Let’s Discuss the Experience of Boat Life

I’ve always had a bit of a dream to live on a boat. It seems like an amazing way to spend your life, or at least a little part of it. It’s an adventurous way to live obviously, and unique too, but I think what appeals most to me is the routine it would involve. The consistent checking and rechecking of the equipment to make sure everything is working properly, setting the course everyday, keeping vigilant against things that could go wrong. Even a small puncture to the side of the boat could bring you down and if you’re on your own and a long way from land then you would really be in trouble. Because while in mind most days would be peaceful it really wouldn’t take much to go wrong.

And think about the freedom you would feel, spending your days on your own schedule, unconstrained by the usual societal demands. You wouldn’t be without worries of course, and I imagine the general demands of keeping a vessel on the water would be time consuming and not without frustrations and anxiety that match the life of a land lover. Indeed, there are certain problems that we often consign to our present life situations that are surely human faults and can be found anywhere that a human lives.

I recently spent some time working with a few people who live art of the year on a boat, traversing the coast of Australia, sometimes up to Indonesia, and they seemed very comfortable with their lives, not interested in the mad rush of life on the land. But I also got the sense that maybe they really were missing something. For instance they were acquainted with only a very small group of people, others who had decided to live a similar existence and I have to admit that that would be a difficult thing for me to do, turn my back on a large number of family and friends. And what happens when you get sick of those few other people who live on the seas, do you then become a hermit of the ocean?

But I can’t help but feel that there would be calmness and easygoing peaceful nature developed by a life spent rolling along the ocean surface. The simplicity required to live on a boat would be a liberating experience I believe. Surrounded by very few personal belongings, some clothes, a few books, maybe a guitar and then the essential items, fishing gear, navigating equipment, emergency equipment such as flares and life vests, and few other handy bits and pieces like laxatives in case of constipation.

There is a movie that came out recently called All Is Lost, starring Robert Redford in a role that is almost entirely without dialogue, just a man sailing in his boat. But he wakes one morning to discover that his boat has run into a stray shipping container floating in the ocean that has torn a whole in the side of his boat. It’s only a small tear but the film follows as it slowly creates more problems and things get worse for the unlucky sailor. It doesn’t sound like much of a plot I suppose but it really is a captivating movie and I would recommended it to anyone who is a fan of sailing or good cinema.

All Is Lost, definitely did something to dampen the enthusiasm for my sailing dream, as well as a general realization of the time, effort and money that would go into such an undertaking but there is enough residual heat and embers there for the spark to be rekindled at some point in the future.


NOTE: This post is from one of our contributors. Any views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views on www.pinoyadventurista.com.

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