I
find as years accumulate, I’m drifting toward minimalist living. Things mean
less. The line grows sharper between want and need. It’s the wants that do us
in; we actually need little. Toward that end, I long ago made the decision to
move off dirt.
Boats
have been a part of my life since the seventies. Even before, in the Navy I
served aboard the USS Shangri La, an aircraft carrier that introduced me to the
varied pleasures of the Far East. My life of boats includes designing, building,
sailing, and life aboard, for any vessel I own must also be my home. While
living in Seattle during the mid-seventies to early eighties, writing screw and
kill Nick Carter paperbacks, I built a 34’ catamaran that I subsequently sailed
from Puget Sound to Juneau, Alaska and return (more like motored, you don’t
sail the Inside Passage), looking to salmon fish and gold pan. When vandals
destroyed that boat, I moved south again to San Jose, then Long Beach,
California, now writing the Operation Hang Ten series of screw and kill spy
novels under the name, Patrick Morgan.
During
this time I became a permanent boat dweller. From 1984 onward, I have never
returned to live on dirt. The vessel I bought was not only the smallest I’ve owned,
a Columbia 26’ but I lived aboard her longer than any other, ten years, while I
wrote a couple of memoirs and many sailing articles. I solo sailed that little
ship down the Baja coast to Cabo San Lucas and around to La Paz where I lived
at anchor for four months, writing screenplays that went nowhere; then I
coastal and island hopped for a year through the Sea of Cortez, writing more
screenplays that went nowhere. This was affordable because: my boat was small;
my boat was simple; I sailed alone. Mornings after hot oats in non-fat milk and
honey, I wrote. My diet became rice and fish. I dove for supper every evening,
snorkeling with my Hawaiian Sling after pan-size trigger fish, a mild tasting
fish so plentiful they seemed to impale themselves on my spear. By snorkeling
instead of rod and reel fishing, I had the choice of what to eat. Many large
grouper zipped past me down there but they were too big for one meal and I had
no refrigeration. Two of the tasty fish sizzling on the small barbecue while
rice boiled was enough to whet anyone’s appetite. Small villages carried some
fruit and vegetables so I added a tomato, onion, cucumber salad swirling in
olive oil and vinegar to the rice and fish. I’ve eaten an apple every morning
of my life for decades.
While
in Mexico, I started putting together the first of my continuing crime novel
characters, Baylor “Bay” Rumble, a guy who designed and built a 30’ sailing
catamaran and while sailing the world runs into murder, alley fights,
gun-toting men, treachery and women so slick and hard they can chop trees with
their heart. To date I’ve written four in the series. The character of Bay has
been followed by Logan Sand, a Northwest Private Eye so tough you can light
matches on his skin. There are two in that series. Logan was recently followed
by the tough woman PI, Makayla “Mac” Tuff, who operates out of a little town
north of Lake Havasu, Arizona where she works and lives in a 22’ Airstream. I’m
currently writing the first in her series.
Ah, but sailing north,
I smashed my little sloop on the wicked shore south of San Felipe in twenty-three
foot tides.
Four
times in my life I have been stripped of all I own and had to start over with
nothing, not even a home. Each time the loss bites deeper with more stuff accumulated,
but recovery is easier because the value of things diminishes. All those
precious possessions turned out to be not so precious. Think about it. You wake
up and everything you own, including your home, is gone. No insurance. You must
begin again from scratch. How tough would that be for you?
While working as a
bartender to save for my next boat, I rented an old sloop from my Australian
buddy who had moved back on dirt with his girlfriend. My small Columbia was
replaced, and those replaced until I bought my present boat, a Cal 29’ that has
been my home for seven years.
What’s it like writing
and living on a small boat?
I’ve
always owned small boats because they are simpler and cheaper to keep up.
