Quick Monday Update

I worked at the hospital all weekend, but went back to the boat today after a morning meeting. Today was short, but a good day. Momentum is building as I work on finishing projects before snow flies. I'm removing lots of sticky notes from the 'To Do' columns of my project board [that is a good thing for those of you who never met Roger Batton].

I worked on the cockpit today. The drainage[pictured above] that runs along each side of the floor, and carries water to the drains, has been all smoothed out with epoxy paste.  It will get a little sanding tomorrow and then I'll glass over the floor. Besides paint, the cockpit floor project is finished!! It will get painted with the deck and cabin sides.

Also, I cleaned up the re-patch I wrote of before. It was a chopped hole in the deck last week [to the right] and now is pretty and smooth[to the left]. The after shot shows some of the work I re-did on the gunwale radius just because I couldn't stop myself.  Paint to come as above.

Starting to clean off the project board is truly exciting. The little clean-up-detail projects more than outweigh the large projects. The chainplates, standing rigging and re-stepping the mast are big projects that are all going to be on next Spring's list. I might yet get the last two portlights in this year. When it gets too cold for paint and epoxy, I'll move inside to work on some wiring and cabinetry work.

I keep daydreaming up new projects. Most of these are whimsy to be ignored, but a great one came to me today - a teak grate table for the cockpit/cabin that I can make from the scrap teak I got removing the toe rail and rub rail!

Fancy Catch Up

So, it's been about five weeks since my last post. The time has come for a "Fancy Catch Up." By the way, back when I was truck driving, I used to pick up Red Gold Tomato products, made with pride in Alexandria, Indiana.

A couple weeks or so ago, I shed one of the part time jobs I had. I miss the people there, but my schedule was getting too tight. Several projects down at the boat required more time than money anyway.

I've been spending my free time where I should be, hard at work down at Tower Marine. The project with the biggest splash was getting some paint on her. It's only primer, but the boat is all one color above the waterline. That's a big deal. It is still exciting to drive up and see her. 

The important part of one color was to be able to check the radiused gunwale; a big project from last fall. Without the distraction of all the colors of all my repair work, it is smooth. I am very happy with the result. It's not perfect but it nearly looks like it was made that way.

The frustrating re-patch that I wrote about last time is fixed and is probably stronger than it had been anyway. I had to give up on the skin. Originally, I had carefully cut through the top skin and saved it to cover over again. The skin was beyond saving, so I ended up just fairing it in with epoxy putty. More on that in another post.

With a "little touch up and a little paint" to show the boatyard folks, I dove into the next project on the list and the rotten balsa wood started flying. The cockpit floor was a known issue when I bought the boat. Some inept previous owner had screwed something to the floor of the cockpit without sealing the holes. When they sold the boat, they kept whatever it was, but left the holes in the floor. These holes allowed the core to get soaked by the elements and the structure of the floor was compromised.

Of course, not all the damn balsa was rotten. The rotten wood came up like warm butter, but about 30% of the balsa was just fine - solid. It had to be cut out, pried out, and ground down. In the fight, the bottom skin of fiberglass got perforated in a few places. But the wood came out - two solid days on my hands and knees in the blazing sun. I taped some of the worst holes and put down two layers of glass cloth; big layers of cloth.

After the glassing had cured, I installed my pre-cut and pre-coated 5/8" plywood new floor. It is rock solid. I haven't jumped up and down on it yet, but I will happily face a storm standing right there at the tiller.

The floor still needs a couple layers of glass cloth on top and some paint, but it is puttied in, smoothed over and sealed up. The re-patch is looking good too. It has been sanded down enough to get painted soon.

Further, there was one spot on the gunwale that had a little ripple. It was the one place that it was a little too obvious that I had been carving on it with an angle grinder.  My obsessive compulsion came swinging back and I did some more work there to bring it up to standards that my old friends in the Florida boat business would approve of. It feels so good to be making lots recognizable progress.

One step forward . . . .

It's really not as bad as one step forward and two steps back, but I left the boat rather frustrated today. A repair that I made two summers ago was undone - by me.

