The Ballet of Boat Living

I woke up the other day thinking that living on a boat is like dancing through a ballet in a lot less space than the average high school drama stage.  While ballet is a performance dance, it seems to fit.  Stay with me on this one.

On Azure Wind, there are two main performing stages.  Life is mostly lived in the salon and cockpit.  And on a catamaran they are nicely sized.

Inside in the salon there is a U-shaped galley area, large enough for one person to stand at the sink and perhaps another person to stir a pot on the stove.  Someone standing at the sink cannot move unless the second person steps back and down the steps toward the sleeping berths.  The counter top of the galley allows you to stand outside the “U” to chop vegetables say, but then you’re in the doorway out to the cockpit.  Across from the galley is the refrigerator/freezer underneath the navigation station.  If someone is standing in the doorway to the cockpit, chopping vegetables on the galley counter, then someone else will have a hard time collecting foods from the refrigerator.  Also inside is a table and a couch (setee).  The table is a bit like a curved rectangle and the setee is L-shaped.  You can comfortably sit on either end of the table, but on one side you’ll be sitting over the food locker and on the other side the locker with all the hand tools.

The second stage is the cockpit, which contains a largish, half-round table and bench seat on one side.  An ice-cooler sits under the table used to store drinks (you can ice them down, but honestly, the ice lasts about twelve hours before it’s melted – might as well leave them at room temperature).  Across from the cockpit table and up three steps is the helm station, and behind it is a lower level bench seat under which are the outside cleaning liquids, and the engine oils and propane gas tank. 

COCKPIT PIC

There are several stage entrances.  You can enter/exit the salon from the sleeping areas in the hulls (two berths and one head in each hull).  Up five steps.  Or, from the cockpit.   You enter the cockpit from the stern, from the helm station, from the side decking, and the salon. 

When there’s two people on our boat, there’s usually enough room to move around each other in pursuit of the various daily tasks (cleaning, repairing, food preparation, etc.)  When two or more people are added, then you’d best put on your ballet shoes and hope for the best as you connect, pass by, or collide sometimes through your chores and routines.  The dancing can go until lights out. 

So, the other night, we were practicing our ballet with Peter and Donna.  It was dinner time, the big meal of the day.   Peter was doing the morning/lunch dishes at the sink and Marney set about pulling some fish out of the freezer.  Donna was waiting in the wings for Marney to tell me to kneel down in front of the refrigerator to pull out the vegetables.  I pirouette my way down and spring back up, handing them to Peter who is now rinsing vegetables while Marney has performed an allegro to grab a knife and cutting board who passes it to me and then on to Donna who is sitting outside at the cockpit table.  As she starts chopping, Peter has undertaken an adagio as he moves his way over to the liquor cubby to collect the rum for a pitcher of painkillers…Marney has headed off to the cooler to pull out the pineapple juice and other ingredients.  I’m looking for a snippet of scotch while I’ve leaped across the salon to find a second cutting board and knife.  Then I step aside and down into one hull because Marney has come for the potato peeler and aluminum foil.  She returns to the galley, I come back up toward the refrigerator, once again kneeling down to find the cheese we want to have with our crackers.  Peter has spun his way to an arabesque and now straddled me as he starts to mix up the pitcher of painkillers – my back is telling me I may need one of those after all.  But before that, I swing back into action in the galley now, performing a cambre as I lean backward over the stove to open up the microwave oven where our opened bags of chips and crackers are kept because the microwave is absolutely the driest place you’ll ever find on a boat!  Then it’s on to the salon table by way of the cupboard under the galley counter to find small baskets to hold the crackers.  At the salon table I turn and toss the cutting board, cheese baskets and crackers to Peter who places them outside.  Donna meanwhile, has been chopping all those vegetables, smartly staying out of the middle of the traffic.  Peter passes the veggies back to Marney who has returned to the galley with aluminum foil to wrap the fish in one bag and the vegetables in another, to be cooked on the grill.  Donna now has the small red potatoes to peel and slice and cover with more foil, and – we sense we’re getting near the end – we spin our way to take our positions around the cockpit table.  Drinks, cheese and crackers before us…  three bags of aluminum foil on the side, waiting while the grill is heating up.

It’s intermission.

After dinner, the second half is shorter but it has its interesting movements as well: rinsing the dishes first in the saltwater off the back of the boat, washing dishes in the sink, putting the food away, trash in the can, lifting up the setee seat to find some cookies for dessert and….at one point I lift Marney into a fish dive and then…. slowing down once more…sitting in the darkened cockpit, staring at the island lights in the distance, swinging on the anchor and smiling that we connected more than collided in this evening’s dance.   Certainly a way to have some live entertainment!

Life just feels like a dance at times.  Not liturgical, not swing, not ballroom, and definitely not a Texas line dance.  It really is more of a ballet.   Maestro, strike up a Vienna waltz, please.  Each has her/his part to play and, I can’t wait until we host four guests in a few weeks and see how the ballet turns out then!

Fair Winds and Calm Seas

Dave

Some Terms:

In ballet, arabesque is a position where the body is supported on one leg, with the other leg is extended directly behind with a straight knee.

Allégro is a term applied to bright, fast or brisk steps and movement.  All steps where the dancer jumps are considered allegro.

Adagio refers to slow movement, typically performed with the greatest amount of grace and fluidity compared to the other movements of dance.  

Cambré is a classical ballet term meaning “arched.” When a dancer is doing cambré, their body is bent from the waist and stretching backward or sideways with the head following the movement of the upper body and arms.

A Fish Dive, or just a “fish,” is a classical ballet term describing a step where the ballerina is in a retiré position and held low to the ground by a male dancer.