I recently received one of those one-line un-signed Hotmail e-mails that we get ever few months. This one proceeded to call me all the -ists. I’m an elitist, a racist, and a sexist. None of which really need be addressed. My actions and my lifestyle pretty much sum up the fact that I am none of those -ists. I may be the cool-ist, the handsom-ist, and the salty-ist, but those other -ists just aren’t me. I will talk about the sexist bit though because obviously this person never lived on a boat and, I assume, many other people reading this never have either.

It’s well known amongst liveaboard sailors that there are two kinds of jobs on a boat, blue jobs and pink jobs. This particular e-mailer, Karina, gave me hell for calling the kitchen, “Ali’s kitchen,” and saying, “Ali’s sink.” Obviously, Karina said, I consider these her “womanly duties.” And I suppose others could read it this way as well.

The truth is that the duties on a boat are pretty evenly split. In Karina’s ideal world, i.e. in a big house in the suburbs, we would stand side by side, Ali washing the dishes, and me drying and putting them away. Or Ali chopping the onion while I flip the steaks. But on our boat the kitchen floor space is two feet by four feet. That’s eight square feet. And in that space is a refrigerator that requires getting onto one knee to access, a stove that swings back and forth with the waves, a post that supports the mast, a slanted portion of flooring that follows the curve of the hull and, well, you get the idea. It’s not a space that is conducive to two people standing side by side happily cooking dinner and washing up dishes while in the process.

Ali calls the engine, “Your engine,” as I’m sure at least nine out of ten women cruisers do. Sure she is smart enough to learn to change oil and replace a fuel pump, but why? Engine maintenance is my job. It’s a blue job. I don’t consider her sexist for expecting this of me. Just as I don’t think she is sexist because I am expected to raise and lower the two-hundred pound dinghy. We could add some more block and tackle and she could do it herself, but that’s not how we do it. “Get the dinghy in the water.” That’s a blue job.

There are dozens of jobs on the boat that fall under the domain of one or the other of us. A boat is small, space is limited, it’s simply easier for one person to do most things.

And one other thing that Karina seems to have forgotten is that we don’t have a nanny. While one of us is working on one of these pink or blue jobs, the other is busy watching two kids. As for the kids, they are brown jobs. Is that what color pink and blue make?