Week #1 of living on the boat, in retrospect

It's been almost a week since we've moved onto the boat. Moored up in America's Cup Harbor, the weather has been beautiful, the people have been friendly, and for the most part things have been going according to plan. Here's some high and low points that I can remember:

• It's been really tough on me that the boat looks like shit. My tools are everywhere, and Charlotte has enough clothes onboard to outfit a small army. There is just tons of "shit" everywhere. Not very much is stowed properly, and I just know that when a rain comes and flexes some of the leaks I know we have, things are going to go from good to bad really quickly.
• Charlotte's been working her ass off, both at work and in this move, so only so much can get done at once. It just so happens that the thing that I want to get done (stowing and lessening of "stuff") is on the bottom of the priority list for her. But you could also say that fixing the head stink (that she deals with nightly.. all night...) is on the bottom of my priority list. It's not like I don't care about it, but there's only so much I can do at once, and I certainly will get to it. We talked about it last night, and I realized that when I'm busy working on something, pretty much everything else needs to take a backseat. It's no that I don't care, but I can only do so much at once. What that means to me is that it's okay if I'm upset with the situation, and it's okay if I don't like it, but I should try to separate that from being upset with Charlotte.
• We don't bump our heads as much, although I think I might have broken my toe somehow.  Maybe when moving the stoves around in my "work sandals".
• The laundry machines are nice. $2.25 ($1.25 wash / $1.00 dry) is pretty cheap, and we can store our detergent in the laundry room.
• Having the stove is already a huge benefit; I'm glad I worked on that first.
• The fridge is nice. I know that they're crapped on for serious cruising, because it's one more thing to break, but it is really nice to have. How well our unit (defender / Norcold) would handle the tropics I don't know, and at 3.75 A draw the power requirements are not insignificant. I'm guessing that we should slowly ween ourselves away from the fridge, finding replacements (like some kind of butter that does not cooling like our friend Ryan mentioned) whenever possible. But having one more thing we can hold off on adjusting too is nice.
• The marina shower situation isn't really that bad. I kind of like the toilets and showers up there, because they are incredibly clean and elegant, and a cleaning crew takes care of them every day (read: I don't have to clean showers anymore). We take our showers at night, and so far, so good.
• I'm really glad we did this in the summer, rather than the winter. It will be a little more challenging getting around when it's cold and wet outside (showering, taking the dog out, etc), so having some warm and dry months to get adjusted in advance is awesome.
• Being at a marina (and not an anchor ball) is absolutely required right now, and it might be for a while. Moving heavy stuff in and out like the stove, doing lots of work, and holding down two 9-5(ish) jobs would be really tough on an anchor ball. Do-able for sure, but it would take some prep work on our part, and we're just not ready for that yet.
• The lifestyle change that I wanted is happening. Short of this blog and my work email, I haven't played a single computer game in the last week, and I have no desire to. The laziest things I do now consist of sitting in the cabin reading a book while having a drink during sunset, and Charlotte and I are finishing up season three of Battlestar Galactica in bed at night.
• Living on a boat is a lot of work, and often it's not work you can put off till later. It's a problem that's staring at you in the face, or one that will get much worse in the future if you don't address it now. This tends to either make your life hell, or force you into a very active and work oriented mindset.

I'll write more later, I promise. I'm trying to be really verbose about this move because it's a crazy thing to happen in our lives, and I want to make sure we can reflect back on it later, and see how our opinions, thoughts, and attitudes changed over time (Hello Eric & Charlotte of the future!). I have code camp this weekend, and need to finish up my presentations today. Catch you guys later!