A loud noise woke me in the middle of the night. A low, recurring squeak, like something rubbing against the wall. This was three weeks ago, at 4:00 A.M. I crawled out of bed to go deal with it. Naked, I climbed upstairs, and then outside. It was cold and windy, and not as dark as I had thought it would be. I walked around, barefoot, until I found the source of the noise.

I live on a sailboat, so this kind of operation is to be expected. When something breaks, you repair it. When something is in the way, you move it. When something is dirty, you clean it. When something squeaks, apparently, you go eliminate the source of the squeaking. The second you fall behind, and put off some task, you only compound your problems and increase your frustration. In only six months, this has become clear. Owning a sailboat is a full-time, around-the-clock job. It’s a lot like having a baby: a baby with very technical needs. A giant baby robot, maybe. It’s also a lot like being Sysyphus — pushing and pushing that ball uphill, and never getting there. When I ask other friends who also live on sailboats how their projects are coming along, I am often told, jokingly, “Well, you know, it’s a process.” It is, indeed, a never-ending process, requiring attention even at 4:00 AM.

The noise that night was coming from three inflated rubber fenders that hang off the side of the boat and protect the hull from scraping against the dock. The fenders are the boat’s bumpers. An October storm, packing 50mph wind gusts, was pushing the boat hard towards the southern dock, and the fenders, doing their duty, squeaked every time the boat rocked up against them, which was every five seconds. I had an idea: because the boat is lashed in its slip — aka marina parking space — from lines on the north and the south, I figured I could remove the fenders on the south if the lines on the north were tight enough. It was worth a shot.

Though it didn’t occur to me that night, it’s this kind of minute problem solving — this sort of improvisation — that defines sailboat maintenance. Need a tool you don’t have? Make it. Need a part that doesn’t exist? Cobble something together. There are textbooks and manuals and guides that detail how to navigate though all kinds of sailboat situations, but most of the time, because every sailboat is different, improvising is called for even when the goals remain the same. It’s always exciting, because every situation is new. Maybe this is the honeymoon stage of boat-owning — but if it is, it seems like it’ll be a long honeymoon.

I grabbed one of the fenders and pulled. It wouldn’t budge, so tightly was it compressed between the boat and the dock. Feeling, now, like a true boat owner — because I needed the squeaking to stop, and was willing to do whatever it took — I leaned into the boat and pushed it northward.

This, too, is typical of boat work. Every task, no matter how infinitesimally small, turns out to require a hundred unforeseen sub-steps and considerations. Take drilling a hole in the mast, something I spent a week doing while installing tiny steps all the way up it a few months ago. What kind of bit should one use? What size? What kind of drill? At what speed should one drill? How would one line up each hole? How deep should one drill? Might one drill into something accidentally? One ends up considering metallurgy, corrosion, mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics — to start — and the list goes on and on. There’s a good analogy for this: Xeno’s paradox. After hours of grueling work, you’re halfway done. Hours later, you’re halfway through the remaining work. Hours after that, you’re halfway through the little bit that remains. Ad infinitum. You never get there. You never finish. But it’s fun — you see a problem, you figure out how to solve it, you solve it — and it sure beats an office job.

As I pushed the boat, my feet gripped the grain of the wooden dock, and my ass hung exposed in the night, and ever so slightly, against the wind, the 20,000-pound boat moved a few inches — enough that I was able to pull the fender out. I laid the fender on deck, and watched as the wind pushed the boat southward toward the dock again. It surged within inches, then stopped, as the lines on the north side drew taut. Perfect. I repeated the operation for the two other fenders on the south side, and voila, the squeaking was gone. I hopped back on board, jumped down the companionway, and slid into bed, my feet covered in dew and the rest of me shivering. I was anything but miserable. I felt great.

I’d rediscovered that satisfaction supercedes mere pleasure. It’d be a pleasure to sip champagne out of fluted glasses on the deck of brand new, spiffed-out, modern sailboat with all of the latest and greatest gizmos and gadgets. But that’s all. Opening that bottle of champagne — about the only problem solving required — would be an accomplishment providing little reward or satisfaction. Solving problems, improvising, learning, accomplishing — that’s satisfying. A new boat, then, might bring more pleasure. A 30-year-old boat, like this one, offers satisfaction. And six months into fixing it up, I’m beginning to feel like the master of the universe. Or maybe just the master of the 40-foot universe that is my sailboat.

— A few months ago, I paused to think about this happiness and realized that the emotion was akin to something I felt when I rode my bicycle most of the way across the country. That was seven years ago, and during those three weeks, I didn’t do anything but use my legs as much as I could and shove food down my throat to refuel. There were miserable days when I was soaked and cold, with numb, soggy feet and blue lips — but I was so out-there, so busy doing my thing, so engaged, that there was no time or place to worry about comfort and cleanliness and appearance. That’s the feeling I’ve enjoyed while living on the boat.

