We Live On A Boat

The clouds prepare for battle
In the dark and brooding silence.
Bruised and sullen stormclouds
Have the light of day obscured.
Looming low and ominous
In twilight premature
Thunderheads are rumbling
In a distant overture…

– Jacob’s Ladder

The problem with having an air conditioned boat is that when the weather is hot, you don’t want to do anything. Today, it is unbearably hot outside – over 40 deg C. with the humidex scale. I’ve not left the boat nor have I done anything but eat, sleep and read books. Oh yes, I watched a bit of television too. I feel bad – lazy really, but I blame it on the A/C unit. Who wants to be all hot and bothered when you can be cool as a cat and all relaxed? I suppose that some time soon, I ought to run off for a shower, if nothing else than for the sake of those living with me. But after that? I have no plans – maybe a bit of reading, some eating and then some more sleep. Ah, what a day!

We have some new neighbours here on our dock. They are noisy and aggressive but at lot of fun to watch. They are a family of barn swallows that have taken up residence under the bow of a powerboat across the dock from us. I guess this is what happens if you park your boat and walk away. I’ve haven’t seen anyone on this boat the whole summer so I guess it was the perfect place for Mr. and Mrs. Swallow to set up shop. Walking down the dock is now an interesting experience as Mrs. does not want anyone coming near her babies. So she dives and we duck – I think it is a bit of a game for her to see how close she can get. I tried to snap a proper picture but could not stop flinching when she came at me so this is the best I could get.

Is this the Simple Life or is this just simply life? A question I’ve been asking myself lately. The fact that we got rid of so much ‘stuff’ when we moved from the house to aboard the boat would seem to indicate that we have simplified our lives. But have we really? Somehow, I think we’ve managed to bring all the things that clutter up our minds and lives and packed them into a wee little boat.

For instance, the internet connection has been horrible here for about a week now. I called twice before getting a message back that they are working on it. What does that mean? Simplified? I don’t think so.

The fridge needs defrosting. If we had simplified our lives we would not have a fridge. But who can live without a fridge? Cold drinks and well kept food seems to be sort of essential to me. But does having a fridge that needs to be defrosted every month or so during the summer mean that our lives have been simplified? Not in my books.

Light bulb burnt out in the v-berth, broken hinge on a cockpit locker, a bit of soft floor in the cockpit sole that needs repair … and on, and on, and on.

Life is no simpler – the actual jobs have changed but the work is the same. Would I give up the boat and go back to the house? Not on your life – I love it here – life is so much simpler…

(I know that does not make sense, but that is the way it really is here aboard H.M.S. Strathgowan.)

We now have A/C on our Alberg. I got to feeling guilty about leaving my wife and child to stifle at the boat while I went off to work in the luxury of my air conditioned service van. So, to resolve my internal dissonance, I picked up a nice little 5200 btu window rattler and installed it in the companionway. I had been trying to figure out how to install a marine A/C unit on our little boat but was having problems getting by the cost of them much less where to install one. KISS (keep it simple stupid) came into play and for $150.00 cdn we are way cool. In fact, during the day A. has had to turn it down because it was getting too cold for comfort. I set it up on a rolling platform so that when we want to leave through the companionway, we simply roll it to the side and out we go. It will get left on the dock when we go sailing unless we are going for the night in which case I will put it in the lazarette for storage. I figure that for something that I might use for 4 or 5 weeks a year, I could not justify the expense of a permanently mounted unit plus the loss of space which on our boat is a precious commodity.

As we move through the stresses of life – A. and I have developed a little saying that we say to each other when we see the other getting too stressed about something. It is, “relax, we live on a boat.” This simple reminder has become a bit of a mantra for me especially when customers are pounding away or when something is stressing me to point of it boiling over into our family life. Relax, you live on a boat – just a reminder that we are living something that other people often dream of but rarely get to the point of actually doing. To us, it is easy to forget that we live in an unusual circumstance, one that others find adventurous and exciting but to us is just life – you know – normal. There are others that we look to for our dreams and wonder at their adventures and exciting lives. For instance this young couple who are currently sailing around the world on their catamaran. Now they are living an exciting and adventurous life! However, we too are living our own little adventure, so just to remind myself – one more time – “relax, we live on a boat!”

Ahhh, the Canada Goose. That bird that wears the moniker of our great country – flying majestically in extended V’s across the spring and autumn skies, often heard before they are seen. The mother goose who is willing to defend her eggs and chicks even to death if necessary. Their stark contrasting colors that separate them from the other geese making them instantly recognizable. What a beautiful stately bird that so represents the aquatic life.

