A year ago, my husband Jon and I embraced adventure twice — once with moving across the country to New York and again a month later, when we were married after six years of being together.
New York has been everything it was promised to be — glamorous and full of opportunity, fast and dirty. It was everything we needed, and yet we were missing something from home.
You know how distance sometimes gives you clarity? If our lives were a romantic comedy, this would have been the moment where, in the midst of a sequined party or night out with laughing friends, Jon and I would look melancholically off screen and a montage of sailing footage would play nostalgically onscreen.
The Scallywag. A boat for which we feel a love something akin to what you’d feel for both a pet and a home, all rolled into one sturdy vessel. It’s true that we’re not lifelong sailors, nor have we had her for very long. But where there was once nothing, she was suddenly there in our hearts, implacable and irreplaceable. We missed her. We missed our slower way of life, our days where we entirely forgot the internet existed, the sunburns and the rocking to sleep. The way we could do nothing with her and feel perfectly content.
You can’t reason away love and you can’t deny it. After months of rushing blood pressure and adrenaline, it was time for a change again. Against our better financial judgement,we trucked her out. Two months later as summer peaked, we laid our plans to live aboard when our lease runs out. Two months from now, the Scallywag will be our full-time home.
Come next week, we'll be setting up Scally as our full-time home and making the transition from apartment to boat life.
Also like any good romantic comedy, the situation is unlikely. Living aboard, in New York, through the winter? Living aboard, with no shower, no hot, running water? It’s not ideal, but love never is.
Until, it is, I guess.