A Touch of Class

Rick has had his boat in the Anchorage Marina for about three weeks now, and even though our departure date keeps getting moved further and further forward, he and I have been living on the boat for almost a week now. I have been helping Rick by running errands – there is a West Marine store within walking distance and I’ve become a regular – and trying to keep some degree of domesticity by cleaning up dishes and doing laundry. During my time here at the marina, I am struck by how similar it is to an RV campground.

Perish the thought! Sailing is generally considered to be a pastime of the upper classes. Stereotypical yacht owners sip gin and tonics while wearing blue blazers and saying things like, “Right, old boy.” Camping, on the other hand, at least in an RV or trailer is looked down upon as a cut-rate travel option for the lower classes and retirees. The class distinction at stake here has already played itself out in our history as a couple. I used to own a small pop-up camper that I pulled behind my car. Dewey and I took a very memorable trip with that camper to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, as well as Maine and Cape Cod when he was small. When Rick and I were first an item and planned a family camping trip to Nova Scotia, he was horrified at my insistence that the trailer would make for a more enjoyable experience and we needed to bring it. Real campers use a tent, you see. Was his contempt for the trailer merely a matter of the lower class connotations attached to it? Or was it that his self image as a newly single man just didn’t jibe with the idea of driving a station wagon with a kid in the back and a camper in tow? I’ll probably never know, but we ended up having a wonderful time in our cozy, dry camper and Rick became quite the convert.

So where did this distinction between high-brow SV’s (Sailing Vessels) versus low-brow RV’s (Recreational Vehicles) come from? One might immediately assume that it is a money issue since keeping a boat inevitably costs a lot of money that the lower classes can’t afford. But I think that assumption would be wrong. First of all, a do-it-yourselfer like Rick can get a lot of boat for the money. Secondly, those big bus-sized Winnebago’s are very pricey and the upkeep and storage can be pretty costly as well. Not to mention the fact that there are many economy-minded live-aboards on boats, negating the need for a mortgage or rent on a house or apartment. A home on a sailboat is a famous housing option for medical students – cheaper than a mortgage, movable at the end of the three or more year program, up-scale and cool. Doing the same thing at a trailer park would probably cost about the same but would be definitely lower class and very un-cool.

So maybe it’s because trailer parks are notoriously ugly, and marinas, being on the water are beautiful. Hmmm. Wrong again. Many trailer parks and RV campgrounds are in gorgeous places in the mountains or on lakes and rivers, even at beaches. In my experience, state and national park campgrounds are the most beautiful places around. Living in a good-sized marina, on the other hand, far from affording lovely views of tranquil waters, is more like floating in a densely packed field of giant Chlorox bottles.

In fact, in many ways marinas and RV parks are remarkably similar. Both have extras like laundry facilities, public toilets and showers. Commercial RV parks almost always have swimming pools. But guess what? So does the Anchorage Marina! The tiny swimming pool is down at the end of the docks – it is filled with chlorinated water, but it floats in the harbor water.

There is also a big similarity between RV’s and SV’s when it comes to water and waste. Most boats above a certain size and larger RV’s have a head – although I’m not sure they call it a head on an RV. The showers are typically incorporated into the same space; simply close the door and you’ve got a shower closet. They both have fresh water tanks and holding tanks for waste that will eventually need to be pumped out. In this regard, neither SV’s nor RV’s seem very classy to me.  Just crudely functional, with an odor.

Perhaps the upper class association with sailing comes from this country’s English roots and the tradition of sailing in England. In his book “Class,” Paul Fussell points out, I think very accurately, that Americans tend to lend upper-crust distinction to anything English – paintings of fox hunt scenes, family crests, English bone china, tea and cakes,…and sailing. In the old days, a young man from very lower class roots could work his way up the ranks in the English navy and become an officer, with its attendant upper class recognition. Famous English sailors like Sir Francis Chichester became knighted for their accomplishments on the water.

Whatever the origins of sailing’s high-class pretentions, our stay here in the marina has not been a hugely high-class experience. It’s hot, the engines on the other boats are noisy, you more or less constantly smell gas or diesel fumes, the filthy water is littered with plastic trash and other unidentified floating objects whose true nature is too worrisome to contemplate, and our view…, well, we’ve already discussed that. We’re basically camping out in something worse than an RV park. After laying out our laundry to dry, our boat has a definite refugee quality to it. It’s official – we’re boat people.