Finding comfort in your floating castle

A small sailing craft is not only beautiful . . . if it happens to be an auxiliary cruising boat, it is without question the most compact and ingenious arrangement for living ever devised by the restless mind of man – a home that is stable without being stationary, shaped less like a box than like a fish or a bird or a girl, and in which the homeowner can remove his daily affairs as far from shore as he has the nerve to take them, close-hauled or running free – parlor, bedroom, and bath, suspended and alive.

E.B. White

July 2024

By David Roper

And in that floating small home comfort is, of course, important. But comfort is more than a soft pillow or a hot shower. Comfort is also a state of mind. It’s also about feelings of satisfaction, contentment, and wellbeing. These can come from items or colors or even smells that are evocative, conjuring up good memories that bring comfort. (In my case, sometimes to extremes: I remember, several boats ago, putting a ball of tarred hemp under my bunk because the scent reminded me of the old manila rope on my dad’s wooden cutter built 80 years ago.)

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City hangs a small etching titled “The Cabin,” created by Anders Zorn in 1917. A framed copy of it also hangs on the bulkhead, opposite the big brass paraffin lamp, aboard my 43-year-old, 25-foot Cape Dory sloop Vesper. It’s evocative in more ways than one: two voluptuous women stand naked in the wood-paneled cabin of a boat. But it’s by no means prurient. One woman appears to be about to drop a towel from her right hand, while the other peeks out to sea over the companionway hatch. My father framed this and put it on the bulkhead of our old Atkin cutter, Phyllis, over 60 years ago. I remember looking at it as a child – almost certainly the first time I’d seen a woman in a state of undress – and wondering why it was there and who these women were. Then, years later, in 1980, my dad transferred it to the bulkhead of his next boat, Eastward, and it hung on that bulkhead as they cruised 35,000 miles over the next decade. When he sold that boat, he gave the etching to me. I put it on the bulkhead of Chang Ho, my little Cape Dory 25, where it hung throughout my own children’s growth years into their teens, and stayed steadfast on the bulkhead during my offshore trips as far as the Canadian border. It then was transferred to my Independence 31 Elsa Marie’s bulkhead, comforting me, not in any salacious nature, but because of the sense of places it evokes – where it’s been, and what memories it triggers in the cabin: family stories of my childhood aboard Phyllis and Eastward, budding relationships as a teen, confiding conversations as adults, laughter, and romance under the lamps in the cabins of those boats over six decades. In short, it has meaning. And that meaning brings comfort. All this from an 8×10-inch etching! More folks should plant personal memorabilia in their boat cabins, that small living space that, due to its size, requires an intensity of comforting visuals.

Vesper’s little cabin is a reflection of my floating world as a child, young adult, and older man. But it’s also a reflection of what I’ve learned about living comfortably in a small space. About the value (and joy!) of minimalism. For me, there’s immense satisfaction in making a small cabin uncomplicated and a reflection of oneself, equipped with only what’s truly needed. And all within easy reach!

How satisfying to sit on your bunk and plan the best spot for new essential things: for a coat hook in just the right spot, or a mount for your handheld GPS within easy reach or viewing, or even a paper towel rack positioned in such a way that the wind doesn’t blow down the hatch and unroll it. After all, it’s your little world, it’s your creation, it’s a reflection of who you are. All the little tweaks, they’re yours, and you’re proud of where you placed them, those essentials, and accouterments of your own small world.

We love our boats. We think about them a lot (sometimes too much). We plan for ways to make things even better, even more comfortable. And that makes us happy. And I know we all agree on that, for, as Mark Twain said, “A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”

David Roper’s new novel, “The Ghosts of Gadus Island: A Story of Young Love, Loss, and the Order of Nature,” is now available. Dave is the author of the three-time bestseller “Watching for Mermaids,” as well as the sequel “Beyond Mermaids” and the novel “Rounding the Bend.” Buy them at Amazon.com or roperbooks.com.

The post Finding comfort in your floating castle appeared first on Points East Magazine.