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By Katherine Bellows
and Jim Mitchell — Fall
2004
We’ve finally done it: sold our house, had the mother of all garage sales, threw out 85 pairs of perfectly good shoes, and moved aboard Nonchalant, a 1930, 50-foot Boeing bridge-deck cruiser moored on Seattle’s historic Ballard waterfront.
It’s 3 a.m., we’re snug in our berths,
exhausted from unpacking clothes and stowing important things in unlikely
places, but looking forward to our new life aboard. We’ve planned
to sleep late tomorrow—little knowing what the next 92 days are
going to bring.
Plink. Plink. Plink.
Jimmy nudges me awake. “There’s a leak over my head. Why don’t you staple some plastic to the ceiling?”
I wonder if he’s stepped down from the moon. I’m dry in a lower berth. “Put your pillow over your head,” I suggest.
The orange cat jumps down from the bridge deck, complaining bitterly. He’s soaked. Water drips down my neck from the upper berth.
I give up. “Okay, plastic it is.”
This was just the first rain, and the first leak. There was rain the next day, and the next, and the day after that too. There were entire minutes when the rain stopped and I’d think, “Whew! Now the sun’s going to shine, the boat will dry out, and I can go kayaking.” Then it would rain even harder.
Do you have any idea how depressing it is to find puddles on the carpet? To discover that the coffee machine is an island in Lake Galley? At night I can hear the mildew growing.
After two weeks of rain, Jimmy and I have a serious discussion. No, we’ll not move to a motel. We’re liveaboards now.
We buy sponges and mops, we strew pots and pans around the boat, but we won’t buy an ugly blue tarp. We may be drowning, but we have pride. We’re not trawler trash.
>> Next page >> Part 2: That night the temperature drops and our expensive, German-made diesel heater expires with a gentle sigh and a cloud of blue smoke. Page
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