Summer 2011

Wow, where to start? It was such a... different summer. There were opposing forces at work: Ivy and Creeky. That made it particularly difficult. I love this little girl like I love no other, and I find it strange that I still manage to grow more attached to her each and every day. Creeky, as we've affectionately come to know our Creekmore 45 project boat as, owns a love of a different sort. Creeky stokes a fire in me that keeps a dream alive: we can live on a boat, as a family, having enough personal space to move around and live comfortably and we can do it on a budget while raising a family and enjoying ourselves. That is something we really believe in. Making that dream come true is a mightily oppressive task. The dilemma is that in order to work on Creeky, I (Justin) have to spend time away from Ivy. Time away from Ivy is a sad thing. To make it worse, time away from Ivy equals time away from Jenny. As one last bummer, all of that time away from them is being spent on a project that eats a tremendous amount of money, which means I have to work full time plus overtime in order to make it happen. All told, I lose a lot of time at home.

This is what time with Ivy looks like

This is what time with Creeky looks like

We know all the headache and hardships are worth it though. If all goes well this boat is going to provide a beautiful and lovely home for DECADES. And it will be a home we can take anywhere, even back to Michigan to live near family for a while. That is something we would really enjoy. So, we plod on, with me in the boatyard and Jenny at home watching Ivy by herself.

Now, I know I'm painting a pretty bleak picture here, and it just isn't true. Things aren't all that bad, I just want to make sure the blogger world knows what all this entails. I don't want to gloss it over and make it look easy for any would be amateur boat builders. However, I certainly take days off of the boat. We simply can't afford to have me work on it every day. That means I can kind of take my time. We get plenty of weekend days together, and very often we have splendid mornings together before I go in to work my afternoon shift at 3pm. When Ivy wakes us up at 6am and I don't leave for work til 2pm it makes for a very long morning--in a good way. We go to various parks and beaches. We take walks around Weymouth. And one of the great bonuses of this year is that we seem to have acquired our very own back yard.

The Yard at Thayer's Landing

Thayer's Landing is great for many reasons. This year, it improved mightily over last year. Jeff, the ever gracious and generous marina owner decided to make a few improvements. First, he purchased a 10 foot picnic table with a large umbrella. Shortly after that he went and purchased a huge Weber grill. On top of that, our friends Jon, Kelli, and Seth docked here this year. So any time I did get to stay home was great. It was a strange sort of achievement of the standard American dream: We had lovely place on the water with a fenced in back yard complete with all the picnic and BBQ equipment one could want. Many many hours were spent in the lawn enjoying a beer and eating at the picnic table. Ivy learned to crawl in this yard. That means a lot to me. Mind you, she's still a sloppy crawler, and it is really more of a belly flop/scootch/clamber/fall/crawl/giggle/wiggle and scoot. Nonetheless, we'd spread a blanket on the grass and set her down and she'd do her best to get across the blanket and pet Willie. Very cute, and a very effective learning method. After all, with such a small boat, a blanket on the grass really is the biggest crawl space we have.

This is the exact spot where Ivy spent hours trying to make her limbs propel her forward :)

And now fall is in the air. In between the boatwork and playing in the lawn with our sweet little girl, the summer has slipped away. In 2 weeks time we'll be back at Constitution, ordering shrink wrap and tying the boat in for the winter.

The picture doesn't show it, but it is cold and crisp,
with stiff north breeze. It's beautiful this time of year.

It'll be a very good winter, I'm sure. Creeky will be down on the South shore, too far away to run to every morning. And we really have to save our pennies for lead ballast, so I'll get to stay home a lot. Ivy will be walking soon, I have no doubt, at least by midwinter. We'll get to plod through the snow and chase Willie as he runs after snowballs...

Low Tide, Yellow Boats, Persistant Fog.

The title really says it all. Low tide is strangely beautiful when the river is down to mud flats. Thayer's currently consists of mostly yellow boats. Our soggy springtime just can't seem to give us a break. It's like we've been living in a cloud for the past week. At least all the yellow adds a bit of cheer.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow we move back to Thayers Landing. We look forward to so many things. Quiet days, quiet evenings, quiet nights. The birds. Our own yard. Familiar places. The farm stand, the park, the library. A peaceful river in which we can sail, row or motor the dinghy as a little family. And this year we're not alone! Our friends, Jon and Kelli, along with their son Seth and their dog, will be following us to also live at Thayers. This is so exciting for us all. They are great people and great company.