I had replaced a small spot of deck core back in 2010. To do so, I carefully cut and peeled off the top "skin" of deck fiberglass, dug out the damp balsa core, cut and planed a replacement piece out of plywood, and epoxied it all back together including the top skin. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good. I've been working on and off between other projects to smooth out this patch ever since.

Friday, I noticed a void in a spot at the edge of my repair. It was where I had laid some of the top skin back over good core. The easy fix was to just cut off the loose skin and fill it with fairing epoxy.

A little more grinding nearby and I discovered the truly disconcerting and bigger

problem. In my grinding and sanding to smooth the repaired area, apparently I had sanded off what epoxy was sealing a straight line butt joint between the repair and some solid deck. Water has been wicking into this seam - basically all last Summer through this weekend. The entire piece of my replacement plywood core was so damp that I could peel the veneers out one by one. The stink of wet pine is just disgusting - and in this case disheartening as well.

Today I was cutting out my repair and digging up the damp plywood. My plywood core had fit so well, in fact, that it was touching good balsa core and dampened still more. I had to cut an inch or two wider to dig out newly damp balsa core. Arrrgghh! I usually keep a clean camp at boat yard, but as the top photo indicates I was throwing damp plywood veneers willy-nilly. With all the grinding and sanding I'd done in the meantime, it made no sense to save the top skin anymore.

I'm going back tomorrow to do a little more digging and then cut another replacement piece. I just covered it up and left in disgust tonight.  I'll glass the repair in and then fair the whole thing rather than relying on the old skin for the smooth surface it ain't got anymore anyway.

This repair was several steps ago, so I don't really feel any bad continuity about steps forward vs. back. Nevertheless, it was especially frustrating as I was out shopping for paint and primer this weekend. That project has been pushed out at least week. But the work continues. A bad day hacking my boat to pieces still beats a good day at work.

Between Home and a Hard Place

Last week I downloaded the sailing movie, “Between Home” [trailer here, download here], an exceptionally well filmed documentary of a young man's intrepid journey across two oceans and the continent in between. The movie, by Jack Rath, is about human endurance and self discovery and flirts along the way with bigger questions of home and place and life. Nick Jaffe, German and Australian, found himself in Berlin searching for clues about a father he never knew. At some point it seemed like a good idea to go back to Australia; not by expensive airliner, but by an inexpensive, barely fit sailboat; a boat he named "Constellation."

At first, of course, the scenes of sailing had me nearly doubled over in existential pain because my boat is not yet in the water. It's bittersweet to see a small boat sailing on the open sea as I want to be there with mine so badly. There are days when fear and doubt and land-locked angst creep across my brain like a nagging, oozing rash. Concentration fails me as I trudge from one project to another; all the while wondering if I can finish, if I want to, if the boat will be worth the effort, etc. Nick and Constellation ended up doing me a favor.

It seems that Nick had some debts when he left including buying the boat on credit. Early one morning, he turned sea bandit and left a British marina without paying off his bill. After crossing an ocean, in the midst of Caribbean paradise, Nick was worried about money. He had also to worry about his boat. Besides being excruciatingly broke, his boat needed repairs to make it across the Pacific Ocean. Rather than sailing on to Panama, the young captain decided to head to New York, home of his stepfather, to work and raise some money for repairs and the rest of the journey. Through the generosity of several Americans, including the boat yard he had wandered into, Constellation was re-rigged and brought closer to bristol fashion. Nick was able to truck the boat to California to start his Pacific crossing. This is an epic, two year story of determination and temerity. As I understand from KTL, all debts to mariners have been settled. Still it was an uncomfortable reality for Nick as he traveled.

I'm still working on my boat which is high and dry on the gravel in a boatyard, but I'm feeling better about the whole project just now. My trip will be different. I am virtually debt free already and my boat, if I'm successful, will be stronger and ready for nearly anything. She'll be more capable than I at first. Some of the work I'm doing is inspired by Fred Bickum and his boat Fenix, who went all the way around the globe in a Cape Dory 28, same as mine. While I'm not that ambitious, my boat has benefited from the work Fred did on his. My boat will be strong, moderately equipped and well found. And for now, it seems my brain, and my heart, will have benefited from the work that Nick has done. It's slow going, hard work, and more than occasionally frustrating, but I'm doing it right. When I finally leave, I'll have not many worries more than the weather.

