NMC022 Two Weeks Aboard Dawn Treader

Rosa Linda

Recorded: June 22, 2016
Location: Riviera Beach, Florida
Subject: New Puppy updates, visitors and general life aboard s/v Dawn Treader after two weeks.

Hello friends!
Chronologically, this episode was recorded just a day after the one posted here on New Mexi-Castaways last week. But when you live on a boat a lot can happen in a day.

At the time of this posting, I am feeling thankful that I recorded these podcasts back when life was “normal” (yes, I know we are generally “abnormal” because we live on a boat). These recordings were from 2016, two weeks after we moved onto the sailing catamaran, s/v Dawn Treader. Back in those lovely, pre-Covid times, when we could have family fly to wherever we were and spend time enjoying each other, face-to-face. I miss that so much.

Wherever you are, I hope you have people you love that you are staying connected to right now. I am so grateful for the chance to connect with all of you, even if only virtually.

Be well, my friends!

Lots of love,
Rosa Linda

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Episode Transcript:

Rosa Linda Román (00:00): Hello, everyone. Welcome to New Mexicast. I'm Rosa Linda Román. And before we get started, I want to share what you can expect here on this podcast. First, you should know that my family lives on a sailing catamaran, and this is my personal audio journal. What you're about to hear is an episode from 2016, when we were just starting our journey of moving from our home in New Mexico onto the boat. As a long time broadcast journalist, I wasn't sure how I was going to keep working while pursuing this crazy new lifestyle. This journal is where I worked through a lot of things, both personally and professionally. That means you will hear about experiments with new technologies like Blab and Periscope and testing out systems to make the move easier like Wildtree meal prep and KonMari for downsizing our stuff. As you can imagine, some of these experiments were successful while some like Blab and Wildtree don't even exist anymore. But I decided to leave even the failed experiment in this audio journal so you could get the whole story of how we went from New Mexicast to New Mexi-Castaways. If you like what you hear, please stick around till the end and I'll share how you can find out where we are now and how you can get much more content by joining the New Mexi-Castaways crew. Enjoy! Rosa Linda Román (01:47): Hello and welcome to New Mexicast the enchanting travel show featuring tales from my family's adventures aboard the 45 foot sailing catamaran, the Dawn Treader. For you that are new here, let me introduce myself. My name is Rosa Linda Román. I go by Rosa Linda and I have had a TV show called New Mexicast since 2007. And it started as a video podcast, featuring stories about just interesting people. We meet along the way, both in New Mexico and beyond. And I created this audio version toward the end of our stay in New Mexico as a way to just kind of brainstorm and share my thoughts as my family prepared to move on to this catamaran. So we are a board. We have lived on this boat for a full two weeks now, and I want you to list I'm going to work and talk and share my thoughts about the past two weeks. Rosa Linda Román (02:51): Plus our adventure and what you hear right now is the sound of doing dishes. And that is one of the many things you learn when you live on a boat is how to get very creative saving water. Because our water, our holding tank for the water, I think we have a hundred gallon holding tank. We may have 200 gallon and forgive my ignorance, but there's so many systems on this boat that we are unfamiliar with. I could tell you in the past no longer cause my brain I have since had a third child, but in the past, I could have told you the water capacity and fuel capacity and all kinds of details about our former boat that we lived on when my daughters were two and four, and that was a Manta. And ironically, as I'm looking out the back window of my current home, which is a Lagoon 450, I can see a Manta, which you don't see them very often. Rosa Linda Román (03:51): They were there an American, an American built catamaran that our boat Hakuna Matata was one of the last ones ever built before the company went under. Not literally, not like under the water. You gotta be careful with those terms when you're talking about boats. But anyway, so long story short, I don't know this boat very well. We bought it back in about six months now. I guess it's been more than that about we bought it last August. So coming up on about 10 months that we've had this boat, but most of that time it's been docked in Fort Lauderdale. And now we are at Riviera Beach Marina outside as part of the West Palm Beach or Palm Beach County area. We're across from a place called peanut Island, which is a delightful little place for the kids to explore while we prepare the boat. Rosa Linda Román (04:44): There are so many things that I can tell you about about just the process of prepping to move onto the boat and now being aboard for two weeks. But I'll just kind of, that's the nice thing for me. And it may not be nice for you, but it's nice for me is about this audio edition is unlike