Electronic-laden big yachts are for the rich and I’ve never been rich. I prefer
sail rather than power boats, I enjoy covering distance by free wind, like I’m
getting something for nothing, a bicycle whizzing downhill, a free ride. Although
cabin cruisers certainly offer more living space per foot, they also offer more
systems and gadgets to self-destruct. The sea environment quickly eats up
electronics and electricity, which don’t live a happy life there. Ask any
skipper and he/she will tell you that every piece of electronics aboard has
failed at least once. Yes, sail boats can be complicated. My Cal 29 was set up
for racing; we dock rats did race her in the Newport Beach to Ensenada, Mexico
race and did well, eighth in class. I’ve tried to simplify the rigging as I did
the little sloop I sailed to Mexico. These days I have as much interest in
sailboat racing as I do in lawn mowing. Certainly a 30’ cabin cruiser will
offer more living space but there’s nothing I can do about that, I like to sail.
The layout of most sail
boats has the anchor at the bow in its own locker. Moving back there is the
V-berth, which can be a double (mine is queen), then the head or toilet with
hanging closet opposite. I don’t like that arrangement with the toilet next to
the pillow where I sleep, even with a thin plywood door between, but almost all
small boats are designed that way. Next is the main cabin which is usually a
dinette of some kind. The galley may be aft near the entrance hatch or it may
take up one side along a narrow aisle across from the dinette. My Cal 29 has
this set-up. I don’t care for it. My little Columbia Sloop had a long seat on
one side, a dinette on the other and the small sink/propane stove next to the
entrance hatch. I consider the only place for a stove is under the main hatch.
Otherwise cooking splatters and the result coats everything in the cabin. Some
boats have seats along both sides with a folding table in the middle. My next
boat will be something like that. It is considered the “traditional” layout.
Most boats have a large outside cockpit aft with two seats about six feet long.
An awning makes it comfortable and much writing can be done on a folding table
during nice weather at anchor. An inverter gives you power from a twelve-volt
system. Solar panels can provide charge but there is a Honda generator in my
future. The smaller the boat the less of this you get, though in our marina there
is a Columbia 22’ with a satellite dish. Down around 22’-23’, the toilet might
not have its own compartment but slide out from under the V-berth. I’d rather
have it along the settee or seat in the main cabin. That size boat is not going
to attract much of a crowd so privacy is not an issue. A small boat means smaller
costs for everything to maintain and use her.
Until you reach 27’-28’
to over 30’, you’re likely not going to have standing headroom. My Cal has six
feet, I’m six-three; scars along my thinning-hair dome show the results. At
26’, my Columbia sloop had a bubble cabin top. Headroom was 5’11” in the main
cabin quickly dwindling to 4’6”. That worked for me because: I stood under the
open hatch while cooking, I knew there was no standing headroom and bent
accordingly, most writing/reading time in the cabin was spent sitting, headroom
was unlimited in the cockpit. I’d rather know I have to bend than always come
up a couple inches short on headroom. Standing tall inside a boat has never
been important to me.
So
what are the mechanics of living on a boat?
Unless
you want to look like a gypsy camp trailer (and many of us do) you’d better
have everything you own in a proper place. Even in my present boat, I cannot
have my computer, printer or TV out there on display. They must be tucked away,
wrapped in waterproof plastic, in their slots and only pulled when used. Forget
about walking from the bedroom to the bathroom and the kitchen. What you’ll do
is stumble and dodge around obstacles shuffling from one place to the other, in
about three steps, while bent; table, counter, narrow doorways, steps always
waiting to ambush you and slow your movements.
Sound
like fun?
One
of the beautiful wonders of the human body is its ability to adapt. The water
people of Hong Kong sleep aboard their junks on a pine board, (I’ve been there
and seen them), even oldsters in their seventies and eighties and nineties.
