The Patchwork Boat: Living Aboard

We're finally living aboard. It's been about a week since we moved, but a combination of internet problems and school work has kept me from updating the blog. The move went surprisingly smooth; my parents hired 4 college students, and we put all of the contents of our house into the basement of I Street, a vacant apartment in Cornwall, and the boat in only four hours. In fact, it went so quickly and efficiently that I doubt we'll be able to remember where we put anything. Amazingly, all of our clothes, utensils, cooking hardware, tools, and a few bits of art managed to fit on Misogi. She has an amazing amount of weird-shaped storage tucked into every possible nook and cranny. There is a hand-sized door in the galley that leads to a cavernous cupboard about the size of a small dog, a drawer under my bed that is a 7-sided polygon, and closets with small doors that turn out to be big enough to stand up in.

We hired a professional cleaning person to try to salvage the carpet and counter tops, and somehow they succeeded. The boat is cleaner than it's been in 9 months and smells like food and diesel instead of wet dog. My bed is very comfortable, although because of the list of the boat (we're still trying to figure out howto fix that) I keep falling out. All the sinks have hot and cold running water, and the toilets are... acceptable. All in all, Misogi is pretty comfortable, and mostly dry inside.

Unfortunately, not everything has gone so well. The refrigerator barely keeps food cold, the oven and range didn't work until yesterday, and the diesel furnace is too sketchy and dangerous to use. So, we have no heat. A leak has developed under the hatch to the flybridge, which is really quite vexing because it was a part of the boat that we rebuilt. I have a plan for fixing the leak (caulk everywhere!), and the heating issue will hopefully be solved by a new furnace and wood stove before temperatures drop below freezing.

For those of you curious about what Misogi looks like inside, I tried to take some pictures. There's not very many, because I discovered that most of the rooms are too small and awkwardly shaped to photograph, but here they are: