Great Dane On A Sailboat: Living In 3 Different Worlds

As a boat dog, Quincy spends most of her time living in 3 different worlds: underway, at anchor and on the dock.  She seems to transition between these 3 worlds fairly well and enjoys all they have to offer.

At sea it’s all about the dolphins.  Whales are rarely close enough, turtles don’t really hold her attention, but when dolphins come around and swim with us, it is the highlight of her day! (we think so anyway).  She runs to the front of the boat and wags her tail as she bounces from port to starboard looking down at them.  While she has a decent center of gravity, we’re usually up there with her enjoying the show and making sure we don’t end up with a doggie overboard.  If you dare grab for the binos or the camera while underway, she’ll follow you, thinking that it just might be her dolphin friends that you’ve spotted.  On longer passages that involve a lot of rocking, she may get some meclizine for sea sickness, but she seems to tolerate being at sea quite well and knows the spots where she can best brace herself.  Make no mistake, she owns the cockpit.

At anchor, the highlight is the dinghy ride into the beach to run and…well…do what dogs do!  There is no guarantee that this will happen for her, however as we are often in National Park territories or perhaps there is rough surf that may prevent us from taking the dinghy ashore.  When she can see and smell land, she gives us not so subtle hints that she wants to go to shore, like this one above.  Note: Even in Mexico, we respect the rules of the National Parks and don’t take Quincy to shore in most of the park areas.

Finally, she lives on the dock at the various marinas we stop at.  This is by far the most reminiscent world of her former life, as we lived aboard with her for almost a year and a half before taking off.  She gets routine walks throughout the day and barks hello to anyone/everyone passing by the boat.  She gets to interact with the wildlife around us which could be anything from burros and cows to iguanas depending on the region.

The life of a boat dog isn’t perfect, but we think it’s pretty good.  Lots of outside time exploring exotic locations and always close enough to get handouts from the galley – that’s our Quincy.

Recognize a different voice and writing style in some of the recent Sunday Quincy posts?  It’s true…the HelmsMistress has been helping out with some of our Sunday posts.  Different takes on life and writing styles help to keep our content fresh and up to date and keep us focused on writing on a regular basis.

Notice a decline in posts lately?  We’ve put on about 1,000 miles since November so we’re been moving and not always able to write on a regular basis.  We write when we can and when we can get internet-

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