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“Now there’s something you don’t see every day!”

As I stepped off the boat to goto work (late, as usual) this big boy was sitting on an ice flow just behind the boat. While I went back in to grab my camera, he took up a perch on an electrical box on the dock across from us. I’m not sure how common Snowy Owl’s are here, but this is the first one I’ve seen in 17 years here in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area.)

Any ornithologists out there? How common is this bird in Toronto?

Yesterday, I contemplated how good life was living on the boat. Today, I’m warming up after going through one of the cons of living on a boat in the winter - filling the water tanks.

It is -17 deg C out and the wind is blowing hard and cold and the tank goes empty. The tank never empties on the warmer days - not when the wind is calm and the sun is shining - but when it is the most miserable out. So tonight I hauled 55 gallons in jugs from the laundry room and filled it again. This should last us about 10 days to two weeks depending on how water frugal we are. As an aside - I have no idea how much water the average 4 person family uses but I can guarantee that they will use more than 55 gallons. Those who live aboard boats live with a true conservation spirit - out of necessity.

Sometimes in the hustle and bustle of life we can lose the sense of how good life really is. I guess I’m getting in touch with my feminine side here, but I am currently … content.

I sit here now on a Saturday morning writing on my laptop, my baby girl laying beside me talking away and sucking her fingers. My stomach is pleasantly full of fresh croissants and coffee. The sun is shining brightly in the windows - the boat gently rocking. The boy and my wife are out and about. I’ve got several good books, just waiting for me to crack open. A day off work.

Ahhhh - life is good.

If you would have asked me a couple of years ago what I would have thought of living in a giant bubble - I would have told you how I though It would be horrible, claustrophobic and confining. But today as I look out through my semi-transparent windows into a wavy kind of smoky world, I can tell you I love it. You have the illusion of privacy while still looking out over the whole marina able to see (sort of) and what you can’t see your mind kind of fills in the blanks.

The boy and I have had grand times playing soccer on the back deck all within the safety and warmth of the bubble. During the day the inside of the boat heats up when the sun is shinning sometimes to where it is too hot. It acts like a greenhouse and traps the warm sun rays inside. Although I have recounted the several times that Ive worried about losing the bubble during wind storms, watching the rain and freezing rain bounce off the outside of the bubble makes one thankful to not only be inside but still have dry decks.

Many of the boats around the marina strung Christmas lights up inside their bubbles making everything very festive. Of course, many of us will leave our lights up till spring although it likely won’t bother the neighbours like on a street somewhere in the ´burbs.

The picture here is my neighbour down the dock who is also in a River Queen with his Christmas lights merrily lighting up the sky at night. That is a peaceful scene!

Well now … as you can see I’ve finally migrated my blog over from Blogger to Wordpress. What a job it was! They don’t make it easy for a non-techie - that is for sure! If people are interested in how I did it - just leave a comment and I’ll do up a post on it. I also purchased a new theme for this blog - Shifter. Shifter is amazing. It allows me to set the format and look of my blog just by turning features on or off. No programming - no ‘geek squad’ stuff, just on or off. That - I can do! Anyway, I urge anyone who is looking for a quality Wordpress Theme to check out Shifter - it is the most versitile theme I’ve found to date.

Boat News

Yes - we survived the storm! I left off my last post early in the morning after a night of watching the storm and hoping that everything would hold together. In the morning light, I went out back to where the most of my frame is to discover that I had a few rips and that the whole plastic canopy had shifted position and no longer sat tight against the frame. So, I hopped into the car (big mistake) and headed off into the blizzard and drifts to get some shrink tape from my supplier. He lives about 10 mins away, but the trip took half an hour. I was plowing drifts the whole way and going down his street I was literally floating on top the snow most of the time. I made it back without mishap and plastered tape over all the rips and stretched areas. I also reinforced most of the corners and anywhere where the plastic was touching boat to prevent chafing. The short version is - we survived.

Now we are dealing with a cold snap. Last night it went down to -16 C which is cold for this time of year. The ice is growing thicker, but the bubbler is keeping it at bay. This morning the lake was smoking - at least that is what it looked like, as the heat left the open water. It won’t be long if this cold lasts and we will be walking on water again.

Having the baby on board has been wonderful. We’ve really settled into a nice rhythm with her. A and I are learning again how versatile babies are - basically, they are happy if you are happy. The boy lived in a house until he was 8 months old although he does not remember it at all. This child will not know anything but the boat - at least for the next couple of years anyway. What a life she will have! Not many kids can say they live on the water - I think it’s pretty cool - I hope they do too.

Finally, I’ve resurrected my business website (with that new Shifter Theme - I just couldn’t help myself.) So that has also been sucking up my time. Check it out at neighboursappliance.com - let me know what you think.

I live on a boat with a 3 week old baby, a 3 year old who still ’stains’ his underwear, a 55 gallon holding tank, an old electric toilet and 2 adults, one of whom occasionally ‘rips one’, and … my boat smells! The smell I am smelling, however, is none of the above (I don’t think so anyway.) I can’t figure out where the smell is coming from. We can go days without smelling a thing, then all of a sudden, in the middle of the night the main cabin of the boat smells like something curled up and died. We’ve searched high and low - looking for something that might be going bad. We’ve pulled all the drawers out - pulled out the fridge and checked all the nooks and crannies - nothing. Even though I don’t smell it down below decks, today I’m going to shop vac out the bilge and dry everything up again - hoping that the smell might be from down there somehow.

I usually get the blame for the off odours around here, and most of the time I deserve it, but this time - IT AIN’T ME!

So, I’m off the bilge with my vac and hoses … queue the Ghostbuster music!

We have received a fair amount of questioning from friends and family about what our plans are. I knew that at some point a decision about our future would need to be made but I kind of shoved it out of my mind for a couple of weeks. However, every day The Boy needs a bit more space, A is a touch plumper (in the good pregnancy way) and I’m still, well … fleshy. So, it has become rather obvious to me that one of the requirements that we need to fill is: - we need more room.

Initially, in a fit of spittle spraying panic, I strongly suggested that we had to start looking for a furnished apartment. Of course, the panic was a result of my putting the problem out of my mind for two weeks, and then feeling the pressure of it. A. gamely played along, but I suspect that even then she knew what the plan was. The next day, she called me at work and suggested that she had an idea that she wanted to present but NOT have me shoot down without hearing it. (That’s what she has to do when I get all lathered up about something.)

When I got home she sat me down and said that not only did she NOT want to move into an apartment but that she still wanted to stay on the water. How cool is that? She then proceeded to show me a series of houseboats on Yachtworld. At first, I was thinking - “oh no, not a stinkpot” (thats what sailors call powerboaters - while we sailors are called blowhards) but A. presented the logic to me.

• We are not going to sail around the world in the next few years, not at least until the kids are 4 or 5 yrs old.
• Sailing the 10 or so times a season does not justify us living in such a cramped space even if this is a great bluewater boat.
• Even though I love sailing - the sails up, sun shining, the water whispering past the hull - my family needs more room.

So, we are officially on the hunt for a houseboat. This past weekend we went to look at a couple of 40′ foot steel houseboats - River Queens. They are houseboats with a hull as opposed to pontoons - twin engine … but no sails. Oh well … dream postponed, not dream over.