Posted on

The Real Deal Winter

As Minnesotans, we’re known for winter. We’re also known for Prince and “uffda” and lakes. That’s about where the list ends. I’ve come to believe that we’re on to something here: keeping our state low-key-cool. We don’t tell them about the perfect summer temperatures and the kickass small town festivals that go with it or the stuff heaven is made of in a Boundary Waters getaway. We don’t clue them in on the magic of the North Shore, that our cheese curds are better than Wisconsin’s, or that people are, like, super nice here. We’ll just let them (whomever “them” is?) go on believing that we’re all Grumpy Old Men with unbearable winters and sports teams that suck.

There is another secret tucked in to the upper Mississippi River valleys; one that even the locals haven’t heard of. No, it’s not the ancient paddlefish (as I’m sure you all were thinking). It’s the little pockets of liveaboards who dot the river’s shores. There’s not a lot of us but bye golly good gosh molly, we’re here alright- rain or shine, snowy or fine… (that sentence got weird). Anyway, the cat’s out of the bag: Minnesota has humans that live on boats all year; yes, winter included.

If there is ever a winter to look back on and think “man, that was the real deal”, it was this one. Winter of 2018-2019 was a beast. It had it all: the week-long negative 40 degree stretch and the record setting snowfall in the month of February. Then, out of nowhere, right before the spring equinox… boom, the melt! FYI: record setting snow one month and a fast melt the next = major flooding. More on that next time.

As far as weather goes, it takes a lot to shock a Minnesotan. We’re a hardy bunch that have bonfires in the winter, sit on buckets on frozen ponds with a pole in hand for fun, and shovel the driveway in shorts as soon as 30 degrees hits. In December, Michael observed a group of five die-hards surfing along the icy shores of Lake Superior…that’s some next level hardiness.

However, somehow, I never fail to surprise a fellow Land of 10,000 Laker when I tell them, “I live on a boat.” There’s always a strange pause like they’re trying to gauge if I just made a weird joke. The most common follow-up question during this winter season: “but you can’t live there now?” In an almost scripted way, I rattle off a cliff notes version of answers to all the questions I know will be asked next. Those include: is it actually in the water, does it freeze, how do you stay warm, is it warm enough, do you have water, do you have electricity, do you have a bathroom, and always, always, always, at the very end of the conversation: “huh, I didn’t know you could do that.”

Yesterday, I frantically helped my neighbor disassemble his ice rink and warming huts when he told me “The city got a barge to come break up all this ice; they’re coming within the hour.” They came in twenty minutes.

As we watched this barge demolish two-foot-thick ice, a woman named Linda came by. She wore a canvas vest like mine and was about thirty years my senior. I liked her instantly as she was curious and candid with an obvious wealth of river knowledge. She did puff hard on a cigarette as we spoke, but hey, no one’s perfect. As we talked, I found out that she lived aboard her boat year round in this marina for ten years. She still comes by to walk her dog and see how things have changed, or haven’t. We talk about the change of seasons, and we exchange the same ideas about the peace and calm of winter and the slightly overwhelming feeling that takes over as the boats get slipped back in for the summer. I laugh when she says, “You have to allow an hour for the five minutes it should to take you to walk to your car.” I had said that exact sentiment to a friend of mine that morning. I had explained to her that “yeah, summer is great with all the people back and all the energy, but as each boat drops in, a bit of our winter serenity leaves with it. In the summer, you have at least half a dozen people to talk to between you and your vehicle; you need to allow an extra forty minutes to walk down the dock.” Summer is a blast, but in the winter, the vibrant human energy leaves for land, and the marina belongs to the wild of Mother Nature again. Linda gets it.  

