Wordless Wednesday around the marina...

So do you like have a bathroom...?

Well yes, yes I do.

It always makes me want to laugh hysterically when someone asks me this.

Really? Do you think I'm a magical creature that doesn't make waste? Do I smell so bad you assume I never shower? (Yeah. That's right. I alluded to the fact that I use a toilet. Get over it.)

I think what they really mean to ask is, "What's your bathroom situation?"

I have a marine toilet, commonly called a head, on board. (Remember when I had to rebuild it?)

However, because my marina is awesome, I live RIGHT NEXT to the bathrooms. There is one boat that's slightly closer, but I couldn't begin to keep my boat in his slip (he's on the sea wall and my boat is too short for that!)

I have a personal access card to use one of four (or two in the winter) bathrooms.

 Each bathroom is its own room with a fold-down seat for putting clothes on, a toilet, a sink and a giant shower stall. Bathroom No. 3 is my personal fave because it has a really nice showerhead. And it's one of the ones only accessible with an access card (and therefore not open all day long for everyone to use).

So yes, readers. I have a bathroom. And I know how to use it!

Ice in the harbor...

People ask me all the time about keeping warm on the boat. All. The. Time. I don't mind, for the most part. Except when people flat out tell me I'm crazy. Which only happens two or three times a week, so it's all good.

And people wonder why I don't frequently tell people right away that I live aboard.

Anyway, one of the most frequently made assumptions about where I live (in the outer harbor in Baltimore) is that the water doesn't ice over.

Au contraire, readers, au contraire. It ices over constantly. It's been a cold, cold winter for the Chesapeake Bay, as evidenced by a huge fish kill of Spot.

It's difficult to see in this picture. I took it standing in the cockpit, facing out over the stern. I left the swim ladder in the picture so that you could see that it is in focus. The lines and ripples in the water are pieces of ice. (I had a surprisingly difficult time trying to capture the ice in a picture, so bear with me here.)

The marina where I live now doesn't have bubblers. A bubbler is a common piece of equipment in the Chesapeake Bay region and my marina in Washington, D.C., had them, as did my the marina in Pasadena, Md. Marinas use them to aerate the water around a dock. If ice freezes around pilings, the pressure can move the pilings. Marinas are always quite insistent that the bubblers are for the benefit of the dock and not the benefit of your boat -- liability issue I guess -- so some people buy them for their boats. I think this is a bit of a waste of money in the Bay.

Since I'm not in the Inner Harbor, the ice doesn't get too thick here. It gets just thick enough for ducks to sit on, but not so thick that it can't be easily broken with a stone. Not that I've tried that.

This brings me to the No. 1 rule for ice in marinas: Never break the ice around your boat.

You might ask why.

Well, I'll tell you.

Broken ice is quite sharp and can damage your hull if it's broken -- at least it will scratch a fiberglass hull and can even leave gouges. A lot of new boaters think they should break the ice -- this is wrong. Any good marina will send you lots of e-mails over the winter urging you to please, for God's sake, DO NOT BREAK THE ICE.

Living on the Potomac in D.C., the water iced over and stayed iced for most of the winter. My boat was fine.

Now I will admit, the sound of ice breaking at night or cracking against the hull in high wind is disturbing. But you must resist the urge to break the ice. Your boat (and your wallet) will thank you for it...

NOTE: If you live in a place where the ice builds up, buying a bubbler may be for you. For me, it's not necessary. The water doesn't ice over very thick here because the Bay is tidal and I live very close to open water.

The social life...

Instead of writing about winterizing, like I probably should, I've decided instead to write about life in the marina. I didn't take any pictures of winterizing the engine anyway. I was too busy trying to remember all the steps.

So life in the marina.

Yesterday I was hanging out and running errands with my friend Andrew. He had some days off left to take before the end of the year and so we decided to get together and run errands, see friends, do some boat work and go climbing. We come back to the marina from West Marine and Costco and lunch with Andrew's brother, Mark, of the famous MarkandChristine duo. And what do we see at the marina? Why, two people sitting at the picnic table, smoking cigarettes and having coffee!

