There’s no switch you can flip and forget about things here. Everything has a system. Water, for example, doesn’t just come out endlessly. She stores it—around 200 liters at a time—and refills it manually every couple of weeks. Enough for daily use, but not something you can waste without thinking. Electricity works the same way. Part of it comes from the harbor. The rest depends on what she’s set up herself—batteries, connections, things she had to learn over time. “It sounds like a lot,” she admitted. “But you get used to it.”
And that seems to be the pattern here. Nothing is automatic. But nothing feels difficult anymore either. We asked her why she chose this in the first place. She paused for a moment, like it wasn’t a question she answered often. “Rent was too expensive,” she said simply. But that wasn’t all of it. There was something else in the way she described it. A kind of quiet that doesn’t exist in most homes. The way the boat moves slightly—something visitors notice immediately, but she doesn’t anymore.
And as we stepped back onto the dock, it made sense. From the outside, it still looked like an old boat. But once you’ve been inside, you don’t really see it that way again.