Seth!

There are things we will miss too. Justin's short commute to work. Friends. Sophie and Rosy. The conveniences of a large marina. The coffee shop nearby.

Sophie and Rosy on s/v Rubicon

But isn't that the beauty of the boat? We can always return, and most likely will. The things that drive us crazy at one marina end up being the things we miss the most after being away for six months, so while we're ready for some peace and quiet now, come fall we'll welcome the crowds, the city, and all those other things that we thought we'd never miss but somehow suddenly can't wait for again.

Ivy is looking forward to it.

Three Days Left

How could it be? How could we only have three days left at Thayer's Landing? Were we really here for six months?

Actually, the summer eeked by for me. Initially I was ecstatic that I wouldn't be in the third trimester of pregnancy during the summer, but in the end I have to wonder if that might have been easier to endure than the first trimester in the continual 90+ heatwaves that we encountered. The heat mixed with morning sickness made for a fairly miserable summer. Since I was working from the boat full-time, I wasn't able to escape into a nice air conditioned library. The boat was often 100 degrees, and it seemed as if breeze was never strong enough to reach me. Finally finally finally the heat let up and we have been having absolutely beautiful fall weather here. In fact, I can't remember a more spectacular fall season. This might be the best one ever.

Heat aside, it was a fantastic and absolutely unforgettable summer. We didn't get to see friends as often now, but we had each other and it was so nice to have that time together. I have started playing guitar again (except this time I'm actually halfway decent at it, unlike last time!), we have utilized the wonderful Tufts Library of Weymouth a lot, watched the entire series of Deadwood, worked on the boat, worked, and I even flew home to Michigan for over a week to be with my family. Oh, and we even found the time to go sailing a few times in there. Oh, and we made a baby too.

While it will be sad to say goodbye to this gem of a marina that we have found, it will also be nice to be back near our friends for the winter. In fact, I am actually looking forward to living in the city again! Weymouth has a lack of cozy coffee shops, but Charlestown has both Sorelle and Zume's and I am really looking forward to doing some indexing off the boat in the comfort of a cozy chair.

Well really, I could go on and on. It is always hard to say goodbye to a place that has treated us so well, but I'm sure that winter will treat us kindly and that we will enjoy the familiarity and familial aspect of Constitution Marina for yet another winter!

I'm sure the next I write, we will be all cozied up in our new winter spot. Hopefully our internet treats us kindly, whichever slip it may be!

**Note** I have tried and tried, but the internet is not working well enough to post pictures along with this update. I may very well sneak in and add pictures at a later date, but for now this is a pictureless entry. Sorry!

Week 8

We're having a baby!

Today marks week 8 of Jenny's pregnancy. We are both very happy. We discovered our news right around week 4 and we have been frantically adjusting our plans. A couple months ago we had pretty much decided that we were going to cruise Madrigal south this fall... unless Jenny becomes pregnant, which of course she did. Really, the timing is perfect. We can stay in Boston for the winter, and baby is due to arrive sometime in late March. Our seasonal winter slip will end in May. After that... who knows!? That is the big question right now. We certainly plan to raise kiddo aboard the boat. We've tossed around the idea of getting a bigger boat... but maybe not for a couple years. Dunno. We would like to come back to Thayer's Landing next year, but Constitution is closer to my museum job (and lots pricier), but a mooring sounds cheap and fun (maybe not with a baby!). Life is kinda chaotic right now, but in a totally fun way. We are mostly just trying to figure out the where/when/how for all this baby stuff. The good news is we have a good place to spent the pregnant winter, with lots of friends and good medical facilities nearby, we have insurance and good jobs and indexing is going great... So life is good and baby is exciting.

In the meantime we've done a bit of sailing. We took a trip to Gloucester for a couple days then through the Annisquam River to the north side of Cape Ann. There we visited Ipswich Bay Yacht Club for an evening and returned home the next day. Jenny's morning sickness was battling her will to sail, but she prevailed. I can't get pics to upload right now, so hopefully sooner than later.

