This week on the SHIPSHAPE podcast we interview a legend of Boston Harbor, Chris Birch. Chris is the founder of Birch Marine and is a frequent contributor to Points East Magazine. Chris take us through the experiences he gathered through decades of being in the maritime industry from the yacht charter industry, business ownership, and writing. Currently he is cruising on a 36 Morris Justine. Hear how he planned for his Seabbatical and life on a boat with a dog.

Transcript—–

Merrill [00:00:00] Check out shipshape.pro for more episodes and bonus content tent.

 

Ali [00:00:16] Today on the Shipshape podcast, we have Chris Birch. He’s been a staple in the marine industry in Boston for many, many years, ranging from the yacht charter industry to business ownership, writing and beyond. Chris, welcome to the podcast.

 

Chris [00:00:34] Well, thank you. I’m delighted to be here.

 

Ali [00:00:36] We’re delighted to have you.

 

Merrill [00:00:38] Where are you recording this from?

 

Chris [00:00:40] Right now I’m aboard my boat in Hadley Harbor on Nosh on down in between Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound.

 

Ali [00:00:48] And if I’m correct, is the 36 Morris Justine.

 

Chris [00:00:52] Yeah, that’s right. She’s a 1991 boat and had her for nine years now. And just recently, we’ve moved aboard full time for a few years of cruising.

 

Ali [00:01:04] So for somebody who knows so much about boats, may I ask how you chose this particular type of boat?

 

Chris [00:01:11] Yeah. I spent my whole professional career working on boats. And the boats that are poorly built, poorly designed really left a bad taste in my mouth and I encountered quite a few of them over the years, even though I owned a few myself. And so really, when we were looking for a boat, one of the things that was most important to me was a boat that was well-made and well thought out and well designed. And this boat ticks all those boxes. It’s not a racing boat, but we’re not looking to race, and it’s not a huge boat. But, you know, it also met our needs in other ways. But primarily it was the quality of the build that really appealed to me.

 

Ali [00:01:51] Do you recall the builder.

 

Chris [00:01:53] Morris Yachts in Maine? They’re now owned by Hinkley, but they’re they’re still in business and they’ve been building sailboats for a long time now. They’re focused more on the day sailing boats. But back in the day when this boat was built, they built a lot of cruising boats, primarily cruising boats, you know.

 

Merrill [00:02:13] So before we get into the whole kind of what you’re doing with your sabbatical to rewind it. How exactly did you get into the maritime industry to begin with? Was your family boaters or what’s the origin story?

 

Chris [00:02:28] Yeah, Now both of my parents are from New Hampshire, and so it was it wasn’t something that I grew up with at all, really boating. But up there on that lake in the Hampshire where my grandparents lived and where I spent some time in the summer as a kid, there was a small sailing program called Dublin Lake and Dublin, New Hampshire. And and I took sailing lessons as a kid there. And for me, it just clicked. I really liked it. And I ended up getting a pivotal high school summer job, my high school years, and just sort of went from there. I was I was cleaning boats for a Learn to Sail program and in Boston Harbor and, you know, for my whole professional career, stayed within a stone’s throw of that sailing school, which is still in existence, the Boston Harbor Sailing Club.

 

Ali [00:03:18] Oh, yeah.

 

Merrill [00:03:19] So were you always in the industry or did you like after college or.

 

Ali [00:03:26] Between high school?

 

Merrill [00:03:27] Yeah. Were you in Marine this entire time or.

 

Chris [00:03:31] Yeah, I actually started my business. I started several businesses in Boston Harbor. But the one that went the longest still going. I started when I was in high school.

 

Ali [00:03:40] Sarah Burch, Marine In high school, I did. Wow. Five years born.

 

Chris [00:03:47] Her.

 

Ali [00:03:48] Yeah.

 

Chris [00:03:50] And it’s a long time ago. 36 years. And the only thing that I ever did, I went I did go to college, but it didn’t really have much of an impact on my professional career. I didn’t train for anything there. I studied geography and and then I came back to Boston and I’ve been working for myself in what capacity or another ever since.

