We Live On A Boat

Tomorrow morning, a local sailing landmark will be destroyed. Known by sailors as the “4 sisters”, the smoke stacks of the now defunct Lakeview Generating Station will be demolished. We will have a first hand view of the destruction as our dock is the first one on the warm water outlet of Lakeview. The “sisters” have been used for navigation on the lake for many years as they were visible from many miles away. In fact, except for the CN Tower they were often the first thing you could see coming across the lake. They were visible (on clear days) from Niagara and even when they were out of site you could see the smudge of smoke they put out. They were also well lit at night which made night sailing so much easier. But, for environmental reasons – down they must come.

Hmmm…

Something seems to be happening here. The longer we live aboard the less sailing we seem to be doing. Others had told me that when you live aboard that your sailing habits would change but I did not believe them. And here we are – the second week of June and I have not actually sailed this boat yet this year. I have motored around a couple of times – once to bring the boat over from our winter marina and a couple of times to do pump-outs but sailing just for the pleasure of sailing we have not done.

Why?

Well, I’m not exactly sure but I think it has something to do with the boat also being our home. When you live aboard you tend to operate just like when you live in a house. Dishes from dinner get stacked in the sink for washing later. Books are left out on the settee (couch) and the kettle sits on the stove. Now, in order to go sailing all this stuff must be cleaned up and tied down or it will be everywhere. The only real solution that I can think of is to designate a specific spot for everything and when you are done using it – put it back. That way when the sailing bug hits, all you do is a quick check down below and off you go. But what fun is that? I don’t want to live in such a regimented manner. I want to go with the flow – you know – I’ll do it later. Living aboard … who would have thought it would generate such a tough dilemma?

So here we are – going with the flow, doing stuff later – but not sailing. There’s got to be a happy medium somewhere. Any suggestions?

The concept of safety at sea is a complex one. I don’t really have any experience with seagoing safety as I’ve never been off the Great Lakes. I have no experience especially when compared with others who both live on board and have sailed away. Nevertheless, I would like to add my 2 cents worth. I read a about a great concept ….

John Vigor’s Invisible Black Box.

This is taken from John’s book called The Seaworthy Offshore Sailboat – A Guide to Essential Features, Gear, and Handling. I have written this out word for word because I think the idea is so important. However, if John or anyone associated with his book reads this and feels that it is a violation of some copyright law, please contact me and I will rewrite it or remove it.

“Vigor’s Black Box Theory states that there is an invisible Black Box aboard every boat. Whenever you take the trouble to consult the chart, inspect the diesel filters, go forward on a cold and rainy night to check the running lights, or take any other seamanlike precaution, you earn a point that goes into the Black Box.

When things start to go wrong in bad weather, when you get to the stage where you can accomplish nothing more through your own skill and physical effort, the points are cashed in as protection. You don’t have any control over their withdrawal: They withdraw themselves, as appropriate.

If you have no points in the Black Box, you will suffer the fate the sea decides. You may be one of those later described as unlucky.

If you have sufficient points to spend, you’ll survive the storm – but you’ll have to begin replenishing your savings immediately because the sea offers no credit.

Your initial deposit in the Black Box is the result of thinking about safety before you ever go to sea. More points come when you actually acquire some safety equipment, and even more when you learn how to operate it under emergency conditions. After that, it’s a question of listening to your conscience telling you to get on with those necessary little acts of seamanship, and continually topping up your balance.

Your Black Box is probably the most valuable safety aid you can own. If you’ve only just discovered you’ve got one, don’t hesitate. Start filling it with points straight away.”

Safety at sea is about preparation. The more you prepare for any and all eventualities that might occur, the better you will be able to weather and withstand them.

In some future post, I will break down some of the things that I have done or plan to do to fill my Black Box.

Let me start by saying that I know this whole post is going to make me sound like a pretentious donkey, but because it is part of the living aboard experience I would be remiss if I did not address it.

Weekenders!!!

Let’s establish something first: If you are stumbling around the main dock with a beer in your hand at 9:00am – you might have a problem. Further, if your buddies are in the same shape – they too, may have problems. If your other dock mates have to repeatedly ask you to tone it down – that might be a signal that you have issues. If your dock mates are secretly conspiring together on how to sink your boat in your slip – you might consider the possibility that you are causing a bit of a problem.

