decor

So we don't have much to do for the next 3 weeks except plan things for the boat. So, plan we shall.

The boat itself has awesome Mahogany interior throughout, so that is what we have to work with for making a bit of a theme. More or less, we are trying to make the boat look like a cabin. Rustic type of theme. Seems appropriate and should feel nice and homey. Anyhow there is a brass swing arm lamp in the bedroom. We bought this for it:

That should be a good start, and I must admit is one of the most domesticated home-ish things I've bought in a long long time. I like it though and it really purveys the "cabin" feel.


Next, I just happen to have a whole bunch of rabbit pelts. So, Jenny and I sewed them into a rug that can be used as a runner between the couch and the dinette area (see "layout" post if you care to know where I'm talking about). Pretty geeked about this actually. I've always wanted a real fur rug. We will have to get a few more to make it a bit longer, but works for now.


In the meantime, we have sold all our furniture but the futon. So our apartment looks pretty nomadic. Oh well. Here is Jenny sitting on the new rug and looking awfully nomadic.
To go along with our cabin/rustic look we've got this old picture that my dad sorta made. Its this old wooden screening type of things (not sure what it really is) but its basically a wooden picture of a bunch of old guys who look like they are betting on a dogfight or something. Its pretty cool. That will be hanging in the one real spot there is to hang something in the living room/ salon of the boat. We also have this cool old looking wooden chest that my grandpa and I made a long time ago. That will be in there too, so perhaps for the first time I can live somewhere with a cool looking decorated theme.


In other news, the sign for the back of the boat has made good progress.

Thats all for now....

-Justin

greetings

Since the boat is still in shrink wrap, we can't get a really good picture of it...but we decided to get a picture of it from the front, so at least this is a little bit better.

Everyone, this is the Fitzcarraldo, Fitzcarraldo...everyone.

-Jenny

Great News

Today we were able to find subleasors for our apartment! They want to move in April 28th. So we should be on the boat within about 3-4 weeks.

Sometime soon I'll have to put up a fun post with some pictures again. Give you all something more exciting to look at than the mediocre wit of my prose.

first post from Jenny...

Finally, a post from Jenny. I'm not sure what to write that Justin hasn't already, but I'll be sure to come up with something.

It has been about a year and a half that Justin and I have been talking about the boat idea. We've had many versions of "the boat plan", but I'm happy to say that in all honesty, the boat that we will be living on is just what we've been looking for. It has a real shower (most boats this size have the shower head attached somewhere near the sink, and the entire bathroom is a shower, so you're essentially showering with your toilet...) It has a real oven, so Justin can cook pizza. The salon (living room-ish area) is quite large and there is actually quite a lot of space to walk around in. Basically, it feels very much like a home. Also, when we were looking at boats online (we looked at hundreds, if not thousands, of boats), we both loved the Carver Mariners the best. I feel so lucky to have found the boat we were looking for.

A lot of people think we're pretty crazy for doing this, and a lot of people ask me if I want to do this as much as Justin, and I can honestly say that I think I do...(I can only blame working full time for my lack of blog posts). For awhile, I was really worried about space and the amount of things I would have to get rid of, but luckily we've been offered some free storage space for a few of our things, which has put my mind at ease about it. Also, most of my important/nostalgic things are at my parents. The thing of it all is, I am realizing that I don't have too much (at least here) to begin with, and at least once a week I try going through and getting rid of a bit more things that I haven't used in quite some time. It will be fun to really live minimally, and I can't help but wonder that when we do live on land again (or when we get a bigger boat!), will I be an even bigger pack rat, or will I enjoy the minimalist lifestyle enough to keep it up?