 

Ali [00:04:12] So I think we lost you for a second. I was going to ask you what other business you started, you know, around the same time as Bertrand.

 

Chris [00:04:20] Yeah. So Bertrand originally started out as Captain Choice Boat Maintenance, and I had a partner, but then we went our separate ways and I kind of got on with the business and he went on to do another thing. But along those time, I also started a business called Captain’s Choice Canine Cruises, where I took dogs out to the Harbor Islands, dog walking service, sort of take them out there in the morning and bring them back in the evening. This was before the Harbor Islands, whereas developed as they are now, and that went pretty well. But eventually I had one bad day where I lost a dog and I found the dog eventually. But it was it wasn’t until way after dark when I finally found the dog and I brought them all back. And this was before cell phones. And so I would tell anybody where I was or what was going on. Just like I had absconded with. These seven dogs didn’t return looking. Everyone was wondering what was going on. And needless to say, none of them were too keen to give me their dogs again. So that business kind of collapsed. But it was nice. I go out there and the dogs would run around with the spectacle island, which is it’s now really developed. But at the time it was just a dump, like literally a dump. And this was before the Big Dig. And and I would just sit there with my book and my chair and dogs would burn around. And that was all well and good and Fluffy decided to run off into the footage.

 

Merrill [00:05:48] I’ve heard a lot of things in the maritime industry, but I’ve never heard of dog charters.

 

Ali [00:05:52] I think it’s brilliant.

 

Chris [00:05:55] Yeah, yeah. And then for a while I had a business called Flow Tot, which was a human lieutenant myself. But it’s true. It was a human daycare center. And in my little floating office, on my little floating shop on the waterfront, and I was I had a young child myself at the time, and for daycare reasons, I thought, well, maybe a good idea for me to look after other people’s children while I’m looking after my own. While my wife went off to a traditional job. This was in the wintertime when cleaning boats was really slow. But just like captain’s chairs, canine cruises, I had a hard time gaining much traction and getting the trust of the clientele, and no one left their child.

 

Ali [00:06:41] Or at least it didn’t turn out the same way. You know, you didn’t lose a child.

 

Chris [00:06:44] I didn’t lose a child. Right. So floater to. Yeah. And then I also started a business called Boston Boat Share. And that was sort of like Zipcar is now or all boat sharing businesses that are in Boston Harbor. But this was before any of them were in existence. And I had a I turned 30 and turned 34 and a person 35. And people could sign up and they would get six weeks use of the boat in Boston in the summer and then also three weeks use of the boat in the Bahamas in the winter. Wow. So it was a pretty it was a pretty good deal. But like, I remember applying for it to the Bahamas, ultimately I ended up closing that business and sticking with the one Birch Marine, which was sort of always a constant.

 

Merrill [00:07:34] Now, how did the services develop with Birch Marine? You know, what were you guys doing in the beginning in that at the end, right before you saw the business, what services were you guys working on?

 

Chris [00:07:46] Yeah, well. Birch So we were a mobile marine service right in downtown Boston. And one thing that was unique about it is that was the geography. So my shop was the floating shop, and it was right in the harbor and we would get around by boat instead of getting around by car or van or truck. And a lot of the other mobile marine services in north on the north shore of our Boston and South Shore didn’t want to come to Boston because of the traffic and the parking hassles. And so just being in Boston and getting around by boat was sort of what made us unique. We didn’t go out outside of the Boston Harbor area at all. We didn’t even have a vehicle on the road. So we were just right there. But to your question, Merrill, in the beginning I was just doing anything and everything I could to no matter what people wanted me to do, I would try to do it. And because I was, you know, growing a business. And but over time, I came to realize that the routine maintenance and the washing, waxing, varnishing, bottom paint, shrink wrap, really the routine stuff, especially in the spring and the fall, was the stuff that was most reliably profitable for me to do, and it led to the least amount of problems. So I, I ended up doing more and more of the routine maintenance and less and less of the things that could go off, could lead, could lead me into trouble one way or another, I decided. But I guess what I came to learn is that there’s a place and a there’s a time and a place for specialists. And if I wasn’t a specialist in that particular thing, it was best to to not try to take on that project.