So, this winter had it’s usuals: the motley crew of ten boats that house thirteen people, three dogs, and one cat. We saw each other only rarely as we scuttled from boat to car to bathroom to boat to grocery store to boat to work to boat. We mustered the occasional outing: a bonfire on New Year’s Eve or a walk in the woods. Neighbor Eric was the star of getting out in the elements with his pond hockey team lighting up the far side of the marina on even the coldest nights. The winter wildlife sightings also included the usuals: beavers playing above and below the ice shelves, a coyote’s deer kill in the middle of the river’s frozen main channel, and bald eagles perched in the cottonwoods. There was also this big debate: was that a coyote or a wolf that Brody (Neighbor Mike’s German Shepherd) was playing with in the woods? As we eat chicken pork seafood gumbo on Ben and Pam’s boat after an icy sunset kayak session, a consensus is made. It was either a robust coyote well fed from easy dumpster food or a young wolf lost in the big city. So, the consensus was that there was no consensus.

This winter also had many unusuals. The unusuals included a morning so icy that Neighbor Sam couldn’t get his truck up the hill to get out of the marina. He had to walk up the hill and Uber to work. Then there was January’s polar vortex deal that handed us wind chill temperatures down to 60 below. February brought us the snowiest February to date with 39 inches falling on Saint Paul. It was the fourth snowiest month of all months in recorded history here.

So, how does boat life fare in these conditions?… perfectly alright. A small place has small needs. We have two electric heaters and one propane heater aboard. We used all three once on the very coldest night, but one or two of those usually did the trick. Eight of the twelve windows were covered with Reflectix, a double bubble reflective foil that works to keep the heat where it belongs. The other four single pane windows were left as is so we didn’t feel like cavemen. Mental health matters when you exist within ten feet of your spouse for four good months.

The most popular questions regarding winter life aboard revolve around intake and output: do we have access to water and how do we expel that intake. In other words: how are we drinking and where do we shit. Before the freeze hits, all water sources are turned off except for one hose or series of hoses that lies deep below the water’s surface where it won’t freeze and runs across the whole of the marina to reach us. It would be about three hundred feet of hose.  The hose runs up to the middle of the dock to meet the needs of all thirteen humans, three dogs, and one cat. The hose must be left on to trickle just enough water through to prevent the hose from freezing to a stop. There are two things that can and have gone wrong with this one and only hose, the hose we all depend on for our sole life-giving water source. The first of these happened last winter when someone turned the water completely off after use and left the hose to freeze shut. Just like that, the whole community was waterless until the spring’s thaw. The second thing that can go wrong with our precious well is that someone can simply drop the hose in to the dark abyss of the Mississippi waters never to be recovered. We had a close call like this in November when I came home to four of my neighbors gathered around a dock finger fishing around with boat hooks. I walked in to a tense situation in which someone had dropped the hose in. The group knew approximately where the drop occurred and had been fishing around for some time. One neighbor asked why it was moved in the first place when it was originally secured tight elsewhere. Others were in quiet desperation, hoping this wouldn’t end our water supply already when winter had hardly even started. In a moment of good fortune, the hose was recovered and tied tight again with a pact amongst us all not to move it. The boat owner’s own hose must be brought to the anchored hose and connected there rather than detaching the precious anchored hose which would risk another drop-in and result in a community-wide water famine.

So, having a working water source, that is step one. We have a twenty gallon holding tank under our bow that we fill with this water. A water pump transports that water to the five gallon water heater and to our sinks. To get the water from the holding tank to our mouths or dishes or wherever also has it’s problems. If it’s less than ten degrees outside, the water pump does nothing. If it’s above ten degrees but below freezing, the pipes might be frozen as the water pump tries to push water through. We’ve had a pipe bursting incident twice this way. If we do get water from the sink but the ice or snow is frozen around the through hull were the sink water exits, our sink fills with water until we break the ice and unfreeze the water sitting in the exit pipe. Basically, we have a fully operating water system for about 35 percent of the winter months.

Alright, next question. “How do ya shit?” It’s a common liveaboard practice to avoid poops aboard altogether. It’s ideal to have a system that can handle all butts and everything that comes out of them, but even if you do, it lands in a contained system that requires a pump out. If you have a moving boat, pump outs are a breeze. You go to the gas dock, buy a touch of gas so you’re pump out is free, and get the pump hooked up to your holding tank’s deck fitting to suck out all the good stuff. In the winter, it’s not as accomodating. Our marina offers pump outs that come to you every few weeks but that pumpout date might not land on or near the date that your holding tank is full and starts to smell, and it costs two hundred dollars for the season.

