The world is our neighborhood in a parking lot

The world is our neighborhood in a parking lot

Interesting note here. We’ve now been living in the boatyard – READ that as parking lot – for about a month now. It was only supposed to be 2 weeks maximum. It’s interesting to think of… us living in a parking lot. As fellow boaters, we’re all parked next to each other on a layer of gravel – essentially a parking lot. Some boats are occupied and some are not. Some neighbors are here doing repairs, some are heading south after working on the boat, some have already gone elsewhere and the boats are covered for the season. It’s quite a multicultural experience. Probably like living in the parking lot of an airport. We’ve met people from Germany, England, France, Holland, Australia, Canada and Quebec, Denmark, and of all the exotic places – Michigan.


Life here goes something like this. Climb down ladder to visit the facilities (showers, laundry, restrooms, lounge area for the television or to swap books), visit the next boat owner out sanding their hull or painting or varnishing. Sometimes you can’t understand each other. For instance there’s a Quebec boat here (a Westerly) that I admire because I used to know someone with a Westerly (actually it was the first sailboat I ever stepped foot on). I went to go chat with the gentleman only to discover that he spoke no English, an I spoke no French. We both spoke a little spanish and a lot of hand gesturing. Other discussions go something like this: “So almost done painting?” “Yep 5 more coats of varnish aught to do it, then we’ll start tearing the engine apart to see why it isn’t working” “Cool we’re taking the loaner car to the grocery store and West Marine. They have fenders on sale and we could use another chart. you need anything?” Oh hang on! Let me get my water jugs and jerry cans. Okay. So the 4 of us are loaded into the car with the jerry cans and water jugs. Oh hey – Martin said he needs us to pick up his alternator at the auto parts place– do you mind? Um, no… sure… Oh hey can we stop at the deli and pick up some lunch? Um, okay – but we only have the car for an hour… No problem. you sign it out for an hour and I’ll sign it out for an hour… then we get two hours. Hey we can stop at the hardware store too and see if they have any cleaner to get the gunk off the engine”. After the discussion we pile in to the car, leave the parking lot and head into town. After filling the 3 jerry cans with fuel and 6-5 gallon containers with water, theres’ not much room for the groceries or fenders from West Marine, so we head over to the marina across the spit because we hear that you can get parts for everything from them woosh – it’s a boating mechanics dreamworld over there even though this wasn’t on our planned agenda. How come we can’t get this stuff at our boatyard? Okay, hey guys I really need to pick up some food. Okay but we’re late already – we need to go sign the car out again. Okay. Then we can drop some of this stuff off and we’ll have more room and time too… By the time we finish, we’re banned from signing the car out again, I forgot the eggs for breakfast (remembered the beer though), and our water jugs got punctured by something sharp in the back of the car and the car is all wet, and 2 water cans are ½ empty. We had a successful outing. We discovered a great new deli, a marina parts store that has everything, a way to keep the car out for longer than you’re supposed to, and a fire station that shares its water with you (that doesn’t have a limey taste).

Oh oh, we forgot to get the fenders from West Marine.

Think Ernie can sign the car out this time?