Now — if you'd like the full story, and the full story is worth it, carry on.
Here is the thing about Jura's decks, which are teak, which is a wood so beautiful it makes grown sailors go quiet and reverent the way some people go quiet in cathedrals, or in the presence of a truly excellent sandwich: they are soft. Softer than you'd think. Softer than they look. Softer than seems reasonable for something that has to hold up a whole boat worth of people and their bags and their opinions.
And what they cannot abide — what they find absolutely intolerable, what offends them at a cellular level — is sand and grit and the crumbs of whatever you were eating (and no judgment here, truly, eat what you like, eat with abandon, eat with the unselfconscious joy of someone who has no idea they are being watched) ground in by shoes, by heels, by the cheerful heedless foot of someone who is busy admiring the view, which is admittedly tremendous.
So: sweep. Sweep often. Sweep cheerfully. Think of sweeping as a kind of prayer, or at least a form of gratitude, which is close enough.
The varnish gleams. It really does. On a bright morning when the light comes skipping off the water it gleams in a way that is almost unreasonable, almost too much, the way a really good piece of music is almost too much, the way it makes you feel things you weren't planning to feel that early in the day.
What it cannot survive — what will break the skipper's heart quietly and without complaint, which is the worst kind of heartbreak, the kind that just sits there — is a buckle, a zipper, a bag set down with the breezy confidence of someone who has never thought about varnish in their entire life, a tool placed with that particular blunt authority of someone who does not yet know what they are looking at but fully intends to find out.
Keep your buckles away from the varnish. Keep your bags somewhere else. The varnish is doing so much, quietly, every single day, and it asks so little in return. Honor that.
The dinghy is a wonderful, small, chaotic vessel that wants very much to smack into Jura's hull with both oars extended outward like the arms of someone who has just been told surprising news, which is essentially what it's doing at all times. Do not let it.
Guide it gently. Fend it off with your hands, not with a shove, not with an oar, not with the kind of casual force that says I am stronger than this situation, which you are not, because the dinghy has physics on its side and physics is famously unbothered by confidence.
Think of the dinghy as a toddler — full of energy and genuine goodwill and completely, serenely without judgment about what it crashes into. You provide the judgment. That is your role here.
The sofas below are soft and beautiful and forgiving in the way that only the very best sofas are, and they ask almost nothing of you, really almost nothing, just this one small constellation of things: don't sit on them in wet sailing gear, which you will want to do, which is understandable, which the sofas themselves would do if they were the ones who'd just been sailing.
Don't place plates on them. Don't drop bags on them. Don't use them as a shelf or a table or a towel rack or a second berth for your gear, which has its own berth, which is anywhere the sofas are not.
The wooden table folds. It has leaves, which open and close with a kind of quiet elegance that rewards attention. Do not drag your laptop across it — the laptop doesn't mind but the table does, and the table was here first.
Do not lean on it with the full philosophical weight of someone who is in the middle of making a very important point, because the point, however important, is not worth it. Handle the leaves the way you'd handle a letter from someone you love — carefully, with both hands, paying attention to the fact that something good is in your hands and you are responsible for it for this small moment in time.
The stanchions — those thin silvery posts standing at attention along the edges of the boat like a very small and optimistic fence — are for steadying yourself, for a reassuring touch, for the kind of light contact that says I am here and the boat is here and we are all fine. They are not for hanging off of, or leaning against with full commitment, or gripping with the white-knuckled certainty of someone who has decided that this particular piece of metal is the only thing standing between them and the sea. Grab near the bottom if you must grab. They are doing their best, and their best is considerable, and it has limits.
Do not jump on the deck. This genuinely feels like it shouldn't need saying and yet here we are, together, saying it, and there is no shame in that because it is still worth saying. The deck is not a trampoline. It is not a stage upon which your enthusiasm is the main event. It is not a surface that responds well to impact, or to the energetic footfall of someone experiencing a very good moment and expressing that goodness physically downward. Express your high spirits in other ways. Wave your arms. Sing something. Tell someone what you're grateful for. The deck will thank you by remaining watertight, which is the highest compliment a deck can pay.
The lines are the ropes — sailors call them lines, which is one of the charming small private languages of the sea, a language in which a rope is a line and left is port and right is starboard and the kitchen is the galley and the floor is the sole, as if the sea decided that everything that happens on it deserves its own name, its own small identity, its own word, which seems right actually, which seems like the sea being its characteristically generous self. The chain is the anchor chain. Stepping on either of these things is bad for the equipment and possibly for your ankles, which you need, which are not replaceable in any harbour we are likely to visit.
The tiller is made of beautiful wood and it steers the boat and it rests above a hatch and that hatch has feelings, or at least it has structural limitations, which amounts to the same thing in practice. Don't lean on the tiller. Don't press down on it idly, the way you might press down on something while thinking about something else entirely. You'll know you've done it wrong when the skipper goes very still in the particular way of someone who has chosen, consciously and with great effort, not to say the first thing that came to mind.