And then there is the city goose!

A dirty mongrel of a bird – too stupid to fly south for the winter – eating pesticide infested grasses – crapping everywhere and generally a nuisance. Arrogant too! Drive toward one and rather than moving they will try to stare you down; only moving when the outcome of the stare down will obviously result in a bad situation of bird on bumper.

We have some lovely parks and marina areas around here that are virtually useless due to the disgusting accumulation of slippery city goose poop.

This one has forgotten how to fly properly. Rather than landing into a headwind as per the Gander Manual, he decided to attempt the difficult and somewhat dangerous crosswind landing. Things went well right up to the loss of control inherent to crosswind landings that resulted in an uncoordinated careen into dock A. Net result: a broken wing. (Later in the day after this photo was taken, this city goose was collected and brought to a local animal hospital. Current condition – unknown.)

Now what do we do with them? Can’t ‘remove’ them – send them on a permanent vacation so to speak as this would offend those with a love for animals (no matter how much their love hurts the animal.) Can’t just move them – they can fly – and eventually do so – right back to your dock. So what is the answer? Birth control for birds? Maybe… but until some solution is found – our waterways and shorelines will be partly ruined by their unsightly mess and the strut of the City Goose.

There are some things that are part of the living aboard experience that those who live on dirt know little about. For instance, during a bit of a wind storm a couple of nights ago:

• Watching your drink and dinner plate sliding around the table and hoping that they don’t go too far too fast and end up on the floor.

• After putting up with the infernal slap of loose lines on your mast as long as you can – crawling out into the wind and rain to tighten them only to realize that all your neighbours both up and down the dock are slapping and banging as well.

• Homeowners on dirt pick up leaves and branches from their yard after a wind storm. Live aboards pick up canvas panels that have blown out, wind indicators that have come loose from the top of masts and floating fenders that have come away and floated into your slip.

• Watching the masts of all the sailboats around you bending and waving in unison as the next gust comes towards you.

• Not having to rock the boy to sleep as the boat is doing it for you – albeit somewhat violently and with little rhythm (unless you call the lines slapping on the mast – rhythm.)

• Picking up the pieces while watching the sheet lightening move off into the distance.

I worry that after living on a boat and being so close to the power of nature and God’s great creation, that living in a good solid house in a ‘burb somewhere would be, well… boring.

P.S. Oh ya, I forgot this one: feeling somewhat sickish after spending too much time inside the boat during a wind storm.

I just finished sitting out in the cockpit under the tarp watching a great lightening storm blow right over top of the boat. Lots of great thunder and tons of bright flashes – such power and regal majesty yet ultimately one of the more dangerous things to those living on a sail boat. Basically, you’ve got lots of lightening flashing all over while you are sitting under a large metal pole that rises some 40 or 50 feet into the air. Does this really sound safe?

This brings me to the topic of lightening dissipaters and grounding plates.

A lightening dissipater is a brush like appendage that is attached to the top the mast. It actually looks like the metal brushes that are used on top of signs and under bridges to keep the pigeons off. The idea is that the many bristles of the brush allow the positively charged ions to dissipate into the air thus preventing the completion of a circuit between the clouds and earth. (Most lightening is the movement of energy from a negatively charged cloud to a positively charged earth. See more information at Wikipedia.)

A grounding plate is a large area of metal bonded to the bottom of the boat which is connected to a lightning rod which is at the top of the mast. The theory is that the lightning strike will move down the rod/mast to the grounding plate which will dissipate the charge into the surrounding water.

There are problems with both these systems. Basically – sometimes they don’t work. The lightning dissipaters often cannot discharge a large enough amount of energy or are not fast enough to prevent the flow of electricity. Grounding plates can only handle so much electricity. There are many stories of grounding plates that have been vaporized during a strike with the result being a hole in the boat below the waterline (or water in the basement so to speak.) So, what to do?

Well, you can do what I do – nothing.

Sit out in the cockpit, enjoy the show and hope that your neighbors mast (you know, the goldplater with the mast that’s 20 feet taller than yours) attracts all the lightning. Another bit of joy and wonder that you get to experience while living aboard a boat.
-Weather

The crowds assembled, police policing, photographers poised and in a series of muted booms down they came. The metered explosions reminiscent of an orchestra with the ‘sisters’ doing their final dance – and with a graceful pirouette they are gone. Nothing but a pile of rubble and a rapidly disappearing dust cloud.