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Images lifted from Nick's and Jack's sites.

Bow to the Grindstone

Hoorah! The gunwale is completely glassed!! Last fall it got too cold to work with epoxy before I was able to do the last five or six feet of fiberglassing. What I had left to do was also the trickiest part; right at the bow.

I glassed four layers today. It was so hot that the epoxy was kicking off before I could have a drink of water and admire my work.  At the bow, I had to cut pleats in the cloth and carefully wrap it around the multipe curves and angles.  It was a little like trying to iron a shirt after you'd already put it on.

A little more sanding and the gunwale will be complete. Then . . . . wait . . . . more sanding!! The rest of the hull will be prepped and at least the primer coat will go on. It is so much more fun when all the hard work leads to actual physical improvements. I can do this!!!!

Swab the deck, oil the teak!

Today was a bit of a lay day. Just as I was rolling in to the marina, a good friend called and came by to see the boat and visit. It was pretty hot, so we ran into Douglas to the Respite Coffee shop for an iced Americano.

Earlier in the week, another friend stopped by the boat. Sometimes it takes giving a tour to notice the obvious. I hadn't oiled my teak in about 18 months. So, I broke out the tung oil and mineral spirits and went about it today. It was almost like having a real boat instead of a project. I was making her prettier instead of building or tearing down. A nice relaxing day, but a necessary accomplishment as well.

Fair to Middling

'Fair to Middling' is a phrase from farming to describe a range of quality of animals and produce. The loosely defined grades were 'good', 'fair, 'middling', 'ordinary' and 'poor.' So 'Fair to Middling' was in the middle leaning toward good. 'Fair' by itself, is also a verb - to smoothen or even a surface.  I got a little obsessed fairing the radius I'm working into the gunwale of the boat.  Obsessed in the best possible way.

Back in 1992, when Disney's Aladdin movie came out, the Ringling Bros. & Barnum Bailey Circus which is based in Sarasota, was using an Aladdin theme at their souvenir tables. The vendors wanted minarets and they came to us - a small plastics job shop in town. I built the mold for the onion top part of the minaret. The minarets were molded in halves which were then put together and stuck on top of a section of 12" PVC pipe with an Arabesque window cut out of it. The whole thing was topped

off with a fancy finial the circus people made; that included a door knob as I recall.

The difficulty came in the phrase "put them together." The two halves had to have the exact same contour on each side for them to fit together in the three dimensional minaret. I made a backbone and ribs out of carefully cut pieces of plywood and then filled and shaped with bondo. After getting a rough shape, I made a template to check the curves and carefully sanded and filled until the minaret was completely symmetrical. It was this obsession with symmetry that hooked me again.

I could only imagine, sitting at the tiller while crossing an ocean, during the second week at sea; among the albatross and the whales, my brothers;  with the deepest bluewater from horizon to horizon; and all I can do is stare at this little skip in the curve of the gunwale where I had done my repairs. So, I sanded and filled, and sanded some more. Then I carefully sanded by hand, filled the low spots, and worked the high ones. There is sixty five feet of gunwale down the port side, across the stern and back forward to starboard. I was making about 15" an hour and having to make two passes.

Then again, it damn near looks like it was built that way now. I have to say that it is coming along nicely - slow like sculpture - but nice.



Just in case you missed the musical allusion above. OK, the dolphins can make me cry.

#^@!, I don't want to do this anymore!

There are days I don't even know if I want to do this anymore. Usually in Late Winter/Early Spring, when I haven't been near her for weeks or months. The separation doesn't make my heart grow fonder, it makes my mind wander. Did I buy the right boat? Did I do the right thing? Am I still on the path? Is this path the right path? What the $%^ am I doing with my life?

It is hard enough to remain committed to such a long range project, and to do it on a shoestring, but being away from her – physically disconnected – is so disheartening. The project leers at me like Sendak's Wild Things. Without the contact, without the least amount of progress, the steps melt into a monolith, progress made is forgotten. I get frozen just looking at the whole thing. I get scared.

