Our story is not about a boat - but there is a boat in this story. We have been living on Eos for so long now, a bit over 68 months, that she feels like the backdrop scenery of our story. An expedition tool. A home. And the best writing studio ever! And being trained as academics and scientists -- we were told to believe our opinions were irrelevant. If you can not prove it, do not talk about it. So, we did not believe anyone would be interested in us and what we thought and felt as we converted from one way of living to another -- on purpose. We came out here to tell the larger story of all of us and how we believe that humanity will be just fine. The world we live in may have different boundaries, borders, currencies and temporary power struggles. But I have seen people figure out new ways to live too many times to believe we are all going to curl up into a ball and die. That is silly. It may be different, but we will adapt to it and go on. I promise. Our way of adapting was to choose an 'expedition' boat. What does that mean? Well, there are boats to race around the world really fast. And there are ones designed to take 50 people on a tourist snorkel trip. And everything in between. In all those choices, there are expedition vessels. Things designed to go on long trips and back. Things built at a time when people were not worried about you suing them. Rather they wanted to be part of your sailing around the world and they made a damn good boat for you to do it in. Cheers to the builders of EOS and her sisters. We thank you. Above you will see Eos at Porto Penasco getting the finishing touches to her copper coat bottom. She is 32 feeet long ~ 10 feet wide and weighing in at about 15,000 lbs with an expedition load of food and water on board. Eos was designed to sail non-stop around the world -- and is therefore designed to carry a great amount of weight in a small platform. At sea, she moves about 115 miles per day under sail. We choose the copper coat hard paint option because it allows us to leave her in the water for many years. Essentially, we bought 36 pounds of talcum powder fine ground copper and 'painted' it on Eos like water color paint. Layer upon layer builds up until your boat is entirely covered in copper -- like a statue. And if you clean it correctly you may get up to 15 years without having to take your boat out of the water. Long term thinking. So, when choosing a floating home, we wanted to be able to go out on location -- for documentary filmmaking purposes -- and stay somewhere for months at a time. Whales do not wear watches. They just show up when they show up. So, part of documentary filmmaking is going out in the ocean and hoping a pregnant whale swims by. In the meantime, you need food and water and comfortable living arrangements for the crew. Thus, we decided to use that long range capability by staying longer in extreme remote locations -- and essentially just hanging around until the animals swim by. And because the boat is going to be 'on location' for years at a time, it does not make sense to polish her to a shine the way you would when parked in a marina year round. We call that look -- expedition chic -- she looks damn good for a workboat that has been 'on station' for five years. Our interior living space is about 10 feet x 10 feet. The bed forward is 80 in x 88 in. We have another full size bed outside under the stars. So, we have three full size beds we can use depending on the weather. This central salon area is about the same size as a compartment in an overnight train -- and the motion is similar. We just move about walking speed. We can carry up to 100 gallons (400l) of water, but most of the time we use 50 to 60 gallons (~225l) a month. We carry three (3) months of cooking gas -- cost 21 dollars. We can carry about three months of food but we generally go in for fresh food every 21 to 25 days. Otherwise, we have been 'out there' this whole time... One of the things about living on a boat is that it moves around. In all directions -- up, down, sideways, etc. But you need to move around on it so you can raise and lower the sails. Our side decks are almost two feet wide all the way around the boat. There is great comfort in being able to move around the boat seamlessly. Those yellow things are like dog leashes. Rule # 1 If you can not swim to the beach - tie yourself to the boat.
And we do not carry lots of toys and things to get blown away in the wind. A lot of people call us 'traditionalists' for sailing on such a simple boat. And it is true, with our hand start life boat engine included -- Eos only has 7 moving parts. No, not really -- but you get the point. We searched for and found a boat suitable to our purposes. We were not making a political choice or trying to convince anyone to do things our way. Our lives before now were really complicated -- so in a sense Eos is as far away from complicated as it is possible to be and still be a voyaging home. And if you are really going to voyage far and wide -- it might be a good idea to make sure you can fix everything on board. The only thing a Black American Express Card is good for when you are out in the middle of nowhere is to scrape things off the bottom of your boat. M
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Michael Sylvester
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