What is it Like to Live Aboard?

April 24, 2013

     "At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much."

Robin Lee Graham

I have imagined living in a small, moveable space most of my life. When I was eight I was fascinated by Flash Gordon’s rocket ship. With my dad’s help, I designed a rocket ship to be made out of wood. I wanted to build it in the back yard and live in it, in the back yard. In my heart of hearts I knew it couldn’t fly into outer space and land on the Moon, but a child’s imagination is a wonderful thing.

Then, when our children were 5 and 8 we rented an RV that wasn’t really all that big, and traveled throughout the Southeast for two weeks. It was the best vacation we ever had, and a completely minimalist life style: 4 forks, 4 spoons, 4 knives, 4 plates, etc., and 5 days of clothes for each of us. A two-burner stove, and I had no trouble producing good meals. In fact, we ate out only once. That RV experience showed me that I could live happily with minimal belongings and space. It won’t be right for everyone, but the simplicity appealed to me.

But now to the realities of choosing a sailboat. Your bathroom, the “head,” is so narrow that you can go in to use the toilet, or the “head within the head,”  and bruise both elbows on the two walls (pardon me – bulkheads – what – another ‘head?’) at the same time.

As it happens, I had a rough winter aboard this year. I had bacterial bronchitis, an inner ear infection that caused enough dizziness that I had to go to a motel for a couple of days, smoke inhalation that caused various kinds of chaos, then viral bronchitis, and finally a badly sprained shoulder. I didn’t get much sailing in. But living on the boat, I always felt the promise of sailing. I still felt the boat sway in the slip in the wind (in fact, I deliberately tie my boat up so it will sway).

Living on a sailboat, the problem-solving is constant, but usually, fun -- not annoying.

I live immersed in nature. While docked in salt water, I heard tiny shrimp eating algae off the side of my boat at night. Now in slightly brackish water, I hear little crabs eating the algae off day and night. When the very reliable bottom cleaner comes and cleans my hull, I miss sound of the crabs. I spent one summer in a marina that was swarming with bioluminescent algae. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and at one point, the algae were so prevalent that you could see them sparkling like diamonds at noontime on the tops of small waves. It was more intense than the normal “sparkle” you can see on water all the time.The manatee would come in six or eight at a time to drink from the fresh water spring at the end of the marina. Dolphin came in to corner fish and feast on them.

On the downside, I am constantly looking for things that have been stored in the wrong place. That’s because storage space is so precious that sometimes strange combinations of things have to be stored together. When I cruise with others on my boat, I put an empty plastic box in the middle of the cabin and tell people to just put things they use – everything they use – in that box. I need those things to go back where I keep them. Do you have labels on every cabinet and closet in your house (I mean on the outside)? I doubt it. But because of the storage problems mentioned above, it helps me tremendously. My P-Touch is one of my most-used gadgets. When I was researching this life change, I came across an article that said something like, “When living on a sailboat, you have to move two boxes and a body to get a cookie.” There’s truth in that.

I have to have a system for keeping things on the shelves that line the settees in case we should heel over strongly.  On one side I made panels that snap down and keep things from flying extremely well. On the other side I have a panel of netting I can stretch across the shelves that serves the same purpose.

I find living on a boat invigorating. The first time a storm was approaching, I went above decks and methodically secured everything, and had a great feeling of accomplishment knowing I had prepared the boat well.

But most of all, living on the boat makes the promise of adventure ever-present, concrete, and real. How many 67-year-old women can say that?

I doubt I’ll leave the marina I’m in now except to move back to land, which, I suppose, is inevitable some day. There are obvious potential risks to an older woman living alone on a boat, but this marina is a gated community. Only people who are on my dock have the code for the gate to my dock. I know someone who was murdered recently in his trailer park. A couple of days ago, a couple was murdered on their houseboat in an unsecured marina. Terrible things happen everywhere, but I feel safe here.

I thought there would be less housekeeping to do, since it was a smaller space, but a sailboat’s smaller space has many nooks and crannies that are awkward to get into and hard to clean.  For instance, suppose the task is to clean the head (and the head in the head and the bulkheads lining it). Cleaning the head can be a full body workout. You gather up your supplies: you’re going to need a tooth brush, and Q-tips to get into some spaces -- and get on to your hands and knees (get some knee pads). You squat down, contort yourself down onto your hands and knees in the VERY small space in front of the head ... and then you realize you left your favorite cleaner outside. So you back out into the 14” square space in front of the head, climb back off your knees, turn around, bend over and grab the cleaner. You reverse all that and get back to work. You've done five minutes of exercises and you haven't cleaned a square inch yet.

The cleaning supplies have to be stored in several places to use your storage as well as possible, and you’re careful to return them so you can find them when you have to do it all again. 

Then there’s the entire outside of the boat to maintain, plus all the mechanical elements. It’s complicated. You screw up while changing the oil, and you’re going to spray used engine oil all over your living room (I haven't done that yet -- just the image of it in my brain makes me very, very careful!)

But overriding all of the bothers is the promise of adventure. If I choose, I can just throw off the lines and take off, and I have done that. Or I can sail with friends, and I’ve done that too. On every single trip out, whether it was for an hour or for four days, I’ve learned something  that excited and energized me. I’m physically stronger than I was 20 years ago.

LESSON LEARNED: The things that kept me down this winter were not really related to age, nor to living on a boat. They were the same things that have followed me for years (well, except for the smoke inhalation -- that isn't about sailing, but I'll have to tell that story one day!) I never get through winter without a bout of bronchitis, for instance (and no, I don't smoke), and the shoulder injury was my own fault – and completely avoidable (see the blog entry about anchoring safely). That injury might have healed a little faster 30 years ago but it’s still just a bump in the road. I've made the right lifestyle choice for me, and I feel blessed.