But, alas – you don’t clue in – because it’s 9:00am and you’ve already had 6 beers.

Why do you have to play your music so loud that it can be heard two marina’s over? Are you hard of hearing? And why, pray tell, do you have to sing along – off tune – at the top of your lungs? Do you fancy yourself to be a closet Sinatra that the world needs to discover? (P.S. – you’re not!)

And ….

Why do you have to urinate on the toilet seat and floor around the toilet all while smoking a cigarette and talking to your pal in the next stall? Why do you then walk away without flushing the toilet – much less cleaning up your mess? Is it because it is noon, and you’ve now had 15 beers?

What is so funny? That winch over there – look at that thing – man that is funny! And that cloud up there – it looks like your ex-wife – HAHAHA – ooooh, I’m so funny. Come to think of it – everything I say is funny. I’m a fun guy. I’m the life of this party. Lets all laugh together – 1-2-3 – from the belly, a good – raise the dead, laugh. (Hey, when I laugh – it can hear it echo. Man, that is funny too!)

It’s now 2:00am – well into the second case of beer. Hey, has anyone seen my pants? I don’t remember taking them off – I had them when I got up this morning. Oh well, I’ll figure it out in the morning. Lets just turn the music up and go to bed … after this one last beer.

I know, I know – not all weekenders are like this, but I’ll bet that every marina has a boat or two that the above describes to a ‘T’.

At all costs, I want to keep L on the dry side of the water. I think that my greatest fear as a parent of a baby living on a boat is that he somehow gets into the water. During the winter, there was little concern as we were shrink-wrapped and there was no access to the water from inside the wrap unless the door was open. We installed a latch high up on the door where it could not be reached and a bolt style lock that could be locked while L. was playing in the cockpit on the warm winter days. However, since removing the wrap we have now had to develop a much more conscientious plan to keeping him safe. We have devised a three part plan to keeping L. safe.

The first part of the plan is to install netting all around the life lines of the boat. Our life lines are about two feet high and come up to L.’s forehead when he stands up against them. So filling in the space between the lines and the deck is a great first step in keeping him safe.

Second, I will install jacklines on both sides of the deck running from the cockpit to the bow. Jacklines are a length of line that is pulled tight between two attachments usually tight to the deck. Then what we will do is use a harness on L. that we will be connected to a tether that is attached to the jackline. (I know – its called a leash. But this is for sailors so we have to use fancy terms.) This will give him the run of the deck on the side he is clipped in on but still keep him attached to the boat. The tether will be about 2 ½ feet long which will allow him to reach the life line but not beyond if somehow he did figure out a way to get through the netting on the lifelines.

And finally – anytime he goes outside, he has to wear a lifejacket. If somehow he gets off the tether/harness and somehow he gets over or through the lifelines and ends up in the water – he will have the lifejacket on to keep him afloat. Eventually, I might add a water warning system to his lifejacket that sets off an alarm if it gets wet. (I saw them on TV once.) Plus we have enrolled him in swimming lessons that again adds to the safety of having a baby on board.

A. and I have really set the rules for ourselves. We want L. to have freedom while living on a boat but we want him to be safe as well. I suppose that a kid living on dirt in the city has a fence around the yard for much the same reason – to keep him safe. This is the same thing – just different. Does that make sense?

You know for a human that is only a little over two feet tall they sure take up a lot of space! As I look around the settee area of our little boat I see baby stuff everywhere. Lets see, sippy cups around the sink, baby books in one corner, a hanging basket full of baby toys and figurines. Then on the back shelf behind the settee across from me we have a plastic baby computer, a change pad, a box of wipes, and a basket full of diapers ready to go. My only magazine rack on the boat? – Full of baby books! Hanging in the windows are baby plush toys, one hanging Homer (Simpson) and 2 bibs (drying – ready for the next meal.) Behind me, 1 of 3 cupboards full of baby food, baby cups, baby spoons, a baby toothbrush (with edible toothpaste) and more sippy cups. Of the two drawers that we have available to us in the settee area – one is full of toys. He takes up more space than A. and I put together!

I think the key to keeping a baby on board while staying sane as parents is to purge. A good regular purge of accumulating toys, allows you to move freely again for a day or two and also gives you a chance to move some new (and hopefully more interesting) toys in for the boy. This usually only lasts for a couple of days – but those days of free movement around the boat are wonderful.

