Do you take showers from a 2L Fanta bottle?
Do you get the water for that 2L shower from Mr. Bush who lives 4 blocks up the hill from the dinghy dock but kindly lets you fill your jerry cans from his kitchen sink?
Do you get your daily exercise carrying said jerry jugs up and down from Mr. Bush’s house and then in to the dinghy and then up on the decks and then finally into the water tanks, arms-a-quiver and sweat-a-beadin’?
Do you feel a shiver of accomplishment when you manage to have a complete shower (shampoo, conditioner & smooth legs included!) with less than 2L of water?
Do you thank your lucky stars when you get to the internet café and there are only 2 people using the wifi because that means you can get the 3rd wifi connection that Daisy (the woman who runs the wifi place) is streaming off of her tethered phone?
Do you wonder why the only wifi on the island comes from a tethered cell phone?
Do you love doing government statistics projects with said wifi during the hours of we-say-we-open-at-nine-but-maybe-more-like-ten to siesta while trying to satisfy 9-5’er schedule requirements?
Do you find yourself saying “I missed you!” to your husband whom you haven’t seen in 4 hours because you’ve been working on statistics at Daisy’s wifi café while he worked on the boat (all-the-while wondering how ridiculous you’ve become and how you’ll ever re-assimilate into ‘normal’ jobs and couple-dom)?
Do you enjoy researching holding tank plumbing to the nth degree because you’ve got a partially-cured fibreglass beast in your cockpit and you’re almost ready to cut some holes in the sucker and install some almost right fittings but you don’t want to screw this up or you’ll have to poop in a bucket for the foreseeable USA future?
Do you know that in the USA you can pee directly overboard without issue but if you first pee in a bucket then you are not allowed to dump that bucket overboard because now you have a sanitation system and must therefore have a holding tank?
Do you feel that as a Canadian you’re somehow lacking the “holding tanks are awesome!” spirit?
Do you wish you could remember where you put the new fan blades so that you could run more than one fan at a time rather than having to switch the blades back and forth between fans?
Do you think it’s still ridiculous that you can lose things SO completely on a 33’ sailboat?
Do you sometimes stand in the middle of your boat and look around at the mess and go hide in the v-berth (which is not really possible – more like half-crouch in the v-berth and pretend you’re invisible) and just have a good cry?
Do you feel better after a good cry, even when the mess is still there?
Do you feel excited when you look at that one chart that manages to show Florida and Maine on the same page (albeit opposite ends of the same page) because it means maybe the two are indeed in the same physical realm?
Do you feel like Florida is still a million miles away?
Do you wake up to an alarm that says “Chris Parker Weather!”, check passageweather.com when the internet place finally opens, refresh the weather page on your Kindle when you get back to the boat, check passageweather.com one more time before going to sleep, and dream about what Chris Parker might say the weather will do tomorrow morning?
Do you think it’s ridiculous that the best internet you can get on the boat is free and is coming from your 4-year old Kindle which has a browser under the “experimental” menu?
Do you google “how to tether internet from 3G Kindle” and sigh in disappointment when the results are not positive?
Do you wake up in the middle of the night and listen for the tell-tale sound of the dinghy bumping up against the hull just to make sure that the dinghy is indeed still there?
Do you sit in the one clean 3’ x 2’ spot in the entire boat and bury yourself in your Kindle book so that you can feel more concerned about whether FitzChivalry will be Witted to a dragon rather than the weather and the passages that are still ahead?
Do you feel slightly embarrassed that you’re becoming a little fantasy-nut and have read five Robin Hobb books in a row?
Do you wake up in the early morning (earlier even than Chris Parker’s weather forecast!) and find a comfy spot in the cockpit to sit and drink coffee and watch the sun rise while you write and dream and smile at the beauty of Providencia?
Do you wonder how much you’ll miss all these tropical days in paradise when you’re freezing your butt off in Maine?
Cuz I do 😉
– LMK
The Robin Hobb books? I do too 🙂
Oh man I’m so hooked on her books it’s ridiculous… I’ve now read all 6 books in the Fool & Fitz series, and just started book 1 of the Liveship series… You’ll have to recommend someone else to read when I’ve finished all of Hobb’s books??? 😀
Awesome post! Fun to read! Wait…that could apply to most of your writing and is why I’ve almost read them all.
Thanks so much for sharing your life and experiences from your heart!
Thanks so much Kevin!! 🙂 It’s kind of fun to read these a few years later and laugh about how hard some of that was (carrying jerry cans through blocks and blocks of town was *legitimately* hard!!!) but also how much I miss it, despite the challenges. The highs and lows of sailing, right??? Keeps us all hooked 😉