Author: Lucy Vannini

                                                 Changes                       

                                            By: Lucy Vannini

                There are lots of difference when you live on a boat. No matter how hard you try, it won’t be the same as a house. Some things you wish you have but you don’t, some things are way harder. There are lots of different tweaks and changes you have to make when you live on a boat. Changing your lifestyle completely one might say. The benefits overweigh all the cost another might say. On a house you can’t swing on a hammock over the water, on a boat you can’t walk to school everyday with friends. You can decide what you think, but first let me explain life on a boat versus one on a house.

                Changes are hard. They sometimes make you sad. Everyday routines vary a lot depending where and what you live on.  Yes, we all live on Earth, yes we all live on the same ground, but how we do it, is the key. It makes everyone special, I am going to start by talking about how that affects me.

                Morning is about the same. You wake up. What you do differs though. In a boat you normally wake up do all the morning things; brush teeth, comb hair, etc. When you get up, you don’t have to rush to be out of the door by 8 o’clock but you do have to start school at a reasonable time. Yes, sometimes reasonable time stretches when we wake up at 11 o’clock the day after we started early. In the morning on a boat there is a lot more freedom to when you start things as long as you finish.

                Mid-day (school time). School. It is like a octopus in the waves. It always is there sucking on to you. But….you can make school more fun then the word “school.”  Homeschooling is like regular school plus lots more attention and freedom minus spending some time with your friends. An average school day on homeschooling is about 3-4 hours versus the long and ever lasting 7 hour school days. So, in my opinion that’s a plus. Another difference is that in homeschooling you can work wherever you want and can take more breaks. You can also play music, chew gum, and more things that you wouldn’t  necessarily be allowed to do in public school.

            Being able to move. I would have never thought before I moved on a boat that your home could get stuck in a sandbar or tangled up in riverweed. Being able to move your home wherever you want is fun! You can be in Alabama one day, and Florida the next. There are always new fun experiences in the new places. You can see lots of differences in what you do in just two states. Although some places aren’t as great as others, you can always not spend as much time there, and spend more time in fun places.

             Cooking, whether you are on a boat or house you still cook, you can cook the same things. The difference is how easy it is. Houses are easier to cook in, but boats give you more opportunities to cook things all the way from scratch. For example an dinner at your house might be pizza for example. So, you can just Domino’s and get it delivered. But on a boat you can make the crust and sauce and add toppings. On a boat you can make things from scratch that are better because you don’t get the option of ordering pizza to your boat.

     Friends.  They are special. You miss them. On a boat it is a little different making friends. Basically any kids you meet become  you friends pretty quick. On the river, there was one other kid that we barely even met,  we were with them for two days. We didn’t have that much time to meet each other unfortunately. So, once we get to the Caribbean, we will get to meet new people and kids. Both from the islands, and boaters. Basically, once we become friends with the boaters we can maybe change our path according to where they are going. So right now, I haven’t met that many friends.

     There are lots of differences when you live on a boat. No matter how hard you try, it won’t be the same as living on a house. Some things you wish you had but you don’t, some things are way harder. There are lots of different tweaks and changes you have to make when you live on a boat. Changing your lifestyle completely, one  might say. The benefits overweigh the cost, another might say. On a house you can’t swing over the water on a hammock, but on a boat  you can’t walk to school with friends every day with your friends. Happiness is not a destination, it is a journey.

Number 1.
Never ever, ever, drive into the weeds even if it is  20 Ft deep

Number 2.
Always leave at least 5 Ft of wiggle room for your depth.

WARNING: SOME THINGS MIGHT BE A LITTLE EXAGGERATED!

So imagine you are motoring on down the Ten Toms and it is time to anchor. We start going to narrow path with some splotches of seaweed grossness stuff, ‘xcept it isn’t seaweed because it is growing in the river. Anyway, it is long and green and it kinda looked like green mermaid hair from the stories. We kept on going in not realizing we were slowing down. SUDDENLY, BAM, we stopped dead in our tracks. I looked around stunned by the loss of movement and went to ask Dad what happened. And when he said we were stuck, I saw a tow coming! Don’t you worry though because we didn’t get stuck in the channel, a barge wouldn’t be able to get unstuck very easily. So imagine us, practically in the middle of nowhere on our boat with white smoke puffing out of the starboard (right) engine. It wasn’t just a couple of puffs every so often, no, it was huge puffs with oil coming out in slugs. So you are probably thinking right now, are you still there, no way! We got out, thanks to Mom’s idea of using the anchor! WHAT A LONG DAY, IT COULDN’T GET ANY WORSE!