Finally, the baby paraphernalia issue is a learning process for everyone. We, as parents, still sometimes buy things for the boy without thinking about where we are going to store it. Trying to keep the rest of our family (grandparents, aunts and uncles) under control is another thing. My ma and pa, for little L’s first birthday got him a great present! I would have loved to have it when I was a kid. It was a farm. A nice, big (opens up even bigger) plastic farm complete with little farm figures and a full range of sound effects. L. loves it – so it is here to stay for awhile. But where, oh where, are we to keep it? It has moved around. Currently it sits under a flip up kitchen counter extension that is permanently flipped. It has been stored in various places included in the cockpit area, in a corner of one of the settees and on the toilet. (The last spot was not practical for anyone – especially in the middle of the night.)

But the boy is here to stay – so I guess the paraphernalia is here to stay too.

My wife has already committed much of her blog to having our son (now 16 months old) on board a boat, but I wanted to provide a bit of a view from my perspective. Here is the first of a short series of posts (maybe 3 or 4) about having a baby on board.

First of all, I will say that A. does the bulk of the work with our son. As I am off at work each day, she ends up with him as her constant companion during the day. This is what we had planned before having kids – we wanted to raise our own children. Not have them, then pass them off to a daycare or nanny to raise as is done so often today. It was a choice we made. However wonderful it sounded back when we were just taking about having kids, we never imagined how much hard, mind numbing work it would entail. A. is a trooper – she is doing a great job with L. She has the patience to provide the attention he needs now as he learns new things each day.

When we first moved aboard L. was 9 months old. At that age, he was just beginning to change from a baby to a little boy. He, of course, had expressions, and responded to tickles and moving things and was crawling, but was not yet climbing. As he got comfortable on board he began to do some serious exploring. The boat was the perfect place for him as down in the main cabin he was able to move freely around without us having to worry about what he was getting into (he was always in sight). Once he started climbing, things changed a bit. He quickly discovered that he could climb up onto the settees and from there onto the fridge where if he stood up, he could look out the companionway. This quickly became a favorite perch of his – looking out into the cockpit. The whole climbing thing made A. and I a bit uneasy at first as we were always imagining that he would fall. But he quickly demonstrated his natural agility and balance and we were able to relax our minds about it. He did fall a couple of times, but other than the surprise of landing hard, he never really got hurt. The next stage of exploration was to actually crawl out the companionway into the cockpit. You should have seen the delight on his face as he proudly looked back at us after performing that little stunt. Thank goodness it was winter by then, and we had the plastic cover over the boat. We allowed him to rove around the cockpit and play down in the bottom with his toys. He loved the freedom and the change of scenery. Soon it was off exploring up the sides of the cabin toward the bow of the boat. We were not too happy about this as that area is, well, our storage area – and not baby proofed. So we ended that part of his roving by blocking off the way to the bow. How long that will last I don’t know – he is already showing signs of being able to crawl over the boxes we put in place. A week or two ago I put up a net to block off the doorway to the outside so that we can have the door open during the day without L. being able to get out. (It’s getting too hot in the canopy during the day – especially when the sun is shining.)

When we first moved aboard, we did not have any real place set aside for L. to sleep, so we kept him up in the v-berth with us. I can say that there are pro’s and con’s to having your baby sleep with you. First of all, it is really nice for the whole family to be together – cuddling up on a Saturday morning with the boy poking around your eyes or nose, while giggling away is just plain fun. I think it was nice for him too. He would often reach out in his sleep to make sure you were there – sometimes leaving his hand on your face. On the other hand, I don’t think any of us really slept that well. L. would often end up sideways so that he could cuddle face to face with mom while digging his heels into dad’s chest. At first I thought that was cute, but when he began to bruise me, it wasn’t so cute. He also tended to roam around in his sleep, crawling over top of one of us or moving down around our feet. I can’t believe how much he would move in a night. Plus in all his moving around, of course he would end up banging his head somewhere – which produced more tears and crying than real pain. L. would then go back to sleep in about 10 seconds leaving A. and I to stare at the ceiling and wonder what on earth we were going to do to get a full nights sleep. Eventually, we designed and built at leecloth system for the port settee that is now L’s bed. We rig it up in the evening and put him to bed there when we go to bed, then in the morning it all folds up under the settee cushion. Works perfectly – we all are sleeping much better.

