Different Slants

By Rick Munden and Robert M. Katzman

The Situation: Rick and Mary Munden, residents of California for a quarter century, sold their house and car and gave away or disposed of almost everything else they had accumulated during that time so as to condense their life sufficiently to allow them to live their lives on a thirty-one foot sailboat.  Both are now sixty years of age.

Prior to that period, the Mundens lived on another boat in the Caribbean for nine years, leaving the Chicago area via the Mississippi River, learning to operate their sailboat as they went along.  They decided to return to the United States to have a child, who turned out to be Robert Munden.

When they felt Robert was ready to be on his own, and yearning to return to living their prior lives life on water, they bid him farewell, and left the USA in June, 2010, flying to The Netherlands and waited there to collect what few possessions they decided to keep, which they’d shipped from their old West Coast home.

Rick and I, who first met in 1961, on the South Side of Chicago when we were both eleven, will be making periodic reports on the minutia of what it’s like to shrink a shared life to a space smaller than a one-car garage.  Ninety-nine per cent of anyone each of us knows, or doesn’t know, will never live a life like the one they have chosen.  This new series of reports will examine the results of what others may consider to be an unobtainable fantasy.

We will probe, in detail, whom they meet, the problems they encounter—if any—with local governments, the weather, their boat, where they find supplies, the quality and availability of fresh food, how they make repairs, pleasures and frustrations, how they deal with illness if it occurs, how they communicate both locally and with the world, and whatever philosophical musings they, or I, may have about all of the above.  All photos will be supplied by either Rick or Mary.   I have encouraged them to supply many, illuminating as many aspects of their existance as possible.   My personal hope is not to see panoramic vistas, but more of a written and visual diary of everyday life.

This the first report about their new life, as they gradually sail south-east through Europe, with the eventual goal of landing in The Mediterranean Sea before winter sets in later this year.

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Q.
I wonder what you guys do all day.  Do you read, or explore the town or what?

A.
We have not had a lot of time to settle into a routine.  When we arrived Sunday evening in Stavoren, the boat was out of the water.

Monday, We had to arrange to have some minor work done to it before it could be relaunched.

Then, Tuesday, the seller arrived from England for the “commissioning” part of the sale.  He answered questions, told us things we needed to know about the boat and was generally helpful and friendly.  We signed paperwork with the broker and the boat officially became ours.

Wednesday, we came back from a walk into town to find all the requested work had been done and the yard was ready to launch the boat.  This was a surprise.  When I had requested the work on Monday, the yard manager had replied “OK, possibly this week”.  I took this to mean that he was either busy or unenthusiastic, and that he may or may not get around to what I needed in the next week.  I now think what he meant was, “Yes, it can be done this week”.

So we had to ask to delay the launch a day so we could paint the bottom of the boat.  Boats require special anti-fouling paint to reduce the growth of algae, barnacles and other organisms that would attach
themselves to the bottom and slow down the boat.

Thursday was spent painting the bottom and putting the boat back into the water.

waiting for paint to dry

While all this is happening, we are developing something of a routine.  As we did in Sunnyvale, we have made a habit of walking into town every day – sometimes twice a day.  It is a nice walk of about one mile each way.  Some of it is along a pretty wooded path that runs along the canal and some of the way is through the town itself.

path to Stavoren

The town itself really just a small village of about 1,000 people though it was once one of the richest towns in the country. I wrote more about this in a previous post.

Once in town we stop for coffee then buy our groceries for the day.  We have not stocked up on food yet, we just buy enough for one or two days at a time.  We have yet to open a can here, everything we eat is fresh.

Since the boat has been in the water, we have spent time putting on the sails, inventorying the equipment, and going out and testing the systems on the water.  The weather here has been mostly cold and rainy so we have not been out sailing as much as we would like.

Mornings and evenings I spend taking care of business over the internet.  I am still running two small companies.  The nature of these businesses is such that I rarely need to meet anyone face to face.  All communications can be done electronically.  There is a 9 hour time difference between here and California so my evening is their morning – a good time for phone calls and emails.  Likewise, I morning is their late evening another good time to talk to people at home.  Remind me to talk later about how globalization has opened up opportunities for me.

Finally, there is socializing.  This is a tourist area and many people from Germany keep their boats here.  We have met quite few of them and had some interesting conversations and some good parties.  Also the Dutch people here are very kind and often have fascinating stories and different perspectives on life from what we are accustomed to.

Now we are waiting for our “stuff” to arrive.  What is left of our worldly possessions is being shipped to Rotterdam.  Sometime next week we will sail inland to a town called Sneek (but pronounced “Snake”)
where we will rent a truck and drive down to Rotterdam to take said “stuff” through customs and haul it back.  It will probably take another week after that to find places to stow it all.

the "stuff"

Upon completing that task, we will finally be ready to start cruising.  I think we will take a few days to head south to Amsterdam but there are no firm plans yet.

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Ex-Pat Report (# 2) will appear next week.  Questions or comments from readers of this series will be answered by Rick or Mary as the spirit moves them.  They are floating through Europe.  They do as they please.

Reported and edited by Robert M. Katzman, unfortunately based near Chicago, Illinois, thousands of miles from that little boat in Europe.