{"id":129,"date":"2020-12-28T08:37:06","date_gmt":"2020-12-28T07:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.2032.ch\/?p=129"},"modified":"2020-12-28T16:27:22","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T15:27:22","slug":"summer-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.2032.ch\/index.php\/2020\/12\/28\/summer-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer ’20"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Well, this was a special summer. Not particularly because of COVID-19 (I don’t want to call it Corona<\/em>, I want to keep a professional distance<\/em> between us), but since my girlfriend and I lived on a sailboat (from the end of May to the beginning of October).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of things happened. I don’t want to bore you with all the details, so I’ll just tell you the most relevant ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where are you living now? <\/p>

Will you do it again next summer? <\/p>

Tell me about your experience! <\/p>

You are my idol! Can I join you next year?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If those are the thoughts that are crossing your mind right now, continue reading my post, otherwise, just go back and do whatever you were doing before, I don’t want to waste your precious time!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the introductory post see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beginning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I quit my shared flat at end of May. I moved all my stuff to my grandmother’s house since she has a lot of (empty) space in her old farmhouse. The night before I moved all my belongings, we discovered that our sailboat had a new water leak, yey! Not the best way to start this experiment! After some investigation, we found out that the water was leaking from a hole (due to corrosion) in the exhaust pipe. Fortunately, that meant that as long that the motor was not running, no water entered the boat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I closed the leak with a silicone band, managing to temporarily remedy the problem. I guess that before there was about half a liter of water entering the boat per minute. After the quick fix, maybe just 1% of it? Difficult to estimate, but definitively less. We already knew that we had a leak at the level of the propeller shaft bearing, but managed to fix that by greasing it continually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living on KAJO 6<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I had a more romantic picture of life on a sailboat. I thought that I would have a feeling of holidays every day. But since I had to wake up early, commute 2 hours to get to work, work, commute back 2 hours, there was not much left of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But on my days off it was beautiful. The constant rocking of the sailboat following the waves, the summer storms sheltered by the sailboat, the coziness in the boat with Saskia, the proximity of the lake with the possibility to go swimming whenever I wanted, all those things made this experience memorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comunist KAJO 6.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I liked our minimalistic life. What I missed was space. Space to properly store things. Space to let things stay for a couple of days. Space to live (now I understand the true meaning of living room<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My garden.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I once tried to make a pizza with our camping oven. That didn’t go that well. It smelled a little bit of the alcohol we use to fuel our stove. The interior of the pizza was well baked, while the peripheral part was still uncooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After some weeks, some people noticed that we were often on the sailboat and asked if we were living on it. They probably asked it as a joke. I don’t exactly know whether it’s legal what we did or not (I guess not). First, because houseboats are not allowed in Switzerland. And second, because I was still registered in the canton Aargau and lived in the canton Neuch\u00e2tel. But don’t worry, I don’t have a guilty conscience. I was always a little bit worried that somebody somehow found out. But fortunately, that was not the case, at least not until the very end. The city of Aarau wrote me a letter telling me I have to move my residence to where I live. Luckily I then had already found a new place to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Happy Saskia sleeping on happy KAJO 6.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The most uncomfortable thing was the lack of a proper bathroom. We had a little camping toilet, which was great, but there was no shower (and no running water). There was a common restroom with showers for the harbor people, but that meant a little excursion every time I wanted to shower. What I ended up doing was showering at work and cleaning myself by swimming in the lake (except during the period when Cyanobacteria populated our waters).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Happy KAJO 6 among its friends. Can you spot him?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What I also missed was a way to do laundry on the boat. Luckily Saskia took care of that and washed my clothes with her grandmother who lived nearby. Thanks, Saskia! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sailing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We didn’t go sailing as much as we wanted. The virus took Saskia’s job and she had to find a new one. Fortunately, she found one, unfortunately, she worked on weekends, the only time when I had time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This season we anchored for the first time. We did it 2-3 times near the port when we didn’t have much time to go out for real. I passed my theoretical sailing exam (for the Swiss lakes) but didn’t start the lessons for the practical exam, that’s something for next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Towards the end of August, we made a little trip on the north side of our lake. We visited Neuch\u00e2tel (Jeune Rives), Saint-Blaise, Portalban, and Chevroux. When we departed from Portalban to go to Chrevroux, we knew that a storm was coming. We decided to go anyway because we were naive (and retrospectively stupid). About 500 m before arriving at Chevroux, we folded our sails and went on by motor, as usual. The storm was rising, the waves and the wind were against us, pushing us back. We advanced very, very slowly if at all. It seemed that we stayed on the spot. Then I thought it would be possible to follow a zig-zag path against the wind. But as soon as I slightly changed direction away from the wind, the boat started to turn completely. The waves became bigger and bigger, the boat was rocking more and more. I had never experienced something like that. My knees started to tremble. I don’t remember the last time I was that afraid. Another mistake I made was not to wear a lifejacket. As I fought the waves, I tried to put it on single-handedly, which distracted me from steering the boat. After pushing KAJO 6 through the waves for something which felt like an eternity, we managed to enter the harbor and safely dock. I don’t know the last time I was that relieved either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Happy KAJO 6 in Portalban.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Living around Neuch\u00e2tel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I bought a (cheap) racing bike to go between the port and the train station of Neuch\u00e2tel to save a couple of minutes of commute every day and to keep in shape. My goal was to commute by bike every day, but it was exhausting, especially because I also went running regularly. In the end, I might have cheated<\/em> only 20% of the time by using public transportation to the train station of Neuch\u00e2tel. I’m proud of myself :).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My bike (on a cheat day).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It’s a very nice area to do sports and outdoor activities. I went running a lot by the lake and to the mountains (direction of Gorge de l’Areuse) and I did some biking (a couple of trips with Roy, a harbor friend). Because of COVID-19, there were not that many parties and events as usual. What I missed the most, was the nifff<\/a>. Last year we docked at the harbor of Jeune Rives and stayed there for the whole duration of the festival. I really want to repeat this experience, maybe next year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holidays<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In September we did two weeks of house-sitting for friends in D\u00fcdingen. Tap water, an oven, dishwashing machine, a shower, and space to stand straight, such a luxury! The house was directly on the Schiffenensee and our friends have a small sailboat (a sunflower) which we could use \ud83d\ude42 There we enjoyed the space. We finally had space to do a jigsaw puzzle (of a sailboat, of course) \ud83d\ude42 It was a nice change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pepsouille, our roommate in D\u00fcdingen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Saskia preparing happy Sunflower.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

