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berthing slips, mostly occupied, but only three other live aboards, all sailboats less than thirty-two feet long and occupied by at least two people.

Out on the end ties by the main channel there were the dream live aboard boats. Big windows, bimini tops, pressure water, HOT water, onboard
showers, luxury by most live aboard standards. One, a beautifully restored Chinese Junk even had a fireplace and onboard washer and dryer.

Life on the 28' 32' dock was a little different. We all had real jobs, managers, accountants, medical professionals, office workers. For all of us, hot water and a shower was nearly a quarter mile away on the quay, in a bathroom we shared with fifty other live aboard boats and countless occasional boaters and guests. Five showers for women, the same for men.

We had moved onboard from a huge basement flat in a Victorian. The essentials of our life amounted to about twenty percent of our total belongings. We were able to make room for perhaps a quarter of that we considered vital, the rest was packed away in storage. We lived light, didn't have dinner guests and did laundry a lot.

Cooking was done on a two burner stove, clean up in a single 8" x 12" sink. Since we had electricity from shore we had a toaster and microwave, but we could only operate one at a time or we'd blow a breaker.

We lived in the San Francisco Bay, a fairly mild climate that allows for year round boating. Mild climate or harsh, living on a boat is wet experience. Many boats have insulating linings inside the fiberglass hull, our didn't, so the inside of our hull would sweat, like condensation on a cold glass. Everything that was stowed near the hull got wet, so we kept everything, from salt and pepper to unmentionables, in sealed plastic bags.

We lived on the boat for seven years. The easiest way to summarize the experience is, it's like camping out, all the time. It's a lifestyle that will make you realize your habits of accumulating stuff and things is a bad habit. You look at packaging, use, possessions and lifestyle very differently when the home you share is considerably less than nine by thirty feet.

For all of the shortcomings to onboard living, there are many things I miss. Lying in my bunk, with the deck two feet above, during a heavy rainstorm. The incessant pitter patter of raindrops occasionally accentuated with a much larger thunk of water drops that have collected in the rigging. Or a winter storm blowing through the harbor of eerily vacant boats. Hundreds of boats, rocking in time to the beat of Mother Nature. Sailboat masts looking like a display of a giant metronome shop. Unsecured halyard lines slapping against masts, the deep bong of a fifty foot schooner blending with the tinny ping of a twenty foot day sailer. A symphony of Mother Nature and mankind, which is the essence of sailboat living.

Learn more about this author, Kay Falls.
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