Celebrate everyday moment.

 

VS

 Ok. It is not a big secret, for the past 2 weeks, we have been here at the marina. I’m not complaining, i would be lying to you guys if I said that I don’t enjoy it. Why is it enjoyable? 

- The shower, yep, this thing that I just turn a little handle and suddenly the water starts running. And if I’m lucky, it is even possible to regulate the temperature of this beautiful fountain of water that doesn’t leave a kilo of salt in my hair.

- The supermarket two steps away. Wow, that really means that I can step out of the boat and go get what  i feel like eating for dinner without undertaking a journey in the dinghy. Or else, when I’m sailing, I better have thought about what and how much I’m going to eat because I can forget about the idea of quickly grabbing the-little-something-missing.

- The electricity. Really, I can treat as many photos as I want even if its not sunny or windy out there. ( When not at the dock most of the electricity is made of our wind generator and solar panels, cool aye! ) Or I can have a movie night without the battery running out  at the most tense moment of the film. 

- Vacuum cleaning. This goes in the last category but it is worth a bullet of its own. Don’t get me wrong, I love the broom concept but have you ever tried to broom the bilges of a boat (this is the part between the floorboards and the hull of the boat, where we keep food and loads of other stuff.) So yes, me, i tried to broom the bilges and it seems like it only makes it worse. So big thumb up for the small vacuum cleaner and clean bilges!

- An espresso coffee. This is a precious moment for me in a day, coffee time. Believe it or not, I haven’t managed to make one good coffee in the sailboat. It seems like there is always a weird taste coming in the mouth and I tried many ways. My last try was with a reusable filter that Tassio’s mom kindly brought for us, the old style I guess. It is not bad but it is nothing compared to the real dark coffee slowly coming out of the machine with the beige crema floating on top. So at the dock, we have this luxury…

- A full night sleep (for me, at least) without waking up when the wind starts whistling to pop my head out of the boat to make sure that our, or someone else’s anchor, is not dragging. Tassio, even at the dock, still wakes up as soon as he hears an unusual noise and have a look around. I don’t. What would I do without such an alert captain? 

- Being able to stretch properly in the morning. Blissful! So ok, I like early mornings, and while at the dock, I get out and go in a remote place on the quay and set up my yoga mattress and stretch (don’t know if the marina is aware of that?). It becomes interesting in the sense that the floor is not constantly moving, so I can actually hold a position for more than one second and it also allows me to stretch without having my foot touching the oven and my hand to be on the dinning table ;-) so i enjoy it. It is though really doable on the sailboat but it just needs a little time to develop the right method and it practices a lot the equilibrium.

- Last but not least it is to go for a walk without having the question running into my head: Is the boat ok? Did I forget to turn off the gaz of the stove? Will our beautiful ship still be anchored where we left her? To understand this feeling, just imagine that your home could move. Imagine that when you come back from your day at work, you could find your home to be two blocks away from where you left it in the morning or could have sunk in the near river. Scary, no?

 Yes, all that I guess, can be resumed in one simple word: COMFORT! and it really is enjoyable. But there is also this big voice inside me screaming: Go back on the blue road!  Because there are beautiful moments out there and here are some of them:

 - Jumping in the water early in the morning to freshen up. Can fill me up on energy as much as a good yoga session.

- Drinking my awful coffee looking at the endless blue horizon, it almost makes me forget the taste of it and it is quality moment spent outside.

- Traveling with my little home from one place to another. So I wake up with a different scenery, from a little cove to a buzzing bay, from no one around to loads of neighbors. Endless possibilities.

- Being as self sufficient as I can. Collecting rain water, this will always be available. Generating our own electricity with our wind generator and solar panel ( as long as they work, we are good),  they provide us on enough energy. It makes me more aware of my consumption and it feels good to me. 

- Makes me think twice and three times before I go buy some stuff on the shop. There is loads of stuff that i drop because I couldn’t be bothered to go through the process of going to shore on the dinghy. This is out of laziness you might say, and this is probably right but end of the story, it is positive. Consume less. This is without saying that there is limited space on the boat, so the stuff that comes in better be really really useful.

- But above all the joy, the sea. Nothing that I have experienced before in my life equals this. And I hope one day that I will be able to put it into words, but for now, it is one of these really few things just impossible to describe. I haven’t been out there for so long, I started sailing only 1 year ago and we are now preparing my first long passage on the ocean. So I am not one of these old salty dogs that went around the world a few times and have seen the worst storms and fought with pirates. No, but with the little I have experienced so far, it is enough to say that the first thing that comes into my mind when I look at the sea is respect. Respect these waters that carry such power and strength. I feel so small when I’m out there and so grateful to the sea to have allowed so far our little ship to dance with her and travel. So now, to whoever spirit reigns over the sea, I say thank you for having letting me feel this that I cannot yet put into words.

 So life goes with the ups and downs of being tied at the quay. It can sound like I miss the shore when I am at sea and that I miss the sea when I am at the shore. The truth is that both are really enjoyable. Celebrate every day moment, even the most little and simple ones.

Claudia

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