-Justin

Big Catch at Thayer's Landing

Justin and I noticed yesterday morning that a few boats were "missing" from Thayer's Landing. Actually, it's finally boating season around here! So a few people had gone out for the day.

Here are a couple of pictures of what may come to be a fairly normal thing for us to see on the weekends...

Our Move to Thayers Landing

Well, we did it. We moved our boat and our lives to Weymouth Massachusetts. It was a strangely happy and sad farewell all at once. Not like we are 1000 miles away or anything, but it is still a weird feeling to have left all our friends and our daily routines. We had a great trip over here. At one point our friend Mike, who lives on an oversized speedboat, came racing out with a small crew of our friends to do circles around us as we luffed in a squirrelly breeze. It was a fun, and it made for a nice goodbye gesture. But with no further adieu, here is our boat snuggled away at its new dock.

Madrigal at Thayer's Landing

So far it has been a very pleasant experience and I think we'll be very happy spending the summer here. It is so completely different from Constitution Marina. First off, it is quiet. So pleasantly quiet. A train goes by once every 1/2 hour or so at most, but even that sound is muted and minimal compared to the constant traffic over the Charles river bridge that we are used to. Also, I don't think I've heard an emergency siren once! Nice. Aside from quiet, it is very green looking and pleasant smelling. That's surely a change. Jeff's backyard is full of lilacs that smell way better than exhaust.

I took this picture just to show how amazed I was to see real living

trees and greenery outside our ports :)

After we settled in we both crashed out pretty quickly. It had been a long couple days preparing and then the 4 hour sail over added to our tiredness. But of course, we weren't so tired that we couldn't make some homemade pizza for dinner :)

Jenny making pizza dough.

Then came Sunday. It was a beautiful 85 degree day, and we were both free to explore our new surroundings. Sunday included a dinghy ride up the river and across to a park, a bike ride into town, and a walk to other nearby parks for Willie.

This is looking down the Fore River. The ocean is a few bends past those powerlines.

Speaking of those powerlines, the trip up the river was quite hair raising the first time. We have to go under the Fore River bridge (7 feet of clearance for us at high tide) and then under 3 sets of powerlines (about 15 feet of clearance at high tide). The visual perspective staring up the mast as you go under these things is all skewed. It looks like you are surely going to run straight into one of them. Of course, we cleared everything fine, but then there is the narrow channel to follow with very shallow water on either side. It was a bit tense, but really it went just fine.

A channel marker near our dock with some geese. (lots of geese here)

We seem to get the occasional swans as well.

Our dinghy ride to the park across the river (a 30 second dinghy ride-- I could probably push off the dock and coast all the way over) yielded some neat finds. There is moped quite similar to my Kreidler which is submerged in the lowtide muck. Perhaps some vintage Puch or maybe even a fellow Kreidler?

Moped in the gubbus.

A closeup of the moped in the gubbus.

The floodplain area of the park has some really neat swirled grass kind of stuff. It is strange and cushy to walk on. Willie really had fun running around in it.

Willie in the grass across the river.

We also discovered that this river we are in is technically a Marine Estuary with a really neat little segment of marine life in it. This placard below is posted in that same Park. If you click the picture it will give you a large version that you can read. Neat.

Estuary placard.

I don't think Willie's nose has stopped sniffing since we got here.

And this was from our dinghy ride up the river. That was about as far as

we could go before shallow water and a little dam stopped us.

So all told, we are pretty happy with things. It is going to take a while to get used to not being able to just be like "I wonder what Mark is up to?" and walking over to his boat to find out. And there was almost always a crowd of 3 or 4 already over there playing games and having drinks. Instead, it's just us. But I like it. It is more peaceful, more subtle, and more how I always pictured living on a boat with a beautiful wife and a sniffing dog.

The end of the beginning

Today is Jenny's last day working at the library in Watertown. This is a huge day. All of our income and expenses will suddenly change. In fact, our lifestyles in general will change, and change rapidly, because this is also our last week living at Constitution Marina. This coming Saturday, May 1st, we leave for Thayer's Landing in Weymouth.

