Living aboard - first impressions

So, there are a couple of new situations and characters to add to this fun adventure, a situation I see happening so much in the future!  However, one thing that will hopefully remain somewhat stable throughout our upcoming year will be our boat, barring the changes we know we need to make on her.  I thought I would write a short blog just outlining the general description of what the layout of life is like right now.

O.K., let's begin with the boat's current situation:  Our boat, which is unnamed as yet, is 32' long, 10.5' wide, and has a center cockpit, which we found is a fairly rare layout for a boat (especially one this length).  "And what  does a center cockpit have to do with anything?" you may find yourself asking.  Glad you asked!  With most boats, when you step onto the stern (the back) of it, you are stepping into the cockpit; with our's, the back end of the boat is an aft (rear) cabin and our "stateroom" (what any bedroom on a boat is called).  This means that our bed, one closet, and a sink/porta potti area with bathroom cabinets are separate from the rest of the boat, giving it a true "bedroom" feeling as opposed to sleeping in the same area where we cook and "live".

The center cockpit

The back end (or "stern") or our boat

Where almost all of my clothes are

A vanity/porta potty area in the stateroom

Our full-sized bed w/ memory foam mattress!

 Almost none of the areas in these pictures look the same anymore as these pictures were taken the day we bought the boat... now, everything is a little more cluttered - to say the least.  Don't worry, with two cats on-board, I'm sure there will be plenty of photo-ops of our stuff!  Now, to the rest of the boat!

After walking through the cockpit, which has a big wheel for steering and a small table (that's more for snacks than for a meal right now - something to change), you get to the fore cabin (or forward - anything that is toward the front end of the boat).  This is the area where our "head" (the bathroom as a whole or toilets on a boat), the "galley" (kitchen area), living area with two bench settees, and the table with two folding sides are.  Walking past the living area is the v-berth, the area in the front tip of the boat where two adults can sleep, though the bed is shaped like a "v", so it's not the most comfortable place to sleep permanently (a few days are fine, though - come see us!!!); for the time being, this area is our catch-all closet.

After hours of rearranging, it all fits inside!

This is actually part of the lighting-of-the-alcohol-stove process

                   

The settee/library

Me writing the blog - hard job, huh?

The head - look at all that storage!

What the v-berth looked like before our stuff came...

Our head is tall enough for Rob to stand in (not common in boats!), has a shower head with a hose we can take into the cockpit and use for bathing, and there are so many storage places in it (combined with the cabinets in our stateroom) that we are using it for some kitchen storage!  The galley was driving me crazy, so I had to take everything out of every nook and cranny last night to rearrange - but I got everything nicely put away, impressing both the husband and myself!  The living area is getting there - we still have stuff everywhere, but there is so much storage that it's only a matter of deciding where it goes!  I love that we have so much space and how much we got rid of with the thought that we would be WAY overcrowded!  This actually allows us plenty of room to get dry foods (beans, rice, flour, etc.), more canned goods, and everything else we would need for at least six months of nothing but eating on the boat.

So, other than the boat itself, our living situation is at the end of a canal in a small lagoon that is rumored to have been one of the living areas of Flipper the Dolphin when the TV show was being filmed here.  We step off our boat and onto a concrete dock, where our Dock Lord's house is; we are plugged into the house and can use the water hose to fill up the water tank onboard.  While docked here, we are able (actually, due to zoning laws, we are required) to use the bathroom and kitchen in the house; if one of the neighbors feels we are putting any waste into the water, s/he could call the city on us.  Besides, we don't want to have waste floating around our boat as this water moves just enough to keep it from being stagnant, but it's not very fast (there are cool fish and birds around due to this).

We pass our Dock Lord's boat while walking into the house, which is a mobile home that is permanently in its place; there are bedrooms on either end of the house, a sizable living room, and a very small kitchen.  The Dock Lord's fiance lives with him and all four of us share a bathroom next to their room; there is a new tenet in the other bedroom/bathroom (he just got here on Saturday and spends a lot of his time either gone or watching TV in his room).  Our Dock Lord lived onboard for 15 years and has just recently moved on land because his fiance was done living on the boat; she will be his sixth wife.

Dock Lord is a retired Navy guy who is preparing us for and scaring us about our upcoming journey; the conversations are hard sometimes because the equipment he recommends us having (almost insists on us having) is expensive...  Expensive is not something we can do right now and we are already looking at some fairly expensive items before we can pull out.  If money were no object, we KNOW we would be out of here by the end of the month.  This is still the no-plan plan, but we also know that we will not leave before we are truly prepared and have everything we need... which is still quite a bit.

So, right now, we are pricing items here in Marathon, we are pricing things on eBay, and we are planning a trip to the west coast of Florida to visit the only 16-acre boat pick-a-part we know of.  With lists in-hand, we will be calling on the Universe and  hoping for the right equipment to find its way to us while remaining in our price range.  The list of needs is long (the list of wants is longer), but we feel confident we will find just what we need when the time is right.  We've gotten this far - and this was a long shot that came true!