Life Aboard Isabella

It's been approximately two months that I've been living on my boat, I figure it's about time for an update.

It surprises me how people adapt to new environments... or maybe it's just me. By now, and quite frankly within a week or two of moving, living on the boat seemed totally normal to me. There are obviously quite a few differences from living in an apartment or a house.

The big one everybody asks about is my bathroom. Yes I have a bathroom (bathrooms actually called a 'head' when they're on a boat... comes from the time that they was always in the bow of the boat), no it doesn't have a shower. Mainly I tend to do my business and shower at the marina. Occasionally I shower when I get to work.

Food and food preparation is a bit different as well. I don't have a fridge, I have an ice box. If you're not sure what that is, it's essentially a cooler built into the boat. Eventually I plan to convert it into a fridge, but that hasn't happened yet. The downside to this is that vegetables don't keep very well on my boat, so to all my Vancouver friends who occasionally invite me over for dinner, force feeding me salads might not be a bad idea! As for a stove, I have one, but it's got some issues where sometimes it catches on fire. It's not cool, so I don't use it. I plan on replacing that too eventually with a propane stove/oven. In the meantime I have a single element induction cooker and a BBQ (actually a 'SEA-B-QUE') which have served me quite well so far.

I have water and electricity hookups on the dock. There's also cable, but I don't have a TV, and I'm not super interested in getting internet.

Not having TV or internet isn't exactly a new thing for me, as it's kinda how I grew up. Mainly for entertainment I read books or just work on little things around the boat. Alternatively I write stuff for my blog or play guitar. I think I've seen maybe four movies in the past two months.

They say that the test to see if you're ready to buy a boat is to go to the end of the nearest dock, throw a handful of money into the water, and if you enjoyed that you're ready for a boat. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but it seems that everything marine related is just a little bit more expensive than you would normally expect something to be. Despite this, I spend a lot of time looking at my boat thinking stuff like "I really want to fix this" or, "I'd really love to improve that". I guess I'll just start saving up all the money I'm saving on not paying rent, and put it towards boat improvement!

There are so many other things about living on a boat that I'd love to talk about, but I'll save that for another post.

Stay classy internet.