the video show, the TV show which again started as a video podcast and became a weekly half hour show. All of which I created and produced that was very work intensive. And I just, I don't have the ability to do that. At this point in my life, I have three kids. Ahava is 11, Ziva is 9 and Samuel is 5. We just got a new puppy that is part of our move aboard adventures, which I'll tell you more about as we in the coming weeks. I'm going to try now to be more consistent with this audio podcast, because as I've been thinking about my work and, and the things I've enjoyed doing through New Mexicast, the reality is starting to set in that... oh, I hear something. You hear that noise? Oh, that's cause let's go outside really quickly. There's a big cruise ship coming out and I'd love you to hear it. Let's see if they blast that horn one more time. Rosa Linda Román (06:12): You can hear the wind, hear in the distance. So at this Marina, there are there's a cruise ship terminal right next to us and this boat comes in and out and in and out. Basically it comes in every morning. I know this because I'm out here on the deck trying to teach a nine week old puppy how to use the potty on a boat. And so it pulls in every morning and it goes out every afternoon it seems it may be not the same boat, but this is a busy port. So I guess they're not going to bless the horn again. I thought you would enjoy hearing that. But anyway, so going back to the whole point of this audio edition. As I move forward, I have a lot of wonderful people who are asking me about our adventures. I'll go back inside and continue to do the dishes. A lot of people wondering about living on a boat and how do you prepare for living on a boat and how does one do that with three kids and a new puppy and try to maintain your sanity. And while that I may not have an answer to, the fact is this audio edition is much more practical at this point in our lives because A. when you live on a boat the internet is often awful. The best internet you get is not great and it ranges from not great to awful. And the problem is when we sail to the places we want to sail, I think the internet is only going to get worse. So realistically, the live shots, which I've done a few, and if you are interested in kind of our preparations, leaving New Mexico to move on to the boat and then our move onto the boat you can check out New Mexicasts live the stories that I did live on New Mexicast TV on YouTube or facebook.com/newmexicast. Rosa Linda Román (08:23): And that's N E W M E X I C A S T. Anyway, So if you want to see some of the videos, that's great, but the reality is they are very hard to upload when you do not have good internet. And that has been a stress point for me throughout my TV show too, because my family is a traveling family. We like to hit the road a lot. And even before we moved down to the boat, we went to Mexico and we went to Chicago and we traveled extensively. But I would often be in the middle of editing an episode of New Mexicast and have no way to upload it to the TV station or to my video podcast feed because of internet, lack of internet connectivity. So that is why I am really leaning toward doing more of this, which is just my let's call it "Rosa Linda's ramblings" here on New Mexicast audio edition, because I could get to wherever we go, I can get to a coffee shop. Rosa Linda Román (09:29): And in The Bahamas, let's say and upload an audio file reasonably easily, but trying to upload video is going to be only sporadic at best. So that said it is my goal now that we are onboard full time to at the very least publish an audio edition once a week, but I'm going to try more frequently, but I'm not going to promise anything. At least at this stage, maybe by the time you're listening to this, I will have gotten my stuff together and be consistent. And you will see that we have lots of audio recordings in the feed. So yeah, I think the big thing is going to be, because this is brand new for me to really do this as an audio podcast, you're going to have to tell me what you guys want to hear. And that doesn't mean I'm going to do every single thing you want, but like, what are your questions? What are your thoughts? Are you interested more in the process of prepping to move on to the boat, which I did a program called KonMari? Basically it's a based on a book by a woman named Marie Kondo called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and the process of KonMari-ing (if that is a verb?) to downsize to move on to the boat, was overwhelming, amazing, emotionally draining and ultimately incredibly rewarding. So I certainly can share more about that here on the podcast. Let's see. I could talk about just the whole process of being here with the kids and what that's like, and some of the concerns, Just life aboard a boat in general. I mean, I'm sitting here and we have three sinks here on the boat, which is kind of funny. I laugh that we could keep like totally kosher, which we don't, but we have three sinks, so we could separate dishes if we wanted to, but mostly it's because we use each thing to accumulate lots of dirty dishes and you have to be really cautious about using all this water. Rosa Linda Román (11:35): Right.?So I fill