My life on land carried with it the luxury of being able to ignore small noises. A squeak in the hall while I’m trying to concentrate on a patient’s chart? Not important, tune it out. A couple of low thumps outside our apartment late Saturday night? Probably some party goers returning home. Roll over, resume snoring.

Not until our sailboat became our home did I become suddenly, keenly aware of the potential importance of the vast array of small sounds I would have disregarded on land.

An alteration in the engine’s hum could mean a problem with the stuffing box. The ruffling luff of a sail’s telltale signals that I need to trim the sails, or adjust my heading. The progression of normal noises as the head flushes is a relief-and the gronk/gronk of the shower bilge advises me that the water from my ablutions has properly drained.

My husband and I are hypersensitive now, so early into our adjustment as liveaboards. Having each had the experience of assuming a noise was “nothing” only to have it turn into an “oh shit” something, we are as hyper-vigilant as alley cats.

Dink. “What was that”? We startle and search and peer with our eyes, strain our ears with heads cocked. We pry  open compartments in the cabin sole, inspect motorized devices, shush each other and hark until the source and significance of the unexpected sound is understood.

At times it makes me feel on edge, but as days pass, and I commence to comprehend the expected auditory range of our floating home, little factory of processes, smells, noises that it is, I feel an intimacy with and an affection for the sounds of its proper operation. When I lay in our cabin at night, listening  to the small animal cries, wind sussurations, and the subtle normal boat creaks, hums, clicks and hisses, I feel reassured and comforted.

This feeling is deeply familiar. After almost three decades of doctoring, I recognize the same relieved satisfaction that fills me  each time I lay stethoscope on my patient’s chest and my ears give glad confirmation that I am listening to a healthy human heart.