There are logs in these waters — great waterlogged lumps of former tree, former forest, former growing thing, now drifting along just beneath the surface with the slow and absolute patience of something that has nowhere in particular to be — and hitting one is an experience that no one aboard will enjoy and everyone will remember. If you are on watch you are the eyes of the boat, which is a real thing, a true thing, a thing that matters. Be good eyes. Be the kind of eyes that spot the log. Be a hero.
The throttle and gear controls live in the cockpit and they are doing a specific and important job and they would like very much not to be bumped, sat on, leaned against, or used as an armrest by someone who has found a comfortable position and decided to commit to it. This is not a metaphor. It is just a thing that is true about controls.
When the boat heels — when she tips, as she will, as she does, as she absolutely loves to do with a kind of joyful inevitability, leaning into the wind like someone who has found the thing they were made for — things that are not secured will become projectiles. Your water bottle. Your sunscreen. Your novel, which will land face-down and lose your page. Your phone. Your sunglasses. That snack you were saving. All of it will slide or roll or launch itself with the cheerful indifference of physics, which does not care about your belongings the way you do. Stow everything before we leave the dock. Everything. Future-you, braced in the cockpit with both hands occupied and the wind in their teeth and a big grin on their face, will not be able to thank past-you enough.
Freshwater is finite aboard Jura, which is one of the many ways that life on a boat clarifies things, returns them to their actual weight and value, reminds you that fresh water is a remarkable and not-unlimited gift that most of us have been taking for granted our entire lives. Use it wisely for washing and cleaning. But drink. Drink a lot. Drink more than you think you need, especially on sunny days, especially when sailing, especially when you are having such a genuinely excellent time that your body's increasingly urgent messages about hydration are getting lost somewhere between the sails and the horizon.
Jura's holding tank for urine is small — smaller than you'd expect, smaller than you'd hope — and it would appreciate being checked before you make demands of it. This is the kind of intimate logistical knowledge that accumulates between a person and a boat over time, unglamorous and essential, the very same way you eventually learn the particular quirks of any home you love.
The saltwater pump draws from the sea, which is generous of it, and the sea in a harbour is not the sea you want touching things, which the pump understands if you explain it by not pressing the button while in one. After it's been sitting idle it will produce, briefly, a quantity of water that smells like it's been sitting idle, which is fair, which is honest, which is the pump simply reporting on the situation accurately before moving on to better things.
Power is limited aboard in the way that all genuinely good things are limited — sunshine, the perfect anchorage, the exact right word — and it deserves to be treated accordingly. The electrical panel on the wall is a kind of map of everything the boat is doing electrically at any given moment, and the skipper is the one who holds that map in his head, tracking what's on and what it's drawing and what that means for tomorrow morning. Asking before you flip something is not an imposition. It is, in fact, the entire move.
There is a lid over the chain locker and it must come off before the anchor goes anywhere — up or down — and be rested against the bulkhead, that wall there, before the chain moves, because the chain will otherwise do to the wood exactly what you'd expect a heavy chain to do to wood given the opportunity, which is eat into it with a slow and enthusiastic viciousness that is almost impressive.
When the anchor comes back up, the chain needs to be guided into the locker with some attentiveness, coaxed in rather than simply permitted to happen, like a very long and very heavy and not particularly cooperative garden hose that has its own ideas about where it wants to go.
The fridge door must click. Not sort of close, not mostly close, not close in the way that looks closed from across the cabin — click, with that small and deeply satisfying sound of a seal completing itself, of a thing doing exactly what it was designed to do. If it does not click, everything inside it will warm up with a patient and unhurried certainty, and you will open it later and find things that are merely ambient-temperature, which is not what anyone wanted.
There is a solenoid — a small switch, typically red, typically mounted nearby, the one that controls whether propane reaches the stove at all — and the sequence matters: solenoid off first, then burner off, in that order, not the other way around, not simultaneously, not in whatever order feels natural in the moment, because the order is the point, the order is the whole thing, the order is what keeps propane from doing what propane will enthusiastically do if given half a chance.
Once the flame is out, wipe down the stovetop with a damp cloth before whatever just cooked on it decides to become a permanent part of the stainless steel, which it will, with remarkable commitment and zero regret, if you give it enough time. Then leave everything off. The stove, finished for the day, appreciates this more than it can say, as does everyone sleeping six inches from the propane locker.
After meals, wash up. Wipe the table. Leave the galley the way you'd hope to find it if someone else had cooked before you — clean and calm and ready for the next good meal, because there will be a next good meal, there is always a next good meal on a boat, this is one of the unwritten laws of sailing and it is one of the best ones.
Sweep the deck and the sole (that's the floor inside, another word from the sea's quiet private language). Wipe things down with soft cloths. Coil lines when asked — it is a skill, and a meditation, and more satisfying than it has any right to be. Help with fenders when docking, which means getting them out before you need them, not during.
Ask questions. Take the helm when offered. Stand at the bow at some point and look out at the water and let yourself feel whatever you feel, which will probably be something very close to wonder, which is the right feeling, which is in fact what all of this — the boat, the water, the effort of getting here, all of it — is fundamentally for.