Unknown Speaker 0:00 Yeah, so I was new to the boating world and boating life. I think it's not really a joke, but just something to the extent of like, oh, God forbid, like, you know, we don't want to sink. And I was talking about my boat. I wasn't talking about anybody else's boat. And my neighbor looked at me, he goes, Oh, like, we don't use that word around here, unless it actually happens. And I was like, What are you talking about? And he was like, it's pretty serious word. Like, only use it like if it happens, and I was like, Oh, damn, okay. Good to know, Unknown Speaker 0:32 people to hear you around. Tomorrow night, we want to do a barbecue and we would say things like, no, we're on the heart for the next week. We got to do the survey. And so that's how most of us refer to land is on the heart. Unknown Speaker 0:44 You know, there's a lot of like, Oh, you know, he's a land lovers. You know, Unknown Speaker 0:48 that kind of thing. Land lovers. So like someone who you know, lives on land, Unknown Speaker 0:54 discovers dirt dwellers. Unknown Speaker 0:59 Dirty land lovers, hey, Unknown Speaker 1:00 weekenders. Unknown Speaker 1:04 We call everybody else. Unknown Speaker 1:07 Those that don't live aboard, Unknown Speaker 1:09 we've got another one, which is a sneak aboard, which is a marina that doesn't allow you to live aboard but you do anyway. So you got to sneak aboard. Unknown Speaker 1:16 Or Rick's looking for the catch up, I'll say it's, you know, it's in the forward, it's forward and inboard in the fridge, so he knows where he's looking. It's kind of like that. Unknown Speaker 1:24 You mostly use those terms between friends. Like my friends that live on land or whatnot, you're just a dirt dweller You don't understand. Unknown Speaker 1:44 liveaboard is someone who lives on a boat, you're round, even during the frigid winter season. All five of the people you just heard live your round on a boat floating on Lake Ontario. This is Toronto's liveaboard community. Unknown Speaker 2:08 I go to sailing camp over bigger, like on the west side of Port credit. And I will learn how to sail there. Well, a friend of sailor cat told me I should join the race team. But I said I don't want to sell the race. I just want to do it for the joy. Unknown Speaker 2:31 That's Owen Marshall. Unknown Speaker 2:32 He's 10 years old and has never lived on land. It makes me really happy that he you know, he's managed to like find the thing that, that feel the same things that we love about it, you know, you know, when you're out sailing, and it's a beautiful day, and that's the that's how it all got started. Unknown Speaker 2:52 That's someone's mother, Lisa McKay. Lisa and her husband Rick have lived on their boat for 21 years straight. Unknown Speaker 2:59 That great moment of being out on the water, you know, you know, in the sunshine and, you know, those great feelings, you know, he's now he's got his own memories of sailing on his own now, you know, which is you know, sort of directs right come goes right back to why Rick started having this dream in the first place was when he was a little kid. And you know, being out on the water and and being out fishing and you know, swimming and stuff like that up north. You know, that's what sold him on this, you know, and now owns gonna have his own his own memories that you know, well maybe influence how he goes on in his life, you know? I mean, he could potentially live aboard his whole life. Unknown Speaker 3:44 I've noticed this this clock kind of going on yeah, so far compensation. What exactly is it so Unknown Speaker 3:50 it's uh, it's um, if you were on a ship and you were like a part of a crew, you'd be on watch and in a 24 hour period there are three watches three eight hour watches. And so when they they created the timing clock so you could hear what time it was no matter where you are. You wouldn't have to look at the clock to see what time it was you could hear it but the number of bells work was out of town when I visited but all three of them live at the port credit Yacht Club he got some see get some severe weather every now and again. And you wonder you know how it's all gonna go like via big wind or you know, you know you worry about the power going out which happens every once in a while. You know, those are and then that's more just about you know, just like dealing with it as opposed to scary, but you know, we do get some big weather that you have to Unknown Speaker 4:47 like the one storm and I was like eight and the snow was like two feet tall. Unknown Speaker 4:52 Yeah, we had a big snowstorm right around Christmas time power went out like it was you know, you got to deal with it. We're We're prepared. We have a generator. We have alternative heat. Like we've got