I jump out of the car to introduce myself. The marina staff is on a two-week vacation and I'm a little more starved for human interaction than I usually am.

"Hi! Do you live here? I'm Allie. I live in that little boat," I say, pointing. "I've been just dying to meet some of the other liveaboards here. I knew there were some, but I haven't met any yet."

I said this all in one breath.

It took a moment for the new couple to digest what I had just said and get up to shake hands.

They, too, seemed a little starved for company.

We engaged in a discussion about space heaters. They examined the one I had just purchased from the West Marine. We discussed the relative merits of West Marine-brand space heaters versus hardware store space heaters versus propane heaters.

And then, in the truly attention-starved manner of all liveaboards I've ever met in winter, we exchanged phone numbers and a promise to meet up that night over a bottle of rum.

The social norms in a marina are not complex. They are based mostly in a desire to meet someone -- anyone -- other than whomever lives in the boat with you. And liveaboards like me who live alone? Forget about it. We're all dying for discussion with something other than a duck.

People come in and out all the time because they travel the world, or the Bay, or they're visiting for a week. Whatever it is. So you meet someone in the boat yard and just end up hanging out. There was a guy in my marina this summer who has since gone to the Caribbean. I let him borrow my hose and he, in turn, checked on me during storms and invited me over for wine and chips. Never mind that he had a daughter my age. We had a grand time discussing charts and navigation. Then there was another guy over the summer who liked to sit on his deck chair next to my boat and chit-chat about boat prices. Once, when I went to get my mail, an older couple, despairing of their taxi ever arriving asked me for a ride to the Inner Harbor. When I lived in Washington, D.C., there were always people I'd met in the bathroom or the laundry room dropping by for a drink or a chat.

I'm no sociologist, but I think it's something to do with the prospect of getting to talk about something you love -- with someone who hasn't just spent a long period of time confined to a small space with you.

So what I'm trying to say is that inviting someone you just met to your home isn't strange at all and I eagerly accepted.

Around 8, I got the call and went over.

Now, what I have neglected to mention is that one of my main points of attraction to these people, besides companionship, was the fact that they have pets.

Not just any pets.

They have two cats -- and a pet squirrel.

So we sat up until 2 a.m. playing with their pets and drinking tea with rum and eating cake.

Life in the marina? It's really not so bad.

The haul-out...

So in my last entry about the horrific nightmare that is winterization, I mentioned that I was having my boat hauled out by the marina.

Well Wednesday morning it happened. I was on "flex" as I live in the marina and wasn't too worried about when they'd get to me. I got up early just in case I ended up with one of the first slots and wandered up to the marina office and discovered that Misty would be hauled out at 10:15 a.m. I could live with that. I went back down to the boat to make coffee, have some cereal and get my camera ready. I'd never seen Misty out of the water before. The last time she'd been out of the water, about two years before, I had been away at school and hadn't really wanted much to do with the boat. (I feel guilty sitting in that same boat typing this now -- sorry, Misty!)

Anyway, 10:15 rolled around and coffee in hand, I stepped out to meet the yard guys, who wanted to know if I wanted to drive the boat over or be towed. I wanted to be towed. I wanted to take pictures. Plus I was super nervous. After asking very thorough questions about the location of my keel (fin) and the location of my stuffing box (just ahead of the wheel) and my knot meter (nooooo clue), the guys were ready to tow my boat over and haul her out.



Basically what happens, for the uninitiated, is that they tow the boat to a patch of water with concrete dock on three sides. A large sling apparatus can be driven onto the parallel sides of the dock and a sling can be pulled underneath the boat. Then the boat is lifted up and the slings are driven onto solid ground. I just did a short haul, so the boat stayed in the slings. If I'd been coming out for winter storage, they would have used blocks to brace the boat from the sides and stand her on her keel. But we'll talk more about that later.



I was actually surprised at the lack of barnacles. Sure, she was a little scummy, but not heavily covered in barnacles. This was a good sign.