-Jenny

ultimate sacrifices

Man, this is tough. We have to cut out SO MANY things from life. I love it, mind you, but it gets a bit tedious in spots. During the course of this week I went through my cd collection of some 400 discs and did some severe chopping. I think that in the end I ended up getting rid of about 100 cds (mostly all donated to the library since the cd stores suck and don't give you anything for trade in value). All of the rest I removed from the jewel cases (which will be stored on land) and placed the actual discs in sleeves in some cool aluminum boxes. Now my 300 disc collection only takes up about 1 sqft worth of room as opposed to the giant amount it took up last week. Downside is that I'm a nut for good quality CDs and good quality CD art.... Now, I have very very little cd art left to take onto the boat.

But, ah well, I figure living on a sweet boat will be well worth it. It was just one of the harder things for me to do in this process.

On the plus side, our library now has one of the more bizarre collections of obscure heavy metal that I know of.

Also, I really really like having less stuff. General and random stuff seems so burdensome now that I am rid of so much of it.

In the meantime, waiting to move onto the boat is killing us..... ugh the waiting!!

-Justin

Der Mann, Fitzgerald.

For those of you who might be wondering why we've decided to call our boat "the fitzcarraldo", this post is for you.

"FITZCARRALDO" is a movie by the amazing German director Werner Herzog.

some info on it can be found here:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0083946/

Basically, its a move about a madman named Brian Fitzgerald ("Fitzcarraldo" to the Peruvian Indians who couldn't pronounce his name correctly) whose greatest dream was to build an opera house in the middle of the jungle. His means to accomplish this is by taking a giant steamship upriver and then moving it over a mountain to get to the next river, upon the shores of which he will build his fantastic opera house.

Fitzcarraldo is played by actor and real life madman Klaus Kinski.

Herzog, while making the movie, was just as much of a madman as Mr. Fitzcarraldo was portrayed to be. He actually moved the steamship over the mountain without special effects by using the hired help of the Peruvian Indians. Crazy.... but anyhow, thats where the name comes from.

In the meantime, the boat is called "breaking news". We aren't going to pull it out of the water to repaint it until the end of summer, so in the meantime we need a way to have the name on the back changed. We decided to buy a board and have me carve "The Fitzcarraldo" into it. Mind you, my woodworking skills are infantile at best. It has, however come out pretty decent in the meantime.

This was me working on it in the very beginning:

I know it sure doesn't look like much there, but its come a long ways since then.

Anyhow, we can hang that off the back of the boat for now and it will cover the old name for the summer. It is just a cheap pine board (so that its easy for me to carve) so it'll pry rot to pieces by the end of summer anyhow. But thats fine. We'll paint it on then anyhow.

btw, Jenny promises to post something soon too...

by the way...

Feel free to comment... anyone, we don't have to know you. We just changed the blog settings so that anybody can comment. Comments are just fun.

some marina info

Well, I know that we already mentioned we will be staying at www.constitutionmarina.com, but that website is pretty cruddy, so in order to give a better idea of the marina we wanted to give you guys some stuff to look at. (basically we're all boat-excited and could talk about it all day but can't do so without driving all our friends off, so you blog visitors get to see it all)

Here is a sweet link to some arial photos.

Also, the marina is part of the greater whole of the Charlestown Navy Yard, which houses the original USS Constitution (aka "Old Ironsides) from the revolutionary war. Jenny and I, due to her job, are pretty well up every morning by about 7:30, which is a good thing because Old Ironsides fires her cannons every morning at 8:00 sharp. I, personally, think it will be really sweet to wake up to cannon fire!

Also, here are some pretty awesome pics of the marina in winter:







Winter is going to be so fun. I know many people think thats nuts, but I think that it will be plenty worth it.

For those of you who have read this far, the marina is here, which is *right* across from lots of cool things-- the banknorth garden (where the Bruins play), the north end (old Italian town full of great restaurants and cafes), and Quincy market (fun tourist-ish area with lots of shops)... among other things. So I think we'll be far happier and more entertained there than in boring ol Eastie where we are now. not that its bad here :)

Anyhow, I'll spare you all any more of my babble...

