January 24, 2003. Ashley and I packed up the car and drove down the road as we had done several times before. Only this time we wouldn’t be coming back. The house had not sold yet, but we had made the decision to go ahead and move aboard. Damon had already been on the boat now for three months.
The road trip took only three and one half hours. We arrived that afternoon. When Damon come out to the car to help unpack… well, you could have knocked him over with a feather! Apparently I didn’t scale down as efficiently as he would have hoped. The car was packed to the roof! And the trunk, practically exploded when it was opened! I wish I had had a dime for every time I heard …’We’ll never get all this onboard!’.
There was no rush to get everything aboard. So I decided to take a little at a time. The biggest bulk of what filled the car was probably clothing. Since we had sold all of our luggage, everything was packed in garbage bags. How sheik! I brought them down one bag at a time. We did have, according to other boats, a rather large hanging locker. This is where most of the clothes were going to go. Then under the Pullman berth…that’s a bed, there are six larger drawers. After being in the Navy for five years, I had learned that folding and rolling clothes is the only way to make maximum use of a small space. So everything did get put away. We did have to go though everything again and decided what should be hung to avoid massive wrinkles. There wasn’t a whole lot that we wanted hung, but after carefully surveying the situation we decided that we needed shelving. So we hired a carpenter to come in and build some shelves for us in our hanging locker and the lockers in the head and the aft cabin.It was absolutely amazing how much more efficiently we were able to use the spaces after the shelving was in place! Not only did everything get stowed away, but we actually had room to spare!
In the galley, this was another place for creative packing and stowing. After talking with other live aboards around in the area, I discovered that if you are good at, and or enjoy puzzles, you will have no problem stowing items. A key reminder I think is to evaluate each item by how much you use it. Those items that are not used as often, they pre put in the place that is harder to get to. Also, before you actually begin stowing your items, carefully examine all the storage places. In some spots, the floor boards come up, you’ll be surprised how much you may be able to get under them! Another space sometimes overlooked, if you have a few drawers stacked on top of each other, take one out and then reach in and feel behind one of them and see if that space could be used. Sometimes you might have an item that can stand up behind the drawers.
On Bruadair, we have in our galley a dry pantry storage area. It’s located in the corner of the counter that also houses the sink. It’s loaded from the top and goes all the way down below the floorboards. To get the bottom you almost have to have either someone holding your ankles or a lifeline tied to you should you fall in. It has, and still is to this day, been a challenge to keep organized. I ended up going to Wal-Mart and purchasing several Tupperware type containers. These containers all have lids with handles on them, and they are stackable. I used our label maker and have them designated into different categories. I did it this way, because a loose can travel quickly. And they usually travel down! So these containers hold most of the can goods that we use. I have them divided by veggies, soups and stews, and tomato products. Then on the shelf that this compartment has, I have two other smaller Tupperware boxes. One is for rice and pasta’s, and the other is for dried soups and sauce mixes. We had brought with us from the house our vacuum sealer. If you don’t already have one, you should get one! In my pasta box, I was able to get ten boxes of the family size Rice-a-roni, and six or seven boxes of Pasta Roni and then a few boxes of Zatarain’s Dirty rice’s. Not to mention all the Hamburger Helpers and Tuna Helpers! So far this system has worked well for us. And yes, I still get frustrated because to get one item you have to unload the whole thing. Then after it’s all put away, invariably I will remember an item that I forgot and have to do the whole process all over again.
The other nightmare that I’ve been dealing with in the galley is our ice box. Shortly after we purchased Bruadair we converted the ice box to an actual refrigerator. I was excited about this change! Carrying blocks of ice gets old rather quickly! After installing our Nova Cool system we now had one other problem to deal with. Due to the configuration of the ice box and the placement of the condenser/freezer box, we started encountering freezing problems. There is nothing like frozen lettuce when you are really wanting a salad! That or a frozen orange! So we had to be careful of where we stacked items so as not to have them freeze. But when you have to dig to find the Grey Poupon, things sometimes get rotated and your not aware of it. Then other problem would be when a Tupperware bowl would sometimes leak and then discovering it a couple days later either by smell or finding an item stuck to the bottom of the ice box in the goop. Either way, it did not make for a pleasant day of cleaning! And after about the third time I knew I had to do something to solve this problem! Thank goodness we know other live aboards!
I was visiting our friends Dan Schwartz and Jaime Uscocovich on their Baba 35. We were exchanging different ideas of ‘helpful hints’ one day, when I had mentioned my dilemma with the refrigerator. Jaime got all excited to show me what he had done. Now as I had mentioned before, every boat seemed to have a different interior. Well the same holds true for refrigerators too. Dan and Jaime’s refrigerator is almost a perfect box with no sloping sides or weird angles that he had to deal with. Nor does their refrigerator have a front/side loading door as we have on Bruadair. Jaime’s solution was to use tension rods, that they had found at Wal-Mart, and used these as supports and on top of them he had cut down the white plastic cutting boards and used them as shelves! After seeing this, I just wanted to slap the forehead and yell, ‘why didn’t I think of that!?’ It was absolutely ingenious! Or at least I thought so! And my friend Pam Tingley who happened to be with me, she and her husband Dan live beside us on a Gulfstar 37, she was amazed as well. Now armed with inspiration and a clear vision of what to do, I headed back to Bruadair!
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