Who would have thought that moving from a land based life to living full time aboard a yacht would make me see the light? Already, only a few months into our around-the-world sailing adventure I’ve realised that I took cars, food and water for granted.
Read on and find out how living on a boat has given me a new appreciation for the simple things in life…
Travelling by car has become a novelty for us
While living on a boat, our main mode of transportation is sailing, motoring (getting places using our engine rather than sails) and when on land, it’s walking. If you’ve never been sailing before it’s important for me to point out that it’s a very, very slow mode of transportation. We average about 8 miles per hour when under sail or using our engine.
In very winding conditions, we might hit 12 miles per hour. People often think that when we use our engine we can go fast, but that’s not true. At top speed, using our engine, and depending on the tide, wind, etc. we go about 8 miles per hour.
When I get into a car now I get a somewhat giddy feeling
My stomach experiences little butterflies – it’s as if I’m on a rollercoaster and am experiencing the feeling you get when you go fast down that first hill. I think the feeling comes from the fact that I’m just not use to going fast anymore. Travelling at 60 miles per hour is no longer a daily activity…in fact, I’m lucky to hit the speed once a month now!
Not only does it feel amazing to travel at a speed faster than 8 miles per hour, but also a car offers different views. On the boat, we’re usually looking at wide-open blue expanses of water in addition to miles of coastline or quaint little harbors. On occasion we’ll moor up in a city but our view is one of the city rather than being in the city and looking out.
We’re currently in Patras, the third largest city in Greece. As I type this, I’m in our cockpit, moored up next to a 350’ cruise ship with a 100’ luxury motor yacht behind me and a gullet sailboat in front of me. I can see a bit of the city front – a few hotels and apartments – but 50% of my view is blue water, a break wall and mountains. No matter where we are, we’re surrounded by boats and water!
Getting in a car, we see land, countryside, towns, stores and everything that we used to see when we lived on land. Never did I expect to enjoy being in a car as much as I do now.
And being in a car isn’t the only think I took for granted…
Can you believe that I can’t get any food I want at any time I want it?
We discovered in Italy and now in Greece that you can only get seasonal vegetables. For the first time in my life, I can’t go out and get green beans and parsnips. I can’t get in the mood for a papaya and then simply stroll to the local supermarket and find one!
We have to settle for carrots, onions, celery (sometimes), tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, potatoes, eggplant and lettuce. And on the fruit front, we can only get one variety of apples, bananas, oranges, cherry’s, pears and a pineapple if we’re lucky. (I say this all tongue in cheek)
Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m not complaining…I’m actually loving it
I come from a country where I can get anything I want anytime I want it. If I want an avocado in February at 3am in the morning, I can surely find and buy one in my hometown of Rochester, NY or in my most recent residence in the UK. Grocery stores are open 24 hours a day and they stock all fruit and vegetables – whether they’re in season or not.
Like the joy of riding in a car, now that I can’t get the variety of foods I’m use to I’m appreciating food in a totally different way.
First of all, it’s actually nice not having everything
It allows me to appreciate and miss things. For example, while in Sicily for over a month, it was impossible to find bacon. You just couldn’t get it. When we first arrived in Greece and saw bacon at the restaurants and at the butchers we were overjoyed.
For me, a breakfast without bacon just isn’t a breakfast at all. When we fried some bacon up, the smell permeated every cell of my body and I couldn’t wait to take a bite of the crispy slice of heaven. My family all sat around the table and we devoured a whole pack of bacon. It was absolute bliss.
Not having bacon made me appreciate it even more when I did get it.
Second, all the meat and vegetables that I am getting are in season, fresh and locally sourced
Everything we eat tastes incredible. The vegetables are full of flavor. Tomatoes have this deep, rich and slightly sweet taste – they don’t taste like slightly flavored pulpy water like the tomatoes you get in America or the UK.
The meat tastes natural. Now I’m not sure how to really explain what I mean by ‘natural,’ but when I eat it I feel as if it’s clean…it hasn’t been tampered with. I don’t think the animals are fed growth hormone feed nor do I think anything is done with the meat when it’s butchered to prolong its shelf life.
Just last week I went to a butcher on a Greek island and asked for 2 kilo’s of ground beef. The woman behind the counter went into a back room, pulled out a huge chunk of beef and then pushed it into a grinder. It’s the first time in my life that I saw my ground beef/mince being made right in front of me. Back in the UK, I remember a report coming out saying that the ground beef/mince that we eat has the DNA of 200 different cows. It was great to know that I was eating the mince from one cow! And the taste was outstanding. We made Greek Hamburgers (get the recipe in our using our Britican Galley Greek Blend) and a Shepards Pie type dish.
Aside from the limited supply and the amazing tastes, we’ve also had an issue finding supermarkets and when we do find them, we’ve had issues finding them open!
In the Mediterranean shops open around 9 am, close for a few hours around lunch when it gets hot and then are often open until 9 or 10pm at night. In some places, stores are all closed on a particular day like Wednesday and nothing is open on Sundays.
It often feels like when we finally get to know a place we move on. We’ve learned to prepare for all eventualities. On board, we always carry enough food to last several days and every time we see a place to get milk, we get it. The mere fact that we can’t get anything anytime we want it makes us appreciate what we can get when we get it. And that leads me to…
“What do you mean we’re already out of water?”
Living aboard a boat causes a massive appreciate for water. Never have I been in a situation where water wasn’t fresh and readily available 24 hours day/ 7 days a week!
Let me explain the water situation we have on the boat
We are very fortunate to have a 1000 litre tank. Furthermore, we have a water maker that takes salt water and turns it into fresh water.
That being said, maintaining our fresh water supply is always a daily topic of conversation. The water maker can make drinkable water, but you must draw seawater from a location far out to sea. In the Med, we don’t have that option so we simply make water for showering, doing dishes and so forth. We buy bottle water to drink.
While moored at a marina or on a quayside there’s often fresh water available and we’ll top up our tank. And when we’re sailing, we’ll run the water maker which is a necessary task to keep it clean. In other words, we must run the water maker every week – otherwise, bacteria grows and creates a problem. It takes about 1 hour to make 100 liters of fresh water and we must run our generator to power it.
With 5 people on board, we can use 1000 litres water in a couple days
If everyone takes a shower, we do some laundry and of course the dishes, it’s gone. Furthermore, our daughter won’t shower unless the water is tepid to warm (who can blame her) so we waste water waiting for the hot water to make it to the shower.
Some of the ‘fresh water’ supplies on the quaysides are not fresh so we can’t depend on them. Sometimes the water we’re traveling through isn’t clean enough for us to pick up for the water maker.
That being said, when we shower we get wet, turn the water off, lather up and rinse
And in a future article I’ll write about how veteran world cruising sailor, Carol, recently taught me how to bathe myself with 6 cups of water – coming soon! (For more on Carol, read my article: Couple sets off for a 3 year around the world sailing trip – 15 years later they’re still going!)
When we brush our teeth, we wouldn’t dare think of letting the water run. When we do the dishes we do so using the least amount of water. And when it comes to laundry, we all try to wear our clothes for as many days as possible. Back in England I used to wear a couple outfits in one day and they’d be put in the dirty clothes bag – nowadays I’ll wear one outfit for 3 days!
I wonder what would happen to our fresh water reserves if we all stopped taking water for granted
I think it’s a lesson that will change my water consumption habits for life.
So…can you believe that I can’t get anything I want anytime I want it? And you know what…it’s GREAT. It’s helped me to slow down a bit and to appreciate the simple things in life… and that can’t be bad.