Welcome back to the real world

We visited our relatives in the real world for a week. After living on a boat for five months, some adjustment was required. Our fear has always been that we could not adjust back to the real world. This is one of the reasons, why we opted for a fixed time trip. And rightly so. This is what I noticed after living just five months on a boat:

When opening the tap, for example to wash my hands, I don't open the tap all the way. Back on land, I notice myself switching of the water frequently, and running with a small water stream. After being back on the land, every time I leave the tap on, and use the maximum setting, I feel a little guilty for wasting so much good water. When measuring the amount of water to make a coffee, I found I put too much in the cup. On the boat I would have never wasted good clean water, but after a moment hesitation, I just pored it away into the sink.

Before I left on the sailing trip I had a long and hot shower every day. One of the things I found very hard to imagine is how to live with less and shorter showers. I need not have worried. On the boat, a shower usually consists of a swim, and a rinse off. If we used the solar showers, or we have run the port engine, the water is hot. Otherwise it is cold. Well, cold is relative. It is the 24 degrees from the tank, no the 4 degrees cold water that we have gotten used to in Norway.

Before applying soap or shampoo, I always stop the shower. For the rinse-off I start it again. Back on the maintain, I found myself having a long hot shower, and even brushing my teeth while wasting good water!

Before I went to bed, I found myself looking through the window, as if I could establish wind, waves, and boat position relative to the rocks or other obstacles. I stooped down to avoid the one bulkhead that does not fit my head.

We love our cappuccino in the morning. With our espresso machine we foam the soy milk, and add this to the espresso, produced from hot steam through freshly ground beans. However, our coffee consumption has drastically dropped when switching land life for sea life. Back on land the coffee consumption has immediately gone up again. I guess that when the anchor alarm goes off at three in the morning, no coffee is required for instant and full awakening. I guess back on land we could use adrenalin shots to substitute our espresso shots in the same manner.

When walking though the house I take small steps. The ones designed to have a sure footing in a rocking boat. I also walk slower than normal, to prevent bumping into things. While have a big boat, the corridors on our boat are not that long, and we find that we are always taking steps our rounding a corner, so we never have to walk fast.

 When waking up, the first thing I do is looking out of the window, to see what the weather is like today.

Why are people looking funny at me? It could not possibly be my flipflops, as I have been wearing this for the last 6 months and no-one looked funny at them at all? It is really only end of October, and the latitude is 52 North. I have never used the GPS to select appropriate footwear, but perhaps next time I will!

Flipflop model tux is showing the allegedly inappropriate footwear above latitude 52 N in Autumn/Winter