Convincing wife to liveaboard?

[TrentePieds]

Quote: "Women understand the necessities of excretory function."

Indeed they do :-0)! MyBeloved has spent thirty years - THIRTY YEARS!!! - wiping and powdering other peoples' babies' bottoms. "Greater love hath no woman..."

Fresh sea-air will do her good :-)!

TrentePieds

[Pelagic]

With much reverence to TrentePieds....I think this would be a good time to read Gunter Grass. .... The Flounder.......we all miss that 3rd bosum...

[TrentePieds]

Squid: I'm a contemporary of Holger Danske - This guy: who is presently asleep in the crypt beneath the castle of Kronborg in Elsinore.

Holger was at the battle of Poitiers in 732AD, about 60 years before the raid on Holy Island that I told you about. Holger had, prior to the battle of Poitiers, fought against an incursion of Franks into the territories of the Danes. However, by 732 King Charles Martel of the Franks took a stand against the Saracens - as the adherents of Mohammed were called then - and Holger concluded that differences twixt the Germanic tribes needed to be put on the back burner while a united "Europe" stood against the proselytizing intruders.

Martel, with Holger's help, held the line and excluded Islam from the European heartland. Only Spain and Portugal were forfeited to Islam which held sway there for some 700 years.

Plus ça change... N’est-ce pas?

The legend sez that Holger will awake and come to the defence of Denmark whenever she is in peril. And indeed the most active resistance group in Denmark during the Nazi occupation was "Holger Danske"

TrentePieds

[TrentePieds]

hm... seems like Holger was a little reluctant to come out of the crypt. Let's try it again :-)

TrentePieds

[TrentePieds]

The Flounder! Ho, boy! I'm not sure I have the courage to go there :-0)!

TrentePieds

[Sea Dreaming]

My great grandmother, Ferrell Provstgaard, was born and raised in Denmark. I enjoy the Danish history. Thank you.

[Lantau]

It depends on your relationship, specifically whether your wife trusts you to tell the truth and do what you say you will do. If she does, I encourage you to tell her that you will do ALL repeat ALL of repair work and most of the cleaning yourself. That way when she looks at all the fancy features of a boat she won't be thinking that SHE has to take care of them alone while you fiddle with the chartplotter.

[zeehag]

she may surprise you
sail together--find a way, whether it be chartering in caribbean, or sailing on a lake somewhere.
go to boat shows. go to used boat open houses. show her the awesome stuff and the stuff in your price range. work together.
who knows she may have something positive to add to the search with you.
but then, i only lived on everything from 21-41 ft, been sailing 60 yrs and owned many different boats power and sail since 1990. learned to sail since 1955 on family owned 36ft 1903 gaff rigged raceabout.
no one had to talk me into this.
i ENJOY my lifestyle on board and cruising. even the repair part of cruising aint bad.

[weavis]

I know Kenomac and mrs Kenomac. Not super well but enough to know of the character and of their abilities.

Kenomac is one of those people that is a doer. NOTHING will stop him from achieving what he needs to do. Fixing his house, his business, his car, his boat, his yard.... and he does 99% himself. He will launch into a project and work at it until completed.

Kenomac is not a man to be compromised by political correctness. A person who says what thinks, (just read his posts) but is not driven by ego but by genuine feeling and a lack of comprehension as to why other just do not stop complaining and get on with it. He can be dogmatic and if you piss him off you will have taken on your worst nightmare but on the whole he loves life and takes it by the horns. (Amusing to be with as well).

Mrs Kenomac is an equally hard working person. Together they work their way through life, ask for nothing and earn it themselves.

If mrs Kenomac did not want to live aboard then she would not live aboard.

I think as a couple they work in each others strengths. I have seen the respect for each other in words and in deeds. They complement each other in life and in attitude.

If you can have that in a marriage, then working together, living together and location all come together...

Dont get me wrong... Im not making the kenomacs out to be the pefect couple... I am making them out to be 2 people that have got it right for themselves...

I like that. That to me is a good working marriage.

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

hm... seems like Holger was a little reluctant to come out of the crypt. Let's try it again :-)

TrentePieds

If I am reading you right. I don't want to start a political or ideological drift so enough said.

[Sea Dreaming]

Originally Posted by weavis

I am making them out to be 2 people that have got it right for themselves...

I like that. That to me is a good working marriage.

Exactly! Marriage is about 2 people in harmony. That may not be harmonious to an outsider view byt it only has to work happily for the wed.

[Cadence]

My Mom lived aboard for 17 years. My wife has been long suffering with me and my boats since she gets sea sick. I would not think of asking her to live aboard.
It was a joke with my youngest. "Mom took a pill and went below, that's the last we will see of her."

[TrentePieds]

Quote: “My great grandmother, Ferrell Provstgaard, was born and raised in Denmark. I enjoy the Danish history.”