 

Ali [00:09:27] So as somebody I’ve tried to do something, some idea impressive. I always admired your work in the industry and I don’t think I came close. But what did you enjoy most about doing it? Because I can think of a lot of the things I enjoyed least, but I do have a couple of things I liked. What did you like about it?

 

Chris [00:09:47] Yeah, well, I mean, I liked working for myself. I think it was a big part of it. And I know this is about boats, but it’s also about entrepreneurship. And there’s something to be said for working for yourself and being able. To set my own goals and set my own schedule and make all these decisions and not have to answer to somebody else. And so I think that really was a big part of it. Another big part of it was where the boats themselves and I you know, because I do like boats. And so it was being able to spend my time working on boats rather than on something that was just sort of that I stumbled upon like, I don’t know, something like widgets, you know, just obscure. It was actually I was doing something that I wanted to be doing. And so and I think another thing that I would that I enjoyed about it was the variety. So there’s variety in two different ways. There are lots of different boats and lots of different projects. So that look kind of variety. But there is also a lot of different seasons, and each season in Boston is so much different, you know, in the world of boat work than the next. So I think that that really helped keep me going. The just constant change and variety rather than just doing the same thing over and over.

 

Merrill [00:11:01] What you mentioned about entrepreneurship in the space. It’s definitely an interesting industry to get into and I feel like there is just so much room for people to come in and essentially start businesses. And I mean, Ali, me, you, we’ve all come in to this industry, kind of made it our home and and started working, you know, on boats, writing about boats, all that other type of stuff.

 

Ali [00:11:27] Talking about those.

 

Merrill [00:11:28] So what would be some advice that you would give someone that’s thinking about coming into the industry?

 

Chris [00:11:35] Yeah, you know, I would say go for it. I’ve never held a corporate job and I’ve never actually had a boss. And and so I don’t never was really attracted to a lot of the security that comes with that kind of job. But I think that the the control that you have over your own life by working for yourself is it makes it worth it as opposed to having a corporate job or you being in a job where you’re working for somebody else in the marine industry. So I would I would encourage young people to just go for it, give the world. And if they like boats, then, you know, that’s a just a good way to go about spending your time is working on them.

 

Merrill [00:12:12] At what point did you start writing on boats?

 

Chris [00:12:15] That’s relatively recent. Maybe about five or six years ago. One of my customers worked wrote for Point Seas magazine, Marilyn Brigham. And yeah.

 

Ali [00:12:26] I know that connection.

 

Chris [00:12:27] Awesome. And then another one of my customers, Ernie Weidman, was one of the founders of the magazine. So I sort of knew about point is I always enjoyed reading it, but I never really thought too much of myself as a writer. But, you know, I got an idea once and the very first thing that I ever wrote and I wrote it and I submit it and they accepted it, and that was kind of thrilling. And then I just sort of realized that I was enjoying it. And so I kept at it.

 

Merrill [00:12:51] They had probably been like asking you to write an article for the 26 years prior or something.

 

Chris [00:12:57] Yeah, well, you know, I just I never thought about it. I’d never entertain the idea until it just came into my head one day and I did it.

 

Ali [00:13:04] So, yeah, I think I think the publishing side of the budding industry is different from the practical side, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of both. But sometimes it doesn’t matter how much knowledge you have, you can’t write about it in a certain way. People are have trouble, you know, printing it. But obviously you’re more talented at both. We love having you at points. So glad you mentioned it.

 

Chris [00:13:32] Thank you.

 

Ali [00:13:32] Yeah. And I can say, I mean, you’ve been there since I came on, but I feel like every article you publish is just more and more exciting and fun to read. And I’m I’m not sure if that has to do with maybe like, the freedom you’re experiencing now in terms of selling your business and doing your sabbatical, which I have a few more questions about, but we’ve really enjoyed having you.

 

Chris [00:13:58] Terrific. Great. Well, that’s nice being here.

 

Merrill [00:14:02] So when it comes to the marine industry, because you’ve been in it for some time, how have you seen it evolve through the years that you’ve been working on boats and all that?

