David’s Voyage Blog

Publish Date: Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Location:   Detroit, Michigan
Coordinates:   42° 19.980′ N  83° 01.484′ W

We are moored at the downtown marina in Detroit, and this morning I had some time to read the newspaper (online, of course). There was a thoughtful essay in the New York Times titled The Joy of Less. The essence of the essay is that happiness does not emerge from the accumulation of possessions, or from a fast-paced life; rather, happiness is mostly influenced by your attitude, and sometimes a simpler, less-busy life leaves room for more happiness and appreciation for what you do have. This concept resonates with us, and in some ways I think our cruising existence is an embodiment of these ideas.

Our home in Boulder was not huge by modern standards, but it had much more living space than our little ship has. One of our concerns about selling our home and moving aboard was, Would we have enough living space? Now that we’ve been living aboard full-time for about ten months, our conclusion is that it’s more than enough space. You adapt to what you have.

We also shed most of our belongings when we moved aboard. Obviously we sold our cars, but we also got rid of most of our furniture and household items. I remember when Kathryn was going through her cookware trying to decide which pots and pans to bring aboard — for a cook as accomplished as Kathryn, having the right tools means everything. In the end, she brought along only about 1/4 of our pots and pans, and she’s finding that they’re more than enough. We can say the same thing for clothing, shoes, electronics, power tools, and other household items: less has become plenty, simplifying our life in significant ways.

Having said that, our life did not necessarily slow down upon moving aboard. In many ways our life is now faster-paced than it was when we lived ashore: researching and cruising to new destinations, learning and maintaining the boat’s systems, creating a web site worth following, home-schooling Ayla, and staying in touch with family and friends. But the activities that fill our days now are a bit different because there is less regularity (i.e., routine) than before. Our Boulder life was far from boring, and we enjoyed it very much, but it was more predictable than our Three@Sea life is. It will be interesting to see how we react to the ever-changing demands over a period of years, but for now it makes us feel alive and inspired each and every day.

We’re finding great joy in having less, but experiencing more.