Life on a Boat is Like Being a Writer

A glimpse inside the day-to-day life of a sailor who happens to be a writer

Writers get very tired of hearing, from the non-writers they meet, “I could write a book, too, but I’m too—fill in the blank: busy/tired/poor/unhappy—to be able to sit down and write.” Those of us who are writers have obviously found the time, powered through the fatigue, written before and after work, and channeled the angst of our lives onto the page. That’s the difference between the busy, tired, poor, and unhappy people who are writers and those who are not.

But like many lifestyle choices, being a writer sounds more fun than it really is. Because people concentrate on the part where the book is already published, and they think “I could sit in that studio and be interviewed about my book and sound smart, too.” In that way, being a writer is a lot like living on a sailboat. Because people who live in houses find themselves walking around a marina and see people laughing and enjoying themselves while sitting on their perfectly maintained sailboats and think they are seeing the entire truth of what it is like to live and travel on a boat.

When they find out that we’ve lived on a sailboat for well over 30 years—a couple of years we were on land—people always say, “That must be so fun!” and of course, a lot of the time it is. No one needs to be told how cool it is to untie the dock lines on a sunny day, sail a few miles away to an anchorage, drop a hook, and watch the sun set while sipping a cool drink. The part most people don’t think about is everything that comes before those cool, fun experiences. I’m not talking about the long time-consuming process of buying a boat and refitting it and all of that. I’ll assume that anyone who has bought a house or a car can imagine how complicated that is.

Like Thornton Wilder in “Our Town,” I’ll concentrate on the day-to-day life of a sailor. This particular sailor, me, is getting ready to go sailing for a couple of months, and trying to finish the last few “to do” items at the bottom of a long list of things that have been checked off for the past week or so. The setting is Boat Haven Marina in Port Townsend, Washington. It’s early June. The sun is up and the day is beginning…

I wake up at 5am and read for a bit to try and clear the mental cobwebs, play Wordle—dang, that was hard!—then read emails to make sure there are no new items for the to-do list. Once out of bed, I turn on the propane stove to heat water, make coffee and tea and we have a light breakfast of fruit. Then I grab the trash bag from the small bin in the main salon, carry it up to the cockpit and off the boat, stepping carefully onto the deck and the dock step which are both wet from the rain. After I took a fall back in 2020 while stepping off the boat, and ended up on crutches for 8 weeks, I try to always be mindful of the boat to dock transfer.

Once on the dock I walk to the main walkway and over to the gangway and up the gangway to the parking lot (for your information, it is about 500 feet from the boat up to the lot). I dump our trash, and stow our recycling in the proper bins. I grab an empty dock cart, wipe out the dirty water from the bottom of it and steer it over to the marina office where I get the laundry room key and buy some quarters.

Back at the boat, I strip the bed and put the dirty linens and all the dirty clothes from the mesh bags hanging in each of our lockers, into two big trash bags with the almost empty bottle of laundry detergent. I carry that up and off the boat, and roll the load up to the parking lot and over to the laundry room where I sort the clothes and load the two washers. Everything just fits, which is a great relief. Washing a separate load after the first two loads are in the dryer would throw off the timing of my morning.

Once the washer is going, I walk over to the Safeway to pick up more bananas and some fresh bakery bran muffins for the next morning—we prefer a muffin breakfast on departure days, so there’s no dishes to do before we go sailing. I drop our last mail in the mailbox and get back just in time to shift the laundry to the dryers. After bringing the groceries down to the boat, I eat a muffin and then walk back up to the laundry room, where I start folding clothes. Once I have the clothes and linens folded I stow it all in bags (I put them in clean trash bags to avoid getting dirt on them from the dock carts and in case of rain showers, though the clouds have parted by now).

At the boat I remake the bed and put away my clothes and put all the pillow cases back on both berths. I check in with the professor who is slogging through grading dozens of scripts and essays and then head for the showers, along with my shower bag and towel. I walk back up to the parking lot and then a couple of blocks over to the yacht club where we shower. There are showers for boat owners at the marina but they are cold concrete boxes that take 6 quarters for less than five minutes of water. This is quite common in Washington, and I applaud the water conservation method as a concept, but it is a real drag in practice. After my shower I walk around the barely heated yacht club clubhouse to dry my hair while I check social media on my phone.

From the club, I walk a few blocks over to the local food co-op where I get a few tangerines and some fresh organic greens, which they don’t sell at Safeway except in pre-packaged plastic bags. I walk by the bank and get some cash and then walk back to the boat, stopping by the yacht club again to pick up my shower bag. I grab an empty dock cart as I go by the trash bins and carry everything back down to the boat.

Back aboard, I put away items, take a handful of nuts for sustenance and drop onto a settee and rest for a bit. Then it’s time to fill the water and fuel tanks. I stay below and call out the gauge reading as the captain runs the water hose and fuel jug end of things up on deck. Then we load the dock cart and walk out to the parking lot and across it, over to the gas station which is thankfully close by. We fill the fuel jugs with diesel and then roll the cart back down to the boat where we load everything back up—still being careful of that dock step, because accidents happen close to home!

While the good captain is checking the diesel engine’s oil and water levels and giving the whole engine a careful look over, I stow everything that got left out that morning and from previous days—from extra water-maker filters to paint and resin cans from the captain’s latest deck repair job. I clean and chop veggies for the dinner of chicken and veggies I am cooking, a big enough batch that we can have enough left over to eat at anchor tomorrow night. Once the food is simmering, I plop down and check my phone. The pedometer app says I am already at 8,000 steps for the day. No surprise.

See how easy it is to live on a boat?

I slept very well that night, by the way, and the first leg of the sailing trip went beautifully, if slowly, due to light winds. Now we are anchored in Sequim Bay (see photos) and planning to stay here and visit with friends tomorrow; after this post I have met my daily 1,000 words for #1000wordsofsummer daily word count and can relax the rest of this long, sunny afternoon. (For those who remember the new fridge project last summer, our solar panels are easily keeping the new fridge nice and cold.) We’ll head out early next week on our next adventure—north to Canada.

hasta pronto!