During my first week on the boat, during a fury of boat work, I didn’t shave. I didn’t shower. I didn’t wash my hair. I washed my dishes with my fingers, pissed in a bucket, drank wine out of the bottle, and slept sound as a baby. My pants told the story of my existence; on them were bits of caulk, epoxy, and grease; stains of sweat, salt, snot, and blood; smudges of pasta sauce, wine, and melted chocolate; metal filings, fiberglass strands, resin shards, and saw dust. (I’ve since gotten new pants.)

I learned to feel my way around the space on the boat. My “bedroom” is about the size of me — as long as my body and as wide as my wingspan. The kitchen is standing-room only — for one person. (And yes, there is a stove and a fridge.) My clothes are shoved onto three shelves in a small locker, and a few extra things — my checkbook, toothbrush, and a few books — are on the shelf above it. All those little doodads and trinkets and nicknacks that live on bookshelves and night stands and mantlepieces are absent. All that stuff is in boxes in a friend’s closet. It took about six months to get used to the change, but now life is simpler. There are fewer distractions — 4:00 AM squeaking aside. My heating bill is zero. My water bill is zero. My power bill is about $8 per month. And my rent — the fee to park in a slip at the marina — is less than $400.

I was concerned, to say the least, that moving onto the boat would eat up all my time. I wondered how I’d have time fix up the boat while still having time to work, cook, write emails, and answer my cell phone, let alone read the news, keep up with the New Yorker, and play the occasional game of Scrabble. Thus far, things have worked out well. I’ve found that I can bounce from fix-it mode to domestic mode rapidly, and probably because fix-it mode is so satisfying, I look at my computer less, which has long been a goal. At the same time, I rejoice a little more when I get a good email. Unfortunately, I fall asleep reading. But I wake up raring to go.

—

The boat is named Syzygy (the word, pronounced Sih Zih Jee, is of Greek origin, and means “the alignment of stars or planets”), and I bought her with two close friends: Jon, a teacher in Denver; and Matt, a photographer here in San Francisco. We’re all 30 years old, and we’ve been friends since college. Thank god, because we’re all pretty much broke now — the boat cost us $60,000 and we’ve sunk $40,000 into repairs already — but I suppose we should have seen that coming. All we knew when we bought her was that we shared a fuzzy dream, inspired by Joshua Slocum, who wrote the classic adventure story, “Sailing alone around the world” more than a hundred years ago. It resonated.

A plan was hatched. We’d save our money, buy a burly sailboat (a Valiant 40), spend two years fixing it up, and sail it around the world. We’d do it under our own power, learning everything as we went. Self-reliance would be called for. Foremost it would be challenging — our biggest adventure yet.

It’s worth noting that none of us grew up sailing. I spent a couple of weeks at a YMCA sailing camp when I was 12, dinking around and regularly capsizing a tiny 12-foot Sunfish in the Potomac river — but that’s it. None of our parents could tell a binnacle from a spinnaker, and until a couple of years ago, neither could any of us. But we’ve adventured in every other way, and developed strong technical climbing, mountaineering, and canyoneering skills. We’re hoping that the time we’ve spent tied to opposite ends of a rope, pushing ourselves physically, in uncomfortable conditions, out in the middle of nowhere, will prove relevant. We’re banking on it, actually.

So far we’ve overhauled a good deal of Syzygy. We’ve sanded and painted the bottom, built bombproof watertanks, replaced the standing and running rigging, beefed up the through-hulls, greased all of the winches, painted the bilge, built a new electrical panel, rewired everything, upgraded most of the lights, and replaced all of the plumbing. We’ve installed new midship cleats, new reef hooks, a new bilge pump, a new toilet, new scupper hoses, a new stereo, new speakers, new blocks, and new lifelines. We’ve repaired delaminated parts of the keel, refurbished all of the pumps, and sealed a few dozen cracks in the deck. We even got new cushions, and bickered like a married threesome over the color. Along the way we began to understand why people say it’s easier to build a boat from scratch than to fix up an old boat, and why others advise not buying any electronics until you’re all stocked up on food and ready to depart. Too late for that. Nevertheless, I’ve learned how to splice lines, extract bearings, tap threads, install rivets, and repair fiberglass, such that I can drill a fist-sized hole in the hull of my boat and patch it and still sleep soundly onboard that boat.

A lot of friends ask us how the three of us have learned to do such tasks. The answer is twofold: half the time we learn from Matt, because Matt reads maintenance handbooks meticulously, and the other half we learn by doing. Obviously, there was a steep learning curve, and we all have wounds to prove it. Jon, while sprawled over the engine to replace a fuel filter, accidentally started the engine by touching the wrong parts with a wrench. Matt learned the hard way how difficult it is to steer a 40-foot sailboat into its slip in high winds. I’ve broken my share of power tools. But we’ve gotten better, and proudly accepted it as a compliment over the summer when a passerby told us he wished he had three 30-year-old guys like us working on his boat.

—

The rainy season arrived a week ago — revealing a few leaks in our boat. Big surprise, right? Just as we finish fixing one thing, another problem presents itself. On other boats nearby, I’ve noticed an assortment of leak-reduction techniques: plastic bags, tarps, towels, and (my favorite), a plastic lawn chair inverted over a hatch. For what it’s worth, I put a few pieces of duct tape over suspect cracks in our deck, and Matt strung up a canvas cover over half of the boat.

