Living Aboard Our First Sailboat: Gone Away

It all started with sailing magazines that arrived in our mailbox. Seems innocuous enough, doesn’t it? But we weren’t living near a body of water, large or small; no, we were living in Sedona, the Red Rock country of Arizona. What was going on?

Well, what was going on was husband Ken Normington was planting the seeds to own a sailboat. A dream, an intention, a desire. All of that. And, guess what? The seeds took hold and sprouted not one, but two sailboats that we lived aboard — full time — for several years, traipsing up and down the Eastern Seaboard of the United States with winters in Key West, Florida, and summers on Cape Cod or the Chesapeake Bay or Maine’s mid-coast Penobscot Bay. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

What did Ken and I know about sailing? Not much and nothing. I grew up in Idaho and had only been on a few sailboats, big sailboats. Ken at least had a nautical background, having spent four years in the Coast Guard. But sailing? Neither of us knew how. It didn’t matter. Since we were both risk takers and adventurers by nature, a sailboat or two were to be in our future.

So . . . nothing stopped us from buying our first sailboat once we laid eyes on this gorgeous, magnificent, dark-blue-hulled beauty named Gone Away. We had moved from Arizona to the coastal waters on the East Coast to work for a local timeshare developer on Cape Cod. In nearby Newport, Rhode Island, the “sailing capital” of the East Coast, we couldn’t get our checkbook out fast enough when we saw Gone Away, a 36’ ketch rig – a monohull with two masts and three sails.

We moved aboard, and somehow sailed her to Cape Cod for our summer jobs. We spent the summer living in a mooring field at Parkers’ Boat Yard in Cataumet. We quickly learned how to go back and forth in our dinghy between the boat and the dock carrying groceries and boat supplies. It was a steep learning curve, yet we loved living on the water, we loved living in nature, we loved Gone Away, taking her for a spin after work while the sun set and we de-stressed.

When we woke up one morning with frost on the boat, we knew it was time to head south for the winter. Ultimately, we got our real estate licenses while docked at a marina in Key Biscayne, Florida, so we could work for Hyatt Vacation Club in Key West. In between was a two-months’ slowslowslow trip down the East Coast from Cape Cod to Key West.

But what a glorious two-months’ trip it was! We were not ocean sailors; instead, we pretty much stuck to routes from bay-to-bay, bays-to-rivers — any available waterway until we hit the Intracoastal Waterway in Norfolk, Virginia.  The ICW allows sailors a way to safely travel on the inside route instead of out in the ocean all the time. 

We had daily adventures, some even terrifying, when equipment failed or squalls took us by surprise. We learned how to live aboard full time, how to handle all the daily aspects of our lives like eating, showering, bathrooming (ugh).

What about our relationship? How was it affected? In several ways!

Early on Ken informed me that like the other guys (how sexist is this, but actually it was true at the time), he was the captain of the boat. I responded that it was just fine with me that he was captain. He was stunned. Really? I said, “Really.” I continued, “You are the captain, but I am the admiral.” And that settled that.

Further clarifications were needed: blue jobs and pink jobs. Again, a little sexist sounding. Ken’s jobs were the difficult, dangerous, and dirty jobs known as blue jobs. The rest were my jobs, the pink jobs. This classification system has continued on as part of our landlubber lives.

But back to sailing. The scary and difficult adventures were minimal compared to the thrill of living in nature. Pods of dolphins swam alongside the boat. Absolutely thrilling. Birds were overhead, in trees, on nautical markers. Everywhere. And the colors of the water once we were in Florida waters – the greens, turquoises, the blues. Magnificent.

When we were underway, we often dropped the hook at night in some quiet, secluded area, enjoying a glass of wine and a delicious meal as we watched the sun end our day. When we lived at the city dock in Key West during the winter, we’d walk to work right past Jimmy Buffet’s hidden studio – Mr. Key West himself — with his music constantly blaring over the marina and over the city from every outdoor restaurant and bar.

Steel drum Caribbean music. Vivid colors in artwork, clothes, everywhere to be seen. High, vibrating energy. Authentic Cuban food. Luscious flowers and vegetation everywhere. Sunset sails. Culture. Authors, musicians, and playwrights. Life lived to the hilt. That’s Key West.

We both agree that of our thirty-year marriage (and possibly our entire lives), our Key West and Gone Away experiences were some of the best times of our lives. We were younger, full of energy, experiencing adventures and nature on a daily basis in some of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring places along the Eastern Seaboard.

Eventually, I, but not Ken, tired of living the simple, but not always easy, life aboard Gone Away. I longed for a washer & dryer, a real kitchen, and more of our spoiled American life. So we sold Gone Away. That night in a laid-back Key West restaurant, we (and our waitress) drank ourselves to near oblivion, drowning our broken hearts, broken by walking away from Gone Away and some of the best times of our lives.

Little did we know that instead of becoming permanent landlubbers, we were just  “between boats” as we’ll talk about in the next post “Living Aboard Our Second Sailboat: Gemini 1000“.

Below are pictures that capture some of our lives living aboard Gone Away.

Row one, left to right: traveling by the famous Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse built in 1875 near Annapolis, MD (this picture was published in an article I wrote for a sailing magazine); the serenity of dropping the hook at night somewhere in the Golden Marshes of Georgia – even our dinghy was peaceful; at the Liberty Marina across the Hudson River from the Twin Towers in New York City (faintly seen in the background) mere months before they were destroyed by terrorists (see my post “Vacation During a National Tragedy”).

Row two, left to right: down below looking from dining/living room to our bed; our small galley with the frig with the counter lid in the corner between the stove and sink; happy sailors lovin’ life in Key West.

Row three, left to right: happy sailors in Huntington Harbor, Long Island, New York; Captain Ken suited up for his blue jobs in foul weather gear; Admiral Jane enjoying life in between her pink jobs somewhere at sea.