And then I get to spend some time with her. And like Max, I conquered the Wild Things by "staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once." A couple weeks ago, the tarp came off. The bilge was dry in Spring for the first time ever. I've been back a couple times, but today was nearly a full day. Dad and I cleaned her up with a couple sponge mops. And while Dad painted a couple bits for me, I began sanding again. The radius project really is moving along. These last long steps are sanding and fairing.

After the gunwale is faired, the rest of the hull will be prepped and she'll finally have some paint on her again; primer, at least. Also on the docket this Summer is replacing the cockpit floor. It will be reinforced and a couple access hatches will be installed. On Rain Days, I have some cabinetry work and wiring to do down below. It is so...damn...good to finally be back in Douglas working on my boat!!

Real Juice

Its funny how something unexpectedly profound can spill out of your mouth unfiltered. If you aren't too uptight, there are moments in your life when real juice can spill. The adventurer inside you is usually drowned out by the roar of life's machinery. It is hard work to slow down enough so that a few drops of honest, personal blood can ooze to the surface. I can't remember the last time I allowed this to happen. It happened just the other night.

My boat project really languished last summer. I had decided to change careers; to get a little closer to the boat in order to make better progress. To do so, I spent nearly six months trudging through some career training and working hard just to eat. I felt disconnected from my boat; mostly because I was. There were days when I couldn't concentrate enough to remember exactly why or what I was doing. Other days I wondered if it wasn't just some scheme to run away from life. I really don't have any responsibilities to tie me down, but running away, if that's was it, might not be very mature nor exactly healthy.

With five years invested physically, and the kernel of a dream that goes back to before I could drive a car, I need to finish the boat. I need to see this through – one, to finally finish one of my grand schemes; and two, to not end up always wondering what I might have been able to accomplish. The boat and I will wander, someday. My lifestyle is pared down and with help, and a lot of love from family and friends, I've set my life up so I can just go – eventually.

But without the spark, some kind of drive, any project will dwindle. Without knowing the “why,” the “how” and “where” and “when” of a dream just aren't sufficient. We've all heard musicians, or watched actors or artists, who are proficient at the mechanical and technical aspects of their craft; the hows and wheres. Without some soul, however, some indefinable core characteristic, they fall flat. Gibbon in “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” wrote of when “freakishness pretends to originality and enthusiasm masquerades as vitality.” Without some real “why,” freakishness and enthusiasm lurk around the next bend. They won't steal you soul, but they'll hide it from you.

Concurrent with my boat project, my world view has been changing. I started two businesses before I was 32 years old and was hard charging … at one time. Several other career stops involved contributing on creative and entrepreneurial levels. I was a radical capitalist, a rugged individualist, and an atheist for almost 20 years. But I wore the hard crust like a cheap disguise, like a dollar store Halloween costume. It didn't fit so well and it chafed at my arms and neck.

In the last few years, I've slowly begun to shed the crust. Events in the world, events in my life, and some in my heart, chipped away at the crust until it fell away like a body cast removed, revealing the emaciated limbs of the real human I had actually wanted to be.

The new, real me that I've always been, recoils at the harshness of the world we live in. With new eyes, I can see painfully simple, and simply painful truths about the world. Children go to bed hungry in the world's richest country. Brutal, repressive countries furnish their citizens with health care, even while enslaving them. Meanwhile, the land of the free and the brave is going bankrupt, in large part, because so many are trapped in the quick sand of our broken health care system. Furthermore, we live in a world where everyone thinks they have the right to be right and would rather scream at each other than quietly work together to solve these and other problems.

I was cruising Facebook the other night when I ran across the fresh smell of real juice. An acquaintance of mine was getting back on her game and talked of returning to her creative pursuits. She made a short but ambitious bucket list and challenged her friends to do the same. Nearly without thinking, I wrote these words: “wander the Central American Gulf Coast and Caribbean while trying to help preserve the reefs and natural places.” The words rang in my head like a temple bell lingering in the fog.

