Home Sweet Boat

Here are a few shots of our floating nest, together with some interesting storage solutions.

The most useful idea so far (and not one of mine) is to buy pillow covers and stuff them with your off season clothes! We have four so far, and two more on the way. They are working really well and saving us all sorts of storage trouble.

The yellow pillow holds two winter jackets, a vest, and two mufflers. The blue cushion holds two sets of winter sheets, 2 pairs of leggings, a long sweater and a winter headband.

The orange pillow holds two of David's winter jackets (his are bigger, of course) and the blue one has two winter blankets, a shawl and one of my sweaters. Two more cushions are on the way...

One big storage problem is fresh food that doesn't need refrigeration. Last time we went out, we had one of those net hammocks that hung from one side of my settee to the other and which took every opportunity to whap me in the head. It ended up holding everything from onions to dishcloths and looked horrible. This time, I am trying individual net bags that I got from HEB. So far, so good. (Update: the tomatoes leaked. Ick.)

The net bag solution. One for onions, garlic, and ginger and one for tomatoes, so far.

Last time, I had all sorts of hooks put into the galley to hold my utensils. They were always in the way when you tried to access the cupboards and swung wildly with the boat's motion. This time, we are trying a slanted utensil holder. Works great at the dock, but I am sure I will have to stow it underway.

In easy reach at the dock or at anchor. Underway...probably a guided missile system.

On a boat, we end up sharing space for convenience, which is a detriment to decor. This is my settee with all my books, and Wilda's beautiful pillow on the bottom shelf, and our ridiculous collection of teas on the top. Just couldn't wedge the teas into the galley and we HAVE to have the teas.

The essentials...tea and books.

Most of my clothes are stored in the v-berth in these small plastic boxes. I do have lots of storage in my new shelves!! Knitting yarn, purse, long pants, shoes...it's great!! So much better than the old hanging locker.

V-berth boxes containing my wardrobe and other odds and ends.

Three deep shelves are making my life easier.

And finally, the head. The paint is dodgy, as I suspected, but I'll live with it. The door is back in place with a hook to hang the towel. The back brush has migrated to my shelf in the v-berth.

It all fits...somehow.

Now that we are more or less organized below, the focus is on emptying the "garage" storage. Like everything else, it's taking a lot longer than we hoped, but we are making progress.

I am enjoying being at the marina for the most part. Things are more physical here. When I go shopping, the groceries have to be lugged down the dock. The laundry and the toilet and bath house are about 300 feet from the boat. Big deal, you say, but we try to use the toilet up there to keep from having to empty our on board black water tanks very often, so there is a lot of going to and fro. Mostly the weather has been kind, but I got drenched twice yesterday from little unexpected shower bursts. We have A/C on board, so that really helps morale when it is hot, as it is so many days when thunderstorms come in off the coast. Portofino is located right on the Kemah channel, just a hop, skip and a jump from the Bay. Hopefully we will be going out soon for some small and then large shakedown cruises (Offat's Bayou and then Corpus Christi). What works on the dock often does not work on the water, and it's good to find that out before you are committed to a voyage.

In the meantime, I am working out some pain in my shoulder from a fall I had in January and working to build up general fitness levels. I fear I will need the summer to come up to par. Too many years sitting at a desk and in an RV. Voyaging is very physical.

We had originally planned to go down the coast to Port Aransas for the summer, just to get out of here, but with all the doctor, dentist, massage therapist, and lab appointments to deal with (almost done) and then the hassle with getting a new postal address, and the time needed to upgrade my physical strength, and the things David still needs to do (helm chair, solar panels), AND the trips we need to take (still haven’t seen our grandson), two of which require flights out of Houston, and our very elderly cars, we decided just to stay put. David is going to England in September to visit his 93 year old mom, so we will probably head out across the Gulf toward Florida in early October. After that, who knows? Maybe Florida for the winter, or we might cross to the Bahamas.

Floating around yesterday in the bright sun (in between showers), watching a flight of pelicans soar overhead, and looking at the sunlight on the palm trees and the water all around, I felt very much divorced from our land life and very much on the road again. 

Moving Daze

First you sort it. Pile on the left to boat. Pile on the right to storage. Because I NEED that green bowl, that's why.

We’re aboard! We've been sleeping on the boat for about 10 days, but spending the daylight hours at the rig. After more than a week of hard, hard work, the RV has been cleaned and emptied and moved to a consignment lot.

You’d think I’d have some nostalgia for our home of the last four years, but I was just relieved to get it fixed up, cleaned, emptied, and moved. David did the fixing up and a lot of the cleaning, I did cleaning and lots of the trips to Goodwill and the boat, and we both sorted, tossed, agonized, and tossed some more. In between times we gasped in the humid heat of a Houston summer and wondered who on earth moves in June. Evidently, we do. Bad idea, but the year has just slipped away from us.