 

Chris [00:14:13] Well, Boston Harbor has gotten busier a lot easier than when I first started there. Just a lot more marinas and a lot more boats and a lot more demand for boat services and Boston Harbor, even through good times and bad times. And, you know, there were times and early days when the harbor could get really quiet, especially when fuel prices were high or or or the economy was bad. But, you know, every decade that goes by, the harbor seems to be more and more secure a place for boating jobs. There’s just a lot more activity. And I think that’s probably true in most of America. The boating industry seems to have grown a lot since I started.

 

Merrill [00:14:56] So you’ve obviously seen a bunch of. This is come and go in the harbor. What have been kind of the key things that keep a business running in this space?

 

Chris [00:15:08] Yeah, well, I think dedication to the job is probably the thing that is the most important because they’re going to be a lot of days with horrible weather, horrible issues with projects not going well. It’s easy to get discouraged. And I think that if someone doesn’t have that sort of gumption to stick with it, it’s pretty easy, pretty easy to give it up on a bad day. But, you know, after rain, their sun and the good days always sort of came after the bad ones. And so people that have the gumption, I guess would be the word to stick with it, the ones that stuck around and succeeded.

 

Merrill [00:15:47] So considering we’re partially on the subject, what is the worst day you’ve ever had?

 

Chris [00:15:53] Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, actually, I’ve written something about it, and you get it in your in your inbox this winter, Ali.

 

Ali [00:16:02] Well, maybe we shouldn’t talk about that now. Now go right.

 

Chris [00:16:06] Yeah, there was one. There’s one winter day when I was working on a holding tank and sort of an I was upside down hanging locker and a cockpit locker and a hose came off, and it was under a lot of pressure, and it just blasted right in the face now. Yeah. So. And it was winter and yeah, it was bad. So I would say that one definitely took the cake. I never did. Well, I know I fell into the harbor a few times, but never in the winter. That would have been another bad day. But that never happened. And I guess weather comes up a lot. It was that that coldness or that day when that when that holding tank let go on me. And but also I remember, you know, working in the heat in the boatyard in the summer and some of those days. But you know another thing that would come up because I was self-employed, is that if I got stuck, I was pretty stuck, especially in the early days of my career before the Internet, because I didn’t have anyone to ask. You know, it couldn’t go to my boss and ask, you know. And so there were some moments of some genuine frustration over not being able to figure something out. And sometimes that lasted for several days until, you know, the flipside of that is ultimately, of course, you did figure it out. And and that’s rewarding when you have that kind of frustration and and you solve it. So I guess those would be the the different levels of a bad days.

 

Ali [00:17:31] I also I was wondering about own with your business, when did you decide to expand and take on employees? Something that I have found a lot about and it’s I feel like it’s a difficult call to make in terms of insurance and all other kinds of things that people don’t really think about.

 

Chris [00:17:47] Yeah, I’ve been as small as one and as large as nine. Birch green was large as nine employees at one point, and I started pretty early. Bring it on employees. To me, the concept was to have employees, and a big part of the fun of running the business was thinking about growing the business for me. And and I knew that if I was to do that, I’d have to have employees. And it was nice to have the company of other people.

 

Ali [00:18:15] Oh, yeah.

 

Chris [00:18:16] In my work day and their health and the sort of the, the promise of profitability of, you know, being a larger business and, you know, the ability the employees would give me the ability to grow the business financially.

 

Ali [00:18:31] Right.

 

Merrill [00:18:32] I feel like one of the biggest issues when it comes to getting into the service side of the industry is it’s very word of mouth. And therefore you need to get your first job in order to break that glass ceiling of entry. And not a lot of people get to do that. So what was your first job?

 

Chris [00:18:52] MM Yeah. So I was working as a launch driver and a boat cleaner at the Boston Harbor Sailing Club, like I mentioned. And there I would be driving these people out to their boats and they would. And one of them there was boating in the toi t0y and they asked me to clean it and I on my day off. And so I did. And that’s how I really that’s how it all started. But I met a lot of people that way because I would be in that position of, you know, shuttling them back and forth between their boat and the shore and talking to them and getting to know them and and if they had a problem, I oftentimes volunteered to help on my day off. And that’s how it started for me.

