What I Appreciate About Living on Land

My Mum treated us to a very nice lunch yesterday, which was only a short walk from our house in Toronto. As we were finishing I expressed how grateful I was for the lunch. The food and company were of course amazing (as is the food and company in Mexico usually). What I appreciated the most was that we could just walk out of our front door and arrive at the restaurant 5 minutes later in the same state as leaving the house. During boat life, we often arrive wetter, sandier and much sweatier by the time we get to the actual restaurant. The dingy ride from the boat to shore can often be a wet and wild one. I usually relish in that adventure of our boat life, but when we decide we are going to splurge and go out for dinner…it just detracts from the experience if I’m sitting down to eat with wet clothes on from our exciting dingy ride/landing into town. After I expressed how grateful I was for the ease of going out to eat when you live on dry land, my Mum suggested that I make the comment on the blog to give a more well rounded picture of our actual life while sailing. There are a lot of pictures of bright blue skies and smiling faces on the blog. The reason I don’t write more about our boating annoyances/hardships is that I hate complaining. And really how much sympathy am I going to get about eating lunch with soggy clothes on while living our dream aboard Starship ;) ?

I’ve often heard the sailing life referred to as "simple, but not easy". It’s very true! Compared to living on land, our life is much simpler on the boat…but keeping it that way is not easy. For example,the boat’s water, sanitation and electrical systems are much simpler than what you’d find in your house. But having the knowledge, patience and resolution to maintain these systems by our self is not easy. I’m always a bit nervous when something breaks when we’re at a remote anchorage because I know it’s just up to the 2 of us to fix it. There’s no plumber or electrician to call, even if we did have a cell phone. Luckily Chris and I make a very good team solving problems on the boat, with our very different/complimentary approaches. I usually run in a panic to frantically start reading the troubleshooting section of the equipment manual. At which time, Chris calmly comes up with some crazy creative solution off the top of his head. After some discussing, the actual resolution usually lies somewhere in between our two approaches.

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t like dwelling on the "not easy" part because I don’t like complaining. We feel so grateful to be on this wonderful adventure together and that’s what we want to focus on. So instead of having a list of "boating life complaints", here’s my list of  "land life appreciations":

I’M LOVING…

• Sleeping well. Going to bed at night with the peace of mind that your whole home will not move or somebody else’s home will not crash into yours. With high winds, anchors that are not properly set can drag, resulting in a few stressful experiences while aboard Starship.

• High speed Internet. I’ve downloaded over 27 days worth of podcasts to keep us entertained during night watches.

• Phones. What an absolute luxury to be able to call and receive calls from family and friends to “just say hi” and catch up.

• Flat spaces that don’t rock. Doing standing yoga poses on the boat can be quite terrifying unless we’re in the calmest of calm anchorages. I’m so enjoying doing standing yoga poses and single leg squats without the fear of falling overboard.

• Space in general. It really is amazing how much space houses have. After living on Starship, every house and apartment feels like a mansion.

• Swimming in FRESH water lakes. So much more refreshing than salt water!
  

And what I definitely love the most is:

• Family and friends. Getting a hug and kiss from my parents every day and being surrounded by the friends and family that I love

Be prepared for a post about what I appreciate about living on boat in October/November!

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Location:

Toronto, ON

Latitude:

43.728037

Longi tude:

-79.404738