Living the Life You Want

We often hear things like, “you guys are so lucky” or “I wish I had your life” or “must be so nice to be on vacation full time” (fellow boat people are rolling on the floor laughing at this one), and so firstly I would acknowledge the privilege we have had to be born where we were born (in the US). That in itself has provided a lot of opportunity, but we have also put in a lot of hard work and there are some sacrifices. We don’t always get to see our families on the holidays, we don’t have the conveniences and variety of the US food system or the instant gratification of Amazon. But maybe those are the strengths. This post is about mindset and for the people who always say they would love to do what we are doing but cannot because of X,Y or Z.

I have found that the number one thing that helps us do the things that we do is that instead of saying we want to do…is saying we are going to do. It is too easy to get stuck on the obstacles that can keep you from doing something. When you approach something in a way where you state that it is your intention overcoming those hurdles becomes part of the plan versus one of the things that holds you back. I am going to promise that there will be some sacrifice to get there. Maybe it will be monetary, maybe time, or maybe your expectations of what it will look like, probably it will be all three. And even then you might fail. But maybe changing your perspective on failing at something needs a change too. Failing can be a teaching tool so don’t ignore the life lessons when things don’t go perfect.

I have made several big leaps in my life. In my late twenties I decided to go back to school to finish a Bachelor’s Degree. I had an associate’s degree in veterinary technology and was well respected in the field as a Registered Veterinary Technician, but I was not fulfilled. I was pretty sure that a Bachelor’s degree was the answer to break out of the veterinary field (hint, it wasn’t, but that is another post). So I enrolled at Sac State, declared English as my major since I loved reading and thought this must be my path. And I did not want to do the night school/part time thing, I had been doing that for years. I wanted the full time college student experience. First off I had to give up my cute apartment, with my own garden and deck, so I moved in with my sister and her husband for a month while I searched out something cheaper closer to the campus. I also had to sell my beautiful, black jeep and get something paid off, which just happened to be a 20 year old Honda Civic. Did I mention I had Labrador retriever and two cats? One of the cats was blind and the other circled and only turned left due to a traumatic brain injury (vet techs keep the reject animals).

Sam, Moto and Koala in the purple house’s backyard

So I found a couple of roommates on craigslist that had some baggage too and we rented a house in Sacramento. It was a house that had an insane amount of purple interior paint. And brown carpet. But it had an amazing pool and a tiki hut in the back yard. We rented it from an older lesbian couple that were taking off to New York to pursue some Broadway dreams, in hindsight probably fitting we lived there. My first week of classes I realized English Literature was not my calling. I dropped all my classes and switched to a B.S. in Recreation Administration. A degree in recreation is definitely not a way out of the veterinary field into something more lucrative. I don’t regret one thing. I was the oldest person in my degree program but I met amazing friends, I learned about myself and the world, I did things I was afraid to do. I hiked the Tahoe Rim Trail, I became a white water raft guide and I learned to compromise and be OK with situations and environments that I could not control.

As you read this I hope that you don’t come away with the idea that I am some bad-ass, pull myself up by my bootstraps kind of storyteller. I am not, I am privileged just by the fact of where I was born, the time I was born, the support of my friends and my family. I completely acknowledge that. Some people will have more circumstances to overcome to achieve their goals. I would just challenge people who want to go out and do something completely different than what they are doing to look at it in a different way. State your intention and then do what you need to do to bring it to fruition. Maybe it is going to take asking for help. Do what you need to do. Hopefully you will be in a place to pay that help forward to someone else someday.

As we are looking to transition back to land life as a family, we don’t look at moving onto the boat and taking off as a mistake or a failure. We are happy for the experiences, for the people we met along the way and for the lessons we learned (even the expensive ones, sigh). You only have one life, when you reflect back on it in your old age don’t let the life you didn’t live be a regret.

