Boat people

When I was a little girl, my family would go on sailing holidays. The lifestyle was simple, like camping on water. You were constantly in nature and lived with it and the ocean. This is a common summer hobby in Sweden, and winters were spent repairing, maintaining and improving. [[[Stats: How many Swedish boats?]]]]

The first boat we had that I can remember was called Lay-Up, from my father’s basketball obsession. It didn’t have a toilet or shower, no electricity and the kitchen was a one ring kerosene stove. There was nothing luxurious about this boat, but I remember it and the summer we sailed it, 1994, very fondly. This was an incredibly warm summer, Sweden came third in the World Cup, and I discovered a new ice cream called Svala. The engine on the boat broke, only me and my sister (six and four years old at the time) could stand up straight in it, and the whole family had just recovered from tapeworm. But it was a fantastic experience and I loved every minute of it.

We had been on boat holidays before, but this is the first one I can remember properly. The summer of 1994 – 30 years ago – that I spent on Lay-Up was when I fell in love with the sea. It was when I learnt that ‘båtfolk’, boat people, are good reliable people; hard-working, nature-loving, helpful and generous people. In every harbour, bay or anchorage that we came to, no one was scared of getting wet or dirty to help the young family on a small boat with a broken engine. In fact, everyone helped everyone out. There was nothing glamorous about sailing this way: it was dirty, exposed and demanding. An adventure with constant work and unknowns. This is how I understood boat people; rough and down to sea, at home in the elements. But since then, the term boat people has gotten other meanings too.

20 July 1994. Me, my little sister and my mum on Lay-Up in a natural harbour.

I’ve started to think about different meanings of ‘boat people’. From the explorer-adventurers of the past, to the rich and famous of the super yachts, Princess Diana in a turquoise swimsuit, to overcrowded dinghies and bright orange lifejackets strewn on Greek and Italian beaches. It will be impossible to tell all their stories, to recount all their names. But they’re all boat people, in different ways. And they’re all human, in exactly the same ways, but in very different circumstances. As a fellow boat-person, I feel connected to them all.