set out.
Which brings up the last example of alternative ways to measure our progress- The State Of The Bank Account, but I think the less said of that, the better.
