Home Sweet Boat

So what is it like living on a boat?  I’ve been boating my whole life and lived on a boat for 5 years as a teenager, so I forget sometimes that most people don’t have a working knowledge of what it is like.  With all the experience between Chris and I, I still expected that there would be an “interesting” transition period as we moved from our 3,000 square foot home in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey to a 47-foot boat that is only 14 feet wide at its widest point (yes, that would be 658 square feet, IF the boat was 14 feet wide, but you know how sailboats are).  Surprisingly, the switch has felt (mostly) seamless to me.  I can’t speak for the others, of course, so I’ll let them speak for themselves:Bryson:  “It’s a little harder than at home.  Throwing stuff out isn’t so much of an option, so we have to conserve everything, like food.”Reese: “I think it’s hard and I don’t like how we don’t have a lot of room.  I like the bedrooms a lot, though.  They are small and tight.  I love feeling tight.”Porter: “You get to see new things.  You get to play with new people.  You get to go to different restaurants and know new foods.  Living on a boat is different because it is hard to connect to Wifi.”

First Aid Station, ready to go…

As for me, I am just excited that no one has experienced seasickness yet.  All three kids have felt seasick at some point during our past boat trips, so I am stocked up and ready with every possible remedy under the sun.  Perhaps that is why everyone has felt fine so far.

houston, we are having a slight shoe problem…

The storage is an issue that I expected, but happily, it has turned out better than I thought it would.  Everyone teased me for months about my militant approach to packing- weeding out unnecessary items, repacking, and reducing the number of each item we decided to bring.  My mantra was that everything on the boat had to serve at least two functions.  I swore that each person would get only 1 pair of socks (we each ended up with 3).

so much for “no books”

I decided we would not bring books (too heavy) but would read everything on Kindle. I decided everything HAD to be practical and absolutely necessary. Well, that worked right up until the last week, when I was going through each room of our home and making final decisions on what stayed and what came with us.  My sentimental side won over my practicality at times, as did my “what if” mentality.

finally! moving day

In the months before July 1st, various parts of our home became staging areas for items to be brought to the boat.  We were working on the boat right up until the last minute, so we had to wait as long as possible to load it. The storage on the boat is comprised of regular drawers and cabinets as well as oddly shaped hidden compartments under mattresses, cushions, and even the floor.  Some No, most of the storage is difficult to access, so the organizational plan must be executed with extreme precision and prioritization (yes, I missed my calling to be a military strategist!).  So, I had the living room floor for personal items, the storage area under our bedroom for sailing/safety items, and the garage for tools and large items. The food and clothing were done at the last minute.

48 Lock N Lock containers just waiting for precious cargo and PTouch labels…

The weekend before we left, Chris’ mom took the kids overnight and we loaded up our cars with everything. We drove to our marina in a horrendous thunderstorm and wheeled the cargo down the VERY long dock in wheelbarrows in between downpours. For two days, I was in my glory. My label maker never worked so hard. I was so proud of it. The 48 Lock N Lock watertight storage containers we bought were commissioned one by one as I unpacked.

staging the storage puzzle

I took breaks now and then to text pictures of my storage epiphanies to my friend Steffanie, who understands these things. Chris just shook his head at me as he continued to plug away at his own list of last minute jobs, like building storage shelves for me…

the magic locker, shelves, and some “non-essential” items that just make me happy…

The more I unpacked and sorted, the more I began to feel like we had some sort of magic boat. Maybe it is because of its magical name, but our clothing locker is kind of like Hermione’s Pouch, on which she had placed an Undetectable Extension Charm. I kept bringing hanging items from the car, and they kept fitting in the locker.

the magic floorboard

We found another secret storage compartment under the floor in the galley. When you pull up a 6″x6″ floorboard, you access a bilge area that can hold 35 bottles of water!  You just keep putting them in, and they roll to the side, welcoming more and more.

that’s a lot of work to get the colander!

The main problem is that we have to bring so much safety gear, emergency items, and “just in case” items and all of that has to be INSTANTLY accessible in an emergency.  There goes all our regularly-sized, easy-to-reach drawers and cabinets!  99% of these items won’t be used once during our yearlong trip (yes, I’m knocking on wood).  Which means that the items we use several times a day, every day, for the entire year, require lifting cushions, crawling on the floor, and taking out 17 things that are blocking the way.  So you’d better REALLY want some crackers for a snack, ’cause you’re gonna work for ’em!  (By the way, did I mention that safety gear is enormous?  Liferafts, ditch bags, extra lines/ropes, lifejackets, many flashlights, etc, etc, etc.)

Chris’ shelves

The one thing I am in the process of achieving is a neat-looking boat.  Even though I’m the only one who cares, a small space looks messy and cramped if even one thing is out of place.  So I have made sure that EVERYTHING has a storage place that is out of sight, with some exceptions.  Our books are stored on book shelves in our cabins, and some of our electronics are stored on the shelves that Chris built for me.  Overall, I am happy with how things are coming along, and because of my brilliant organizational skills (humbly speaking, of course), we seem to be able to live in a way that doesn’t feel like permanent camping.  With a little practice being respectful of our space (and what 11, 9, 6, and, ahem, 40-year-old doesn’t need a little of that?), we should get along just fine…

final, absolute, last-minute items…

So what kinds of things did we bring?  Check out the “provisioning” page for a list of first aid items and other safety/sailing equipment.  Our personal items are limited, but we are finding that we have plenty of everything we need.  We will need to frequent grocery stores a little more frequently than at home, and we can go about 10 days before we need to do laundry.  But I won’t get into that now.  I have a feeling that laundry, showers, and grocery shopping will all warrant their own posts somewhere along the way!

all that needs to fit in there (yes, I did it:)

heavy, fragile Buddha stays back to keep our home happy

We are excited that both the North Jersey and GoodMorningGloucester.com organizations have shown some interest in our adventure. Read the articles here!

