My wife has already committed much of her blog to having our son (now 16 months old) on board a boat, but I wanted to provide a bit of a view from my perspective. Here is the first of a short series of posts (maybe 3 or 4) about having a baby on board.

First of all, I will say that A. does the bulk of the work with our son. As I am off at work each day, she ends up with him as her constant companion during the day. This is what we had planned before having kids – we wanted to raise our own children. Not have them, then pass them off to a daycare or nanny to raise as is done so often today. It was a choice we made. However wonderful it sounded back when we were just taking about having kids, we never imagined how much hard, mind numbing work it would entail. A. is a trooper – she is doing a great job with L. She has the patience to provide the attention he needs now as he learns new things each day.

When we first moved aboard L. was 9 months old. At that age, he was just beginning to change from a baby to a little boy. He, of course, had expressions, and responded to tickles and moving things and was crawling, but was not yet climbing. As he got comfortable on board he began to do some serious exploring. The boat was the perfect place for him as down in the main cabin he was able to move freely around without us having to worry about what he was getting into (he was always in sight). Once he started climbing, things changed a bit. He quickly discovered that he could climb up onto the settees and from there onto the fridge where if he stood up, he could look out the companionway. This quickly became a favorite perch of his – looking out into the cockpit. The whole climbing thing made A. and I a bit uneasy at first as we were always imagining that he would fall. But he quickly demonstrated his natural agility and balance and we were able to relax our minds about it. He did fall a couple of times, but other than the surprise of landing hard, he never really got hurt. The next stage of exploration was to actually crawl out the companionway into the cockpit. You should have seen the delight on his face as he proudly looked back at us after performing that little stunt. Thank goodness it was winter by then, and we had the plastic cover over the boat. We allowed him to rove around the cockpit and play down in the bottom with his toys. He loved the freedom and the change of scenery. Soon it was off exploring up the sides of the cabin toward the bow of the boat. We were not too happy about this as that area is, well, our storage area – and not baby proofed. So we ended that part of his roving by blocking off the way to the bow. How long that will last I don’t know – he is already showing signs of being able to crawl over the boxes we put in place. A week or two ago I put up a net to block off the doorway to the outside so that we can have the door open during the day without L. being able to get out. (It’s getting too hot in the canopy during the day – especially when the sun is shining.)

When we first moved aboard, we did not have any real place set aside for L. to sleep, so we kept him up in the v-berth with us. I can say that there are pro’s and con’s to having your baby sleep with you. First of all, it is really nice for the whole family to be together – cuddling up on a Saturday morning with the boy poking around your eyes or nose, while giggling away is just plain fun. I think it was nice for him too. He would often reach out in his sleep to make sure you were there – sometimes leaving his hand on your face. On the other hand, I don’t think any of us really slept that well. L. would often end up sideways so that he could cuddle face to face with mom while digging his heels into dad’s chest. At first I thought that was cute, but when he began to bruise me, it wasn’t so cute. He also tended to roam around in his sleep, crawling over top of one of us or moving down around our feet. I can’t believe how much he would move in a night. Plus in all his moving around, of course he would end up banging his head somewhere – which produced more tears and crying than real pain. L. would then go back to sleep in about 10 seconds leaving A. and I to stare at the ceiling and wonder what on earth we were going to do to get a full nights sleep. Eventually, we designed and built at leecloth system for the port settee that is now L’s bed. We rig it up in the evening and put him to bed there when we go to bed, then in the morning it all folds up under the settee cushion. Works perfectly – we all are sleeping much better.

There are generally only two categories between those who live on land and those who live on boats:

Live Aboard: one who lives aboard a boat.
Land Lubber: the term given to those who live on land by those who live aboard boats.

But another couple friends of ours introduced us to a third category. They had lived aboard their 30’ sailboat for, I think it was 7 years, with their twin daughters when they decided to buy a house and move back on land. Not wanting to be known as Land Lubbers, they introduced us to the term Clods. C.L.O.D. stands for Cruisers Living On Dirt … Clods – has a nice ring to it.

