Cruising Bummers

Cruising is not fun all the time, even though it seems from our write ups that it is. For those of you who want to know the dirty secrets, here is what is NOT fun about this life:

 Nothing is ever easy

You get to a new place. You don’t know the area. You don’t know how to get things done. You don’t know where anything is. Sometimes you don’t even speak the language. Usually it is hot and you are all sweaty, looking for stuff you need. Usually you don’t find it – they are out of it or have never heard of it. You don’t have a car. So you have to take the bus with a lot of other sweaty people. They stink like you do so you don’t really notice. As soon as you get to know your way around, you have to leave because hurricane season is approaching.

 Space

You are living in a 40 ft camper trailer and you don’t even have a yard so you can get away from each other. You are literally within each other’s sight 24 hours a day. You have to like your partner. We have a number of friends that have had there marriages or relationships go down the drain. There are a lot of single handers, male & female that didn’t start out that way. All your combined ‘stuff’ plus the boat’s ‘stuff’ has to fit into this 40 ft space and the boat seems to have the most ‘stuff’. 

Maintenance

Everything is breaking all the time. The boat is never working properly, something is always broken. If its not broken, its dirty or corroded and needs to be cleaned or it too will be broken soon. Some of these things are inconvenient, some could sink the boat. There is a saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t use it”

 Anxiety

Everything you own is dependant on a length of chain and that little anchor holding you to the bottom! Think about it. No. Maybe best not to. Think of sleeping in your house every night not knowing which part of the neighborhood you could wake up in. You could be on the reef, or hitting your neighbour. If not, they could bit you! Any time of the day or night. Hopefully you will be home at the time, and not in town! 

You get pimples in weird places because you are always hot and dirty. (Will leave this to your imagination!).

Effort

You can’t just get in your car and go somewhere. You have to:

-         decide to go out

-         get dressed – hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, hat, backpack, money

-         lock up the boat, don’t forget to shut the hatches because if you don’t it is sure to rain

-         unlock the dinghy from the boat because somebody could have tried to steal it from you the night before

-         get in the dinghy

-         climb back up into the boat because you forgot something, unlock the boat, get the thing you forgot, lock up and climb back in the dinghy.

-         Get to the dinghy dock if you are lucky, beach the dinghy if you are not

-         Lock up the dinghy so somebody can’t steal it. Try to part it away from any kids who use it as a swim platform and play off it. Throw out a stern anchor if there is a nasty swell and the dinghy dock is so shitty that it could  put a big hole in your expensive dink.

-         By this time you are all hot and sweaty, probably salty too and all out of sorts

-         Get to the bus/van/hitchhike or whatever you have to do to get to town

-         If you decide to get groceries, you must each carry a backpack, and canvas/net bags, and a cooler bag, because you have to cart all your provisions back to the boat on your very own backs.

-         Maybe you can get an ice cream in town and this makes it all worthwhile

Pack Mules

Everything that you need or consume, or that that the boat needs must be hauled manually. Groceries have to be carried by back packs and carry bags to your dingy, loaded into the dingy, moved from the dingy to the boat & finally stored. The same is true of diesel, gas, propane and water. Most places you can’t get your boat in to fuel up. You have to lug heavy containers of fuel by dinghy back to the boat, lift them onto the boat (sometimes they fall into the water and it really puts you out of sorts) and filter into your tanks. This is the way it is and you get used to it… kind of.

Security

You are always conscious that locals and maybe even other cruisers are going to steal your “Stuff”. In San Blas we almost had our dingy stolen…. we were lucky…..it was locked on to the back of our boat by a 3/8” cable. The whole idea of getting your “Stuff” stolen forces you to lock everything up. This means chaining & locking your jerry jugs, dinghy, generator, and every other thing you can think of all the time.  This is  a lot of work. Sometimes (not often) you lock yourselves into the boat for the night because the bad guys can sneak into your boat and rob you while you sleep!