Musing on Cruising Four Years Later

[Lydia Fell]

01/05/11
Hamburger Beach, George Town

Next month marks the end of our 4th year of cruising, although it’s nearly 4.5 years since I quit my job and moved into the boat yard in St. Pete where Skip was already working on Flying Pig.  I promise you, living on a boat while it’s on the hard – propped up with steel jacks on the ground during a refit, requires a tough mindset.  Our boat was not just in disarray; it was torn apart in virtually every cabin, and we couldn’t move through the boat without negotiating tools, supplies, and disassembled projects, all covered in dust and detritus.  For someone who likes a tidy home, I had to adjust to life in a viciously hot and dirty boat yard quickly, or emotionally perish.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard; I rejoiced in our first major step away from mainstream life, and I was mentally prepared for “camping”, which is actually a very generous way to describe our living conditions.

As a joyful reward, in between repairing over 800 blisters on our boat (systematically grinding them out, and filling them with fiberglass and epoxy), I looked forward to easy trips down to Sarasota, where Jessica and Oliver had relocated and found jobs.  It was soothing to have my oldest and youngest children nearby, making the break from my kids more gradual and less emotionally severe.  Jessica and Oliver shared a house together, and I set up shop in their garage to refinish larger pieces of teak (working through their piles of laundry in between coats of varnish), and luxuriated in endlessly long showers – sheer ecstasy after yard baths under a hose with a bottle of shampoo.  And we had hours of fun together in between their shifts, which were always wonderfully rejuvenating for me.  There’s no group of people I’d rather hang out with than my kids.  They rock.

Eventually, in February 2007, we finished up our work, splashed the boat, and sailed for the Florida Keys.  Between our repairs from the initial wreck 36 hours into our maiden voyage, and trips ashore to family since then, we’ve been off the water for nearly a year of those 4 years, but each trip to visit family has left us feeling increasingly further off the grid of “civilization”, impairing, I think, our families ability to relate to our lifestyle, and ours, in a sense, to the stress and complications of theirs.  Technology, amongst other things, is moving forward without us.  Life in the US, even in rural Georgia, moves fast for us.  I’m not sure that we know how to “do it” very well, anymore, and I imagine we must seem behind the times and ignorant to the kids when we come.  Every full time cruiser out here, whether they have children or not, has said goodbye to their families when they set out.  With the exception of the truly devoted, (the rugged lifers who raised children at least for some period of time on their boats), most of us feel the same way.  It’s as if we’ve crossed into a different culture and we falter in remembering our native tongue, while no one other than fellow liveaboards understand our language anymore.  It’s a sad dilemma, and I don’t know what the answer is, if there is one.

This ongoing thought, that we’re growing further and further away from life as it used to be in the States, came back into focus this afternoon when I realized that I no longer feel a compulsion to get off the boat every day.  We’ve been in this anchorage for five days now, and on only two of them did I get off the boat to “do” something.  On reflection, I think I was motivated to go to shore because, more than anything else,  I was annoyed at myself for not “needing” to get off the boat anymore.  Criminey.  The view from the cockpit of these beautiful ports we visit is so awesome, so appreciated that, aside from achieving grocery shopping and laundry (and getting some exercise!)  I don’t seem to be driven to leave our boat for solid land.  In fact, the gentle rocking of the boat at anchor is so unnoticeable to us now that it’s become the “norm”.  I don’t fully understand how this affects our inner ear, but being on solid ground now feels as unnatural to me as being on a boat would feel to a landlubber.   Kind of scary.  Does this qualify me now, after 4 fast years, of truly being a “cruiser”?

If someone had walked into my old office in 2006 to apply for a home mortgage, and told me that they’d recently swallowed the hook after four years of sailing, I would have interpreted that as a long spell of living on a boat.  And yet, I promise you that it’s not.  It’s simply flown by – though it’s long enough to convince you that this is, or isn’t, a lifestyle for you.

It’s a lifestyle for us, for sure, indefinitely.

Skip’s youngest son, Michael and his wife, affectionately known as “Fish” (but otherwise, Katie) are visiting us on the boat again at the end of this month.  It’s been 14 months since they came, and so the weather is a little different.  The days are cooler, the nights are much cooler, and the water is significantly cooler.  On top of that, you’ve got to love and appreciate the fact that there’s nothing here apart from beautiful walks, exquisite beaches, good snorkeling, and a tiny, cute Bahamian town with a fantastic library if you’re going to have any fun here.  So, I’ve been privately anxious that we know of everything of interest that we can do with them.  I mean, if all you really want out of a vacation is to lay on the beach with a good book all day, then hey, you’re in Paradise here.  But Michael and Fish aren’t sun worshippers, and they’re a great deal more interested in experiencing everything this area has to offer.

But then I was sitting up in the cockpit tonight listening to Crosby Stills & Nash’s “Lee Shore”, appreciating the beautiful vista of Hamburger Beach, with only five boats at anchor floating on aqua blue, gin-clear water, and I heard the lyrics, (ones I have been listening to for 37 years), anew.  I saw what people see when they come here on their vacations – I saw this cove as if for the first time.  And I realized I needn’t have worried about Michael and Fish’s visit.  If they did nothing but sit on the boat and look, they’d be privileged.

This weekend, unless the weather forecast changes, we’re sailing 40 miles NE of here to Conception, a small, exquisitely beautiful, uninhabited island with pristine beaches to roam, and hopefully some Flamingos to see.  There may be a couple of cruisers there, or we may find ourselves totally alone for the few days that we’re there.  It’s an experience we don’t want to miss, but need to time well; it can be a dangerous anchorage in a westerly wind, with nowhere to hide.  I can’t wait to walk the shores for sea treasures and snorkel the reefs. 

After four years, life on this boat is everything I ever hoped for, and so much more. 

We’re truly Living.

I hope you are, too.  Life is short.

Love, Lydia

S/V Flying Pig
Morgan 46 #2

"The only way to live is to have a dream green and growing in your life - anything else is just existing and is a waste of breath."
Ann Davison