-Justin

layout

While the pics are nifty and whatnot it is still difficult to really tell what the inside of the boat is shaped like. Jenny finally found a copy of the layout for a mariner.


click on the pic for a bigger view:










The one thing this doesn't explain is that just below the "R" in "Refrig." there is a thick blob of ink. That is actually the ladder that goes straight up and through a hatch leading to the flybridge. The flybridge is pretty huge and has room for seating of like 6 people or so. That'll be sweet on nice days... and even on crappy days there is canvas to go around the flybridge so we can still enjoy it.

half a boat

We've taken quite a few big steps toward this already, but today's step was by far the biggest. We went and put the first half of the money down on the boat. May 1st we will take full ownership and pay the second half of the boat off. Woohoo! We are finally actually doing it. Feels kinda sweet, but kinda scary.

Finally took quite a few pictures, but none of them are really that good. The boat is still full of Susan and Carl's stuff and they are in and out quite a bit with trying to buy and fix and clean their new boat. So the pictures look a little lived in. (Felt kinda bad taking pictures of the inside of their house haha, oops oh well)

Anyhow, here it is:

Still wrapped in plastic for winter. Hoping for
better pics soon.















Wanted to take a picture showing
that I really do have enough room
to stand upright. (That was a big
concern of my mom's... and mine)




















da head.



















aft















and Jack... who sadly, does not come with the
boat, but will be our neighbor's dog, so that's
good enough.















Well, I know they aren't the most fabulous pictures, but that's all we've got for now.


The really sweet part of tonight's visit with Susan and Carl is that they said they are going to be gone spending the weekends on their new boat from now until April and that we are welcome to come and work on the boat while they are away each weekend. Also, they are outright moving onto their new boat April 1st, so we get a full month of vacant boat to work on it and whatnot. YES! That will be sweet.

impending living situation

Well, preparations are underway. We are supposed to sort of "close" tomorrow. It is just a private sale so we don't really have a closing date, but we are supposed to get it all purchased and whatnot tomorrow. VERY exciting for us. In the meantime, we have been making the sacrifices and spacial preparations for what my professor dubbed our "impending living situation". We sold our big dresser and our TV. We have had some people come and look at the apartment for subleasing and we've donated a couple HUGE bags of stuff to Salvation Army.

I guess this isn't all very exciting for a post, but until we can get on the boat this is about all you're gonna get. We are so excited we can't shut up about it anyways, so this blog helps :)

rrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

Sorry, Jenny took over and used the official Pirate Keyboard for a minute.















We are planning to take the camera out to the boat/marina tomorrow for our closing. Hopefully we can get some more pics of the boat soon to be named the Fitzcarraldo up for your viewing pleasure. (in the meantime it's stuck with the name "breaking news" ? oh well)

If any of you are perplexed enough by the liveaboard lifestyle to seek out reading materials beyond the brilliant scope of the blog then you should check out this book. This guy lived in the same exact marina we are going to be in. He is around our age and seems like a pretty decent person to use as a reference for the lifestyle. The book has been pretty helpful in giving us some ideas on stuff.

Anyhow, enough rambling for one night.

In the beginning, there was land.

Well, this is the first post of what will hopefully be many many posts. Jenny and I (Justin) are currently in the process of purchasing a 33' 1978 Carver Mariner to live aboard in Boston Harbor. I am attending graduate school at the University of Harvard Extension School and Jenny is a Childrens Librarian at the Watertown Free Public Library (www.watertownlib.org).


This will be our new home!



As of now, we live in a small studio apartment in East Boston. We just moved here from mid-Michigan and know virtually nothing about boating, so this is destined to be an amusing experience. We have about a 2 month window in which to get our apartment subleased out, get all of our crap sold or donated, and get on that boat! We will be staying at the Constitution Marina (www.constitutionmarina.com) right in downtown. It is going to be awesome.

Hopefully one of us will keep you all updated as events warrant. Bye for now!