LIFE ABOARD, LIVING WITH LESS.

A sea change, throwing caution to the wind, for what we hope would be the adventure of a lifetime. We left behind a world where almost any food item you desire is less than 10 minutes from your front door. Good-bye soft bread, cheese, meat, cold delicious milk, juicy fruit and fresh vegetables, chips and crackers…., weeks and even months go by without going to a ‘supermarket’, and the prices of imported items meant we only re-stocked the basics like rice and flour.

Before departure, 4-6 months of non-perishable foods are tracked and traced by excel into every nook and cranny of our boat, our tiny fridge and freezer stores less than a small drinks fridge, it didn’t take long until we were down to dinners of rice and beans, or pasta and sauce. As a matter of necessity our angling skills came a long way, fast. We went from losing a number of fish at the surface to regularly landing big Wahoo and Tuna.

So then, sushi, sashimi, fish pie, a seafood extravaganza. We began baking bread, trading for amazing local produce, papaya, bananas, breadfruit, bok choi, cassava, pineapple and we have learned the true value of coconuts…. coconut water, coconut milk, coconut cream, coconut oil, coconut chips, coconut shavings, raw coconuts. Every sailor we met had a different coconut related talent, from climbing trees, to removing husks with rudimentary tools, to creating spicy coconut snacks! All of a sudden our diet had changed, though we were always very excited to receive care packages from friends and family, of chocolate and cheese!!!

Pick your own - Near Blue Lagoon, 45 min bushwalk

Well worth the effort!

Little Monkey!

Moon River has water storage tanks with capacity for 900 litres. In Auckland 900 litres lasts an average family of 6 less than 1 day. Water conservation is a big part of our life aboard and we can make 900 litres last 4 weeks. So instead of each person using 160 litres per day, we each use 5!! We had left behind long steamy showers, flushing toilets and we had to hand wash our clothes, clean our dishes with salt water, and we ran outside in our undies in the middle of the night whenever we heard rain, to catch fresh water with strategically placed buckets. We flushed our toilet with salt water and we have an amazing wastewater treatment system, so we don’t discharge any harmful waste.

Any rubbish we have on board we have to store for weeks or months! We cut our food scraps up into small pieces before throwing them overboard, we collect our paper to burn on campfires when we go ashore, we throw our glass overboard when we are in very deep water, we squash and store our tin cans and we try to have no plastic, but when we do we cut it into small pieces and push it into milk bottles to create plastic bricks which we store until we return to NZ. We are looking into making a small portable recycling machine, we would love to be able to beach cleans wherever we go!

Moon River has house batteries, which provide power to reading lights, pumps, navigation, auto helm and all other electronics. We charged our small hand held vacuum cleaner and our devices while the engine was running. We had no other appliances. No juicer, no blender, no kettle, no toaster if it plugs in we didn’t have one. Our batteries charged while our engine was going, or using solar panels on our roof. All of our cooking was done using gas and our small hot water cylinder heated up while our engine was running, and stayed warm for a few days.

During our passages between countries we had no standard internet or cell phone reception. We used a satellite phone for emergencies, weather updates and text messaging. We bought local SIM cards to allow limited internet usage, but as you can imagine reception was non-existent at a majority of the isolated villages and uninhabited islands that we visited.

 So that is a brief overview of our sustainable life aboard, our plans to travel to Indonesia have been put on hold, and our life aboard in Auckland means we return to some of the luxuries, but we can’t wait to head back to our life on the ocean, simple, relaxing, fulfilling, peaceful and exhilarating, with some extremely stressful moments to keep us on our toes.