'Yachting' 101

Airbnb has got my attention. This is the business that enables people to rent out a room, their home, or pretty much anything that others will pay to sleep in. I stayed in someone's basement for a week. Cozy, tidy, simple, perfect.

The other day I saw what looked like a broken-down van touted as an option. I passed on the van.

There was this yacht, though… I mean, how many times are you able to rent a yacht for the weekend? In tony Sausalito, nonetheless.

So you know the story about air travel and what happened when it became accessible to middle-income folks, right? Air travel went from being a luxury experience to being trapped in a metal tube with screaming children. Being of the middle-income sort, then, what could I expect from a yacht that I could afford?

My expectations for our weekend didn’t include caviar and a butler, and let’s just say the experience sparked quite a discussion about what constitutes a yacht.

No.

No.

Yes, however...

Our place didn't look like that one. It was a bit more modest and had seen better days.

Turns out an alternative definition of 'yacht' is any sizable motorized boat meant for pleasure cruising. The definition doesn’t include any reference to age or condition, or even whether ‘motorized’ refers to a past or present state. It doesn’t say whether a hot shower can be expected.

Even so.

There was a deck on top where we climbed with a bottle of wine and crusty sourdough bread to watch evening settle over the Bay. Coots and pelicans fished for schools of herring in the marina and sea lions rolled in the water, surfacing here and there like randomly scattered whack-a-moles.

Across the water was San Francisco and at the end of the dock was Sausalito. We watched the lights pop on in multimillion-dollar residences up the hill as the light faded into night. Later, I faded into sleep amid the gentle roll of our rented ‘yacht’ and the chime of sailboat riggings around us.

A few years ago, I rented a fire lookout in northern Idaho as a weekend getaway. We drove five hours, half of that on unpaved fire roads that wound up and up and up. We got lost far from cell service and GoogleMaps. Reread the directions and finally arrived.

Perched on stilts, five stories above the top of a mountain, I climbed steep stairs to a one-room 360-degree view of endless forest. At night, in a region that Lewis and Clark once found nearly impassable, a carpet of lights lit up the sky.

There were no bathrooms, no running water, nothing but bare dirty mattresses on wooden platforms.

I could have stayed there forever.

These unique experiences enrich my life and help me appreciate how happiness isn't found in perfection or the absence of bad. It's found somewhere in the balance of good and bad.

It’s hard to be upset about our ‘yacht.’ I love the sense of adventure that comes with using Airbnb. But I do have a good ‘buyer beware’ story.