Some of you have wondered what we do all day and some have wondered (my non boating friends) how we live on a boat and what that would be like. Well, here's a little of my day.
I usually wake up around 6:45 because one or both of the cats has decided it's breakfast time. Them fed, I make my way to the computer to do a little reading. We must be frugal on energy, as we are not tied to a dock and don't have a constant supply of electricity. Currently we are making power with our solar panels. I tell you this, because my computer is the most energy efficient and most days Scott and I share it, don't worry we have several computers, it's just mine has the best battery and we spend a lot of time on the computer. Once I'm done with my daily reading of the computer, I turn over to my Nook for an hour or so some pleasure reading and Scott takes over the computer.
I make a light breakfast and putter around the boat doing a little cleaning. Today actually is laundry day on the boat. That means I'll load up 2 or 3 weeks of laundry and put it in the dinghy. Then I take it and the soap ashore to the public pier. It's about 1/2 mile away by boat, then the laundry is 2 blocks away. I have a rolling cart to get everything there. It's usually a 3 hours process. The one nice thing is I can get all the loads done at once. Then I return all the clean things to the boat and hope that it doesn't get splashed. A little saltwater on something and it never fully dries until it gets washed with fresh water. Another "household" chore that is different are dishes. When Scott and I met I told him I didn't do dishes by hand. I love and miss my dishwasher. Well that all changed. Today we don't have hot water on the boat, it's not totally uncommon in the boating community. Heating hot water is a deep draw on the batteries. Most people will heat water when running the engine, but most boaters only run the engine about 10% of the time. So that means a lot of time without hot water. No problem, I have a wonderful invention called a tea kettle. Not only do I do dishes by hand, I now boil the water to do the dishes with. If it's a hot day I set the kettle in the sun for a few hours. It's black and the sun heats it up enough to do the dishes in about 3 hours. Simple things on a boat take planning. We also have a fair amount of stainless steel on our boat. Mostly on deck. The elements are pretty brutal to the exterior of a boat. I spend time after each cruise wiping down all the stainless. It still can get pitted if the quality of stainless isn't quite what we thought it was. It takes be about an hour with Windex and a couple of rags. I do have one time saving little item, I actually have a vacuum on board. Not quite your mother's old hoover, but it works great. It's actually a small, cordless wet or dry vac. I love it. With two cats there is a lot of extra hair. It makes quick clean up. It is battery operated. The batteries are charged during our once a week starting of the engine to top off the main battery bank of the boat in the event the solar panels didn't fully do their job, or we used more electricity than normal. Once a week I wipe everything down with soapy water. We live in a very small space and cooking produces a lot of grease in the air that lands on everything. Some weeks it's not possible if the weather is not cooperating and we can't open up the boat to let it air out.
Some of my other duties are filling the water, propane, and general provisioning. Currently our water tank holds 35 gallons of water. We take showers onshore, so the only consumption of water is drinking, cooking, and cleaning. Doing dishes doesn't take as much water as you would think. About half a tea kettle usually does a days worth of dishes for the washing part and just a drizzle out of the faucet for rinsing. I've very careful to turn off the faucet when not using it. To obtain water is fairly easy. When ever I take out the trash I also carry along two 5 gallon water cans. I bring them back and into the tank. I try to bring back 10 gallons every two days. To get the water I dinghy over to the pump-out station where they have free fresh water. BTW- a pump out station is where most boats go to empty the head (toilet) on the boat. The pump out station is very sanitary. The waste goes to the same place your on land waste goes, public sewage. As for propane, we use that for cooking as well as heating. The boat has a small propane furnace and a three burner stove with oven. I try to grill outside as much as possible. This helps keep oils and smells out of the boat, but it doesn't always work out that way. It was raining so hard the other day I had to choice but to cook inside. That was fine but propane puts off a lot of moisture, so it's raining outside and it felt like it was raining inside. I didn't allow for that, next time I'll do better on checking the weather and it'll be sandwich day! We have two 20 pound tanks and each time one empties I start looking to fill the empty one and we switch to the full tank. Filling a tank without a car is a challenge. You can't take it on a public bus. They think you are a terrorist and planning on blowing it up. Taxi drivers are a little suspicious, but they just shrug and take off. I have learned that most of the time the propane filling station is nowhere near the marina. Also strapping a tank on the back of a bike doesn't really work either, it throws off the balance. Propane is usually the biggest pain we have when we don't have a car. Provisioning is usually my favorite. Scott and I are frugal and we enjoy looking for a good deal on things that we like. I know some people who buy something just because it's a good deal. Not us! I have found that most grocery stores near a marina are either expensive or expensive! The good deals and best selection are usually miles inland. We've been lucky, most places have had a good public transportation system. Los Alamitos Bay near Long Beach, CA is one of our favorite places for provisions. There are 3 major grocery stores right across the street and a Sunday Farmers Market in the parking lot. Once I get my groceries I have to bring them all back to the boat via the dinghy. So, let's see, I've got me, Scott, 35 pounds of cat litter, 50 pounds of ice for the ice box, a 20 pound tank of propane, a couple bottles of wine and a weeks worth of groceries, plus whatever treasures we found at the local boating store we couldn't live with out. That's a lot of stuff for a 7 foot long 3 foot wide dinghy. I usually try to get rid of any packaging as well. If it comes on board I just have to dinghy it back out later.
By this point Scott and I are back to the boat and doing projects to get her ready for our cruise to Mexico. Scott usually spends a couple of hours working while I'm doing the general housekeeping. I try to keep myself available for him when he needs help. It is a small space so sometimes cleaning while he's working doesn't work well for us and I have to put off what I'm doing until the project is done. By the end of the day, I'm ready for a glass of wine and to throw something on the grill and watch a movie. We are usually in bed by 9pm, sometimes we stay up, all the way to 10 pm! Living Wild!
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