Our holding tank recently had a particularly stinky issue with a malfunctioning venting system. Basically, our toilet burped up every smell that went into it. So, Michael and I made the decision to avoid boat poops altogether, and instead, hike our butts to the port-a-potty or to the marina’s shop to take care of business. Basically, our daily deliverance require much more forethought these days. After a stint of peeing into a pickle jar (I don’t want to talk about it), we changed our output system altogether. We didn’t want to rely any longer on the bi- or tri-weekly pumpout, and we were not loving the poorly ventilated system that burped back at us. We decided on a more primitive but less dependent situation. We got a five gallon portable toilet with a flush feature for seventy bucks. When the waste compartment is full, it’s emptied in to the port-a-potty up the dock: easy peasy, cheap, and no stink. Perhaps it’s the pickle jar experience talking, but to me, this is luxury.

Well, now that we got the intake and output talk out of the way, where do we go next? I mentioned Neighbor Eric’s killer ice rink within the marina. I’ve never been a hockey player nor can I really skate but his pond hockey situation makes me think that I’m missing something. He’s got lights that surround the rink and a warming hut that has beer and the ambiance of a cozy Irish bar. He skates from boat to rink every night. Sometimes, I fall asleep to the sound of hockey which I love. Other nights, I fall asleep to the sound of someone chipping ice around their boat. Fiberglass boats can’t freeze in or their hull would be done for, so winter requires a bubbler that keeps the water moving and an ice chipping tool (a 2×4 with a rope tied to it is a popular one around here) to augment the process. We are fortunate to have a steel hull on our boat which means we freeze right in; no problem.

So, here’s the conclusion. Winters in Minnesota suck and are also awesome. They make us hardy. They make us grateful. Minnesotans can surf Lake Superior in the winter, and, if we so desire, we can live on a boat in the winter. We can live in a house too, with a driveway that we shovel while wearing a pair of shorts. We can cheer on sports teams that suck and have a good time doing it. We can be nice but sometimes grumpy. We can say “uffda” or whatever word we want in whatever language we want when we wake up to a foot of snow on our car. We can always find a river or lake, but sometimes, it will be frozen. We’ll fish on it anyway. We might have a real deal winter like this one that brings days where we sleep with a scarf on or pee in a pickle jar… am I losing you now? Anyway, let the world believe we’re Grumpy Old Men with shitty sports teams. I like it that way.

Stay low-key-cool Minnesota.

Love Always, Your Neighbors Aboard

Back to all articles
Posted on

Like Berries On Ice Cream

I am finding that life is far more fascinating than I ever imagined. It is not the dramatics that amuse me but the simplicities. It is one good conversation with a stranger. It is the cool breeze rolling off the river and slipping right through my open window as I fall asleep. It is a good meal with a neighbor.

Meet Bob.

Bob and his husband Yader joined our quirky community when they docked their 1976 Carver Mariner across from ours one year ago. In this quick but full year, I hold memories of Yader and I dipping our feet in the waves with Bob at the helm; this quickly turned in to us getting soaked and laughing heartily at our fortunate misfortune. Warning: waves may be larger than they appear. I fondly recall salsa dancing with Bob on the dock on Cinco de Mayo and Yader later leading an impromptu Zumba class; looking back, dance class on the dock seems like a hilarious accident waiting to happen.

Bob loves his boat as obsessively as the rest of us, and I’ve observed many nights of Bob diligently working on one boat project or another. Bob’s favorite form of exercise has become kayaking at dusk- a favorite and often shared activity among the whole dock; this is almost always followed by the nightly ritual of beaver, deer, and bald eagle or blue heron stories as observed whilst at paddle. Sometimes our dock is fortunate enough to hear Bob playing the fiddle as the sun slowly falls behind the trees. As evidenced by these previous paragraphs of goodness, Bob and Yader fit perfectly in to our strange little floating society.