There are generally only two categories between those who live on land and those who live on boats:

Live Aboard: one who lives aboard a boat.
Land Lubber: the term given to those who live on land by those who live aboard boats.

But another couple friends of ours introduced us to a third category. They had lived aboard their 30’ sailboat for, I think it was 7 years, with their twin daughters when they decided to buy a house and move back on land. Not wanting to be known as Land Lubbers, they introduced us to the term Clods. C.L.O.D. stands for Cruisers Living On Dirt … Clods – has a nice ring to it.

In keeping with this past weeks bathroom humor, I thought I might describe one of the other routines that one has to endure while living aboard especially in the winter in Canada: water and waste management.

If you want have water available at the sink and if you want to be able to use the John in the middle of the night, you will have to figure out a way of filling the water tank and emptying the holding tank. Once every 7 to 10 days I haul in about 20 gallons of water and haul out about 17 gallons of waste. I use the two wheel cart supplied by the marina and fill the water tank using two five gallon jugs. I fill them in the laundry room and drain them into the deck fill hole to fill the tank. Others at the marina here run out water hoses to fill their tanks, but I believe that they have much bigger tanks. Its Ok filling a 20 gallon tank by hand, I don’t want to imagine filling a 200 gallon tank.

The waste is another issue. We decided to keep our head working for the winter. Other live aboards here do not – they use the marina rest room exclusively. That means, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a snow storm, they have to troop out to the bathroom. Not for me. We use the head for liquid waste only so that limits some of the odours.

Our boat originally came with only a deck mounted pump out hole. This is no use in the winter as we do not have a pump to pump it out there, nor do we have any way of collecting it on deck even if we could. Instead, I installed a diverter switch and a hand pump on the side wall of the head that allows me to pump out the holding tank by hand into a jug. I then lug the jug up to the restroom in the marina and pour it down the toilets. It takes four trips to empty the tank completely (5 gallon jug loads at a time).
Here is a picture of my set up. As you can see, the diverter switch on the left allows me to switch between the deck pump out and the hand pump. The hand pump is attached to about a 4 foot hose that I put into the jug and then pump the handle. This type of pump will pump solid waste as well as liquid so, if we ever have need, we can use it for that as well. We add waste tank deodorizer stuff to the toilet every couple of days to keep away odours which also helps during the pump out. With fans running there is very little smell during the procedure although I usually still have A. and the boy go off for a walk while I take care of business. The first time I did this, I really wondered to myself about why I was in the situation where I had to haul crap by hand, but now it is just one of the things that has to be done to live the life we live. It doesn’t bother me a bit now.

The other day I was in the laundry room filling water bottles and got chatting with a lady who was there doing her laundry.

She said, “This morning there was a bad smell in the ladies washroom – smelled like sewer pipes. Is there a bad smell in the men’s restroom”?

Hahaha – oh me, oh my! My dear – there is always a bad smell in the men’s room – and it almost always smells like sewer! Hahaha.

Unless you plan to live aboard a monster yacht, one of the compromises that you will have to endure is public washrooms and showers. For the other half (who use the ladies room), I will give a little picture of the mens side of the action.

The mensroom is an interesting blend of private business in a public place. As the percentage of men to women at this marina is about 2 to 1 there always seems to be someone doing something in the mens. I can’t think of any other place where you could go to the washroom at 2:00am and end up chatting for half an hour with three other guys there for the same reason as you. And politics! Don’t get talking about politics or you’ll be there for hours. Voices will chime in from behind every closed door offering everything from opinions to expletives. World problems could be solved if people would just listen to the solutions presented there.

The showers are also a unique place. Our shower is an open room with four shower heads. At any given time you can have four men showering, chatting away while studiously scrubbing various parts and pieces. All this goes on while consciously concentrating on keeping any open eyes up above the neck of your shower partners. Come to think of it, there is a lot of eye contact in the mens room.

Men for the most part tend to be somewhat proud of the various events that occur in the stalls. Sometimes after a particularly spectacular occurrence you might hear a chuckle from a couple of stalls down. Some times you might even get cheered on. “Good one, man”! Men are such children.

And finally there is one old guy at this marina who always makes a scene of trying to find William. You can often hear him pull up to a stall, then talk to himself as he digs around, “Alright buddy, where are you? Come on out. ….. Ah, there you are – gotcha now!”

And yes, there is always a bad smell in the mens room – something like sewer pipes.