Life on the Water
(Page 3 of 4)
October/November 2005
By Ellen Landrum
We store fresh water in a 20-gallon tank under our bunk, and we also carry four 5-gallon jerry cans to give us a reserve of water. Our manual-pump toilet uses seawater to flush into a holding tank. Our kitchen sink has two hand pumps: one for saltwater to give dishes a first rinse, and another for fresh water to give them a final rinse. At the Boston marina, we had access to water on the dock; when we are sailing, we can go 10 days or more on the 40 gallons we carry. That breaks down to 2 gallons per person for each day, which is the common figure used when provisioning for a hiking or camping trip. Eventually, we would like to be able to take care of all our laundry and bathing needs on the boat. With that in mind, we plan to develop a system for collecting rainwater. We’ve seen many methods, from PVC pipes acting as rain gutters to the ever-practical 5-gallon bucket set out on the deck.
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FLORIDA AND BEYOND
We left Boston on Nov. 7, 2004, and spent the better part of six weeks traveling to Beaufort, S.C., where we took a break for Christmas. Then we continued on to the Florida Keys, arriving at the end of January. Our route was down to the Cape Cod Canal, through Buzzards Bay, Block Island Sound and Long Island Sound to New York City, then out to the Atlantic, where we hugged the coasts of New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland until we could join the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) in Norfolk, Va.
From there, the ICW took us south all the way to Miami, where we were finally warm after 2,000 miles of travel. Our routine was to sail about 50 miles a day, though we were able to do two overnight passages when the weather was good. It is a trip done annually by thousands of sailing “snowbirds,” who migrate south with the winter and north with the summer. By leaving late in the season, we avoided much of the traffic on what is essentially a mariner’s coastal highway.
Just as in Boston, we are experiencing the best of both worlds here in the Florida Keys. We have civilization at our fingertips. Using our 8-foot dinghy — which is powered either by rowing or its 3.3-horsepower outboard engine — we can go ashore for showers, laundry, boat parts, food and, of course, cold beer. On the boat, we can spend uninterrupted hours reading, writing and doing boat maintenance. When we’re not working day jobs, we live frugally so that we can spend more days exploring before stopping to find gainful employment. I’ve taken a number of different jobs, from a tour guide aboard a “duck” boat in Boston, to my present position at the Outward Bound school in Key Largo. Here, I work as coordinator of food, gear and transportation for outdoor courses in the Everglades and central Florida.