With the continued indulgence of the moderators, then:


“Provstgaard” means “parsonage”, as you may already know. A “provst” is, in the state church of Denmark, a country parson who is rather more equal than his fellows. He is charged with the oversight in matters spiritual, i.e with assuring adherence to the party line, and in matters of administration with the prevention of malfeasance. “Gaard” in this context means “farm”, and your name indicates therefore that one of you ancestors (perhaps by marriage) was not only a Lutheran priest, but that his “living” - his appointment – entitled him to occupy and work a farm owned by the church.


The name was most common around a town called Ringkøbing in the west of Jutland, and this is where the story begins to become interesting for Americans. This part of Denmark has always been a very poor part of a rather poor country. It consisted in former times of uncultivated moorland, a heath of ling, heather and gorse with a tough layer of hardpan lying three of four inches under the sandy soil.


When the collapse of Napoleonic France resulted in the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the German Confederation was formed from the numerous German speaking principalities in northwestern Europe (including Prussia which theretofore had been insignificant), the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg were left under Danish control. Turmoil erupted in Europe as a result of the sentiment toward nationalism that was a result of the French Revolution, and many of the “nations” born at the Congress of Vienna conceived “basic laws” (“constitutions”) implementing democracy to replace autocratic systems of governance that existed as a residuum of feudalism. Denmark enacted and promulgated such a “basic law” in 1849.


On the commemorative statue to Frederik VII, who was the ruling monarch who saw the train coming at him and therefore accepted this basic law which rendered the Danish monarchy powerless, the plinth is inscribed on one side ”A Nation of Laws”. That, of course, is merely a politically correct echo of the beliefs of America's Founding Fathers – wherever THEY may have gotten such ideas from :-). But consider the time now: These were the very years in which Karl Marx was slaving over a hot manuscript in the British Library and Friedrich Engels was arguing for democracy – nay, for communism – in every issue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. In consequence we find on the other side of the plinth the words, alluding to the purpose of basic laws and governance, “That few may have too much, and fewer too little!” Always CYA :-)!


By 1848 there was an insurgency by Lauenburger troops who wanted to join the German Confederation. The insurgency was put down, but by 1864 we enter the second act, now with Prussia as a keenly interested participant. Prussia had the new-fangled rifled artillery pieces produced by Krupp. Denmark did not. From Prussia's point of view, this war against a small, backward nation was a heaven-sent opportunity for a dress rehearsal for the Franco-Prussian war that was planned for the imminent future. Schesvig, Holstein and Lauenburg were lost in the war of '64. The Franco-Prussian war came in '72.



Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg had been Denmark's “bread basket”, so the loss was serious. It amounted to about one third of Denmark's total area. A descendant of French huguenots, an officer in the Danish Army, a Civil Engineer, Enrico Dalgas, said “What we've lost outwardly, we must regain inwardly” and set about breaking and cultivating the moorlands in the west of Jutland in much the same manner as the prairies of the American West were broken and cultivated. The areas inland from Ringkøbing were among them.


Settlers came from other parts of Denmark and were given title to “homesteads” much as homesteads could be taken up in some parts of the American West and in Canada for a minimal cash payment preceding occupation and improvement. Again, consider the time: Joseph Smith was half a century into his missionary work, and like desperately poor people everywhere, the desperately poor homesteaders on the Danish Heath were much given to superstition and religiosity. By the 1880s the “free land” on the Heath had all been taken up, and swains born in the mid '60s, when the Heath was first settled, were now of an age to look for land and for brides. Given their poverty, they were not much of a catch for the daughters of “good” families, and in consequence they were ripe for the picking by LDS missionaries who flocked to the land. “Free land and polygyny” was a bait as irresistible to them as is the promise of two and seventy virgins to many young men today.


And that is the reason that in some States, notably Utah, you find so many Danish names. My own “rellies” came from the other side, the “prosperous” side, of the peninsula of Jutland. So you will find them not in Salt Lake City but in Racine :-)


TrentePieds

[sailorboy1]

I have a life partner and we make decisions together. If you and yours don't, well there's always the internet to rant about it.

[Simply Sailing]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

If you plan on trying to convince her into camping full time, it won't work. I've never met a woman, my wife included, who would ever agree to water being rationed. The same with toting dirty laundry all over town, and don't even think about showing her a composting toilet unless you want to live the dream alone.

Apparently you've never met the right woman. I've lived on a 34-foot boat for 15 years, for 10 of those years we had 3 boys that we raised aboard. No, I don't "camp out" because our floating home is a HOME. I use a foot pump to ration water. I can shower in less than 2 gallons. I don't tote dirty laundry all over town, but I do wash it in a bucket with a plunger. And I've had a composting toilet for 6 years. For 5 years before that, we shat in a bucket. Ask anyone who knows us, you DON'T have to live the dream alone just because you live it simply.