A few days later, during a heavy rain, a nearby boat caught fire and went up in a blaze, killing the dog that was aboard. Chances are good that a leak caused a short circuit, though the fire department’s inspector couldn’t say for sure. A cell-phone charger could have overheated. A battery could have burst. A power cord could have fried. Nobody knows, which is terrifying.

I was 50 yards away at the time, and just happened to look over and see orange flames leaping up out of the marina. My heart jumped, and I sprinted to the boat. By the time I grabbed a hose, a half dozen other people, decked out in foul-weather gear, were already spraying water on the fire. The fire department arrived a few minutes later, but we’d extinguished the fire by then — a testament to my neighbors at the marina. In that way, the network of live-aboards, as they are called, is as tight as the network of rock climbers or road bikers that I know. They don’t need to be asked for help, because they already know what’s at stake. I am grateful to be part of such a community.

Half an hour later, the boat ’s owner arrived. Someone had called him at work. He ran up the dock, in jeans and a flannel shirt, and broke down in despair after he peeked into the charred remains of his boat and saw his dog’s body. Someone gave him a towel to keep dry, and someone else held an umbrella over him, and someone else put an arm around him, while it continued to pour. He sobbed, put his hands to his head, asked someone to please cover his dog, and fell to his knees. Nobody made eye contact. I have never seen such despair, and hope never to see as much again. He lost his home, his possessions, and his beloved dog — in an instant. I whimper just thinking of it.

Later that afternoon, before I’d dried off or stopped shaking, I sent a long, distraught email to Matt and Jon. I was too frazzled to draw any conclusions, but faintly aware that I was searching for some, trying to pull some lesson out of a tragedy that could just as well have struck us. All I knew was that our leaks now seemed terribly inconsequential. A neighbor found inspiration to practice fire drills, to test the marina’s fire hoses and emergency call boxes, and to encourage all of us to keep our eyes and ears open a little wider. Matt and I found inspiration to make sure our electrical system was up to snuff — that all of the boat’s old, corroded wiring had been replaced, that all of the connections were properly waterproofed, that every circuit was properly fused, that our shore-power cord was properly sized, and that our electrical outlets were all the grounded type that are common in bathrooms. But more than that, we realized how committed we were, even though we hadn’t even left the marina yet.

In the days since the fire, the live-aboards have started a small collection for the owner, and placed a bouquet of flowers on the foredeck of his boat. It still smells like burnt plastic, and the reminder when walking by is brutal.

—

There’s a cliche about boat-owning: they say that the best two days of a boat-owner’s life are the day you buy your boat and the day you sell it. Anecdotal evidence already suggests the opposite.

First, buying the boat was no fun. Buying the boat — literally paying for it — entailed electronically wiring the largest check I’d ever written to some obscure bank in Seattle, while at the same time second-guessing myself and wondering if I’d made a grave mistake. Did I get the right boat? Did I take a big hasty jump too soon? Did I just screw myself for the next three years? Five years? Life? My concerns ranged from tiny to huge, such that the actual boat-buying was fraught with anxiety and concern and distress. Which is to say that the day I bought the boat was not one of the best days of my life — 99% of the other days in my life, in fact, were better. I can’t fathom how the first part of this myth was born.

Second, I saw the previous owners of this boat a year ago, when we met them in Mexico to check the boat out, and I would testify in court that they assuredly did not enjoy selling their boat. I think owning it made them feel young, spirited, engaged, and adventurous, and that selling it only reminded to them that life’s circumstances — increasing age and flagging ability and mobility — had finally caught up with them and forced their hand.

There is another cliche that does hold true: they say a boat is a hole in the water that you pour money into. Absolutely. Here’s how you quantify it: You think a project will cost $200? Triple it. Even if you’ve already beefed up your estimate, added some wiggle room — triple it. It is unfathomable how much stainless steel, copper, and “marine-grade” parts cost.

There’s a corollary rule about time that we’ve learned. If you think a project will take 5 minutes, that means 10 hours. If you predict 3 hours, that means 6 days. The rule: double the number, and increase the unit – from seconds to minutes, from minutes to hours, from hours to days, from days to weeks, and from weeks to months.

Perhaps the best rule of all, though, I only learned last week, from a friend who also owns a sailboat. We were at a bar, yabbering on about the ongoing nature of boat projects, when someone interrupted and asked if there were any general principles to sailing. He answered immediately:

“Keep water out of the boat, keep people out of the water, keep the girls warm, and keep the beer cold.”

That seems as good as any other way to frame this unfolding adventure. As for the myths, cliches, and hard-learned rules, recognizing their place in this new boat-reality is somewhat vindicating, given that I’ve only lived on the boat for six months. It makes me feel like my experiences thus far are propelling me into the life of a true sailor (or at least boat owner), even if I haven’t sailed anywhere.