I get this question often- how do you cook on your boat? Our mainstay is the cast iron skillet. We specialize in stir fries, curries, and egg scrambles. We do not have an oven although some boats do; and for the record, no boat actually uses them. We do have a grill but rarely use it; other boat neighbors use the grill religiously. One guy uses his pizza oven for everything. Our friends on a sailboat actually have an outdoor solar oven since they anchor out at all times. My husband makes weird green smoothies comprised of kale, garlic, and beets; it tastes like someone smothered your face in the dirt. Our neighbor Sam makes a similar looking smoothie that I once mistook for the water he rinses his paintbrushes in.

Back to Bob.

Bob is the kind of guy that warms the soul of each person he meets. He tells good stories, plays good music, and listens with an honest intent to learn about another. Bob loves people. He loves his boat, and he loves food. It’s no wonder he would want to combine all his loves in one place- a cookbook for boat people.

I go to Bob’s boat this morning as he prepares “a basic breakfast hash with cowboy caviar”. This is not the first time Bob has cooked for me. He often grabs a neighbor to share a meal with. I love this about him. He has Appalachian music playing lightly as I come aboard.

Bob is coming to his boat a few times a week now to cook a meal in preparation for his upcoming cookbook. Bob has a vision. He wants to appeal to those who want to cook on a boat or in small spaces and do so creating good food with a fresh flavor. Bob plans to complete his vision by next summer, and his neighbors’ bellies are all benefitting in the meantime.

So what about Bob?

Bob works as the Regional Marketing Director for Bon Appetit Management Company; he has worked there for some time now, but he wasn’t always in the food business. Bob first received a degree in Social Work; he did this for seven years but found himself unfulfilled on this path. Bob described going on home visits at a reservation in New Mexico where he would find himself cooking with the kids in the kitchen. He realized his passion lived here- with good people congregated around good food.

As a child, Bob looked up to his mother who cooked from scratch and has fond memories of cooking with Patty, a family friend who threw “amazing dinner parties”. Patty remains an important influence to Bob; she even sang at his and Yader’s wedding. At the age of 30, Bob went back to school- to culinary school in St. Louis. He worked closely with a great chef during this time and soon found himself writing a food column called “Dinner and a Movie”. He later managed a restaurant and helped this restaurant grow to seven restaurants; this evolution pushed him toward marketing. Now, here we are. Bob is preparing the best breakfast hash of my life while I sip espresso on the stern of his boat soaking up the morning sun. Thank you Patty!

Bob’s cookbook will include a pantry list of supplies for the reader to always keep on hand. Each meal will combine what the reader already has with a few additional fresh and local ingredients to make the meal flavorful and unique. He will also have a basic bar section because what is boating without the occasional cocktail?

In finding his calling to food, Bob remembers his first “ah-ha” moment. In this moment, Bob is a child at his grandparents’ house. Little boy Bob has a handful of freshly picked, warm raspberries; he brings them in the house and puts them on ice cream- the raspberries melt the cool ice cream surrounding them. Bob tells me that this taste is “that moment that you’re always chasing”.

“That moment you’re always chasing”… I like this. I reflect on “ah-ha” moments- the simplicities that make life fascinating… the good conversation with a stranger, the cool breeze as you fall asleep, or the warm raspberries on your ice cream. Perhaps we should all chase our “ah-ha” moments. If we live a life or work a career full of “ah-has”, I think we’re on the right path. I think about my career “ah-has”- seeing my patient walk again after many weeks of therapy, being asked by a family to pray with them before their mother goes to surgery, a burn patient singing to Mariah Carey as we do his full body wound cares, and discussing life goals with a woman exactly my age who has just become paralyzed. These “ah-has” are not always wonderful but they show me life; they have confirmed that I am walking the path I was meant for. Of course, I have personal “ah-has” as well. As a child- dancing in the milk barn or swimming in the cold creek with my cousins. More recently- anchoring our boat out for the first time or sleeping on the plywood floor next to candlelight in our half built cabin.

