Monthly Archives: May 2015

“Normal” Life

We’ve owned Take Two for seven years now. She’s been our home for nearly six. That’s longer than I’ve ever lived in any house, anywhere. It’s long enough for the initial romance to have worn off, but not so long that I am tired of living aboard. Living on a boat seems to possess the perfect balance of familiar and foreign. Sometimes, our life is exciting—we meet new people, we go to new places, have adventures. And sometimes it’s humdrum, especially if we’re tied to a dock because of boat projects or Jay’s work. Somehow, over the course of several years, both the extraordinary and the mundane have woven themselves into some kind of “normal” for us.

One reason I think we have been successful living aboard is that we try to balance working on the boat with enjoying the boat. The to-do list for a boat is not linear, but circular. As soon as you’ve fixed one thing, another needs fixing, and if, by some miracle, everything has been fixed once, then it’ll be time to go back and fix it all again. If you accept that you’ll never be finished, it frees you up to just pick a stopping spot and leave for a while. This would not be possible if the boat represented a sabbatical from our normal lives, but since it is our normal life, we’ve found a way to compromise. We use the boat, bring it back to a dock to work on it, and then make some more money so we can use the boat again.

People frequently ask our kids “what is it like to live on a boat?” They think they’ll receive some amazing response about adventure and fun and an unconventional life, but our kids either look at them blankly or, worse, tell them how they always get seasick. For children, “normal” is defined by the adults in their lives. Rachel, who has never lived in a house, thinks a bathtub is exotic, and looks forward to going to her Mimi’s house because she can take a bubble bath there. For boat kids, taking the dinghy to get groceries is normal, using laundromats is normal, going to the beach for recess is normal, seeing dolphins and manatees in the “yard” is normal. Without the perspective of time and experience, they won’t be able to appreciate their upbringing on the water.

For Jay and me, leaving suburbia was anything but normal—some people said we were “crazy” and by that, a few even meant “foolish.” But the way our culture defines “normal” was not attractive to us: we didn’t like the norms of indebtedness, rush-hour traffic, school schedules, mowing the lawn, and saving for retirement. If that’s your cup of tea, have at it, but we longed for something else. I am always being asked, “How do you do it?” It’s a question that has many possible answers, but the most boring one is that I get up in the morning and put my pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else. It’s normal for me to homeschool five children on a boat. I appreciate that it’s an interesting way to live, and that we’re different even from a lot of the families we meet cruising, but, honestly, the excitement has worn off and we’ve settled into the business of raising our family, working, fixing our boat, and going exploring. That said, I love our life and love being able to change the scenery without packing any boxes and renting a U-Haul.

Project Recap

I tend not to write much when there are boat projects underway. I don’t think many people are interested in reading about them, and I’m too mentally occupied to write about anything else.

Tanya says I need to write more, so I figured I’d at least give a high-level run-down of what has been changed on the boat recently. I could write a big post about each of these, but I probably won’t. So use the Contact page if you want more details.

Air Conditioning – This project was actually finished last spring, but I don’t think we ever talked about it. We pulled out the old split-gas system and put in 5 separate combo units. We have a big pump in each stern and use relay boxes for the units to demand water. The pumps feed manifolds that have valves to isolate each unit, and dedicated ports so I can circulate acid occasionally. The return manifolds have eductors which use the Venturi principle to suck the condensate water out of the pans. I put little float switches in the pans to sound alarms in case they back up. The units themselves are installed in semi-airtight boxes so we can filter the air. It’s amazing how much dust we generate.

Instruments – We took a phased approach that was ongoing for a long time, but is now complete. I chose Simrad/B&G because I was excited about what they were doing with FMCW radar, the sailing features in the Zeus chartplotters, and their reputation for autopilots. We also replaced the instrument displays, the VHF, and added an AIS transceiver. Everything is native NMEA2000. The indoor and outdoor chartplotters are networked together, so they can share charts, waypoints, and the radar; and networked with the rest of the boat, so we can view and control them from Wi-Fi tablets. I expect to rest better when I can open one eye and see a mirrored chartplotter display from my bunk.

