‘DON’T YOU GET BORED?’

Rebecca Shaw

Dear Enid,

Funny that you should ask if I get bored living on the boat. During the past nine years of this cruising lifestyle I would have unequivocally answered ‘no’ to that question. This tenth season I’ve found myself, for the first time, at times, using that word. I’ve always told my children ‘there’s nothing boring in this world, only boring people’ and I have believed it. This season tested my theory and, in trying to define for myself why, I find I have also defined what it is that makes it not boring to do what we are doing.

Musings on cruising

The big difference with this season, from our nine other sailing seasons, is twofold. One, we had no destination, no journey’s end, and cruising and exploring the Croatian coast – which in fact we very much enjoyed – was just not enough for us. We have always found that we need a goal and a destination and that we like passages, rather than just hopping among anchorages. Two (and probably the more significant) is that we did not meet many other cruisers or Croatians. We felt quite isolated, even though we were surrounded by Italians, Austrians and Germans on their summer holidays, mostly one to two week charters. We don’t like travelling in a pack, but we do like meeting people with whom to share our experiences.

So, what is it that’s so stimulating about sailing around?

The boat and the Sea

Dovka – our home, our transportation, our magic carpet – is a continuous source of challenge, responsibility and repair. There is constant maintenance to keep her going and going well. Most of our ordinary activities are not ordinary and require vigilance and thought beyond routine. Almost always, something is not working, no matter how vigilant we are.

The ever-present and ever-changing wind, seas, salt, temperature, and sun take their toll on everything, from sea air causing rubber bands to disintegrate and shackles to corrode, to the sun eating away at cloth and line and teak coatings. The motion of the waves, from wakes in the harbour to choppy seas in strong winds and swells from far-away weather, put everything above and below deck at risk, unless always adequately stowed. The minute something is not put in its place, we’ll need it urgently and will not be able to find it, or it will wreak some havoc from where it has been misplaced.

Every venture requires decisions based on evaluation of the world around us. Of course, this is true when you cross the street in Manhattan. But here we evaluate weather reports, the condition of the clouds, the sea, the direction of the wind, the intensity of the wind, how it smells, feels and tastes, the topography of the sea floor and land formations, and traffic on the sea. Navigation has been made much easier with GPS, but it still requires use of many brain cells.

When we decide to put up the sails and turn off the engine, we become a sailboat and we become sailors and we are in a different world and one that is ALWAYS changing. Right now, I stopped writing this to help Sid put up the mainsail. The engine is off and instead of 6 knots and noise, we are now gently gliding along at 5 knots with gurgling water and light winds. The motion is like a cradle gently being rocked and our angle of heel is 3° to port. All very benign at this moment, but everything on the boat is in motion and it could so quickly be a very different motion. We have to be able to respond with speed to protect ourselves and our boat.

This lifestyle allows an exquisite awareness of the natural world around us, so often missing from life ashore. Without the boat I would not know the joy of experiencing nature isolated from ‘civilization’, or the awe of being alone on the high seas. In both cases we have the whole world to ourselves.

Without the boat, I would not be able to lie in the cockpit at night and watch my planets rise and set and the stars move across the sky. I would not be able to see the dome of our world and watch the sun set, causing half the sky to glow with pinks and golds and the other half to fade into silver and black. I would not be attuned to the feel of the breeze on my body and know exactly from where it is coming and whether it is strengthening or lessening.

I would not be able to fall out of bed and into the water for a wake-up swim, and then take that last swim of the day at dusk to entitle myself to a hot shower on deck, drying with the soft wind. I would not be able to sit mesmerised by the motion of the water around us as it reflects the ever-changing light from the sun, sky and clouds. I would not know the motion of floating and bobbing and rushing and crashing and cutting through the water and waves.

A Water Winnebago

Life on a sailboat has so many different aspects. It is a water Winnebago – a home in which you can travel to different places and still have your own bathroom and kitchen and bed. Dovka enables us to live in Europe as we would not be able to do otherwise. She gives us an opportunity to continuously experience and interact with new places and peoples.

It is a cultural, anthropological expedition as we seek out hardware stores, produce markets and often the industrial zones of the towns we visit in search of odd parts and persons to help with repairs, as opposed to tourist shops and restaurants.

It is a way to get to places and a way to get away from places. Passages are like a sip of wine between bites of a good meal. We like exploring new places, learning about the history and the culture, meeting new people, as well as anchoring alone in uninhabited coves and experiencing natural beauty from the comfort of our own home. And we like leaving that all behind and entering into our own world where we live totally in the present, preoccupied with the immediacy of the effects of wind and sea, savouring and surviving.

When we leave a place and are once again a self sufficient entity, totally responsible for ourselves, we feel a great sense of relief. When we arrive safely and put the anchor down in a protected harbour after a successful passage, we also feel a great sense of relief and a wonderful sense of accomplishment.

And people ...

Most importantly, we have now discovered, this lifestyle enables us to continuously meet new and interesting people. In the past ten years we have made some very, very good friends from all over the world, with whom we stay in contact and see when we can. We have visited them in England, France, Italy, Germany and Turkey, New Zealand and Australia, and they have visited us at our land home in Falls Church and our water home on Dovka in different places in the Caribbean and the Med. We also have met many people with whom we enjoyed contact and will enjoy seeing again as our sailing paths cross somewhere, someday. As we know they will.

While this season was different for us in regard to connecting with other people, and staying in one area (the Adriatic), it did end on a high note with an introduction to a mathematician from Zagreb and his translator wife and family, who have a summer cottage on one of the Croatian islands. They are friends of American cruising friends of ours, who met them many years ago when our friend was working on his doctorate in mathematics and spent a year in Zagreb. They were fascinating and opened their hearts and homes to us for a week. We learned so much about the history, culture and life in Tito’s Yugoslavia (his parents were partisans with Tito), the whole Balkan arena and about life in now ‘capitalist’ Croatia. We had stimulating discussions over meals at their home, they took us sightseeing, we took them sailing, and we spent long evenings eating, drinking and talking aboard Dovka. We made new, good friends.

This is much more than you wanted to know, but it helped me! So thanks for asking the question. People often say to us ‘how wonderful that you are living your dream’. We reply that this is not our dream. This is our life. And life has its ups and downs, its highs, lows and in-betweens. This season was a good one, all in all. It was also an eye opener to me as to exactly what is important and special for us about this life aboard Dovka. And, all in all, it is definitely NOT boring.

See you soon,

Love, Beck