Been doing it all their life, are used to it. An ancient Chinese proverb states
that Heaven is a bed, with your few items of most value within reach, and a
maiden by your side. I can relate. I had a rude awakening recently when I
attended a boat show. I like boat shows, not because I can afford the gleaming,
plush monstrosities displayed but so I can steal ideas to use on my own humble
craft. I was surprised as I moved aboard different boats that I grabbed every
handhold and shuffled about slowly like a doddering old fool, being looked at
with concern by sales people way down there on the floor. I know my own boat so
well I swing aboard from a wobbly dock and flow around the rigging and cabin
like a chimpanzee through jungle vines. Tugboat captains twenty years on the
same boat never have a queasy stomach. They get on a different vessel,
different quirks, layout, movement, and they’re off calling for Wyatt Earp with
regularity.
Most
of those reading this may not be into sail or skinny hulls or a bed shaped like
a V with no room for your feet and you get into by crawling over the pillows,
or all that stuff in the way. Certainly, the modern woman would never put up
with such a way of life. You want a houseboat or at least a cabin cruiser. You
can afford the gas, or you ain’t going no place, you’re just going to write and
live on it.
There are some perks.
Claustrophobic? My ex-girlfriend says, when I’ve had enough of people I dive in
my cave like a bear to hibernate and be a hermit. But when I open the hatch, there’s
all that water with all that water life. If I’ve sailed to anchor at Catalina
Island, there’s the island, although it only takes me a week to know I’m on an
island. There are other shores with other civilization—the shore and islands in
Puget Sound and the Florida Keys. I’m not wild about sailing to remote places;
writing is alone work. When I’m done I like to go among them, lift a few with
the hale and hearty, shuffle and hug ladies on a dance floor, for I do love the
ladies; and exchange ideas. That’s my type of destination. But there’s a limit even
to that stuff.
Sailing
is a slow way to get anywhere. You bet. I believe the ‘getting there’ is as
important as the ‘there.’ My autopilot steers while the sails pull, and I’m a
passenger, having my hard boiled eggs, quartered tomatoes, pitted black olives
and sliced cheddar, watching the trailing ‘meat hook,’ jotting notes for future
writing, and churning ideas, so many ideas, listening to the gurgle and hiss of
hull through water, and inhaling the sea life around me.
The
‘real’ cost of boat dwelling? Cheaper
than rent. The dark secret to success is you can’t be making payments for the
boat; you have to own it, however humble. I know guys happily living on sailing
vessels (that sail well) they paid $500 for; the upper limit is off the chart.
Back in ’84, I paid $11,000 cash for my 26’ Columbia. My current Cal 29’, I
bought for $6,000. There are places you can rent a slip for $150 a month. Slip
fees can go from $10 a foot per month to Newport Beach, California where it’s
$18 to $24 a foot per month. Some marinas charge for everything else too. I get
free water and electricity for my $13 a month per foot. Areas like the
Northwest and the Sacramento Delta are cheaper. Parts of Florida are cheap.
Mexico, if you stay out of marinas, can be free. It was for me.
The
cockpit of a sailboat anchored next to a beach, not only provides delightful
scenery of many kinds, but is a perfect place to read. Lord, the books I’ve
read in sailing cockpits. When cruising, most stops have a book exchange—you
leave one and take one. I write crime novels so I’m attracted to those kinds of
books. But in Mexico, I read Captain from Castile,
the inside gossip dirt on Liz and Richard, the biography of Shelly Winters; endless
westerns (sailors like westerns, maybe cowboys like sea going yarns); books I’d
ignore in a bookstore. And loved them. You have to take what’s available. Two
activities cause me to read a book every two days: cruising under sail and gold
prospecting; you can’t detect or pan gold in the dark, but you can read by a
lantern.
So,
tell me I’m full of apple sauce and go buy your houseboat or cabin cruiser, or
continue strangling with your mortgage and high rent. I’m always doodling with
boat design. I’m working my ideal home now, about 30’ maybe less, a scow-houseboat-sailing
junk, with a leeboard and Chinese junk sails and a eight-horsepower Yamaha
four-cycle outboard with alternator to charge batteries, able to slide up a
beach, and trailerable.
Can’t wait to get
started.