“Ah-has” are simple moments with big impact; we must recognize them as such and use them as a compass. Like warm raspberries on ice cream, it is the simplicities of this life that are utterly fascinating, delicious, and small signs toward a life well lived. Cheers!

 

Back to all articles
Posted on

Dreamers At Work

I got home from work at 2:30am last night. Working as a nurse in downtown Minneapolis is anything but monotonous; it can be a little chaotic and a lot of crazy; it is challenging and fast moving. I love it, but by the time my shift is over, this is where I want to be. At this time of night, the docks are quiet, the water surrounding them is still, and my neighbors are tucked away in their floating homes. As I enter the wooded marina, I breathe easier and move slower. While the sound of call lights continues to ring in my head, my lone footsteps on the dock finally quiet them.

At 2:30am, I am surprised to see another soul awake. It is John. He works late on his trimaran preparing it for June 8 at 5am when he and four others plan to race this not-yet-ready boat in the R2AK. It is a 750 mile race from Port Townsend, WA to Ketchikan, AK. You must sail with no motor and no support boats. With the race nearly one week away and the boat currently afloat 1,760 miles from the starting line, I’m a little nervous for them. I spend a few moments with John, and as he shows me his project successes from the night with a smile that not many people can hold up so well at 2:30am, I believe in him.

Today, May 31st, we have a perfect afternoon. It’s sunny and still. It’s a project day in the marina. With the holiday weekend and spotty storms behind us for a couple of days, every captain in this place has big eyes and working hands.

Bob across the dock is refurnishing his wood trim. Rick, one dock over, is trying to fix leaks around his windows; he says this is a problem every Chris Craft of that era has; we yell across the water as we talk about this. On our boat, we added plywood to our top deck floor to stabilize and level it. It was two day project finished today with fiberglass, paint, and parquet flooring that Michael bought on Craigslist.

As the evening moves on, I visit the trimaran and find Juan. No, I’m not just calling John “John” in Spanish… that’d be confusing. Juan is John’s friend and a fellow sailor ready to take on the R2AK. Tonight, while John is at an open house for the Lake Calhoun Sailing Club (he’s an Associate Director there), it is Juan’s turn to get this trimaran race-ready.

John and Juan are roommates. They met in college when they both went to the University of Minnesota. They met on the water of course. Like all boat people, they got to talking about how to fix one or the other’s boat problem, and before they can do anything about it, they’re buddies forever. They are both Wisconsin boys; John from Milwaukee and Juan from Wisconsin Rapids. I lived in Wisconsin once and still had to ask where this was; Juan tells me its right in the middle of the state. Juan was born in Mexico; his family moved here when he was one year old. As Juan tells me more about who he is, I feel akin to him. His outlook is familiar.

Juan sailed for the first time when he was 10 years old. Then, like me and so many others, the teenage years brought distraction. He was in to sports, hunting, and girls. In college, Juan got a degree in chemistry. When I ask what he originally went to school for, Juan says “for knowledge mostly”. I don’t know why but the choice to get a degree in chemistry surprised me a bit… maybe because we just spent the last ten minutes talking about travelling and for some reason, being in a lab and being out in the world seem like two different animals. Juan told me about taking a few semesters off to backpack in national parks, play music, and spend time WWOOFing on a vegan permaculture farm in California. I related to him on these experiences, except on the music thing; in this, I lamented to him about my ongoing failed harmonica attempts. Juan plays harmonica, drums, guitar, and some ukulele. I’m jealous.

Juan told me that at one point he wanted to be a farmer. This, I understood. Michael and I talk of this often- having our own small farm. I watch my dad and my grandparents find ultimate peace and joy in this work. I ask Juan why he got a degree in chemistry. He tells me that his initial idea was to get educated in environmental water chemistry. Aahhhh… this makes sense to me now. Juan is smart and ambitious. I’m sure you’ve gathered this by now. He spends time with our waters and doesn’t want to just use the resource, he wants to preserve it too. I understand this. In this small revelation, I am proud. During a time when much of the world would rather look away from the environmental problems at hand, I find others my age that care. Juan is one of them. I see this same inspiration in my marina neighbors who gather garbage from the waters when they go out kayaking. I see it in my parents who love their land, my dad out “cleaning the woods” to make it the best habitat for what lives and grows there. I see it in my husband who adores the small details of what we have in our waters and woods; who lights up when he sees a new plant, tree, or animal.