Living in the Now

One might think that living on a sailboat for the past year and a half would help us live in the present. A lot of people when they transition to sailboat life full-time talk about leaving the rat race and the constant whirlwind of their lives. It is supposed to be about slowing down and living a simpler life. And some days that is exactly what we did, we were in a quiet anchorage and our day consisted of boat chores like making water or hand washing laundry, cooking bread in a solar oven, swimming and snorkeling, homeschool. Days where simple things like getting groceries took all day and it was the only thing you accomplished, because it entailed a dinghy ride across the bay, walking to several different small stores to find everything you need and then carrying all your supplies back to the dinghy to load up for the ride back across the bay. Once back at the boat the fresh veggies had to be cleaned and trimmed so it could be stored in your micro-fridge and finding homes for the rest of your provisions so your home looked like a home.

When we left land life we were already living pretty minimally, we had a three bedroom condo that was large compared to our boat but small compared to a lot of the homes in our surrounding area. Nashun had retired from the military and worked from home in business development that did not require full 8 hour days and I worked two days a week as a nurse at a clinic 20 minutes away so we did not really have a commute. Amari had already been homeschooling pre-pandemic. I had whittled down my normal shopping at three stores for groceries to one walkable store and learned to go without if it was not found there. We had minimalized our personal items to the point where we could air bnb our home out and stay on our boat without any effort. The transition to boat life for our family was not that extreme compared to what some families experience. 

 In fact, once we started travelling on the boat it felt like our lives became quicker and always looking forward instead of just the present. I definitely did not have to wake up and check weather first thing in the morning at home. I did not have to have a plan A and plan B and sometimes a plan C  for where to go depending on the weather, or the number of boats in an anchorage. I did not have to be looking forward 6 months to hurricane season and talking to boat insurance companies and sending out multiple emails to marinas to secure a place before they were all taken up. Scheduling boat work and then being able to pivot plans when the boat yard is three weeks behind, or the part is not available or planning travel for the whole family and two pets to escape the heat of a Sonoran desert summer, this living in the now was more stressful than my previous life! And it did not really feel like it was living in the now, there were some glimpses of it but overall it was a lot more settling in and accepting situations that came up and looking to the future to try to avoid finding ourselves in similar circumstances. We sacrificed a lot of the things we would normally do like visit family, travel to farther off countries because we were not in a place to leave the boat or repairs needed to be made or we had to get moving due to weather. We spent a small portion of our cursing time in beautiful locations doing the things we thought would take up the bulk of our time and the majority of our time was in places that were never on our list of places to be.

Ironically, now that we are in the process of transitioning back to land life (Sirena is listed for sale) it feels like we are finally able to slow down and appreciate the now. We have a plan that really won’t deviate. We are in a marina during the cold weather and northerly winds, exploring on land on the weekends while Amari attends a Montessori school during the week. Tuesday is the shopping day at the farmers’ market with a beautiful selection of fresh produce a short walk away. There are always boat projects and maintenance but because we are needing to be anywhere they can be planned out and searching out the parts is easier with an address.  We will enjoy the month of April sailing in the Sea of Cortez before sailing north to San Diego to relist Sirena for sale. We have a plan for staying in that area, travelling to visit family and friends, checking up on some rental properties, and getting rid of our storage. We are  looking forward to returning to our old stomping grounds, after cruising the past two years life in San Diego bay will be pretty easy we are thinking!

I think a lot of families make the transition to boat life to slow down, take time with their kids and see the world, but for us it felt more rushed, more stressed than the life we had already carved out for ourselves. We won’t be returning to our regular life in the states when the boat sells, but a land home base is important to us, so we will settle somewhere and continue to travel and explore. We want to hang onto the good parts of boat life, the ability to be self-sufficient with power. We likely won’t be able to make our own water but recycling our grey water and being more conscious of our consumption can be done. Living a simpler life with less stuff. Growing our own food or buying what is locally grown. We want to try and cultivate the type of community we experienced while cruising. We are not exactly sure what all of that will look like but will keep you posted as it all develops.