plans so bad. You know, we're talking like 100 K, wind. You don't get any sleep. It's so loud. I mean he sleeps through it, but it's just so loud. all you hear is like the big gusts and you're bouncing around and yeah, it's just really really so one of the reasons why we you know if it's going to be that bad we'll we will we'll jump ship for a night. Unknown Speaker 5:39 What do you do in the winter? What if there's no Do you get cold? How do you live on a boat? How do you keep the ice on freezing the wind? Is it a powerful Is it a sailboat? Two years I was what the first year I came to Jenna McDougal them back to school. I brought my iPad. To me. It took a bunch of pictures inside my boat. And I hooked it up to the screen in my classroom. And we show the pictures and I heard a lot of Lounge's Unknown Speaker 6:19 Shane valance is a 46 year old Toronto liveaboard. Like Owen, he also finds it tedious to talk about where he lives. Unknown Speaker 6:27 I'm always okay with having that conversation. But typically it's Oh yeah. Where do you live? Oh, I live in poor credit. Oh, yeah, we're in poor credit. I love poor credit. Well, I'm on the water. Oh, really? We're on the water. Well, I'm on the water. Unknown Speaker 6:46 probably see the water. Unknown Speaker 6:50 Am I Oh, really? Oh, I love that. Yeah. Okay, what's it like and when you get into the hole, Unknown Speaker 6:55 what's winter, like, isn't it cold? Shane lives with his wife, Natalie Walker. And they've spent nearly 20 years living on a boat together. Unknown Speaker 7:05 I always joke that if Natalie and I don't want to look at each other, we have to agree to both sit in very specific spots. Like she has to sit in one corner and I have to sit in the other corner. And and if we're not in those two corners, we can always see each other. Unknown Speaker 7:28 It just made me think of an aspect that we haven't talked about. It is a couple living on earth in such a confined space. You can't fight Unknown Speaker 7:37 we never have there's no secrets. Unknown Speaker 7:40 Like you can't get mad at somebody and storm down stairs or something or you know sleeping in another room. You just can't. Unknown Speaker 7:49 On a beautiful summer day. It's hard to distinguish the difference. But on store stormy, rainy days when you're lying in bed, and your roof is two feet above your head. And it's only an inch thick of fiberglass and and wood and the hard rains coming down. If you enjoy the sound of a storm, there is nothing better than just hearing the rain, listening to the wind. And I just I find it so relaxing. It's like sitting on your front porch. Unknown Speaker 8:59 Most liveaboards start preparing for the winter season before the end of November. Natalie explains that in order to trap more heat inside of the boat, they need to build a plastic enclosure around the boat. Unknown Speaker 9:18 Natalie, do you know where they duck Unknown Speaker 9:24 so Shane is standing outside with the heat gun and pressing it and the guy inside is matching his impression with his hand or the I think he's using a box and it's a quick shot of heat and you can see it shrinking and melting and then you step away and then the cool air cools it right away. Yeah, Unknown Speaker 10:08 so I totally intended to wrap my vote when I was a little late in doing so. I think it was November and we got it, we got a fairly decent like rainstorm and then it turned cold overnight so it it froze and then had a little bit of snow in the morning time. So by the time I was waking up to get going, and I hadn't wrapped my boat yet, which means my on a sailboat, you have what's called a companion way. So when you're walking to get out of the boat, you look and you have to slide a hatch above your head back. And then you'll have another hatch right in front of you that you basically just you push out it's either on hinges or you take it out and you step out. Without that being covered and being completely covered in rain that froze and then covered in snow. I went to move the top hatch to find that it didn't move when I went to move the bottom hatch as a secondary thing to also find that it was also frozen in they kind of had like a quick moment of like, Oh my god, what like what have I done now I'm stuck in my sailboat. The little bit of a freak out there, but it kind of just like Hulk my way through it and just like like, smacked it in critical points that kind of hard to like try to knock the ice off on the outside and I was able to get some movement going and just kept working and working it working. And I could hear the ice like crunching off the hinges as like I was trying to open them. After I got the the front piece open. I was able to kind of like shimmy my way out because it's big enough hole and then I