 

Ali [00:19:31] Yeah, I think visibility is key and especially our idea to, boy, I worked out just being on the water and having it being a mobile water boat business is completely unique and something that will make people remember you. Was that something you planned or you just didn’t have a car?

 

Chris [00:19:52] Yeah, I was 15, so yeah, I didn’t have a car. Didn’t have a license, but I did have a boat. And so I that’s yeah, that’s sort of happened that way. But then I came to realize that there was a certain advantage in not having to park a car. Yeah, I think I started in the geography of Boston just by happenstance, because that’s where I got that lunch driving boat cleaning job. But then once I was there and I was working there, I realized that it was it was a unique place. Boston Harbor was a unique place to to grow my particular business. In fact, I moved to the South Shore many years later in my life. And I and I figured that once I had done that, my business would shift to the South Shore and it didn’t. You know, there are too many other outfits working down there and there’s too much competition. I didn’t know anybody and no one knew me. And so I just kept working in Boston. Ultimately, I ended up moving back into Boston. But, you know, for residents. But yeah, that word of mouth thing really is is for real. And that’s definitely how my business grew.

 

Merrill [00:20:58] Now, you had you’ve sold Birch Marine and you guys are cruising as a couple right now you know at what point where you thinking about doing this as this been a dream that you guys were thinking about for a while, or what made you decide to do a sea?

 

Chris [00:21:15] Yeah, I have been thinking about doing this for a long time. And, you know, I also. And so I’m doing what I want to do. That’s the answer of something I and my and my wife and I just would have loved our summers on the boats on this boat and decided that we wanted to take it to the next level. But another part of it is that I got over the course of the years of my career, I got a lot of different boats ready to go and do a big multi year sailing trip, and the vast majority of them never made it. You know, the vast majority of them never left the dock because one thing came up or another. Looking at those case studies and thinking about what happened with them, I realized that for a lot of them, they’re people who are a good deal older than I am, and I’m 54 and which is young. To be taking years off from a job or a career. And most people do the more traditional thing of waiting until they’re 65 or 70. And then, you know, traditional retirement age and going on a sailing trip then in retirement. But what I saw is that it was hard physically for a lot of these people at that age. And so I thought that if we were actually going to do this, actually going to make it happen, now would be a better time. My wife and I are still relatively young and fit, so that was a big part of it. And another big part of it is that it just fit in well to our respective careers. My wife was at a point where it made sense for her to leave her job, and I had the opportunity to sell my business to an employee who was really a good fit for that. And so professionally, it seemed like a good time. And I think the pandemic also shaped it, you know, where you start to reorganize your priorities a little bit sometimes. And we realized that we really did want to do this trip, even if it wasn’t the smartest or safest move financially for our in our long term retirement needs. And so we just threw caution to the wind a little bit and did it.

 

Merrill [00:23:17] So you are with your wife, but you’re also with your dog, Bill, right? Yes. So tell us a little bit about having a having a dog on the boat. I see a lot of people with dogs and I’ve heard it’s pretty difficult to train the dog to go on the boat. So do you have to stay close to shore or what’s the game plan?

 

Chris [00:23:36] Yeah, So we oftentimes refer to him as the albatross or we call them glue factory, because whenever he misbehaves, we tell him we’re going to send him to the glue factory. But of course, the reality is we love them dearly and can’t really imagine it at all. But he’s been with us for all these nine years that we’ve had boats never gone sailing without him, whether or not. And so he’s used to the boat. We’re used to him. But he does definitely curtail our ability to do lots of different things. It’s just kind of crazy. Like for starters, he doesn’t like to be left on the boat a lot. And if he if we do leave him on the boat alone, he howls. And so we just we can’t leave him on the boat alone, irresponsible to the animal and also to our neighbors in the anchorage. And so that means we don’t, like, go out to eat or go to the movies or do anything like that. So it’s like a dog friendly restaurant that we can take. But we and that’s and it’s all has to do with the training. We just didn’t train him adequately. And I’m sure that’s what’s going on here. But that’s where we’re at. He’s an old dog now and he’s been in bad health for a while. And we just frankly never thought he’d make it this far. But he did. So we never did train him to go to the bathroom on the boat. So we do stop twice a day, take him off the boat, go to the bathroom. And that definitely in the short term. Least it’s going to limit what we can do and where we can go with the boat. So we’re taking it one month at a time and will stay near Coastal with our sailing plans until he’s no longer with us. And then we’re hoping that we might maybe cross an ocean. But that will be after the dog.