up a little bit of the sink and I'm sitting here, sudsing away while I'm talking to you. So I could talk more about just kind of the quirks of living on a boat and some of the things you learned. You know, anything. So feel free. If you are interested in a specific topic relating to our adventures, please send me a line. You can email me at rlr@newmexicast.com, or you can go to my Facebook page. That's again, facebook.com/newmexicast. And just ask the question there and I, I will try to include that in a future episode. So, okay, so let's see, let's talk about the move itself, because I don't think I've really gotten into that in an audio edition yet. So I did do the whole KonMari thing, which again, you should just go check out the videos because they're much more extensive, but that after I, I got down to the wire. I had wanted to leave on, I think it was Tuesday June, I dunno, it might, might've been Tuesday, June 8th, something like that. And pretty quickly I realized we needed some more time, not just to continue the sorting and packing and all of that, but we, the kids needed more time to really say goodbye to their friends and and, and do things the right way. So we didn't feel like things were left unsaid or it was rushed and we regretted, you know, the whole way we ended. So we had a big sleepover party with their friends, my kids friends, including even one of Samuel's sweet friends, two nights or the night before we were allegedly going to leave, which was hilarious. There was no way we were leaving then. So then after that, my friend Erin Edwards came and she, she was awesome. She helped me finish that last push to get everything sorted. And we weren't just like putting stuff in storage. We have some friends who are renting our house and we are leaving the furniture and we left like all the normal living supplies. Dishes ,you know, stuff like that. Rosa Linda Román (13:56): And so that made it a lot easier for us cause we didn't have to pack up. All we had to pack up was our personal effects and the rest of it was able to stay with the house. But that still was a daunting task with, you know, a family of five. And the other issue we ran into, and I didn't really get into this too much until I, I really haven't said this publicly yet but we had our wonderful German shepherd, beloved sweetheart Lyla, who honestly, she's just an amazing, sweet, awesome dog. She's a German Shepherd. And she's 2, and we've had her, we had her at the time tail end of our long time, sweetheart dog Tova, was the dog that lived with us on the boat the first time, also a German Shepherd. And then we had another dog that eventually became my brother-in-law's dog, Mazal,. Well Lyla, for some reason, she had this quirk that she was an amazing guard dog when it came to the coyotes that would come up to our house in New Mexico. And she was an amazing guard dog when a mountain lion came up and sat on the wall in our backyard. Like really great at scaring away, like really big, scary animals. And she wasn't like one of those yippy dogs that would just bark at a squirrel or bark at any random bird. She really was great great protector. However, for some reason she had this weird quirk that she would not ever bark at people. She would not ever bark at people. And I'm talking about my husband traveled a lot for his work and there would be many times that I was home alone with the kids and all of a sudden like I'd come around the corner and there's a guy standing in my house with no, no noise made by the dog. It turned out that it was truly Nolan or some service call and that my five-year-old had heard someone knocking on the door and just let the person in. Rosa Linda Román (16:01): Luckily none of it was ever a real issue because the people did not have any ill intentions. But that's not okay. I need a guard dog. What's the point of having a German Shepherd? If you, if you don't have, I don't mean a guard dog. I'm not talking about like, you know, chain them up and have them guard my property. I don't care about the stuff, I care about the people. And because, I don't know if I've ever said this either. Boy, I'm just revealing everything today aren't I? I have had, I have a hearing problem. And I've had a double stapedectomy. What that means is I've had the stapes bone in two of my ears to all two of my ears, sorry, I'm doing dishes and talking. I've had the stapes bone replaced with a prosthesis in both my ears to improve my hearing, but I still have hearing that is not as good as the average person. Rosa Linda Román (16:58): And so I really do need an alert system and that is why we have a dog besides the companionship. So Lyla was not living up to her doggy duties for me and my needs. And so it was really down, down toward the end when we were figuring out all the logistics and what to do and how to handle the move, we always intended to bring Lyla with us because we love her and she's she's our doggy. But I was really, because toward the end it seemed, we had a lot of people coming in and check and doing things on the house to prepare for our renters. I started to realize, I, I really can't have this dog come with me on this boat because we're going to be in foreign countries. We're going to be, you know, doing