Reflections on a decade of #boatlife

10 years ago, with every penny of my savings (plus a few more borrowed from my little sister!) we bought Brio, our 1981 Nor’West 33, in San Carlos, Mexico.

We’d flown to Phoenix (me from Vancouver, Jon from Maine), stayed in an Econolodge (free shuttle from the airport and breakfast included!), and then hopped on an 8-hr bus ride to Mexico (where I infamously packed only one extra large bag of banana chips to tide us over) to arrive at our future home: Brio.

10 years later, as I wander back to the boat from my morning trip to the porta-potty (workyard life is nothing if not glamorous!), I can’t help but smile at how far we’ve come since then.

Not in the toilet department, clearly, or the ability-to-estimate-how-long-workyard-chapters-will-take (see: our 7-week honeymoon in the boatyard :P).

We still don’t have hot water (somehow we never have!) and have relied on a foot pump for 9.5 years.

And the projects have never really lessened over the years, despite our efforts and investments…

But the cute ruffled-hair boy popping his head out of the vberth hatch swells my chest with so much love I could cry.

And this striking red boat is the stuff of my dream cards.

And the hard-working handsome guy with a sander in his hands? He’s the dream-partner (in all senses) that I barely knew 10 years ago!

10 years ago, setting out for the first time on our little sailboat in Mexico, I dreamed about “a life with no ‘come-home’ date”.

We used to just spend every dollar we had and then go home to our parents’ couches, broke, apart from one another, and scheming new ways to get save money and get back onboard together again.

Now I work from the boat – a job I actually love that very rarely feels like “work” – and we spend our days together, exploring and boat-projecting and making new dream cards with even further flung destinations.

So I guess this is my little way of saying thank you, universe, for this life and this family and this pretty red boat in a Southern Georgia boatyard.