 

Ali [00:25:14] Yeah, I try and I try not to think about like, the excitement of crossing an ocean until my cat moves on, which, yes, that’s a hard thing to think about, but maybe in a way, you know, him forcing you to stay close to shore will give you the opportunity to check out other places you wouldn’t have otherwise. You never know.

 

Chris [00:25:33] That’s true. And I think another, you know, going back to that earlier thought that I had about all these people that failed at a big sailing trip, one of the things that many of them did was to start with a trip to Bermuda. You know, they’d leave Boston and they’re going to go off in this big, round the world sailing trip and they’d sail for Bermuda. And that’s like quite a routine introduction to, you know, your your big change of life. And so I think there’s something to be said for sort of easing into it, and that’s what we’re doing.

 

Merrill [00:26:03] Why do you say it’s a rude awakening?

 

Chris [00:26:06] Oh, well, just it’s, you know, one hour you’re on the dock and the next minute you’re blue water sailing, and you don’t have really any time to acclimate to living on the boat. There’s so much, you know, when you sell your house and and quit your job and and leave all your family and friends and live on a boat, that’s a lot to like, wrap your head around. And then if you had, you know, open water sailing in the first hour, I think it could be overwhelming. And so a lot of people, you know, they get to their first landfall after their first ocean passage and the boat is just for sale and they’re done. And, you know, I didn’t I wanted to make sure we’re easing into it and not having an experience like that.

 

Merrill [00:26:45] So I looked at the photos of your boat on Eagle seven Sailing, and I was thinking to myself, I was like, Well, this is Chris’s boat, so it must be just absolutely pristine. So and also, with your experience, kind of getting boats ready to make a big trip, what are some must haves and what are some must knots for the boat to be able to cruise?

 

Chris [00:27:10] Yeah, well, I think a big thing to think about is the size of the boat that you’re going to go sailing on. And some of that limits your must haves or at least affects your must haves on your list. And we ultimately decided to go on a relatively small boat in today’s terms, at least a couple of decades ago, this would have been an average sized cruising boat. But nowadays people are cruising in boats that are 40 and 50 and 60 feet commonly. So when we decided to go with the boat that we had because we knew it and because we felt like it was going to be a manageable sized boat for us to handle and afford, we had to make sure that our must have items for the boat were, you know, could fit on the boat. So we probably have a shorter list of must have items than other people. For starters, we don’t have an inflatable dinghy with an outboard motor. Instead we have a small wooden rowboat. And in other areas or our collection, the things are just generally smaller and we’re trying to do without a little bit more. But we do have a lot of the things that a lot of the larger boats do. We have satellite communication for getting weather forecasts. I think that’s really important for offshore sailing and for places even near coastal where you can’t get a weather forecast because there’s no cell service and we have a water maker. I think that’s really an important thing. I spent back in my Boston butcher days. I spend a lot of time in the Bahamas in the winter and it’s just very difficult to get water in that corner of the world. At least it was last time I was there. And so having ample supply of fresh water was important to me. So we decided to install that equipment on the boat. And then I think the basic things, you know, experienced cruiser people will tell you is that sails and steering are the number that are the two things that are most important on the boat and making sure that you have sails that are in excellent working order and a steering system that’s an excellent working order, along with redundant equipment for all of the above, the rain rigging, sails, steering, cable steering parts, backup emergency rudder. And before we cross an ocean, we are going to add a vein, which we haven’t done yet, just because, well, there is a lot to do to get ready to go, and that didn’t make it. But we are planning to add that. So sails and steering.

 

Ali [00:29:36] And so what are your plans, let’s say, for the next six months?

