All good things must eventually end

We moved aboard the sailboat from the powerboat when the kiddo was three. He'd just recently started sleeping in his own bed, although most nights he'd still find his way back to our bed in the wee hours. He never required much personal space, he never knew what it was like to have his own room, a play room, a backyard. The ocean was his backyard, the sailboat his playroom. His room was the snug quarter berth, or nestled next to us in our bed. We didn't require much.

And then, as kids tend to do, he grew. And grew and grew and grew. His clothes got bigger and the little closet bar I'd rigged up for him in the quarter berth sagged beneath the weight of big kid clothes.  He started requiring things like privacy. He developed strong attachments to his stuff (future hoarder) and began noticing when things started disappearing after he'd gone to bed. The majority of our storage space on the boat was crammed with Legos and stuffed animals and space paraphernalia. Telescopes and lenses. Models of the solar system. Books. Where he once looked so small in his bed, now he stretched nearly the length of it.

Cramped quarter berth.

Plus, we still had Immortal Greyhound. She took up quite a bit of real estate. She'd spend her days on the kiddo's bed and at night we'd move her to a settee. She's cute but nasty. Always laying with her tongue out, depositing puddles of drool wherever she pleases. There was the issue of an incontinence problem developed somewhere around age 11. We had to have blankets under her at all times. At night we'd cover the settees with blankets and move her over. First thing in the morning we'd cover the quarter berth with blankets and move her over. Those blankets had to be washed all the time because she is disgusting. And by washed, I mean taken to the laundromat. Half our life savings was used for washing dog blankets.

Kiddo doesn't mind that she's disgusting.

But I'm cute!

Immortal Greyhound was also having difficulties getting on and off the boat. We had to use a ramp to get her out of the cabin, and then she had to leap off the boat, over the water, and onto the docks. Not a huge problem in nice weather, but we lived aboard year-round and things got icy, slick. No big deal for a strong water pup, like a lab, or a retriever, but Immortal Greyhound is nothing but skin and shaky bones. As coordinated as a drunk reindeer. She'd hobble up the ramp, grasp for footing on deck, somersault off the boat, land with legs splayed on the dock and then turn to give me an evil look.

We decided we'd had enough. It was no longer fun anymore. It had never been easy.

I'm incredibly glad my kid grew up with the experience of living aboard a boat, but let me tell you. It was never easy. On every sailing forum and a thousand personal blogs you'll find people encouraging families to live aboard a boat. It'll be fun, they say. Your kids will love every second, they say. You will become closer as a family, they say. What they don't say: When you're out on a sail and shit starts getting a little tricky, the kid will start screaming because he needs a snack, or his DVD player quit working, or he needs to use the bathroom. What they don't say: When your kid gets sick, like stomach sick, you won't have your own personal washing machine to aid you in clean up. Might as well just throw the bedding away, because only an asshole would wash vomit bedding in a public washer. What they don't say: Your kid will get hurt. Boats are hazards. They will bump their heads, their knees, their shins, their elbows. They will look like victims of child abuse. Boats will beat the shit out of them. You will have nightmares about your kid falling over and drowning. You will have boat fire nightmares, sinking nightmares. Your kid will be exposed to all sorts of fumes- gas fumes, diesel fumes, paint/varnish/epoxy fumes, exhaust fumes. Your boat will be a petri dish of mold and mildew, no matter how well you scrub and clean and ventilate. Cleaning the boat and ridding it of all these toxins will become your full time job.

It. Is. Not. Easy. Most of the time it isn't even fun. It's work. It's worry. It's frustrating.

Would I do it all over again? You bet.

To be fair, I'm willing to bet some live aboard families have an easier time of it. Boston is kind of a stupid place to live aboard a boat year-round. San Diego might be nice. Also, because of the nature of Jon's job, I fly solo quite a bit. It was often just me and kiddo and Immortal Greyhound and one very, very needy boat. Sure, sometimes Jon would get ten day stretches of time off, but those days were invariably used to play catch-up, to spend time together as a family, and to run the billion errands I refused to do by myself. I was the boat's primary maintenance person simply because I was always there. Not that I'm complaining. I love that stuff. It was just a lot on my plate. Did I mention we homeschool? I don't get many breaks. I'm on 24 hours a day with the kid. I was on 24 hours a day with the boat.

