Getting back to the boat after a 4 month hiatus, which is a third of the amount of time I have ever spent living on a boat is proving to be a bit more of a challenge than I expected. Where do I put all the surplus of "I can't live without this or this or this....?" Stuff. Everything needs. With my expertise in the inexperience of living on a boat and the massive amount of space considerations along with my natural tendency to horde facial products and supplements, which ties in directly to my aging vanity and paranoia, I fear I will have to live with molding products and aging skin. Once upon a time I never used more than one body lotion for my entire nocturnal and diurnal skin needs, I couldn't be bothered with any additional supplements nor needed any more than 10 minutes to prepare myself for the greatest of costumed evenings. Sigh.... The aging body demands copious amounts of products, and the shelf life of many of these products will surely be challenged in this 30 degree 87% humidity climate. I'm sure I'm gonna pay for my "needs"
I could wish that I snap forward 2, 3, 5 years and become the experienced salty mate that I imagine all the other partnerships to be, but what fun would that be, I'd be missing all the gauntlets of frustrations, exaltation's and moldy imported food items and supplements. Besides the lessons will be my own, individualized and unique to what I need to learn. The gifts are at the end of the gauntlet.
I mean seriously what other life style can you be in where you turn around to flush the toilet and are startled by a small wriggling black fish stuck to the inside of the bowl desperately trying to get down to the small remaining puddle at the bottom.
We live on a 43' Outremer catamaran with a relatively simple set of furnishings. Speed has its price. The toilet system, weight conscious is a simple mechanical hand pump; move the lever, pump salt water in from one side of the hull and with each consecutive pump the water from the sea mixes with the water from me and out the other side of the hull, flip the lever back again and pump the remaining salt water out of the bowl. With this simple system comes some interesting events; some nights when there's luminescence in the water your whole bathroom takes on an eerie green glow, other times the intake won't bring water in at all and you'll have to go out and decimate the newly formed reef that's clustered over the inlet.
For two days I tried to flush him down, for two days he clung onto the sides with his Blenny like claws. Some Blenny's don't have air bladders and are poor swimmers so spend most of the time near the bottom of the reef using their pectoral fins like claws rather than to swim with. I pleaded with him, I gave him the choice, I warned him of the incoming, and each time the flap would seal back again, removing his clear escape back to the wide wonderful world of the free ocean.
In the ancient Hawaiian culture Blenny's figured in many legends and for some were 'aumakua (the embodiment of ancestors.) Oh my! Could I have just done my business on my ancestor's head? Did I create some long term karma that I would now be subjected to repairing, would the rest of my life be spent cleaning toilets to correct this unfortunate mishap?
On the third day I awoke again to the call of nature, I flinched as my head cleared in remembering that my private space was occupied by what was now becoming an intruder. I could no longer see the dolefulness in his eyes, he seemed to be squinting at me, taunting me to try again to flush him out. At the thought of another round of the Blenny won't go down, mixed with thoughts of, how can he survive this long and what is he eating.....ohhh don't go there..... I opened the lid and looked in at his uplifted little eyes squinting at me darkly, speaking to him this time as if her were a delinquent younger nephew I told him he better take the next flush out of here and leave my sacred thrown with the next outgoing surge. I pumped the sea in through the pipes with my newly wrought finesse, and just for good measure I finished with an extra ten.....dry closed pumps; whereas before I had been leaving a micro ocean for him, this time no holds barred. I looked down waiting for his black little Blenny face to appear, and then waited some more, to my great relief when I looked a third time he was still gone, bye bye - no more Blenny, I had my space back again.

Yup adapting back to life on board certainly has its perks.