End of the experiment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Towards mid-September, the days began to get significantly shorter. By the time I arrived home the sun was already set. And it began to be colder. That was the moment when it became less fun and time to think about a new place to live. Saskia moved to a shared flat in Neuch\u00e2tel at the beginning of October with her former flatmate. I temporarily lived with her until I found something for myself. I decided that I wanted to go back to Bern since it’s the city where I feel the most at home. I Evelyntually (hihi) found a shared flat in the Breitsch.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At this point, I want to thank everybody who contributed to making this summer so memorable.\u00a0Saskia for everything, her grandparents for the sailboat,\u00a0Roy for the bike tours, Morgane, Thibault, and Quentin for joining our fleet, all our friends who came visiting us, all the nice people on the harbor,\u00a0Moreno & Cristina for the weekend in Valle Verzasca (including helicopter trip), C\u00e9lestine & Olivier for the house we could borrow<\/em>, Samia & Estelle for the month we lived together after our experiment and probably many more people I forgot \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Valle Verzaska \ud83d\ude42<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It was a nice experiment, I’m very glad I did it. But would I do it again next year? No. At least not as extreme as we did. I sometimes missed having a flat, especially when the lake was rough and I could not sleep well because of the waves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This experiment helped me appreciate the little things of life, oh my god, that sounded cheesy. I have to stop it right here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, this was a special summer. Not particularly because of COVID-19 (I don’t want to call it Corona, I want to keep a professional distance between us), but since my girlfriend and I lived on a sailboat (from the end of May to the beginning of October). A lot of things happened. I don’t want to bore […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kajo6"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.2032.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.2032.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.2032.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.2032.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.2032.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/blog.2032.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164,"href":"https:\/\/blog.2032.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.2032.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.2032.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.2032.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}