My husband and I first moved aboard the Dancing Dragon on Sept. 28, 1985. The decision to move to a boat was made because housing prices in the San Francisco Bay Area were beyond our reach, even back in those days. We could almost afford to purchase a shack in the ghetto or move onto a sparkling new yacht. If we bought the house, we would have had to give up boating -- we couldn't afford to own a home, a yacht and eat too. In hindsight, we should have taken the shack, at least economically speaking, but we would have missed 22 years of great friends and fabulous adventures.

We ordered a brand new Catalina 36 from the dealer in Santa Cruz. We gave notice on our apartment and gave away all of the furniture. Whittling life down to fit inside a 36-foot box was a challenge, but we had been advised to keep only the things we loved. That excellent bit of advice made it really easy to decide what to toss. We packed up the wedding china, silver and crystal and left the crap behind.

The delivery date for the boat was fast approaching, as was the end of the lease on our apartment in Menlo Park. October 1 was our drop-dead date. It actually came down to the wire and we had two days to take delivery, bring the boat up from Santa Cruz to our slip in Brisbane, move the remaining 16 boxes on board and settle into our new life.

We wanted to make the boat as comfortable as possible because she was going to be our home. Refrigeration was a must, as was a gas stove and oven. I had cooked on an alcohol stove in our previous boat and wasn't wild about the experience. We also had additional opening ports installed over the galley so I could have adequate ventilation when I was burning dinner. Sweetie, my husband, eventually installed a diesel forced air furnace, a front opening door for the refrigerator (actually a converted icebox) and we had a custom mattress made for the V-berth. But all those improvements came later.

The trip from Santa Cruz, which is located on the Pacific Ocean side of the San Francisco Peninsula was my first overnighter. We had a friend come with us, his wife ferried us over in her car to take a watch on the trip up the coast. The person who had been hired to paint the name on the hull had been delayed so we weren't able to leave dock until after 4 p.m. At long last, the Dancing Dragon was on her way home!

There is nothing in the world like a brand new boat. They gleam in the sun, smell better than freshly baked cookies and promise adventures. It was thrilling to leave the harbor behind and head out to sea. Our friend Joe took the first watch but we were all too excited to leave the cockpit. The Catalina 36 is built for Southern California sailing and her cockpit is mammoth. We were all able to stretch out and enjoy the view of the coast to starboard and the sunset to port. As the moon began to rise over the coast, I made dinner for the first time in my new galley. Thank goodness, the stove was gimbaled because the ocean was just a little roly-poly that afternoon. Sweetie took the second watch, and from my comfortable bunk in the aft cabin, I was able to put my hand out the small port and grab his leg. His shriek was ample reward for my naughty trick.

I had the middle-of-the-night-scary watch and was all alone with the star-spangled sea, the engine thrumming along nicely, and Dancing Dragon taking the big ocean swells on the quarter. I saw what I thought was a fishing fleet a few miles ahead in the dark. There were bright lights on the water that seemed to appear from nowhere. My fear was ungrounded, as it usually is, but then I'm a worrier by nature. The fleet of boats turned out to be the sleepy hamlet of Half Moon Bay, the halfway point in our journey.

I was relieved from my watch by Joe, went below and tucked myself into the V-berth. When I awoke, the sun was just rising over the Golden Gate Bridge. We arrived at our berth in Brisbane just after 8 a.m. The maiden voyage from Santa Cruz took just over 18 hours.

After unloading the packing boxes, we found we still had storage space, but that didn't last for very long. Storage has been an ongoing challenge, especially since we have never had an outside storage space. Why pay to store things you don't use? Everything we own is on board. And that's just how we like it, even after 22 years of living on the water.