all these things with my, my little kids and in the past, when we lived aboard a boat we, ...by the way, the first boat was called Hakuna Matata. And when we lived aboard Hakuna Matata, Tova would just alert me if there was someone coming near the boat and all I need, you know, I just need a little warning. I'm not asking her to eat the people, but just, you know, hey, I need a heads up. And that I realized I was in the middle of a live broadcast on a platform I use called Blab, or I have used, I think Blab might be about to go under which makes me very sad. But like I said, "RosaLinda's ramblings" right? If you're still listening, you're like, boy, she's all over the place. But anyway, so Lyla I was in the middle of a live broadcast and I heard knock, knock , knock, like a really loud knocking. And I went downstairs and, and there was this, this service guy. Rosa Linda Román (18:46): He didn't come in the house, but he was standing there. And I thought, I had no indication at all that this dog, I mean, by the dog, that this person was standing there and it really freaked me out. And so I said, I decided then and there, I just, we have to find another option. And so I was kind of talking to my friend about this struggle that I'm having, I was having with the dog and he, well, he was checking out, he's the one that rented our house. And while he was checking out the house, like if it would work for him and his family, he, a massive coyote walked by our backyard and our dog Lyla went chasing after it and chased it away. And I think that's when my friend was like, why don't you just leave that dog here? Cause he's a guy, he doesn't need the same, you know, like he doesn't need what I need as far as protection. And you know, that, that maternal instinct of a female shepherd. So all of this to say that it all, it ended with a happy ending for both Lyla and now our new puppy. Because Lyla stayed with the house and has she's protecting their family from coyotes and any other wild animals that might want to make their way over there. And we, now that we moved here onto the boat, we went looking at dogs and we found a lady who is a trainer and also raises German Shepherd puppies. So we got a German Shepherd puppy and it took us a little while to name her because we really wanted to get her personality. She is nine weeks old, or I think at the time of this recording, now she's 10 weeks old, but we got her about a week ago and she, Oh, so her name is Nala. You know, Nala, the girlfriend, eventual wife and queen of Simba from The Lion King? Rosa Linda Román (20:45): So Nala is growing up now on this boat. As she, as we're moving aboard, she's getting to know the boat and we're teaching her how to use the potty and what to do here aboard and right away, she is a little miss protective. She, when she sees like the shape of my husband coming from downstairs from our side of the boat, she starts barking at him and I'm like, Oh yes, perfect. So I think there's real hope here that I'm going to end up with my protective doggy and hopefully Lyla is much happier with a family that appreciates her talents for scaring away wild animals. Okay. So what else can I tell you guys you know what, I'm going to take a little break and I will get back with my wrap-up. And yeah, I'll be right back. Rosa Linda Román (21:50): We are back and I just wanted to check and make sure my sister was still okay with all the kids. She took him down to the beach. Actually. I took him down to the beach and then she swapped with me so I could kind of get the boat cleaned up. My husband has been away on a business trip for three days and we have not only our kids and myself and the new puppy, who obviously has accidents. And we have my sister and her two kids visiting from Chicago plus my other sister's two kids visiting as well. So we've got a pretty full house. And the thing you learn, probably in many homes, you feel this way too. But if, if you don't put things away right away, it's chaos, chaos ensues. And because my sister arrived exactly one week after we arrived I haven't really had time to find out where things go and, and find a home for each of the things that we, you know, all of our, our stuff. Rosa Linda Román (22:58): And so I'm sitting here, I decided to come back while they're playing on the beach, so I could get a handle on the house before my poor husband walks in and thinks a bomb hit the boat. You know, it just, it gets messy. We've got now seven kids on board, two adults and one puppy. So I'm getting things cleaned up and I just wanted to check if Becky was okay with all the chaos of the kids swimming, but all is well. So what else can I tell you about this whole process? It's been interesting getting back on board. So I know I left off talking about leaving New Mexico. We finally did leave two days after I wanted to leave, but I was fine with that cause I felt like we needed to say our goodbyes the right way and, and not leave things undone because I wasn't putting things in storage. Now I do have, we have like a little wine room under the stairs in our house. You know, how people make it like a coat closet or storage. We converted that into like a wine cellar if you will, in our house, in New Mexico. With its own