Pastor’s Blog

It seems these days that my phone, my iPad and my Kindle are always low on battery power.   I find myself frustrated in having to plug them in and then finding that the wire connections are too short to settle into my favorite reading chair.   I have to remind myself of how blessed we are to have electric power into which to plug.   When we were cruising in our sailboat, out at sea we had two ways to generate electricity.  We could run the engine, or solar panels.  Either way we had limited power.   We were a sailboat with limited…

4/13 Easter brings the unexpected.   When our son Tim was born, we perhaps took  ourselves way too seriously as parents.  We  decided not to “play into the charade of fictional characters like Santa Claus and the Easter bunny .   It was not to be.    When Tim was about sixteen months old. I was driving him to church while my husband the ICU nurse was settling down to sleep after night shift.   As we drove down our street, there walking the other direction was a six foot white rabbit carrying an Easter basket.  Tim squealed with glee.   It was obvious to…

This is a story from before we were cruising.  I was working for First United Methodist in Glendale, Az.  Erick was an ICU nurse at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center and Tim was less than seven years old.   Our boat at that time was a trailer sailboat, a Catalina 22, the boat that later inspired us to go cruising.  We decided to go camping in our sailboat Easter weekend on Lake Pleasant.   Since it was Easter weekend, I could not join them until after Sunday services, so Erick and Tim went ahead on Saturday. Erick launched the boat and they…

Letter to my Dad, 8/02/11 One would think that the hardest part about starting cruising would be the leaving. We didn’t find it so. Once we decided to go, leaving was surprisingly easy. We said goodbye to our friends and families, but either they were as excited about our leaving as we were or our interests had already begun to diverge long ago, and so the goodbyes were already begun. The boat was not cooperating. Replacing the lining of the refrigerator turned into rebuilding a rotted out bulk head; replacing a leaky water tank turned into moving the fuel tank.…

When we were at sea, the three of us divided the nights into watches. We found for us three hour watches were the best. Watches were the length of time we were responsible for steering the boat, managing the sail trim and avoiding other ships, floating containers and sleeping whales. Four hours was too long for our 14 year old to remain at watch in the middle of the night, and two hours made for too little sleep for his cranky mother. Amazingly, after a night or two, our bodies adapted to the routine. Tim’s watch went from 9 pm…

While we were at sea, we had little in the way of communication. We had our Amateur Radio for long distance, that could not communicate locally and our Marine Radio that could communicate locally, but not over long distances. Every day at a scheduled time, we would check into a radio net operated by a ham radio operator in Washington State. He kept track of everyone who regularly checked in. Often the only way our parents could tell if we were safe was to listen to the net for our report. If the radio propagation was just right, my parents…

The sea life around Bahia Maria leapt up to greet us as we set sail once more on our way south. Harbor dolphins played beneath the boat and booby birds crashed through the waves around us, chasing fish. Fierce frigate birds dive-bombed the boobies to steal their prizes and sea lions leapt free of the water after fish determined to fly. The boat too was on her toes, dancing through the wages. After ten days out at sea, we at last began to get the hang of sailing together as a team. It helped that the wind and waves had…

Yesterday I had to go to the office to use the business phone to check in to our PayPal account. When I told Erick, he jumped at the chance to ride in with me. It reminds me of when we were cruising on our boat. There is immense freedom cruising in your own boat. You can go where you want, stay as long as you want and weather permitting, leave when you want. The only hitch is that our maximum speed is 7 knots (8 mph). This was true for most cruisers due to physics laws that my son the…

Pictures of shoes accompanied my last two posts. So today I remember the monument we saw in Budapest called “Shoes on the Danube.” 60 pairs of iron shoes represent the 20,000 Jews who in were shot on the edge of the Danube after being forced to remove their shoes. Their bodies fell into the river and were swept away. Even though their bodies were lost to the icy waters, the monument proclaims that the lives of those who died count. There is a human tendency to find reasons why our group should fair better than some other group. Some want…