What This Life Offers

I’ve been living on a boat for about 5 years now. It’s funny actually because I never expected my life to go this route. This was not in my future plans, nor was it even on my radar. Five years ago, if you would’ve asked me what a bilge pump was, I would’ve told you it was some kind of pump for sludge or fecal matter for a port-o-potty. And forget about winch, halyard, full-displacement keel, rode, transom, dinghy, or spring line.  I was purely and utterly lost. Fast forward to today and thank God this isn’t the case anymore. 

Flashback to when I booked a flight to Europe, quit my job and left to “go find myself”. As I was lolloping around from city to city, I noticed that my views and opinions were changing right before my own eyes, that I was beginning to see things in a clearer light. I didn’t know if it was because of all the architectural beauty I was fortunate to behold or if it was all the Italian espressos I drank along the way. But I was able to start seeing some differences from my culture and others’ way of life; and not to say one way was better than the other, but it showed me there were many roads one could take to get to the same place. I knew without a doubt I wanted to keep traveling and keep broadening my horizons, for you never know what’s behind the next door you open. Well, this lasted 3 months before I ran out of funds to continue my journey. So, I proudly went home, happy to have had the experience and leaving with a head full of ideas. 

I ended up staying on my mom’s old sailboat for a couple of months when I got back from Europe. And that’s really where my story begins. I had no idea what I was doing, but the realization that a sailboat could take me around the world one day and that people had been doing it for hundreds of years dawned on me. Since then, I’ve done everything in my power to completely immerse myself in the boat life. I ended up buying my own sailboat and I fell in love. I came to the conclusion I had never had passion about anything, well not like this. This was a thirst only salt seamed to quench. It’s taken me a long time to get my bearings in this world of boats. Sometimes I still don’t know what I’m doing. I swear I’m just winging it half of the time. 

I immediately became a barnacologist, that’s my fancy term for those who scrape bottoms of boats. I can honestly say I started from the bottom and worked my way up. I moved from scraping bottoms to basic cleanings to detailing. I’ve always been the “tom-boy” type so this kind of work never bothered me, in fact just the opposite, because I didn’t see any other women doing this kind of work. I think that fired me up right away because I like to prove to myself I can do anything despite social and cultural conditioning. About this time, I learned that I could be self sufficient if I got some solar panels and used only the power from the sun to survive. Shortly after, I moved off of the dock I had been attached to and started living off the hook using a dinghy to get back and forth to shore. I stayed in this anchorage for 2.5 years while learning to sail and this is when I landed a first-mate position on a 50’ catamaran day charter boat.

I got really good at raising sails, tacking, and dropping sails so, I delved in deeper. I kept myself moving forward by challenging myself to learn everything and anything I could learn, period. I use this tactic to this day and I find that I am unfamiliar with boredom. The days seem longer now and simple bird songs all of a sudden sound like a symphony made just for me. And when I think it couldn’t get any better, here come the dolphins to say hello. At this point, I wasn’t only surviving, I was thriving. 

I haven’t owned a t.v. in 5 years.

Yes, I have Netflix, which I use my computer to view, but mind you, I’m sitting in the middle of an anchorage surrounded by water, meaning I don’t have wifi so I got clever and started using my phone hotspot to use the internet on the computer. I get 15gb per month. That means, I’m streaming any video in lowest possible quality format as to save on gigs. So, half of the time, at the end of the day, it’s not even worth the trouble. I fall asleep as soon as I press play anyways. I don’t know what happened because I used to binge watch series for days if I could, but not anymore. I physically cannot stay awake. It takes me 3 nights to finish one movie. I wish I was kidding. But, I’m not. It doesn’t bother me though, not watching t.v., because I get to sit outside on the boat and watch the watercolor sunsets that go down right in front of me. Front row seats even.

That’s where I met Bobby, sitting on my boat facing the sunset and that’s where he dropped his anchor when he moved to the area. Right around over there. So, if I wanted to watch the sunset at any given point, I was forced to look in his direction where he was most likely laid up in his magic hammock, he likes to call it that. Looking happier than a darn lark. We were friends for a long while before we merged into NikkiBobby, that’s what everyone calls us now. 

Life is funny, it’s what you make of it really. I mean what are the chances that I moved on a boat and was doing what I was doing just to meet someone I needed to meet. These are the things that often cross my mind, is there such a thing as chance? Or is there an intricately laid out plan for my life? And that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. Isn’t it up to me to decide what choices to make? Ah, but remember, there are many roads that’ll take you to the same place. So, as I ponder, and learn, and decide, and move forward, life gets more interesting. 

I moved on Bobby’s boat as his was the better of the two. We decided to do this thing, called life, together at sea. For as long as it makes us happy. We make a great team together, since we realized that we moved to another city and really began our lives together planning our future of sailing the big ocean blue. We are currently in the midst of a full refit of our baby. I can’t wait to show off the after pics. We have managed to do all of the work ourselves to save bukoos of money and to really learn our boat from top to bottom, inside and out. We want to do some serious cruising, not just a week here and there, so knowing our boat this well will be a tremendous key in the success of our goal. I have no doubt in my mind that we will accomplish what we’ve set out to do. And the rest of this story awaits to be written. A wonderful life awaits us. 

Till next time, 

✌️ & ♥️ 

Nautical Nikki