Ten Rules to Live By That I Learned from Living on a Sailboat

Ten Rules to Live By That I Learned from Living on a Sailboat

On land as well as on the sea, the shit will hit the fan. In a rush to get to work, the coffee maker breaks, your pants zipper malfunctions, and the car tire is flat. In my ten years of living on a sailboat, a typical bad day was a dragging anchor, a ripped sail, and our toddler throwing a vital tool overboard. At sea as on land, it always happened in three's.

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O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree! The Eternity of Papy

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree! The Eternity of Papy

It has to touch the ceiling. Always. Every year. That's our criteria for a Christmas tree. Our living room ceiling is 8 ft. high, so that is a feasible reach, but our son's tops out at 15 ft., presenting a little more of a challenge—especially since his living room/kitchen area makes up a large part of the second floor of his house. During the ten years we lived on a sailboat, we were occasionally able to put a tree outside on the deck, and then, literally, the sky was the limit.

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No, No Life Jackets on Those Kids

No, No Life Jackets on Those Kids

"No life jackets on those kids?" Yes, that's right. No life jackets on those kids. My Huffington Post blog entry "We Sailed Across the Ocean…" from November 11, 2015, recounting our 30-day trans-Atlantic crossing on our sailboat with an infant and a toddler, featured several photos of my children onboard, "sans" life jackets. Some readers were taken aback and posted a comment of surprise and concern. This is not the first time I have had such remarks from—and here's where I must remind myself—amateurs, weekend recreational boaters, non-sailors, or at least non full-time "cruisers."

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Cowabunga and the Camino, Kindred Spirits

Cowabunga and the Camino, Kindred Spirits

Blisters gone. Swollen ankle—subsided. A few items lost, some new friends found. Satisfaction guaranteed. Thirty-five days for an adventure. Thirty-five days powered only by my own pedestrian momentum, only my feet pushing me from Point A to Point B, beginning to end, 500 miles across a country—just because.

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Hooked

Hooked

And then there are some mementos from Cowabunga, pure and simple, now working their way into veritable heirloom status along with the kitchen tongs. As Sean became an adept fisherman, he would most often trail a fishing line during a passage, and more often than not, a good many of the fishing lures would disappear usually munched off by a shark or the “big one that got away.”

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Under Pressure

Under Pressure

A household in France cannot survive without a pressure cooker, and thus I learned to use this handy item when I lived there. I purchased my six-quart pressure cooker some time before we set sail from France and for our 10 years onboard, it was a workhorse. It was even an excellent safety device, cooking whole meals encapsulated and enclosed in its own secure space as it rocked on the gimbaled stove while we sailed along.

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