Everyday life at sea

When reading most travel or adventure blogs, it’s easy to get the idea that the sun is always shining and everyone is in a good mood and drinking cocktails all the time. The contrast, however, is that everyday life at sea often looks very different.

At least not for us, even though we like to post photos of beautiful landscapes, of us smiling, of dolphins and … oh, what a lot of beautiful things there are.

A normal day looks like this:

• Waking up between 7 and 8 a.m.
• A cup of coffee, usually in bed
• A bit of training on board and a swim afterwards
• Breakfast
• A round of paddling around the block (stand-up paddle)
• or shore excursion
• or read, paint, write, play the piano
• Sleep a little
• Eat a bit
• In the evening, stare at the stars or cook something nice, going out or read again.
• Often early to bed.

That is the ideal state and many days are like that. But whoever claims to want to swap with us also has to go through such days: installing, repairing, changing and beautifying things. Washing, cleaning, providing the right food, nails, skin and hair also need care. Finding wifi or sometimes just a letterbox.

   

Pantry, Provisioning, Ka’s Yogahour, Holgers Readinghour, Salon, Movienight at bad weather

Today is not such a perfect day

We are in the Marina Bas-du.Fort in Guadeloupe. A damn strong wind is announced and we thought we’d go into the harbour, do some shopping, start the washing machine, charge the diving tanks (everything with shore power, that saves the batteries).

But we have to get out. The day after tomorrow, when the wind will be at its strongest and Guadeloupe is full with yachts. It won’t be easy to find a wind-protected anchorage or a well-maintained mooring ball. And then there’s this: last night we had another shutdown. So all systems down. No alarm, nothing. It was a non-functioning toilet flush that first brought it to our attention.

So we got up at 4 am, took out the toolbox. First the easy way, switch on and off, then consult the remote control. Nothing. The deadman switch jumped out, switched off the inverter and all sorts of things, and getting the systems back up is not so easy.

We’ve been looking for a solution to our power problem for a while now.

Leopard got in touch right away after Holger’s email. But when everything is wired wrong, there is no confidence. We’ve seen so many crazy electronic wiring problems and loose cables onboard. Largely everyone, professional and layman alike, throws their hands up in horror.

When confidence is lacking, you get all sorts of ideas. What if the ship starts to burn because of a cable fire? That worries me, basically around the clock. What if it happens again and we can’t get the system backed up? Not even the navigation instruments will work then. Neither the autopilot, nor the wind instruments, no toilet, no light, no water, because you need a pump for that.

Life on board can be as wonderful as it is frightening. On such days, the boat seems like a single danger zone.

Sometimes everything goes well for 10 days, then it’s total chaos again. Holger can live with such surprises much more easily.

Now to the question of what keeps me here: Holger, of course. But it’s also just a normal day on the boat. /Karin Binz