The time had come when the negatives really began to outweigh the positives and we decided to call it quits. We were ready for some of life's niceties. As my husband would say, "I'm tired of suiting up in the morning to go take a crap." Because you don't do that on the boat. You do it at the marina's bathroom. You shower at the marina's bathroom. You will forget your towel, your soap. There will come a morning when you'll be greeted by somebody else's bloody booger on the shower curtain. You'll go days without showering just because it's a hassle. Add a little kid to the mix and it quadruples that hassle. There's the laundry issue. If I never again have to step foot inside a laundromat for the rest of my life, I will die a happy, happy person.

We wanted closets. Clothes that didn't smell like mildew. A garage. A workbench. A king-sized bed. A dishwasher. A yard to let the dog out. A huge furnace. A huge air conditioner.

We admitted defeat and kicked out the tenants who'd been occupying our house. We said goodbye to our beloved boat. We closed the chapter and began a new one.

...and sometimes they're assholes.

Our boat hated Jon when we first became her owners. No matter that he was the one with the job, the one responsible for paying her bills, and covering niceties like fresh paint. No matter that he was only home a few days a week most weeks. Fattycakes was determined to take him out.

It started out with little things. Hitting his head on the companionway hatch. Hitting his head on the boom, on the ceiling above our bed. Whacking his knees and elbows on various stationary objects. Some of these incidents could partly be blamed on some sense of poor spatial relations but sometimes it really did seem like the boat wanted Jon dead.

Every time Jon would attempt a project he'd get hurt or the project would totally backfire on him in a magnificent display of Fattycakes spite. Like the time he went to change the oil and he was all careful and methodical but then something happened with the pump and it sprayed oil everywhere. All over the floor and my new throw rugs and the kiddo's bed.

One night Jon got up to pee and stubbed his toe on a piece of wood trim and broke his toe. He broke his toe! In the middle of the night. On his way to pee.

At one point we debated naming her Salome, after the biblical character who asked for John's head on a platter. Seemed totally fitting.

There were plenty of other times when the boat ceased being awesome. Like the time the engine crapped out ten minutes into our trip to Provincetown. There were no weird noises to warn us of impending doom, no thick exhaust or any other sign that something was about to go down. The engine decided it was done for the day, I am not going to Provincetown, thankyouverymuch, and that was it. We were abeam a mooring field and able to pick up a mooring and wait out the engine's hissy fit. It started up an hour later and we were able to get back to our marina. Still have no clue what the actual problem was. It worked fine later.

Or the time our propeller shaft separated itself from the v-drive as we were backing out of our crowded marina. We lost all steering and about wiped out a row of docked boats.

Or the time we were sailing and suddenly overcome with the stench of raw diesel. The engine was off. I went down to investigate and discovered a couple of gallons of diesel sloshing around the bilge. The seal around the fuel cap failed and as the boat heeled over, diesel sloshed out. That was a fun mess to clean up.

Or the time we took a three-day vacation to Tampa because Boston was a block of ice and I needed to thaw out. We came home and found out that our boat had tried to commit suicide. Her shore power cord was totally burned up at the boat's inlet. It's pretty amazing that the boat didn't burn down. Of course this meant that the boat lost power which meant that the space heaters turned off which meant that all of our pipes froze. The water pump and shower pump and a faucet froze and would all have to be replaced. Nothing like coming home to a freezing boat with no power or water and upwards of $500 worth of needed repairs.

There were all kinds of annoyances, things that are easy to overlook when we're being sentimental. Sure, we had a million good moments aboard our beloved Fattycakes, but it was never easy. It was never stress free. It was never cheap. Our bodies were never without bruises and scrapes from the daily battle of life aboard. The boat was always needy with projects, stuff that had to be completed on top of normal daily maintenance tasks required simply to stay afloat.

Random bruises after a day sail. Sexy. 

Cleaning mishap. 

Retrieving a stuck halyard.

Tired. 

Cranky. 

Old souls

Old boats have souls. 

Spend any amount of time on an old cherished boat and you will feel it too. It's a combination of a lifetime of memories, of hard work, of love and devotion from all owners previous and current that settles over an old boat, working its way into the pores of the teak, the sailcloth, the upholstery of a snug bunk. 