The boat is all ready for the move. This past week I replaced the electric head/undersized holding tank combo with the Airhead composting toilet that we had originally purchased for the Fitzcarraldo. There will be no regular pumpouts there, so a new solution was needed. Having such a small holding tank on an electric head with 2 liveaboards just sucked anyhow. I also installed a Nicro Day/Night solar vent to assist the composter and provide our head with some much needed air circulation. Over the winter I installed a direct from dock water system to go along with our tank water. That way we can take showers with normal amounts of water while docked. Our batteries, and charging system is all set. The engine is up and running after a few little flukes with sticky oil pressure regulators after the long cold winter. Fuel filters are changed and we are excited to move. This week I have to dive under the boat (in the cold Boston Harbor!) and clean up the prop. I could tell on our first run of the season that it is a bit gummed up with crust and gunk, so that shouldn't be too big of a deal to clean.

and then we're off.... out of this Big City. That calls for two appropriate songs.

Big City, by Merle Haggard

and Money Stinks, by DRI

Two fantastic songs about leaving the city and leaving steady jobs.

:)

On Freedom

You know, anytime somebody titles a piece of writing with "On Something" it is going to be an overblown, self-loving, pompous piece of work. This may be true, but I can't resist the title anyhow. :) That said, I really wanted to write up a little piece on freedom in regards to what it means to Jenny and me in terms of cruising, sailing, and living aboard. It is a very important part of our lives and our goals. Visiting our friend Mike, a full time cruiser, in the Virgin Islands for a week really changed the way we look at things.

Part 1: Financial Freedom -

I'll have to start at the beginning and hope that I can use a bit of a story format to convey my thoughts in a remotely intelligible manner. Once, I had a house. I had a mortgage. I was broke. Incessantly. I had to work nonstop to make house and car payments and although I may have wanted to move, I couldn't. I couldn't move about the city even. All my friends in apartments had moved to the other side of town and I had to drive across town to get home every day. That sucked, but there were worse things in life, like bad housing markets. My house was small, but entirely remodeled and very pretty inside and out; however, it was in Lansing Michigan amidst closing car factories and slumping economic times well before the rest of the nation caught up. When I got divorced I wanted to move and to go to grad school, which had always been my intent anyhow. I couldn't. The house would not sell in such a market. I HAD to stay and pay for a house I did not like. I couldn't move the house or myself. There were no better jobs in town. When Jenny came along personal life got better and eventually we had decided to rent my house out and move to Boston, on a boat. I LOVED the idea. Moving across town when I want to will become an option. Moving to a new city will become an option, whenever I want. This was my ideal vision.

Boats and marinas, however, cost money. Significant amounts thereof. The saving grace is that a liveable boat can be bought for cheap money. Our first boat, the Fitzcarraldo, was a powerboat which cost $10k in really rough shape. We overpaid a bit, but it was exactly where we wanted it (I had no idea how to drive a boat at the time) and it was convenient to buy from a seller who was friendly and helpful. Soon we realized the limitations of a powerboat and within a year we bought our Ericson sailboat from a friend who was in a hurry to get rid of one. Madrigal only cost us $6500 as a sale price. We lost a fair bit of money on the Fitz and had to roll it all into a loan of about $14k for both boats, cost of having 2 boats for a while, haulouts, surveys, etc... What it all came down to, was a little bit of that freedom we sought had been lost to debt and job tethers. Jenny is working constantly. I work part time, but have to go to school as well. The marina is expensive, and we've had a boat loan (personal loan) to boot. In the meantime, the market took a dive, I lost my renters, and we decided to just let my house be foreclosed and go back to the bank. A house I had paid $58k for in 2003 sold for $15k in 2009. Ouch. But we have been VERY happy with that decision. We both hate credit, and have sworn off new loans as terrible ideas. What it all boils down to is that the same week we went to visit Mike in the Virgin Islands is when we finally paid off our boat loan. We've also found a cheaper marina within distance of our jobs for next summer. And a beautiful little quiet marina at that, with better access to the somewhat remote Boston Harbor Islands.

So things are looking up financially, which is key to cruising. Cruising under debt is next to impossible without high paying work-from-home jobs. We have student loans, but those are small and we've been paying on them all the while. We should be able to pay those while cruising as long as our Jigsaw Indexing company keeps growing as well as it has been lately. We also get some income from small archaeology jobs that I do on the side and from ad revenue on various websites and blogs we keep up, much like this one.