was able to just like add like shovel my boat off. I showed my boat, which is not something I ever thought I would have to do in my life. But yeah, and then that was kind of like an aha moment as to why people. You know why people wrap their boats earlier rather than later. Unknown Speaker 11:54 That's Benjamin canning. He's 24 years old. It has been living aboard for just over a year. Ben lives at Marina keywest with his seven month old basset hound movie. He recently sold his sailboat and moved on to a 30 foot long 1987 powerboat. Unknown Speaker 12:17 The old car horn I installed so it's just kind of funny. So come on aboard. Welcome to Lake fever. The name of the boat. Yeah, so we've got main living room areas. We've got our TV and like Internet setup. We've got like a nice big couch here. We've got morbi who's excited to see us my pooch. And then so we're looking forwards you look down across the boat and you see like the kitchen and then the little kitchen table in the bedroom at the very front bedroom bathroom. stereo system is playing Unknown Speaker 12:52 catch up of course. Unknown Speaker 13:00 I've said it for a little while people who live on on the boats are kind of like small town folk even doesn't matter where they're from, like, Martin right beside me here. I think he's German man grew up in Germany. Germany has a really thick German accent. But it's more like any Canadian then then I could I could you know point to just because he's so helpful. He's really like he's willing to do whatever you need to do to be your friend to help you to give you advice like all these different things that he offered to just random thing and he's got a submersible water pump so he'll pump water out of Lake Ontario put it through water filtration system and then use it as water onboard because they they'll shut the hoses down like when it gets super cold. And he goes hey look I'll build your little thing like tear water receptacle which is over here on the on the port side so it'll come back so when I fill up my water, I'll fill up your water as well. And that was the same day I met him. Wow. Yeah, just like when was last time anyone has ever been that genuine and nice. Off the docks To me it doesn't happen. People are kind of ignorant on land, but that's just my opinion. Oh, Unknown Speaker 14:04 thank you so much, Paul. Yeah, my Unknown Speaker 14:05 pleasure. Unknown Speaker 14:08 Good job done, right. Unknown Speaker 14:11 So Shane is up there with our neighbor Paul. And because Paul is six something feet tall. He's very helpful to get the plastic unfurled and and overall the high spots. And Shane and I did it with him last year. I can do it if I have to. But it's not fun to the two of us doing it because I'm so short. Unknown Speaker 14:44 So home Unknown Speaker 14:46 as like a as a topic has always been like an interesting thing for me. So I grew up obviously not in the city. And so always refer to as you know, the farm where I was born and raised as home or a home per se Then, you know moving in moving to Toronto and bouncing around the neighborhoods and all the apartments that was never home. To me I never really felt a connection to any of the neighborhoods or any of them, you know, any of the downtown living because it just it just seemed to translate to nothing and what's funny is that like, whenever I moved aboard the boat to literally a transient home and bounce around all these marinas is when I started to find like more of a sense of community and more of a sense of quote, home you know, I might have different neighbors every six months, but everybody kind of has the same you know, willingness to help. The same culture per se everyone is looking for everybody. It's always in a good mood, laughing. And and you know, invites you over to their home for dinner. And when was last time you could say your neighbor that you live beside in downtown Toronto ever invited you over for dinner, let alone even knows your name. And so that, to me is kind of like an interesting aspect of like home back home on the farm that I found here in the city. Unknown Speaker 16:13 I spent a few months getting to know the liveaboards and started to notice a pattern. Every person I met described how helpful the community is. I even experienced that myself when I met Shane and Natalie for the first time to interview them. It was a Tuesday night and I arrived at the train station. My toes were numb and I was expecting to walk to the marina when Shana Natalie insisted on driving over to pick me up. I wasn't surprised when Lisa had offered the same thing a few weeks later, I started to realize that being a liveaboard means being a good neighbor. My name is Julia Sione and this is Toronto's liveaboard community Transcribed by https://otter.ai