The marina guys gave Misty a good and thorough power washing (have I mentioned I love this boatyard?) And changed the zinc for me. I'd offered to do the zinc myself, but you can't do any work on your boat when she's in the slings. Liability issue or something. Remember how I talked about winter storage? Putting the boat on blocks? Well whoever painted Misty last was very very lazy. That square block of lighter paint on the bottom? That's where the last boatyard we used didn't move the blocks to paint underneath them. Come spring I'll do the bottom painting myself. Yeesh.



In this picture, you can see the propeller clearly. The knob above the propeller on the shaft is the zinc. Zinc is what's called a "sacrificial." Basically, the zinc is there so that rust will eat the cheap piece of zinc and not the expensive-to-replace propeller. They unscrewed the old one and replaced the new. Zinc, in a boat heavily used, should be replaced once or twice a year. Three times is a little excessive. Twice is extra safe. Once is fine. Doing it less than once a year is not recommended. Of course we've never done that. Ahem.



Anyway, once she was all scrubbed and zinc'd, they dropped her back in the water and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

It's funny. I see the same guys sling boats in and out of the water without mishap every day. But when it's your boat? I don't think anyone could help but worry...

The nerve...

So I dropped home today in the middle of the day to get something I forgot. It's pretty nice to be living so close to work, I must admit.

And I'm walking down the dock and I see a new boat next to me. I say hey and nod at the guy working on her and I keep walking.

As soon as I set foot on my boat, the guy goes, "Oh, I'm using your hose."

I look over and darn if he hasn't gotten my hose all uncoiled from the tower and connected it to his own hose to make it long enough to reach his boat. And his hose didn't look like the nicest hose on the block either. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I DRINK the water out of my hose. I don't want it connected all willy nilly to suspect hoses that may or may not have the plague.

"Sorry," he says completely in a completely unapologetic tone.

"Um, it's OK, I guess," I say. "Please be careful with it, it's my only hose and I need it for my water."

OK, so maybe that was a dumb thing to say. "I need it for water"? Really? What else do people use hoses for?

And in a totally bombastic tone, he goes, "I'm just filling my tank, I'll be done in a second."

What? Excuse me? You are using my hose and you're not even going to be polite about that fact that you're using my personal hose from my tower without permission?

I tell ya, the nerve of these sailors. Bold as brass.

And he didn't even coil it back up right.

This is a great example of my the principle of liveaboard life in a marina. The liveaboard is exponentially more likely to have gear used without permission or borrowed because the liveaboard, in fact, lives aboard and is exponentially more likely to have stuff for other marina denizens to steal or borrow. The more stuff, the greater the chances of having it beggared away. The more time you spend on a boat, the greater the chances of having more stuff.

See where I'm going with this?

I'll tell you where I'm going with this. I'm going to Wal Mart to get a lock for my damn hose!

The neighborhood....

So a couple of weeks ago I set out to leave Oak Harbor Marina in Pasadena and head to Baltimore. Since I'm working in Baltimore full time now, I figured that living there would not only save on gas money since the commute from Oak Harbor sucked, but I'd also get to live in Baltimore, my favorite place on earth.

So I called around to all the marinas in Baltimore and kept a list of pros and cons on each marina. Categories included: Price, Internet access, location of bathrooms/niceness of bathrooms and overall location.

Tidewater Marina won in most categories. They have no Internet, but are significantly cheaper than most and were offering a slip close to the very nice bathhouse. Sold! Dad called Oak Harbor and they easily were able to rent our slip out (which meant we got our deposit for the 2010 season back -- to go straight into the range fund.)

I shanghaied yet another unsuspecting crew -- this time my dad and my boyfriend Jon. That's Jon in the center of the picture... and my dad's rear end off to the left there. Hi dad!

We actually had a beautiful trip. It was warm and the wind was blowing over our beam the whole time, so we were able to reach right into Baltimore. Overall it was exceedingly pleasant.



But now to the point of my post. In addition to being my home, Tidewater is a serious boatyard in a very industrial piece of the harbor. Want to see my new neighbors? Coincidentally, Jon snapped all of the pictures in this post since I left my camera home (well, I took the picture of him and he took the rest):





My other new neighbors? The cruise ships. It's like living in a row house in the middle of mansion-land...