Two Strikes, Five Dresses

Apparently, you can't live aboard in Kewalo Basin. So, we leave every day.

You also can't SUP in the basin, which makes sense, but I saw a couple of people take off in the morning heading out of the basin and into the channel. So, of course, when I paddled around I got in trouble.

Since then we've been less conspicuous. We took a walk this morning through Ala Moana Park and had breakfast at the Harbor Pub, where Kris was delighted to find that they welcome dogs in the bar and restaurant.

The park is full of families this Easter Sunday. Here in Honolulu, everyone brings the whole family and does the whole day in the park, ohana style. It's pretty cool.

We ran out to Kahalu'u and cleared out the cupboards, provisioning the boat and getting closer to emptying out the house. It's been a long process, downsizing our lives. I'd like to say it's liberating, but that's a little glib. Moving out of a house, and onto a boat and doing it consciously, with no plan to go back, is also a stressful and disorienting process. The things we spent so much time wanting, working for, acquiring, making part of our lives, are reduced to their essential thing-ness, all marketing desires removed. The questions we ask ourselves are:

Have we used it lately?
Do we need it?
Do we already have it?
If we have it, which one is better for the boat?
And, the clincher, will it fit?

It's shocking to find how many things we had in duplicate; measuring spoons, cookware, utensils, all sorts of household goods. And our clothes. Wow. when we started to simplify, we realized that we had too many of each thing; pick a hoodie; choose five dresses; ditch the Carhart vest and pick a rain jacket.

Books. Oh, tough one. For the record, my poetry collection was hard to whittle. Clemens Starck made it; he's a guy I had the good fortune to meet and work with while at Oregon State University. He belongs on a sailboat in Hawaii; we will sail with his finely crafted juxtapositions as companions. I always think about how Clem described his writing process and I can imagine him rehanging an old door, removing it from it's frame, rebuilding the door in the way it required; working over a line of poetry in his head, until that line was right and then off to the next line; building on the previous line, constructing a thoughtful collection of ideas, reflections, and images into a whole that opens a portal in his readers' mind.

W. B. Yeats will be alongside all three of Virginia Hamilton Adair's collections. The bard and a couple of dozen books about the Pacific, including people, places, and travelogues, from Mark Twain and R. L. Stevenson, through Paul Theroux.

Heavy winds again today, so we sit alongside the pier.

A stop at Sandy Beach on the way back to the boat for an afternoon surf session and then left on Kalanianaole Hwy, instead of our usual right to the old land-based home. Re-orienting ourselves to a life afloat.