Simple Life

Our dinghy with Further anchored in the distance - Sutton's Bay, MI

We are loving this anchoring lifestyle. Really, we just love the slower paced, more relaxed and less complicated lifestyle Further brings us overall. We do things when we want to and more importantly at our own pace. Life happens at the Dean and Brady pace. If I can estimate, it's slower than Michigan time but a bit faster than island time. Either way it's a perfect pace for us and we appreciate things more when life moves at a slower pace!

We loved living in Chicago, we were there for the last 10 years. As our time there progressed we were starting to get over living in such a big city. It's hard to believe but it took SO much effort to do normal day-to-day tasks like driving to work or going to the store. We tried to walk to most places but we did have to drive a lot and let me tell you, driving was one of the worst things about living in the city. This is coming from someone who really likes to drive. On a no traffic day it would take me about 30 minutes to drive to work,  9 miles, that was also at 6 AM. On the way home from work at 7:30/8PM it would take me longer to get home. Once at your location, finding a spot sometimes was just as hard to do as getting there. We kinda started to dread doing anything.

Every summer, after bringing the boat down to Montrose, we would do everything we could to live on the boat all summer long. During this time we would also take 2-3 weeks off of work to go sail the southwest coast of Michigan. We started to notice that our lives on the boat were easier, less complicated, we were closer to nature and we were just overall happier. This was a huge factor in our decision to move out of the big, big city.

Our slower lifestyle may not be for everyone. It takes longer to do your normal everyday chores like cooking, food shopping, cleaning, walking the dog, getting to the bathroom and laundry but when you are crossing these chores off your list you do it in a way that you appreciate the chore more. You also learn to live with less stuff and comforts. Because of this we have come to realize that we don't need or really desire lots of the things that we have had before. When out anchoring or sailing, I don't mind using our little head (bathroom) on the boat. I also really enjoy walking to the bathrooms and shower when we are in a harbor. I feel that living this way we appreciating everything about our lives a bit more as well as not having to worry about the hustle and bustle.

To some people this lifestyle may be harder, more difficult or annoying that things take so long to do but not to us. We view it as though we get to enjoy the tasks we need to complete and not try to rush though them. If it takes us a day to complete something then so be it and we will get to everything else tomorrow. We have just changed our view on life just a bit now that we have left the city. It continues to change the more we are on the boat.

A trip to the store means that we have to make sure we have reusable bags, our wallets, and list before heading out since we often step off the boat without anything but the clothes we are wearing, even often forgetting our shoes. We then pile into the dinghy and take turns rowing into shore (at this anchorage it takes about 7 minutes). The walk to the store is about 10 minutes. We aren't able to hunger shop since we can only carry a certain amount of stuff from the store back to the boat comfortably, plus we have no jobs so we are on a budget. Usually a trip to the store takes us a couple hours overall to complete a round trip, something that would have taken us 30 min tops on land.

Life is a lot simpler on the boat so we don't mind when these tasks that may us longer than before. We aren't doing them because we want something, we are doing them for a purpose and it isn't a chore anymore, it becomes a part of our lifestyle. We feel that our errands and chores are more relaxing to complete this way, not sure why but maybe because life is a little less complicated. But let me tell you, I personally will take less complicated over complicated anytime!