 

Chris [00:29:39] Next six months, we’re going to sail around to some of our favorite places in New England this summer, visiting places that we’ve cruised to in the past. But this time, instead of racing from one place to the next, we’re going to let the the wind guide us a little bit. Wait for the wind. The wind to be right. Sail on to the next location so that we’re not motoring or beaten into headwinds and and are able to do more actual sailing between spots. And so that’ll mean that we stay in places for longer. So we’ll probably visit fewer places as a result. But I think that that will suit our pace better. And then we’re planning to go down the coast to Florida and across to the Bahamas this winter.

 

Merrill [00:30:24] So as you were saying about how people come in and they have these dreams of sailing around the world and cruising and, you know, that never ends up happening. I’ve heard that people have issues when it comes to their homes or apartments kind of after they decide to go cruising. So did you sell your house or still got your house? How did you manage that?

 

Chris [00:30:47] Yeah, I’ve heard the same thing. Merrell And so that was a big part of our decision to sell it. And so we did It’s Gone Wow. Now sold the house, sold the cars. And so we have a few things our children took a lot of furniture for. They’re starting apartments of their own, they’re just out of school and setting up their lives and so they could take advantage of some of our furniture. But a lot of it, a lot of our other possessions were given away or sold or and a few things are still in storage. But for the most part, everything we own now is on the boat.

 

Merrill [00:31:22] Well, I guess there’s no turning back now.

 

Chris [00:31:25] Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s a big part of it. To be on the hard day, it would be easy to just give it all up and go home. But if there is no home to go back to, that’s not an option.

 

Ali [00:31:36] Well, you know, wherever you are is home, right? Isn’t that the thanks.

 

Chris [00:31:40] Yeah. Yeah, it’s been nice. It’s been really liberating to sort of live this way. We’re only a couple weeks into it now, but we’re off to a great start.

 

Ali [00:31:49] What do you think the hardest part was for you in terms of like, from selling your house? And it sounds like you, you know, kids taking the furniture, That’s good. But what what was really the toughest part of cutting that umbilical cord shell is.

 

Chris [00:32:02] Yeah, well, you know, the thing that you’re definitely going to miss the most are family and friends, right? Yeah. And so it’s hard to say goodbye to a lot of people. But I would say a close second was access to my tools and shop. Oh, oh. And so I was in a I spent a lot of time in the last six months thinking about, well, how am I going to do this project? And I have a long list of project things that like to do, things I have to do, but then also things I’d like to do like the wind vane and how am I going to do that, you know, without I have lots of tools on the boat and stuff, but it’s different than what I had before. And I don’t have the space or the connections or the car. And so projects, boat projects are definitely going to be a lot harder. So I crammed a lot of boat projects, even some really unnecessary ones in the last six months, just because I knew it was going to be so much easier to do it than it is going to be to do it now. So yeah. Tools.

 

Merrill [00:33:00] What’s your favorite tool.

 

Chris [00:33:03] Huh? Well, you know, the the thing that I the tool that I’m going to miss the most is the the drill press realized that I was just using that all the time to do different things and to beg to have one in my shop, but we don’t have one on the boat. So maybe the drill press.

 

Ali [00:33:21] What is the one tool that you have on your boat that you would not have left the dock without?

 

Chris [00:33:26] Well, it’s hard to say which, you know, just one, but.

 

Merrill [00:33:30] You’re going to give us two or three.

 

Chris [00:33:31] Yeah, well, I.

 

Ali [00:33:34] Imagine you were in a storm or something, you know.

 

Chris [00:33:37] Yeah.

 

Ali [00:33:38] You could salvage one or two.

 

Chris [00:33:40] Yeah, well, in a way I do, because I have different levels of tool storage on the boat. The stuff that’s the closest and easiest is in the. I mean, the stuff that is the most is in the smallest drawer that’s easiest to get at. And then the drawers that are harder to get. I carry the tools that I use less frequently. So but yeah, that’s the that foreign one screwdriver. Right. That’s the one you used most and you know, most pliers and a knife. Basic stuff.

 

Ali [00:34:06] Okay. So I think this is a good time for us to lead into our quickfire questions about, you know, what you like and don’t like. I prefer and don’t prefer.