Moving from a 33’ RV to a 36’ sailboat is somewhat like forcing a size 14 body into a size 10 girdle. I was astonished at what we had accumulated in four years in such a small space – I swear, inanimate objects have sex in the cupboards and multiply like mice. 

We’re still not done. The overflow boxes have gone to the second storage unit to be sorted through yet again. The rule is supposed to be: if you can buy it again and it doesn’t have some sort of emotional attachment, out it goes. We have both fallen into the trap of “but it’s a perfectly good ___.” Hopefully all of the "perfectly good" contents of those boxes will head for Goodwill next week. We want to be rid of the second storage unit (the "garage" where David has worked on our cars and where we varnished the doors, etc.) as soon as possible.

Of the things that made it to the boat, some have had to be taken right back off again (my big green metal bowl was replaced by collapsible plastic bowls) and other things I really need (like my reading glasses!) are hiding. We have sorted through and organized and put into boxes and have mostly succeeded in making a home out of what has looked like an upturned wastebasket for days (see below). I only had to move 3 boxes to sit down at the nav station so I could compose this blog post. :)

After working 8 to 12 hours a day for almost a week, we’ve given our exhausted selves the weekend off and have started to enjoy being home at last. The marina's pool is lovely, the weather has been good most days (although yesterday it was brick-oven hot), and we watched the Friday night fireworks from the cockpit last night. Day before yesterday, I sat out next to the Kemah channel around 6:30 in the cool morning air and watched our feathered neighbors go about the business of catching (or, in the case of the gulls, stealing) their breakfasts. I even saw a dolphin in the channel for the first time ever!

Then you schlep it. Or get your awesome husband to schlep it.

Then you stack it all over the settees...

And the galley...

And the nav station...

Then you sort and label boxes to stow under the settees.

Then you DRIVE the 300 yards to the pool and do some serious floating. And that's how you move to a boat in June in Kemah.

Goodbyes and Hellos

June 4, 2017

The Kemah Channel at dusk. A familiar sight, to be traded in for new places and new experiences.

We are about 10 days from moving back aboard. Yes, I know, we keep saying that! But the only things left to do are 1) 3 more coats of varnish on the repaired cabin sole, 2) opening the drain in the refrigerator so we can drain out condensation (huge improvement), 3) polishing the hinges for the doors in the v-berth and the head, and 4) hanging the doors. All that should be accomplished this week.

We’ve had a rush of things to deal with – unexpected surgery and recovery, retirement, a new grandbaby...and now the trauma of moving. Sometimes it feels like trying to run through wet cement. Other times it feels as though we are rushing over a waterfall.

The good news is that we are moving! Goodwill has received a carload of our accumulated bounty and will get more this coming week. The church garage sale was the recipient of a lot of nice, gently used household goods. The RV is going to a consignment lot, the truck to another consignment lot. We enjoyed them but are not sad to see them go. Two fewer things to pay for, keep up with, and fix.

Other things are not so easy to let go of. I will sing my last Sunday in my church choir this coming Sunday and I am more than grief-stricken to let that go. It was the one place I truly belonged, and the place that made my spirit soar. I know that I will be blessed again out on the water, but it’s hard to let this particular soul solace go. I’m taking my hymnal and will yodel on the water on night watch.

We are letting go of the predictable. Now you would think that would be easy, but it can be comforting to know that on Thursday you go to work, make supper, then head off to choir. You know what’s next and are spared the flailing around that no schedule can produce. The exoskeleton of a schedule keeps you ordered and moving in a particular direction. No schedule is the ultimate freedom and can be hard to navigate. It’s easy to move in circles and to let being busy overwhelm a sense of purpose.

We are also letting go of the comfort of the familiar. We know all the side streets, short cuts, shops, professionals, and traffic patterns here. All the new places we go will be, well, new. The fun of discovery, the frustration of doing everything blind and on foot.

I am letting go of space. My personal space aboard Raven is basically a fiddle rail in the v-berth, a locker, and the fiddle rails in the main cabin (which I often share with the galley). I am culling books and it’s like cutting off fingers. I have no idea how I am going to store my knitting, but by golly, it’s going with me.

I am letting go of personal items. They are very sticky. Lots of perfectly good clothes are going to new homes, because there is simply no room for them. My beautiful blue dish is going to storage. It’s pottery, and pottery doesn’t do too well in the humpty-bumpty of a boat. My excellent collection of wide mouth storage jars are headed for the recycling bin. Big deal, you say, but it took a few years to collect them and I use them all the time. Again...glass.

I am letting go of being known. People here know me, in the places I frequent. Store clerks say hi, people at church know me, people in the community recognize me. I’ll be a stranger wherever we go next, a passing observer but likely not a participant, unless we find a “home port” where we stay part of the year.

So, it’s the season of goodbye/hello, of letting go of one life to welcome the next. You’d think it would be easier each time, but even though I recognize the whole cycle, it’s not any easier. I do trust that regardless of the discomfort of letting go, it’s going to be just fine. Breathe in, breathe out, next step.