This one is from northjersey.com, which publishes the Town Journal, our weekly local paper, as well as The Bergen Record, our daily newspaper.  Please excuse the technical misquotes, if you are enough of a sailor to notice them:)

http://www.northjersey.com/recreation/161225585_Conway_family_of_Ho-Ho-Kus_embarks_on_year-long_sailing_adventure.html

This article was written by our new artist friend E.J. Lefavour (http://www.khanstudiointernational.com).  We met E.J. in her gallery in Gloucester, MA.  The children were struck with her paintings and we ended up chatting for awhile.  E.J. was excited and supportive about our trip and told us she would write about us for GoodMorningGloucester, a well-read website/blog about the town.  Our site has enjoyed numerous hits from GMG since she posted!  Thanks Gloucester readers and thanks E.J.!

http://goodmorninggloucester.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/the-sailing-conways/#comment-66128

For those of you who have just about had it listening to my road cycling stories, fear not!  A new sport has come to town.  Since I am going to be (mostly) taking a hiatus from cycling this year, I have decided to focus on running and swimming.  And you know what happens when someone runs, swims, and cycles.  You guessed it.  They do triathlons.  Well, let’s not put the cart before the horse, or rather the bike before the goggles, just yet.

My old kind of swimming: sunglasses on, hair staying dry.

While I know how to run (kinda), I am not a freestyle swimmer.  I can swim all day long, staying afloat, staring at my toes as I lie on my back.  But I’ve never been a fan of freestyle swimming.  I’m averse to water going up my nose.  I just don’t like the feeling.  It’s a fear that I can’t quite put my finger on.  I don’t consciously think I am going to drown, but I do get the sensation that I won’t be able to breathe if there is water up my nose.  So I usually take a big gulp of air, dive under the water, and swim like a frog until I need to come up for air.  Apparently, that is “Not Fast”.  I can also backstroke okay, but that’s not going to cut it in a race, either.Last fall, I took a swim “lesson”, talking to a swimmer friend about my fears, and getting in the water to practice getting over them.  In one hour, I made a huge amount of progress.  Since then, I have tried swimming whenever I could, but in the winter in New Jersey, you can guess how many times that was.  So when we left on our trip two weeks ago, I made a goal to get in the water every day I could for the entire year.  Even if it was only to swim one time around the boat.  I figure if I swim for 365 days straight, I’ve GOTTA make some improvements.  Maybe even become an actual Swimmer.

So far, so good.  It may be a bit of a challenge to swim every single day, but I’ve gotten in the water almost every day so far.  I quickly learned that “open water” swimming is quite different from swimming in a pool.  And salt water is way different than chlorine water.  The open water has waves and current, so when you turn your head to get air, you will most likely swallow a fish.  I was told to really rotate my body so that my face is practically looking directly up at the sky when I open my mouth to take a breath.  That seems to be working.  (Although today, I was talking to a lifeguard and he told me that in open water triathlon swimming, you want to lift your head up forward, so you can see where you are going.  I’m going to have to YouTube this, unless any of you avid swimmers want to weigh in.)

swimming against max current in Piscataqua River (Portsmouth, NH)

Open water is also not clear, like a pool.  They don’t paint those cute little lane lines at the bottom of the ocean so you can see where you are going, make sure you stay in a straight line, and know when the “end” is near.  In the open water, you can’t see if some creature is about to eat you for lunch or sting the bejesus out of you.  There is also a distinct lack of a pool edge to hold onto while you hyperventilate every 25 meters.  However, I am quickly discovering that the salt in open water is my new BFF.  The extra buoyancy that the denser salt water provides is just enough to allow me to focus on stamina and technique, rather than fighting to stay afloat.  Add a wetsuit to the equation and I practically feel like a hydroplaning high-speed ferry.  I have only used my wetsuit once, since it is quite an ordeal to put on, take off, and wash down, but it was an absolute joy to use.  Once we get to Maine, I think I will be relying on it daily to steel myself against the infamous brisk waters there.Today I got to use the pool at a yacht club in Marblehead, MA, thanks to our new sailing friend Alec, who offered to have us use the facilities as his guest.  I spent the early morning and evening using the laundry room there, so I took advantage of the long wash cycles to swim laps.  After two weeks of open water swimming, where you have no idea how far you have gone, I was so excited to see that I could now swim 350 meters freestyle (with aforementioned hyperventilation breaks, of course).  In the evening, I had time for an additional 200 meters before the pool closed.  I was so jazzed about my improvement from just a few weeks ago that I could have done more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjskhoGHlBU

It’s a good thing I have a whole year to practice, though.  I still feel like I’m flailing around quite a bit.  And I have no idea what my kicking situation is.  I can’t stay in a straight line (unless I’m in a pool with the cute little lines).  Sometimes I have to stop and clear the water out of my goggles.  I certainly can’t do that cool turn around thing at the end of the pool to go back the other way (if I can manage that someday, I will be so impressed.)  But I’m on my way, and I love being on my way.  I love learning new things and practicing them until I can see improvement.  I especially love fun ways to exercise that allow me to eat ice cream at every port along the East Coast.  And you should hope that I stick with it, because I think reading about swimming is probably about 6 million times more exciting than reading about running…

Oh, and in other Sports News, there will be a slight delay in learning to do a yoga head stand on our new inflatable stand-up paddle board.  One of the seams exploded in Newport and we are waiting for a new one to arrive.

Also, if you are NOT tired of hearing my road cycling stories, click on my Personal Blog to read about my riding from the first time I clicked in to my first century!