Civilization Wuss..

Imagine living in 250 sq feet/ meters with your husband and a dog. Imagine your closet contains 10 T-shirts, 7 shirts, 5 shorts, 5 pairs of shoes, a jewelry box the size of a large shampoo bottle. Most of your clothes are sailing and fleece jackets and water proof pants. Imagine you have an office the size of box for high boots and your kitchen is the size of a small chest of drawers. You get it, you have very little. You take as little as you can, but you still have too much and need to downsize more.

I am in a downsize blues today. Can we really do this? Be content with very little, with solar showers, a cooled drink, no private space? The other day, when Radu was rowing us back to the boat I blurted out: ‘This is crazy!’ I meant us at 53, sitting in a blow up dinghy, all wet and sandy, climbing into our boat in the dark with a flashlight leading the way. Am I really up for this? Glam-ping, Glam-camping, as a friend called it. Camping 2.0. One step up from camping. Instead of hiking with a backpack, we sail with a very big backpack.

This should be my life now. Robinson Crusoe meets a middle aged Pippi Longstocking. Except that I don’t have any of her powers and not at all her most important asset: fearless confidence in her abilities. I hit a wall a couple of times on this trip down Baja so far, when I was exhausted from travel, air, sea and the close quarters. Usually I push doubts away, push through, as my father taught me so well. ‘Bite your lips together and go through it’. His upbringing, WW2 generation plus military academy made silent struggle a virtue. In consequence there was never a doubt in my mind that I could adjust to life on a boat. I didn’t have a clue how hard this can be. So far, I try to concentrate on what I like and try to count low points towards the adjustment period like ‘I will get used to it or find a solution later’.

Everyone who knows me knows that I am not easy going. I am an ambitious person with lofty ideas and goals. And this here is kicking my butt. Easily the hardest thing I have done and lived through. Because I can’t push through it and I have to give in and let go. Let go of a career and a life on land. Let go of blow dried hair, kitten heels and good body odor. Let go of if the salty taste on my lip is from sweat or the sea. All is melting into one and I should merge with it.

No matter how big or decked out a boat is, if you’re on a sailboat and you are the crew, it will make you a sailor, with salty hair, sweaty skin, broken off nails and a weathered face. We put all the amenities on the Imagine for Glam-ping but by far not enough to cruise in luxury. We might anchor in the same bays and stay at the same marinas with those folks who cruise in style. Our Imagine is a classic cruiser, from the time when people were roughing it, and the lazarettes (cockpit bins) were meant to carry sails and lines and not generators and washing machines. And then came boating with air conditioning and that’s what it is just boating with air conditioning. You see, here they are again, those lofty ideals. Let’s see if I can live up to them or if I end up throwing in the towel!

Civilization wuss: weakling, a person made weak by the comforts of civilization.

To be continued…