The feeling is palpable. It's a feeling of security in a raging storm, knowing the boat will do her best to keep you safe. It's insomnia at night and curling up in the corner of a settee and feeling nothing but peace. It's being overwhelmed by the world and stepping aboard and finally being able to breathe. It's seeing the boat after a significant time away and knowing you are finally home. It's the smells of the boat; teak oil and mustiness and a whiff of diesel, a smell that will permeate your clothes and hair and constantly remind you of the only place worth being. It's walking down the dock and checking over your shoulder as you leave because you can't get enough of her. It's a swell of pride, a lightheaded swoon, a brainwashing. 

It's being on the water with the sails up, the waves on the hull, the halyards clanking, the bow bobbing up and down, the boat heeling. It's her song and dance and she shares it with you because you are the lucky one. 

It's not all take. It's a constant devotion, a complete giving of yourself. It's spending a decade rebuilding an old sailboat's cabin to exact specifications. It's hanging out of a dinghy at 4 o'clock every morning for a couple of months to make her beautiful on the outside too. It's working overtime to pay for everything she requires, it's spending every spare cent to keep her afloat. It's a constant dreaming of the places you might someday go, an evolving itinerary that changes on a whim.

It's why shipwrecks are especially heartbreaking; why we stop on the docks in front of a derelict boat and can't help but feel sad. It's the reason some people take these derelict boats and spend a lifetime bringing them back. 

They aren't just boats. They are us, our hearts and our souls made corporeal. 

Butterfly

It took all spring to paint the decks. It was murderous work, done crouched underneath the shrinkwrap, which acts very much like a greenhouse. Think 90 degrees, trapped with paint fumes. Wanna get high? At some point I might make some sort of detailed boat-painting-for-cheap-people tutorial, but frankly it's still too soon to relive the whole nightmare in detail. Let's get down to some pictures instead:

Starboard side cabin top. Sanded, awaiting paint. 

Starboard cabin top,  now with shiny paint.

Starboard cabin top, now with Kiwi-Grip nonskid paint. Best stuff ever. 

Close up of the Kiwi-Grip so you can see the awesome grip quality.  

When I finished the decks we removed the shrinkwrap and headed for our summer marina. We'd typically spend the winters at Constitution Marina in Charlestown, and summers at a tiny marina in Weymouth. Once in Weymouth, it was time to do something about all that yellow. 

I was committed to the idea of painting the boat from the dinghy in the water. Insanity. I bought big Rubbermaid tubs and lined them up on one side of the boat and filled them with water. The weight of the tubs would heel the boat over to bring the side I was painting out of the water a few precious inches.

The kid appreciated this effort. Personal swimming pools!

Action shot. I think I was sanding here.
I spent hours hanging out of that dinghy with my feet in the water. 

I'm a huge believer in child labor.

I'm also a fan of hubby labor. 

First side primed. Yeah baby!

Primer. I had to work in sections. You can still see the yellow stern in this shot.

Stern. Before. 

Sanded and repaired. 

Primed. 

Complete. New name!

FInished!

Pupae

We moved onto the sailboat in early spring and spent most of the summer familiarizing ourselves with it. When we bought the sailboat we had like six hours of actual sailing experience under our belts. A good part of that first summer we spent bobbing around Boston Harbor trying to figure out what the hell we were doing. We were less concerned with the big projects that loomed ahead of us and more concerned with having fun with our new boat home.

At some point our thirty-five year old Westerbeke 4-108 engine decided to be an asshole. We hired some of the work out and quickly realized that we'd go broke if we stayed reliant on a mechanic. We both dived into diesel engine repair books, took a diesel engine class together, and rolled up our sleeves and got greasy. I've never been particularly mechanical but once I got over my fear of the engine I loved tinkering with it. It was something that seemed so scary to me when I knew nothing about it but, once I learned how the hunk of greasy rust worked, I enjoyed doing little engine projects. 

The engine before. Ew. It's all greasy and ugly and stuff. 

My first big project was to remove the heat exchanger. It's that cylinder thing mounted horizontally in the above pic. The problems we were having with the engine could possibly be caused by a clogged up heat exchanger so I yanked that thing off and we sent it to a radiator shop for a nice acid-spa day.