Madrigal, at $6500 for a purchase price, was not and is not in cruising condition. We've put a ton into her, and she is much closer to being ready. By next year at the latest we should feel more than comfortable as far as the boat is concerned. We need a new sail or two, some new rigging, and better ground tackle, at the least before we can go and go safely. That should be roughly doable.

So as it stands, we may have finally achieved enough financial freedom to be able to think about cruising in the next year or two. It is a wonderful feeling. Accomplished and prideful, but it also keeps us respectful to all those who have already been able to leave and knowing how hard they had to work at it.

Part 2: Political Freedom -

Politics and freedom are touchy topics when placed together and viewed critically. I'll try not to say too much on here, so as not to offend anyone with my anarcho-libertarian-capitalist-pig-dog-freemarket-Austrian school economic views. But this article by Lew Rockwell is a good starter.

Basically, my own country scares the daylights out of me more and more with every passing day. I've never seen anything like it. Unending war. The federal reserve prints money out of thin air like there is no tomorrow. The US Dollar is most obviously being inflated away. George Bush started a regimen of stripping away liberties and imposing 'Homeland Security' forces in a very startling and scary kind of way. It has fascism and national socialism written all over it and I sure don't see Obama rolling any of that back. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean this in an America-bashing kind of way. Our founding fathers, the drafters of the Constitution, founded a very good thing. I've been happy growing up here, but the more we kill random people in foreign countries because we have some obscure fear of 'terrorism' the more it scares me. I see much of our original country eroding away. And really, the economics of it all is my biggest fear. I do think the dollar has a limited time on this earth, and the economic crash that is looming on our horizon will be dreadful. Having a sailboat, having our own solar and wind power (which we don't have yet, but hope for soon), having our own means of transportation via the coasts of the world is a great freedom to know that we have. I keep a blog at http://economicsynthesis.blogspot.com/ with an ongoing critique from a few individuals of our current situation regarding economics and freedom.

In the end, freedom and the concepts thereof, are big factors in our life. Spending a week in the islands with a full time cruiser was kind of life changing. We'd stop at a new anchorage, he'd look around and say, "hmm.. . I like this, maybe I'll live here for a few weeks." He works from home, at his own pace, and makes enough to live and enjoy himself, but lives within his means all the while. It is a good way to avoid excess expenses, absurd prices of city living, and all the rest that goes with life on land and a full time overly ambitious "career". We want to live simply, live within our own means, and live on the ocean. Wherever we want. Free.

Top Ten: questions we get asked about living aboard

People are generally fairly curious about our lifestyle. Especially those who don't know much about boats or those who are considering living aboard. Here are the top ten things we get asked from those people.

1. How do you stay warm in the winter?

As I've been asked this question so many times, my answer has become more and more bitter/sarcastic. "We turn up the heat." I suppose it is slightly more difficult than that, but that has become the easiest and most accurate answer. And I find it funny. Basically, our main source of heat is a Dickinson propane heater, the Newport P-12000. When we aren't shrink wrapped we have a fiberglass propane tank that hangs on the stern rail. When we are shrink wrapped we have a few extra steel tanks that we just set on the helm seat in the cockpit. A tank lasts about a week running it whenever we are home. When we aren't home, or when it is very cold and we need extra heat we just use space heaters. With our shore power we can have one 1500 watt space heater, or usually we run two smaller ones totaling 1500 for better heat distribution. The shrink wrap itself provides great heat in the daytime and we generally only run about 700 watts of heat during the day, if that.

2. Do other people live there?

Yes. In fact, lots of people. We have somewhere near 75-100 year round liveaboards. Liveaboards are slippery creatures and are sometimes hard to keep track of. Our homes move and many liveaboards winter and summer in different places, so it is hard to count for sure. But Constitution Marina is very liveaboard friendly and has a great community to live in. Now, next summer we are going to move to Weymouth at Thayer's Landing Marina. That marina is so small that we'll be the only ones living aboard, but we'll be close to the islands which our current crowd attempt to overrun every weekend. I have no doubt we'll be able to keep close communication with our liveaboard brethren. Also, we'll be back at Constitution Marina in the winter.

