Moving aboard—the stuff.

Reunited with our crate at the Boreal boatyard.
Now we just need to transfer all the contents onto the boat.

We have been in France for about one week now and we’ve been living aboard Positive Waves for five days. It has been so busy. Moving all our stuff aboard, finding a logical home for each item, learning how all the systems aboard work, and going sailing for the first time. There is a lot of information to absorb, understand, and process. I find myself working all day, jumping from one task to the next, and then collapsing in bed around 10 or 11 at night, thinking of tomorrow’s agenda. 

We stayed at a hotel for the first few nights after we arrived at Treguier. Of course we wanted to move aboard as soon as possible, but we first had to learn the basics of how the systems operate so we could get water out of the tap, boil water on the stove, flush the toilet correctly, and turn the lights on and off. It was important to look in all the lockers before we put our stuff in their because underneath many of the lockers is another hidey-hole that provides access to a switch or a pump or something integral to the operations of the boat. So, first step was spend a couple hours aboard with Jean-Francois Eeman, one of the owners of Boreal to look in every locker and get a general overview of how the systems work.

Freja checks out her empty cabin and hangs her first decoration.

Once we had a general layout of the boat, the second step was to start moving our stuff aboard. No simple task. Positive Waves is our home, our only home, so we had to bring all of our stuff with us. My favorite cast iron pans, legos, magnatiles, shoes, clothes, fishing rods and reels, some tools, quilts, games, and so much more. Our crate was waiting for us when we arrived in Treguier; we simply had to load the rental car up with boxes and schlep it down the dock and onto the boat. Then began the fine art of finding the right place to stow everything. It was a like a 3D puzzle. Most used items need to be stowed in the most accessible places, rarely used things get stored deeper in the bowels of the boat. Holiday decorations, for example are stowed under mine and Hans’s bed. A little harder to get to than, say, the coffee which is in a locker just aft of the stove. 

Where do I put all this stuff??

Stuff to stow mixed with Legos and books.

One of the most important considerations when stowing stuff on a sailboat is the motion of the boat underway. Sailboats heel, sometimes a lot, so everything has to be secured for every angle of sail—flat motoring or heeled in either direction (port or starboard) at a 20 degree angle. Imagine a house, suddenly tilted to the left 15 degrees. Then an hour later it’s tilted to the right 20 degrees. Everything has to be secured so it doesn’t go flying across the boat.

It took us quite a few days to get everything properly stowed away. The boat is pretty ship shape now, but the bigger challenge is remembering where I stowed everything. I remember when we lived on Whisper and Rhumb Line, I was constantly shuffling things from locker to locker, always convinced that there had to be a better storage solution. For now, everything has a place and everything is in its place. 

Our first dinner aboard, spaghetti bolognese.