toocoys
Scraping Paint
Everyone tells you about the normal stuff of maintaining a boat, but no one ever tells you about:
- Bulkhead doors. Every door that leads into a head has a lip about 6 inches off the floor. Make sure you step OVER them, because if you don't you'll find yourself going head first into the head itself.
- Get in shape, because you'll be doing a lot of walking. Walking from the parking lot to the boat, walking from the boat to the bath house, walking down to the green area to walk the dog. Walk, Walk, Walk.
- Speaking of bath houses, you better like community bathing if you don't want to use your boat. You'll get REAL intimate with the neighbors. You'll shower one after the other, get dressed together, and you'll even poop at the same time sometimes! I think my neighbor may need a colonoscopy cause something might have gotten stuck.
- If you do choose to use your boat, flush your vacuum toilet a few times to get used to it before you go ahead and sit down. It was quite a surprise how loud it was, and I might have added a little to the flush.
- Better like stairs. Stairs to get on the boat, stairs to go down to the salon, even more stairs going down to the aft cabin, up/down into the galley, its all stairs!
- Compartments. If you're an organized/OCD person, a boat may be for you! For the love of pete, there are 17 THOUSAND compartments on a boat. Sometimes there's even compartments inside compartments.
- Get a helmet because you'll be hitting your head, alot. On the engine room roof, on the bed when you're getting something out of the drawers underneath it, on the that damn bulkhead door to the head.
- BIRDS! If you have a low startle point, don't go walking the docks at night. Those dang blue heron birds love to roost on the dock lines and inevitable SQUAAAAAWWWWK and take off flying just as you approach and don't see them.
- Speaking of startle points, when out on your dinghy idling through the marina, that body you see floating up from under the sailboat isn't a dead person. It's probably just a diver cleaning a bottom. Bout flipped my dinghy on that one.
- If you have motion sickness, or get dizzy easily, living aboard is not for you. Even though we're in highly protected waters with barely even a ripple, when the wind blows the boats move back and forth. One boat moving one direction and another moving the other direction can get pretty dizzing pretty quickly, especially when you're below deck looking out a port hole the size of a coffee can.
... and that's just two days worth of observation.
- Bulkhead doors. Every door that leads into a head has a lip about 6 inches off the floor. Make sure you step OVER them, because if you don't you'll find yourself going head first into the head itself.
- Get in shape, because you'll be doing a lot of walking. Walking from the parking lot to the boat, walking from the boat to the bath house, walking down to the green area to walk the dog. Walk, Walk, Walk.
- Speaking of bath houses, you better like community bathing if you don't want to use your boat. You'll get REAL intimate with the neighbors. You'll shower one after the other, get dressed together, and you'll even poop at the same time sometimes! I think my neighbor may need a colonoscopy cause something might have gotten stuck.
- If you do choose to use your boat, flush your vacuum toilet a few times to get used to it before you go ahead and sit down. It was quite a surprise how loud it was, and I might have added a little to the flush.
- Better like stairs. Stairs to get on the boat, stairs to go down to the salon, even more stairs going down to the aft cabin, up/down into the galley, its all stairs!
- Compartments. If you're an organized/OCD person, a boat may be for you! For the love of pete, there are 17 THOUSAND compartments on a boat. Sometimes there's even compartments inside compartments.
- Get a helmet because you'll be hitting your head, alot. On the engine room roof, on the bed when you're getting something out of the drawers underneath it, on the that damn bulkhead door to the head.
- BIRDS! If you have a low startle point, don't go walking the docks at night. Those dang blue heron birds love to roost on the dock lines and inevitable SQUAAAAAWWWWK and take off flying just as you approach and don't see them.
- Speaking of startle points, when out on your dinghy idling through the marina, that body you see floating up from under the sailboat isn't a dead person. It's probably just a diver cleaning a bottom. Bout flipped my dinghy on that one.
- If you have motion sickness, or get dizzy easily, living aboard is not for you. Even though we're in highly protected waters with barely even a ripple, when the wind blows the boats move back and forth. One boat moving one direction and another moving the other direction can get pretty dizzing pretty quickly, especially when you're below deck looking out a port hole the size of a coffee can.
... and that's just two days worth of observation.