Heat exchanger after an acid bath.

I wasn't going to put it back all grotty, so I painted it. It's so pretty!

When Jon leaves for work, he's usually gone for four days. It was always during those four days when I'd decide to rip into the engine. Jon is a sensible person, the voice of reason. The one to say, "Let's wait a week or two on this." He thinks about things and plans. He's like a real grown-up. He's awesome. Me, I have two or three beers and grab the tool bag and start ripping shit apart. It was usually on day two or three of Jon being gone when I'd get bored and decide to wage war with the engine. I had nobody home to talk me out of it. I should never be left unattended. 

Like the day I took out the water pump. We're not talking about changing the impeller, that's sissy work. I'm talking about removing the entire raw water pump and rebuilding the sonofabitch. Shaft, seals, everything. It was not easy. I was seriously regretting it by about week two of tinkering with it. Jon was super nice and kept his snickering to a minimum. 

Corroded raw water pump. It was spewing salt water all over the rest of the engine.  Not good.

New seals, shaft, impeller and a few coats of paint to make it feel special.

Draining the margarita bottle. That water pump kicked my ass. 

So yeah. The engine kept me busy. It gave me a whole new level of confidence, but it also shot my confidence as far down as it could possibly go. Nothing was scarier than taking the boat out after I'd been tinkering with the engine. It's like, if this thing catches on fire, it's all on me. No pressure. 

Remember what it looked like before?

This was the after. I have a knack, no?

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I did the majority of the engine work after we painted the boat itself. 

The boat was chalky yellow. We needed nonskid on the decks before the kid slipped and killed himself. So, that first winter, when the decks were covered in shrink-wrap, we started planning. We would paint the decks in early spring when the boat was sheltered and warm from the shrink-wrap. I decided on a nonskid paint: Kiwi-grip. I decided on a paint for the shiny bits that didn't need nonskid: Petit Easypoxy. Now it was just a matter of getting the job done. 

Deck, before. The area inside the blue tape is a nonskid area, the part of the deck where one might walk. The paint in this area needs to be textured and rough. Grippy. Outside of the tape is shiny paint area. In this pic, the shiny paint was already applied. All of those little holes from old hardware would have to be filled with epoxy before applying the Kiwi-Grip nonskid paint.

We spent the entire next spring prepping and painting the decks. It was a crazy, crazy project. But the end result would be more than worth it. 

Larva

We moved aboard Fattycakes in the spring of 2010. It was a fairly easy move. We moved the powerboat into the slip next to the sailboat and chucked our shit from one boat to the other. It's easier moving from boat to boat than it is downsizing from house to boat. We didn't have furniture to sell or anything.

We settled onto Fattycakes and almost immediately started working on her outward appearance. We didn't have thousands of dollars to spend so we'd have to learn how to do things ourselves. We wanted to paint the decks and the hull, apply some sort of non-skid on the decks so we didn't slip and kill ourselves, install new windows and update the rigging. When we were living in our house we employed a gardener and called my step-dad anytime something broke. We were not do-it-yourselfers. But a professional paint job would've cost over $15,000, which was only slightly less than what we paid for the entire boat itself. We had to either figure out a way to do it ourselves or live with the chalky yellow.

98% of people who paint their own boats haul them out of the water and paint them in a boat yard. This means haul out fees, yard fees, and hotel fees because we wouldn't be able live on a hauled-out boat with a four-year-old. It would take days to actually paint the boat, plus weeks waiting for the paint to cure.

I started researching paint and painting techniques and how the hell we were going to get it done. In the meantime, we contacted a plastic company and had them fabricate four new windows. I researched boat window installation and found a technique that looked promising. I ordered all of the supplies and when our windows came in we set to work installing them. The old windows were screwed in and bedded down in thick adhesive and peeling them out was the most satisfying thing ever. Like ripping off an acrylic fingernail. The new windows made a dramatic improvement.

New window on the left. Old window on the right. Cute baby in the middle.

I also tried to tackle a few other small things, things that would make an immediate improvement but not require too much time or expertise. I painted the icky companionway hatch.