Mainsheets – We used to have a 14-foot mainsheet traveler across the back of our cockpit. I originally viewed that traveler as a mark of awesomeness, but living with it was another matter entirely. It had a continuous-line 6:1 adjustment that was hard to use, the cars were noisy when the wind was light, and I’d been worried for years that the thing was going to take a kid’s fingers off. We continued to use it, but usually with the addition of a preventer to “triangulate” the boom. The final straw came when we began to reimagine the cockpit for better seating and enclosure. I removed the traveler and replaced it with dual 3:1 mainsheets. I decided to have dedicated winches available for both the main and spinnaker sheets, which necessitated a little winch rearrangement am still in the midst of.

Hardtop – We built a hardtop to go over the cockpit. The structure we built a few years ago was designed to support a hardtop, but initially we only covered it with fabric laced to the edges. Even with fabric, this ranks as one of the best all-time improvements we’ve made to the boat. The new full-solid top radiates less heat, looks better, allows rain catchment, and provides for attachment of better curtains to help keep the elements out of the cockpit. But it was A LOT of work.

Bowsprit – I’m planning to update our sail inventory with something in the asymmetrical off-wind category. While it may not be strictly necessary, I decided I wanted a bowsprit. For $100 in materials, $100 for welding, and $100 for painting, it was surprisingly easy and inexpensive. I still have to install the padeyes in the bows for the guys that hold it down.

Rigging – The big ticket item has been the mast re-rig. This was just maintenance, but very important. You want to fix it before it fails. We replaced the standing rigging that holds the mast up, the electrical wiring, antennas and conductors, stripped all the hardware off of the mast and repainted it. The only real changes we made were trimming down the step for the old radar, and adding a small crane to the front of the masthead to support a spinnaker furler. We also replaced the plastic sheaves in the boom for some with ball bearings to try and eliminate an annoying squeak when we’re under sail.

There have been a lot of other little things done, but those are the big ones I can think of off-hand. Of course, we have more on the drawing board.

New Sail – The code zero/gennaker/screecher/spinnaker has already been mentioned. This will be on a furler on the end of the bowsprit. We currently have a symmetrical spinnaker in a sock. I expect the new sail to eminently more useful and usable, which should translate into more sailing.

Stern Protection – Our sterns are constantly being bashed by docks and dinghies, and I often envy the protective cages you sometimes see on the back of workboats. I’ve got a design and very reasonable quote from the local welder to add some reinforced tubing around our sterns. It would also provide handholds for people in the water and attachment points for fenders and towables. I love the idea, but I’m always hesitant to make a major change.

New Dinghy – Our 12-foot RIB and 25hp 2-stroke have seen some hard years. Sam and I took them fishing this past week. The motor was initially very grumpy (but got over it) and a fish managed to puncture the dinghy in two places. I applied my first patches ever, and they seem to be holding. But there’s a very “tired” feeling coming from them. I also think we should go up a size. A 13-footer with a 40 sounds about right.

New Watermaker – We’ve outgrown our Spectra. Spectras are great machines, but they’re built for high-efficiency, not necessarily endurance. We spend about $1,000/year keeping ours running. We’ve had an expert out to check our install, and the consensus appears to be that we’re just running it too hard. We have to run it about 5 hours a day to make our water quota, and being in coastal water doesn’t help any. We may squeeze another cruise out of the Spectra, but we’re eventually going to switch to a higher capacity high-pressure design that can make our daily water during the generator run.

New Batteries – This one has been on the table for a while. Our Lifeline AGMs are nearing their end of life. We are definitely going to switch to Lithium, which I am very much looking forward to. It’s the kind of project that has to be done proactively and probably while at the dock.

Cockpit Redesign – The cockpit has to support the functions of operating the boat when we’re underway, and regular life when we’re not. It doesn’t really do either very well. We’re trying to think outside the box about the cockpit design, even to the point of questioning the necessity of a helm seat. I think the kids sit there more than I do.

This list might seem overwhelming to some, but boat projects sustain me. I’d be bored without them. My only regret is that I have to keep making money to afford them.

We typically like to keep our life a mix of moving and sitting, and our ratio is a little skewed right now, but that will get straightened out eventually. We have to find something to do with ourselves this summer, but we’re gearing up for a bigger trip in the fall.