In keeping with this past weeks bathroom humor, I thought I might describe one of the other routines that one has to endure while living aboard especially in the winter in Canada: water and waste management.

If you want have water available at the sink and if you want to be able to use the John in the middle of the night, you will have to figure out a way of filling the water tank and emptying the holding tank. Once every 7 to 10 days I haul in about 20 gallons of water and haul out about 17 gallons of waste. I use the two wheel cart supplied by the marina and fill the water tank using two five gallon jugs. I fill them in the laundry room and drain them into the deck fill hole to fill the tank. Others at the marina here run out water hoses to fill their tanks, but I believe that they have much bigger tanks. Its Ok filling a 20 gallon tank by hand, I don’t want to imagine filling a 200 gallon tank.

The waste is another issue. We decided to keep our head working for the winter. Other live aboards here do not – they use the marina rest room exclusively. That means, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a snow storm, they have to troop out to the bathroom. Not for me. We use the head for liquid waste only so that limits some of the odours.

Our boat originally came with only a deck mounted pump out hole. This is no use in the winter as we do not have a pump to pump it out there, nor do we have any way of collecting it on deck even if we could. Instead, I installed a diverter switch and a hand pump on the side wall of the head that allows me to pump out the holding tank by hand into a jug. I then lug the jug up to the restroom in the marina and pour it down the toilets. It takes four trips to empty the tank completely (5 gallon jug loads at a time).
Here is a picture of my set up. As you can see, the diverter switch on the left allows me to switch between the deck pump out and the hand pump. The hand pump is attached to about a 4 foot hose that I put into the jug and then pump the handle. This type of pump will pump solid waste as well as liquid so, if we ever have need, we can use it for that as well. We add waste tank deodorizer stuff to the toilet every couple of days to keep away odours which also helps during the pump out. With fans running there is very little smell during the procedure although I usually still have A. and the boy go off for a walk while I take care of business. The first time I did this, I really wondered to myself about why I was in the situation where I had to haul crap by hand, but now it is just one of the things that has to be done to live the life we live. It doesn’t bother me a bit now.

The other day I was in the laundry room filling water bottles and got chatting with a lady who was there doing her laundry.

She said, “This morning there was a bad smell in the ladies washroom – smelled like sewer pipes. Is there a bad smell in the men’s restroom”?

Hahaha – oh me, oh my! My dear – there is always a bad smell in the men’s room – and it almost always smells like sewer! Hahaha.

Unless you plan to live aboard a monster yacht, one of the compromises that you will have to endure is public washrooms and showers. For the other half (who use the ladies room), I will give a little picture of the mens side of the action.

The mensroom is an interesting blend of private business in a public place. As the percentage of men to women at this marina is about 2 to 1 there always seems to be someone doing something in the mens. I can’t think of any other place where you could go to the washroom at 2:00am and end up chatting for half an hour with three other guys there for the same reason as you. And politics! Don’t get talking about politics or you’ll be there for hours. Voices will chime in from behind every closed door offering everything from opinions to expletives. World problems could be solved if people would just listen to the solutions presented there.

The showers are also a unique place. Our shower is an open room with four shower heads. At any given time you can have four men showering, chatting away while studiously scrubbing various parts and pieces. All this goes on while consciously concentrating on keeping any open eyes up above the neck of your shower partners. Come to think of it, there is a lot of eye contact in the mens room.

Men for the most part tend to be somewhat proud of the various events that occur in the stalls. Sometimes after a particularly spectacular occurrence you might hear a chuckle from a couple of stalls down. Some times you might even get cheered on. “Good one, man”! Men are such children.

And finally there is one old guy at this marina who always makes a scene of trying to find William. You can often hear him pull up to a stall, then talk to himself as he digs around, “Alright buddy, where are you? Come on out. ….. Ah, there you are – gotcha now!”

And yes, there is always a bad smell in the mens room – something like sewer pipes.