3. Do you take your boat out?

Of course we do! To me, it would seem silly to live on a boat and not use it, though there certainly is a small faction of people who live exactly that way. I suppose the marina life in itself is fun and possibly worth it, but the people I've seen who don't move their boats are generally kinda odd ducks anyhow and don't particularly play well with others. Ah well. Anyhow, we try to get out every other weekend or so. Usually just to the Boston Harbor Islands, but sometimes further up or down the coast a bit. It seems that I work on the boat one weekend and we use it the next. I think it is a fair ratio and I know it is better than some people (aka wood boat owners) who generally just work on them....

4. What made you do this and whose idea was it?

Technically it was my (Justin's) idea, but as soon as I mentioned it, it became just as much Jenny's idea as my own. She was 100% excited about it right from the beginning, and sometimes may have even surpassed myself in her ambition to move aboard. For me, the idea started with a family vacation we took when I was about 14 years old. My mom, dad, sister, grandmother, and I all went from our homes in Michigan down to Lake Cumberland, Kentucky to rent a 60' houseboat for the week. The water was 87 degrees. We woke early each morning to fish and swim. It was awesome. I always said I wanted to live on a houseboat after that, but I never thought I'd have the opportunity. Flash forward many years-- Jenny and I were looking at apartment prices in Boston (eek!) and I realized that for the absurd prices they get, we could probably pay monthly on a houseboat loan instead. I mentioned this to Jenny (somewhat tentatively, expecting a rebuke) and she was thrilled. That was our first encounter with www.yachtworld.com. I haven't stopped visiting that website since. It didn't take long to realize that people lived on real boats too, not just houseboats. That eventually led us to our first boat, the Carver 33, which was about as houseboaty as a planing hull can get. Soon after moving aboard we realized how much we enjoyed the lifestyle and that we wanted to make it more permanent as well as be able to travel further, so a sailboat was in order. Hence, Madrigal.

5. How much does that cost?

Apartment prices in Boston are so high that it is probably one of the few places where living on a boat can actually be comparable to renting an apt in prices. Our boat loan weighs in at around $300 per month, and our dock fee is around $600 per month. Utilities are free in the summer, but in the winter we pay a liveaboard fee of $90 per month and everyone in the marina is stuck paying commercial electricity rates (EXPENSIVE!). Electric bills range from $50-$300 in the winter months, depending on how much we have to use electric heaters. Add on $15 a week or so for each bottle of propane used up and re-filled. Totaled out and averaged, we probably pay $11-1200 per month, not counting repairs. Repairs are a big expense- or can be. Our boat was in rather shoddy condition when we moved aboard, so we have spent a fair chunk of change making it livable and comfortable. It sails and operates nicely, but isn't perfect. New sails etc. are very expensive and we haven't gotten around to that yet. We also have bare minimal electronics aboard (a vhf radio and an old gps). Those will be big expenses when we get to them as well. Luckily, the boat is almost paid off, so that will be a big help for us in the coming months. We are both very excited about that prospect. Just for reference to Boston apt prices, our "cheap" one room studio in East Boston (as in, across the bay, kinda ghetto, near nothing of interest, complete with bed bugs, no counter space, walk up, with a poor view and shoddy appliances) was $800 a month. Anything actually in the heart of the city soars over $1200 easy, and that is still with no real bedroom, just a studio. So if we are under $1200 per month, with a one bedroom waterfront home (Madrigal) then I think have, far and above, the best deal in town. Of course, our expenses are helped when people click on the ads on this site.... hint ... hint...

6. What do (or did) you do with all your "stuff"?

Well, bags and bags and bags of stuff went to Salvation Army. And man did that feel good. Not so much the donating to a cause kinda feeling, but the getting rid of junk kinda feeling. I had my own house, albeit a small one, and Jenny had been in an apartment and then moved in with me. All said, we had a LOT of stuff. Getting rid of all the excess crap that you haven't used or touched in years is an extremely liberating feeling. "Why did I have all that junk?" is the question I ask myself. And I dunno really. Now we have just a couple plastic bins with some books and sentimental stuff residing in a warehouse at a friend's workshop. Everything else, resides in the boat with us.