 

Chris [00:34:17] Okay.

 

Ali [00:34:18] I have Merrick as well.

 

Merrill [00:34:20] This should be a pretty easy one. Sailboat or powerboat.

 

Ali [00:34:23] Sailboat outboard or.

 

Chris [00:34:26] Horse.

 

Merrill [00:34:26] Wheel or tiller.

 

Chris [00:34:28] Tiller.

 

Ali [00:34:28] Sunrise. Or sunset.

 

Chris [00:34:30] Sunrise.

 

Merrill [00:34:31] Center. Cockpit or cockpit.

 

Chris [00:34:33] AFT. Cockpit.

 

Ali [00:34:34] Nature or nurture?

 

Chris [00:34:37] Nature.

 

Merrill [00:34:37] Sweet or salty.

 

Chris [00:34:39] Sweet.

 

Ali [00:34:39] Then keel or full keel.

 

Chris [00:34:42] Full keel.

 

Merrill [00:34:42] Whales or dolphins.

 

Chris [00:34:44] Dolphins.

 

Ali [00:34:45] Summer or winter.

 

Chris [00:34:47] Summer.

 

Merrill [00:34:47] Flathead or Philips.

 

Chris [00:34:49] Phillips.

 

Ali [00:34:50] Stainless or bronze.

 

Merrill [00:34:52] Bronze paper charts or digital paper charts.

 

Ali [00:34:56] Cats or dogs.

 

Chris [00:34:57] Dogs.

 

Merrill [00:34:58] Cape Horn. Or Cape Hatteras.

 

Chris [00:35:01] Cape Horn.

 

Ali [00:35:02] Credit card or cash?

 

Chris [00:35:03] Credit card.

 

Merrill [00:35:05] Interesting. Fishing. Fishing rod or spear gun hand line?

 

Ali [00:35:11] Bernard. My Tissier or Robin Knox. Johnson.

 

Chris [00:35:14] Mm. And Morticia.

 

Merrill [00:35:16] Oysters or clams?

 

Chris [00:35:18] Oysters.

 

Ali [00:35:19] Atlantic or Pacific.

 

Chris [00:35:20] Atlantic.

 

Merrill [00:35:21] Well, those were all those questions.

 

Ali [00:35:24] There are 20 quickfire questions. None of them.

 

Chris [00:35:30] Good. I surprised me on all of them.

 

Ali [00:35:33] Great.

 

Merrill [00:35:34] So as we kind of wrap this up, can you tell us a little bit about your blog, Eagle Seven Sailing? And, you know, how do people pretty much stay in touch with you and kind of hear your stories?

 

Chris [00:35:47] Yeah, I know everything about the boat and who we are and where we’re going and is on the website Eagle seven Sailing dot com and we’ll try to keep that updated. There’s links there also to Instagram, Facebook and there’s a nifty little boat tracker on the website so you can see exactly where we are at all times. And we keep our log entries current on that platform. So yeah, Eagle seven sailing. It’s also, you know, I’ve been doing a fair amount of writing and I’m hoping to do more and there’s links in that website to all the things that I’ve written.

 

Merrill [00:36:23] I like how you, under the title Not All Who Won or Lost. Give me a little bit more with why you came up with that.

 

Chris [00:36:32] Yeah, my wife found that and she thought that that sort of summed up our general philosophy on what we’re doing and that there’s something to be said for wondering, as opposed to thinking of it as a mistake to wonder.

 

Merrill [00:36:48] Well, Chris, it was amazing talking to you and getting to hear all your both stories and kind of what you guys are doing now.

 

Ali [00:36:55] Yeah. More wisdom, as you know, and beyond the ages, it’s going to stay. I think it’ll help people from, you know, Alex to me and Mario, to everyone involved in the industry and Boston forever. We’re so grateful to have you on here.

 

Chris [00:37:11] Well, thank you. It’s been an honor. I appreciate the opportunity.

 

Merrill [00:37:19] And check back every Tuesday for our latest episode and be sure to, like, share and subscribe to shipshape. Dot Pro, dot Pro.