WELLLLLLLLLLL, I was wrong! It did get worse, way worse!
Mississippi has a curse with us I am telling you. SPOILER ALERT: Thank gosh we made it out of Mississippi! Anyway, we are going along our destination, a marina, that just closed down, what luck. So we are going to go stop at a little anchorage in a cute town and walk around then get back on the water. So as we approached there, I was writing a letter and going on like so until, “CREEEEEEEEEEESHUCCCCHHHHHHH” and a jolt. Well, you can imagine how I felt then. I got my life jacket and shoes on in a hurry and ran out on the deck.
“What in the world was that?” I asked, somewhat terrified.
My answer was we are on the ground and we might need a tow boat. OH NO! I thought, this can’t be good. We tried and tried with all of our strategies! We didn’t budge. We decided it would be best to call a tow. Fortunately the wait was only an hour. So we decided to eat lunch, don’t worry our luck was with us. We ate a good and successful lunch. The tow boat came, I was inside with Willie, I heard some occasional shouting but everything turned out okay!

Wish us better luck, until next time,
the one and only
Lucy

Hi everyone reading this,

This is Lucy! To start off I am going to explain how all is now. It honestly seems like we have been living on our boat forever and we havenever been anywhere else. IWe hve finally got everything down-school, anchoring, docking, etc for the most part! It is really hard to believe that when I am writing this we are rigth here in Tennessee! TENNESSEE! It seems that we are just going from place to place so fast. Well, if you think about it though, we are going EXTREMELY slow compared to a car! So lets do some math-if you haven’t had enough after this I can always hook you up! It seems tht we alway have a math problem to solve on the boat! Back to topic……..

the average a car goes is about 60 mph, right

well here we are going 6-7 mph!

So if you do that math you can find that we actually go about 10x slower in a boat then a car!! Now going in cars seem unsafe-WAY TO FAST!!!!!!!!!!

But it is still hard for me to take in that we are going to another place everyday and we will be in Florida in about 2 weeks. The traveling part is so cool- even though it is cold. Taking about cold…….

WEATHER:

So in a house you normally just check the weather each day or for the week to decide small choices. “Will I wear shorts or pants today?” “Capris maybe” or bigger things like, “Will softball be canceled?” “Can I walk or bike to school today?”

Well if you every decided to move on a boat, first off your parents have to quit their jobs then you can make bigger descions abou the weather!!! Also you can stand outside and steer in the rain- what Dad has bravely been doing! I probally should sound more convincing…If you stop at marina’s we can plug in our heater and have wifi!!! Just kidding! We all are excited to get some warmweather soon!

Imagine this, you are sitting down in your hammock at the end of  a hard day of either school or work. The sun glistens down on the trees and makes them glow an orangey, rustic color. You gently swing back and forth the wind softly against you. You read a book, or write a blog post, or write in your journal or whatever you want!

Those parts of the day are my favorite, they are priceless.

I decided to end my post with a quote

blog post   

This is a link to the summary of the last few weeks! Hope you enjoy!

Hi, this is Lucy, on Saturday we did our first sail! Here’s the story-from my  perspective:

I woke up late at around 10 and did the usual morning stuff (brush teeth, comb hair, eat breakfast, etc.) After that we started our sail. At first we just motored out of the marina. Right as we got out of the marina the waves started tumbling on our boat. Our boat went up and down each time my stomach jolted. I apparently didn’t have my sea stomach yet!! Me and Willie lay on the ground both of our stomachs hurting!  We changed to sailing a little bit later and from then on my stomach was fine! I sometimes sat on the  bow (front) of the boat on the seats and let my legs dangle untill they got splashed by the cool water.  We had lunch and then continued to our destination in Milwaukee Wisconsin.  Once we got to the place we were going to anchor at, the sound of music was blasted super loud. We knew that the noise wouldn’t be over all night so we decided just to go back. By then it was about 4:45 so we would have to motor to get back before dark.  We motored the way back meeting lots of nice boaters and sailors. We saw a beautiful moon and sunset while we were motoring! (I will post a picture soon) It was very fun!  We came back to the dock and some nice boaters helped us get tied up. When we made it back it was about 9:15. It was very fun to learn some different things to do to sail. I helped with a couple of things. The first time I helped put the sail down and once I helped put it up. I am excited to continue learning lots of things about sailing and how to do it.