Juan tells me that studying environmental water chemistry was “actually kind of depressing”. I don’t even ask why; I know the answer. I think back to yesterday when I walked in to work behind a lady who threw a half cigarette to the ground right before she entered the building. I wasn’t sure why this set me off. I see cigarettes on the ground all the time and of course, there are bigger problems than one cigarette on the ground, but observing her total disregard for her surroundings must have done it for me. There was a garbage can right next to where she threw it; she didn’t even look at it. I picked up the cigarette, put it out, and threw it away. I continued to feel pissed off for the next hour. As I sat in work reviewing my patients’ charts, I wondered “why is this still bugging me… let it go Chels”. Now, in talking to Juan, I am reminded that it matters. To have an environmentally conscious chemist out there, I am thankful. To be an environmentally conscious nurse, this matters. To maybe someday be environmentally conscious farmers, this is huge.

At this point, I ask Juan how old he is. He’s my age- 28 years old. I only met Juan today; brought together by the water. It is how I’ve met so many people that inspire me; people that care about our world, how we treat it, and how we treat each other. My neighbors on this water are creative, smart, bold, and unafraid. They live in the environment because they care about it.

I once had a friend throw a piece of garbage out of her car. I said something and picked it up. She responded “oh yeah, I suppose you live in the environment”. This was over a year ago now and it has stuck with me. We all live in the environment. What is going on that not everyone feels this way? How do people not see the impact our habits have? How do we fix actions that are so commonplace, so dismissed; like throwing your cigarette to the ground with a bunch of people watching? I still don’t know the answers to all of these questions but I think about them every day. I hope this is the first step to something.

I help Juan hold the electrical panel as he cuts around it to fit the wall. We drink beer as we talk. Todd throws us two more Hamms from the dock. Juan works at Rahr Malting where he is a QC Project Manager, Micro-Maltster, and Assistant Brewer. He’s a bit of an expert in beer so I’m surprised in his gratitude for the Hamms. I invite Juan over for dinner. Michael made steak and asparagus. Juan says he ate already today and when I ask him if he’s on a one meal per day diet, Juan says that lately he is. With the time crunch of getting this boat ready while still working full time, Juan has been getting five hours of sleep and one meal per day. I am thankful that Juan finally agrees to eat after we put the food in his hands.

 

It’s Wednesday; the trimaran gets hauled out on Friday; I know he has a lot to do so I appreciate how present Juan is when we talk. His looming projects include getting the electrical situation squared away, mounting the solar panels, setting up the rigging, and attaching steering platforms. Juan tells me that at this point, the boat is not seaworthy and the five of them have yet to sail together as a team. Whether or not they are ready and able to do the race eight days from now, they will still sail to Alaska, get to know the terrain, and be more than ready for the race next year. I ask Juan about his future. Water will always be a part of his life; he loves sailing. He’ll probably stay around here for a while. He’s ready to set some roots. I realize I feel akin to him because of where he’s at in his life. He has stretched his legs out, carried a backpack around the country, and ponders on what he can do to be good for the world. In all of his exploration, he has found that making a difference where he stands makes the most difference.

As the sun sets, the dock gathers together to unwind from the project day. We finish dinner, drink beer, and talk about what was accomplished. Somehow, conversation turns to plumb bobs and we discuss these for what feels like an hour. It’s surprising how many jokes sprout from this conversation on plumb bobs. I am educated on the variety of plumb bobs that exist. It’s soon 10:30pm, and I retreat to the boat with plumb bobs on the mind. Alright, I’ll let you go before I babble on. It’s time for me to go to bed and time for you to google what a plumb bob is. Also, Michael wants you to google “plumb barbara”; do so at your own risk. Goodnight now.

Back to all articles