little air conditioning unit and all that. Okay. So we, I did save some treasures, like my kids' baby books and my journals and things in that in that wine room and that's locked and that's just where we kept our things. But other than that, we don't have storage. Well, we leave New Mexico, we're on the road and we find out that there's like a six acre wildfire maybe 10 miles from my house. Now we live literally up in the forest. Like I said, wild animals, you get the picture. There was a bear swimming in our in our pond one year, a few years, like maybe five or six years ago. Rosa Linda Román (24:52): And so we get the, the news that there's like a small wild wildfire called The Dog Head Fire in our area. And Miss Linda ,who was with me, she's our nanny who lives aboard the boat with us now, she came from New Mexico and she was our babysitter there and now moved aboard with us. Well, her house was being evacuated as was all of her family's houses. And it was, they only lived, I don't know, like three miles away from our house. And so you can imagine the chaos of poor Linda having to talk to her family and, and try to troubleshoot from afar as they were worried because it went from six miles, 6 acres to 17,000 acres. The Dog Head Fire just exploded and it was very scary. So it was a blur moving onto the boat because we not only, you know, did the whole KonMari thing to get out of New Mexico and downsized and, and really feel like we went through that emotional roller coaster. Rosa Linda Román (25:57): But then after we left New Mexico on the road, we ran into major issues, just emotionally knowing or fearing that house was in danger and Linda's house was in danger and not knowing exactly how that was all gonna play out. I'm happy to report that now the fire is contained and our houses and Linda's are all fine. And her family's homes are fine too, but it was very scary! There were a lot of tears as we were already going through the emotional rollercoaster of leaving our home and moving on to a boat. So that's, that's just a little bit of what we dealt with. Then of course my sister arrived, which that dynamic shifts everything. Cause we barely know the boat ourselves and now we've got kids and people to think about and make sure everybody's okay. Our air conditioning units were breaking or were broken, which did not go very well for poor Linda had like no AC for the first, however long she was here. I guess she was probably only here a week before Miss Linda went back to New Mexico so that there's room for my sister and the kids here on the boat. And it gave Linda a chance to kind of go back and reconnect which is good timing considering the whole fire threat and everything. So yeah, and then add to all of that. We got my daughter, who's a competitive gymnast, Ahava signed up with a gym here in town. So that becomes another layer of challenge to make sure she gets to where she needs to be in between, you know, figuring out where, who needs to be, where to keep everybody safe here on the boat. And then let's see the last thing, oh, the puppy, and then add a brand new puppy to the mix. Rosa Linda Román (27:50): So it's been a crazy, unbelievable whirlwind of a two week of two weeks to move on to this boat. But so far I am loving it. I feel like, you know, I had moments leading up to it. We did like a 90 day countdown to move on to the boat. And I had moments during that 90 day countdown that I thought, what are we doing? You know, have I lost my mind? You know, I just really started to kind of panic about the whole thing. And it doesn't mean that I don't have moments of panic. I do. But you know, I was really having doubts before we left, but I now know this is the right course of action for my family. I feel really good about it. There's a ton of work still to do, but for now I am very much enjoying being here, aboard the Dawn Treader. Rosa Linda Román (28:41): So I'm going to finish washing one cup and then I'm going to step outside. So you can hear the sound of the wind and the waves before I sign off. So again, if you have any thoughts or questions that you want to know about with this whole adventure, living on a boat, leaving New Mexico, KonMari-ing you know, whatever, whatever I can share with you feel free to send me an email at rlr@ newmexicast.com. And here you go, I'll leave you with the sound of the sea outside Peanut Island at Riviera Beach Marina in Florida on the deck of the Dawn Treader. I'm Rosa Linda Roman for New Mexicast, or as we like to call it New Mexi-Castaways. Theme Music (28:41): Rosa Linda Román (30:03): Thanks for listening to my audio journal from 2016 as our family prepared to move onto the sailing catamaran Dawn Treader. If you want to see where we are at the moment, just search for New Mexicast on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or Patreon, or for New Mexicast TV on YouTube. Also, if you want to see the videos and photos of the things I'm talking about on this podcast, please consider joining the New Mexi-castaways crew. You can do that at New Mexicast.com/crew. Thanks again for listening and for supporting our enchanting adventures. I'm Rosa Linda Roman, and this is New Mexi-Castaways.

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