Raft-Up: Non-Productive Crewmembers Waste Space!

Fernando Botero's Cat.  Beautiful, but non-productive.

"Have nothing in your house [or boat] that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." William Morris

Space is a strictly limited commodity on a boat, so what you choose to bring aboard speaks volumes (sorry) about your priorities. When we prepared to move on to JOY, we sold or gave away a vast majority of our Stuff. But what about the stuff that came with us? This month, Raft-Up bloggers discuss our "Space Splurges" - the stuff that we brought on board that maybe we shouldn't have, but just couldn't live without.

So I pondered this topic. For about five seconds. In my mind's eye, I scrolled past the bronze bird sculpture, the electric tea kettle, the pink plastic buddha, the heating pad, and the martini shaker. Seriously, we have all these things on JOY and could not live without them. But the space used by these small items is nothing compared to our major space wasters: we call them Isabel, Percy, and Tucker.

Isabel, Percy, and Tucker are the cats. Cats on a catamaran. Cute idea. But really, they are NOT useful. And oh my heavens, let me tell you about the space we waste on them. We have three litter boxes, which we've arrayed in the forward berths. Hard to walk in there, and they scatter the litter, so the remaining walkable space is a bit crumbly. We store newspapers and bags for litter box clean up. And the litter itself. It is heavy and comes in big boxes. Then there's the food. As landlubbers, our darlings ate both canned food and dry food, and we have continued this feeding regimen on the boat. Three cats can go through three or four cans of food a day, plus dry food. And the food and water dishes take up a pretty substantial portion of our floor space. We have a scratching post, as well, which also takes up valuable floor space.  Throw in a bit of cat first aid and cat medicine. And cat carriers, in case we want to take them to the vet or pack them into the life raft. And a file folder stuffed with cat paperwork.

And the little cat bodies themselves... nearly thirty pounds, put together. They all want to sleep on our berth, which is a lot smaller than the beautiful king-sized bed that we all used to share quite happily. When we're underway and the weather's fine, Isabel and Tucker both like to steal the comfy helmsman's chair whenever I vacate it. And one of our prime storage locations, under our berth, must remain half-empty, since Percy and Isabel use this cabinet as their "happy place" if it's rough at sea or when the boat is invaded by strangers.

Primary cat hang-out.  We could fit a lot of OTHER stuff in this locker, if we didn't need to leave space for the cats.

THREE CATS. On board a small boat. Big space investment. But here's the thing. Isabel is almost 12 years old. The boys are both 10 years old. For all these years they have been, and always shall be, members of Team Behr, for better or for worse, on land and on sea. They're definitely not useful. But let's call them beautiful. They bring joy to JOY, and that's all we can ask of them. Except: hey, move over! You took my seat, dammit!

Okay, Tucker, we might need to get to that jib sheet at some point.  But you sure are BYOO-TEE-FULL.

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