Having a hull of a time spending the summer on a boat

LYNN – Veteran boater Wendell “Skip” Blanchard shares his 38-foot Hatteras with his wife, Nancy, and a stick plant that the Blanchards’ guests refer to as his “Charlie Brown Christmas tree.”Blanchard has been enjoying a marina and seafaring life centered on the Lynn Yacht Club for 35 years, and he has the even tan and smile to prove it.”I’ve always loved boats,” he said.The “Old Hat” – as he calls his Hatteras cruiser – is the Blanchards’ home from April to November, and it is also a vacation spot on the water for grandsons Matthew and Michael and other family members and friends.”It’s very relaxing. No one bothers me – it’s nice,” he said.Former Nahant Fire Chief Robert Ward echoes Blanchard’s sentiments from the deck of the “Seanachi,” a 40-foot Mainship docked in Seaport Marina with two staterooms (bedrooms) and a head (bathroom). There is a lot of nautical language to learn for anyone interested in a water-borne life, and a lot of work to do aboard a boat.Maintenance is a regular task, and boats get dirty quickly. Ward puts the Seanachi (Gaelic for storyteller) in the water in May, and October rolls around before he is back on land living in Swampscott with his wife, Jeanne.Like the Blanchards, life aboard a boat for the Wards means weekend excursions as far as the waters off New York for the Seanachi. The couple embarks next week on an ocean-going visit to Cape Cod and Rhode Island.”I don’t know where I am going after that,” Ward said.Blanchard’s boat is built for fishing with a main cabin, enclosed bridge and “tower” – a suspended perch with a fishermen’s-eye view of the surrounding waters. Blanchard has hauled in his share of big fish. He was aboard the “Bad Influence,” another boat docked at the Lynn Yacht Club, in October 2011 when he reeled in an 810-pound monster tuna.Like Ward, he said he is married to a woman who loves the sea. Nancy Blanchard claims to sleep better aboard a boat than home in her Maryland or Florida bed, and Ward said he bought a small boat 20 years ago to interest his wife in the sea-going life he knew during his Nahant boyhood.”We went from a 19-foot boat to a 30-foot to 40,” he said.The Wards have docked Seanachi in the city of Lynn’s Seaport Marina for 15 years, favoring its convenient location and the protection it offers from most severe weather.”We used to put it in Charlestown in the winter and treat it like a condominium,” he said.David McQuarrie, Seaport’s dockmaster, lives aboard a sailboat and said the attraction to a nautical life is simple to explain.”It’s living the dream,” he said.