7. What if you want kids?

Have em aboard. Duh. Lots of people do so and they're kids are all just fine :) There is a family who lives aboard, mostly in our marina, who moved aboard with a 2 year old. Now, a couple years later, I have to imagine that that kid has more people looking out for him and who care about him than any kid living on dirt would generally ever have. And besides, what a cool adventure to grow up with!

8. Where do you shower, and... and... you know... umm... poo?

There is a full functioning head (bathroom) right in the boat. The shower is not separate, but the floor in the head has a depression in it and the faucet on the sink extends up to become the showerhead. We have a holding tank built right into the boat which gets pumped out by a waste removal boat once a week or so. We will likely install a composting airhead (we already have one just not on the boat) before next summer since the pumpouts won't be as easy to procure over at Thayer's Landing.

9. Did you have to get some sort of license for that?

Amazingly, not in Massachusetts (Taxachusetts). Not to own, not to operate. If you are going to charge people to take them out (charter) then yes, you needs some form of captain's license. The only real bummer is the excise tax and mooring permit. They are just pains in the rear, but don't cost an incredible amount. The excise tax is basically a luxury tax on any vehicle with a motor. Apparently they don't care that we live there and it isn't so much a luxury as a home to us.

10. How do you breathe under the shrink wrap?

No, seriously. We were asked this once. Yes, we can breathe just fine.

Thayer's Landing

Well, it's official. Jenny and I have decided to move Madrigal to a new marina next spring. We love Constitution Marina and have only good to say about it, but it is time for some change. We bought a boat so we can move around a bit, so we might as well. Also, we are both growing tired of being in the city 365 days a year.

With that in mind, we've kept an eye out for a marina that happens to stand out a little. Well, a couple days ago a craigslist posting appeared advertising one open slip in Thayer's Landing Marina in Weymouth Mass. I've never heard of the place before. So far as I can tell, neither has anybody else. There is a good reason for this. The marina only has about 8 real slips and then a long dock that fits about 8 more boats. I don't think there has ever been an opening at the marina. Jeff Thayer, the very nice gentleman who runs the place, said he usually has a 3 year waiting list and he's never really had to advertise before. I can tell it is true because I can't find ANYTHING about this place online.

I think we got very lucky. It is a beautiful place, located up theWeymouth Fore River. Jeff Thayer's house was built in 1680. Dr. Cotton Tufts (pun intended?), founder of Tufts university and doctor of Abigail Adams built the house. It is old, large, and beautiful. However Jeff came to own it is currently unknown to me, but 20 some years ago he built this small marina in his back yard. It is peaceful, quiet compared to our current downtown Boston location and wonderfully, deliciously, green colored. There are trees down both sides of the river. There is a park just across the water from us. The house has a fenced in yard. It is very quaint and should be a nice change for us.

We'll still spend the winter seasons in Charlestown at Constitution Marina with all our friends. All the friends here are seriously going to be the hardest part of spending a summer (and perhaps many) away. There is a great community here, and we've gotten quite close with some people. It is nice to know that we can come and go though. Thus is the real freedom of living aboard.

This is the monstrous Fore River drawbridge that we will have to go under. The picture doesn't do justice to the size of the thing. Our boat can sail right under it. It has a 55 foot clearance at high tide before the bridge even goes up. The bridge gives a pretty industrial look, and the waterfront right there really is industrial. It was home to the Fore River Shipyard. Luckily we are upriver a ways and it gets nicer and nicer up the river. Neither of us have ever spent much time in Weymouth. I've only been there because of Monahans, the fantastic marine store that we will now only be 1 mile from! (I'm not sure if that is good or bad). But from driving around there the past few days it seems like a very nice town. Lots of good looking cafes, restaurants, and coffee shops. Seems upscale, but not snoody and annoying. It also puts us close to quite a few good outdoor areas. Blue Hills Reservation is close by as well as Wompatuck State Park, which is the park Jenny and I camped at when we vacationed to Boston for an inspection tour to see if we wanted to move here almost 4 years ago. We'll also be about 1 mile from Bare Cove Park, an excellent place to walk Willie off leash.

Getting out to sail will become easier as well since we won't have to beat through Boston Harbor and get tossed constantly by the ferry boats and hordes of powerboats. In all, I think we'll enjoy it. Life will quiet down in the summers and move a little slower, but that's OK by us.