Before

After

I began researching fiberglass repair. Our boat had dozens of small nicks and quite a few missing chunks of fiberglass that would need to be ground out, filled with epoxy and sanded before we could even think about paint.

This was a small void that proved itself to be a much bigger problem once I started picking at it. I ground it out, layered in fiberglass cloth, filled it in with epoxy, and sanded it smooth and fair.

Before. 

After.
To this day I'm still blown away by my mad fiberglass/epoxy skills.

It took forever to fill the random dings and nicks, to make everything smooth in order to prepare for eventual paint. Boat paint is especially thin and even the teeniest hairline cracks will eventually show through the surface. Meticulous is the name of the game when it comes to boat paint prep.

But we still didn't know how we were going to go about painting. It seemed like such a huge overwhelming task. It seemed so expensive. I hated the thought of having to haul the boat out to paint it. There had to be a solution.

And then one day I saw a guy hanging his ass out of a dinghy, paintbrush in hand, very carefully painting the hull of a sailboat.

Aha! I'll paint it from the dinghy in the water! It was such a brilliant idea. Except that everybody thought it was nuts. But that's okay. I'm down with being nuts.

Fattycakes

My dream sailboat is a Westsail 32. They are extremely rugged, built to sail around the world. Westsails have an unfair reputation for being slow vessels. They're not necessarily slow, they're just very heavy and take a while to build up momentum. Westsails weren't built for day sails. They were built to cross oceans. They have a traditional look reminiscent of old sailing ships. I liked the whole 'round the world idea. I mean, you just never know.

Gorgeous pic of the Westsail Antares. Photo courtesy of Sail Magazine.
http://www.sailmagazine.com/great-lakes-solo

We looked at a few Westails for sale in various locations. San Diego, Seattle, Florida. None of them worked out. We still hadn't sold the powerboat so financing was tricky. The Westsails on the market in our price bracket needed way too much work. The ones in pristine condition were too expensive. I think Jon was nervous about owning a boat built to cross oceans. By now he knew me pretty well and probably figured it was only a matter of time before I started dropping hints about South America and Australia. 

I was still dreaming of Westails when our friend Mark came by our boat. "Hey. Jim's sailboat is for sale and he just lowered the price. It would be a great boat for you guys."

I knew the boat. It was anti-Westsail. It was an old beat-up looking racer. The yellow gelcoat had succumbed to oxidation and was chalky and in need of new paint. The windows were glazed over as if they suffered from a terrible case of cataracts. The non-skid tread on the decks had long ago turned smooth and very slippery.

It was anything but a gorgeous Westsail. It was a 1975 Morgan 36T, built with one purpose, which was to kick ass racing. But I liked Mark and the price was right, so we went over with him to check it out. 

We stepped aboard and I'm pretty sure I grimaced. The poor thing was so ugly from the outside. 

The sliding companionway hatch covered in old adhesive or whateverthefuck.

Cataract window oozing goop. Also, a tiny glimpse of some of the deck issues.

A close-up of the port side.

Okay, yeah. It needed some work. We went inside and it became clear why the outside looked like hell. All money and time had gone toward completely rebuilding the interior, turning the old racer's guts into a comfortable, cozy home. Jim had spent ten years rebuilding the cabin. He lived aboard the boat year round and tailored everything for comfort even in the worst of Boston winters. It had a diesel fireplace, propane stove, big batteries. Marina loses power for a week during a nor'easter? Who cares. We can still cook and be toasty warm. 

The interior was stunning. Gleaming teak-and-holly floor. Gorgeous cabinetry. A galley just perfect for me. A large v-berth for me and Jon, a quarter berth cozy for the kid. Plenty of storage. We'd be giving up some niceties, like a separate enclosed shower, but no matter. 

We were home. 

Her name was Shantih, given to her by a previous owner some decades back. The boat was quite the tank and very beamy. From the right angles she looked almost round. I gave her the nickname Fattycakes. It wouldn't be long before we'd change the name for good.

I didn't get my Westsail, but I got my Fattycakes. When I decided to write a novel about a girl who was preparing to sail around the world, I made her boat a Westsail and lived vicariously through my character. It's one of the things I love most about writing- making the world of the novel any way I want it. In the true-story of my life though, I'm glad we found Fattycakes. She was perfect.