Amid a pandemic that cant decide if it refuses to go away or is perpetually beginning the ‘second wave’ and protests and riots and autonomous zones, it feels like a valuable time to return to the sailboat.
Something I love about expeditions, however great or small, is the reduction of the mental capacity. When your next meal and the next day’s safety are the only concerns, the mind is able to block out the distant future worries of health insurance, or the little anxieties of an interaction. Even a 4 hour round of golf gives you rest from the wandering mind, but a long backpacking trip or a life on a sailboat is a little more prolonged.
Enough about the philosophy of the boat, it’s time to grind.
In the next 72 days, we need to: fix our overheating engine, mount a radar dome, outfit our dinghy to be a functional life boat, re-wire the electrical system, install solar panels, remove – sand- buff – reinstall and seal our windows, sand and paint the hull, replace our two tiny sinks, build an onboard computer, wire said computer to run our home-made chart plotter, buy a dinghy motor, and fix the boat’s steering mechanism.
All the while, we need to build a life on the boat, get back into the tiny-house movement, learn to fish, continue our sailing skill education, clean 8 months of mold off the boat, and hopefully make friends.
It’s been daunting, to be honest. Fortunately we have a haul-out scheduled, where we hoist Scooter out of the water, plop her on some jacks, and let the professionals repaint the hull. We can’t mess with the engine too much, cause we need to limp down to the haul-out facility. We also cant mess with the rudder too much, because we hope everything will be easier out of the water. So this week is about moving in, and tackling the small projects we can handle. It’ll be a nice break to get back into the swing of things.
The conclusion is, we’re so happy to be back on the boat. Scooter feels like home. It’s the only place Tay and I haven’t had roommates since we got married, plus it’s the physical embodiment of the life we chose. Although the boat life is full of projects, and failures, it is amazing. Every day is a new adventure with (mostly) low consequences.
I hope I get the chance to look back on this blog post in 2 months or 2 years and miss the way I feel now. I’m happy and overwhelmed and anxious and absolutely STOKED.
-Hank