Livaboard - better than deadaboard

Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Sat 4 Jan 2014 03:14
Liveaboard, that is the term for people that live on board their boats.
I remember those strange boats that would stay in a marina in Sweden when everybody else was gone.
It was a boat from USA once, they froze in the ice and as the snow covered the boat and the only thing you could see was the
chimney sticking up above the snow, smoke coming from it, showing somebody in there was trying to stay warm...
We have seen them underway, the boats that lost all the dignity to be at sea. Covered with old stuff on deck, then there is a cover on top of it all.
Boats where the steering wheel has been taken away because it is in the way.
So now we are liveaboards... Yesterday I paid the kids for every toy they could get rid off.
Space is limited to everybody, but on a boat it becomes more significant. Our life is foldable and inflatable.
We are talking about things like bikes and dinghies but also life itself.
You do not buy a thing unless it is flat like a sheet of paper or is foldable.
We made the mistake of giving Andreas a Playmobile pirate ship for christmas. Well that thing is bigger then our dinghy. Now it sits in the sofa, and if somebody wants to sit there it is moved to a bed and when somebody wants to sleep in that bed it goes to the bathroom. We have to take a shower with a pirate ship that is taking most of the space inside a curtain that wants to stick to your body ( a result of knowing how tight it is?)
Being a liveaboard was normal when we were a big bunch sailing along the Pacific. Now we are on our own and people are extremely friendly, but we are known and watched upon. Standing in the line in the Supermarket one day, an old man in front of me started to chat. He was kind, because he asked what accent I have, -an American?- -.Well no, I'm from Sweden, we live on a boat in the marina-
-Oh I heard about you...

Welcome off board