I'm not sure what this will entail. I don't know if this is really it, but its an exciting, fresh approach. Recently, I ran across Oceans Watch. The plastic filled mid-ocean gyres are depressing news. The Gulf Oil Spill spoiled some of the places where I had planned to sail. I dreamt about a project, a coffee table book or a website, that features beautiful coastline pictures from a distance and then a close up, at the same spot, of the inevitable beach trash. Perhaps there has been some momentum building for some time. At the very least, this is a good wintertime project; while I'm putting some money away for boatwork season. Maybe I can wander off and yet still make a difference somehow.

So this is Christmas. . .

It's Christmas Day as I write this. Outside snow hides in little nooks and shaded corners, but the grass is still green. I haven't worked on the boat this month, but it was a warm fall. Boatwork was possible deep into November. I finally covered her up the weekend after Thanksgiving.

I'm looking forward to a good Winter refilling the boat fund.  There are some design and outfitting choices to make; perhaps some stainless steel parts to order.  As soon as the snow melts in the Spring, I'll be back doing some interior work and waiting for the Sun.

The big projects for Spring/Summer are finishing off the space where I removed the pilot berth, replacing the chainplates, re-installing the seacocks, and replacing the two large aft ports on each side of the cabin.

Hanging Locker, Part Deaux

[Editor's Note: Check out the hair!] The picture to the left is from two Aprils ago, when I was right in the same spot as below. Back then I was removing deck hardware; including the above-the-deck part of the chainplates and having a Bad Boat Karma Day. This last time I was working on the part of the chainplates that was inside the hull.

Clutching the valence at the top of the hanging locker [that's closet to you landlubbers], I gingerly placed one foot onto the small floor that curves with the starboard side of the hull. Lifting my self a bit, I swung the other foot up and into the small opening. With both feet inside I shimmied one hip in, then the other and sat down. After one shoulder at a time, I wriggled my arm in from behind me. The multifunction oscillating cutter and the safety light were already inside the locker waiting for me. Some surgery was needed.  First up, I had to cut a larger hole in the cabin liner to access the area against the hull.

I am replacing the stock through-the-deck chainplates on my Cape Dory 28 sloop with stainless steel strap on the outside of the hull. I'm copying several ideas from Fred Bickum's Fenix. Cape Dory Yachts embedded a metal structure inside the fiberglass hull to support their chainplates. Next Spring, when I drill through the hull to bolt on my exterior chainplates, this gangling structure will likely be in the way. A chainplate is the connecting structure for the shrouds and stays. The shrouds and stays are the wire ropes that hold the mast vertical on a sailboat.

The chainplate is attached to the hull with a layer of fiberglass cloth and resin. The cloth must be cut loose and then the chainplate pulled out. Cape Dory's version of a chainplate is somewhat unique. On many boats, a section of stainless steel bar stock projects out of a deck. This type of chainplate is problematic because the chainplates are bound to wiggle where they come through the deck which ultimately causes some leakage. Cape Dory attempted to prevent this leakage by eliminating the projecting bar stock. A die-cast pad eye is bolted through the deck and into a piece of angle iron. Welded to the bottom of the angle iron are three “J” hooks made of re-bar. The J's are glassed against the hull with the angle iron is glassed up into the corner where the deck meets the hull. I was concerned that the angle iron was inextricable.

The broad round blade of the multifunction cutter made quick work of uncovering the re-bar. A small amount of water actually came out from under the forward “J” on the starboard side. At least one sailor on the Cape Dory Board had reported water collecting under the fiberglass. The mild steel re-bar was not in bad shape actually, but I was glad to see it and the water go.

As I struggled to keep my feet awake and ignored my zafu wracked knees, my perch inside the hanging locker led me to decide the angle iron was not coming out. There are three chainplates to port and starboard. The angle iron ran along the gunwale on each side for four feet and connected all three “J” hooks together. The angle iron ran above and behind both bulkheads – neither of which I intended to remove. After some pondering though, I realized everything was fine. Next Spring,

the drilling will only need to avoid those J's. I could leave the rest right where it was. All I needed to do was two things: uncover the rest of the “J's” and cut out all six with a grinder.  In order to do the port side I would have to sit on the toilet side-saddle – backwards.

Grinding off the metal hooks in the hanging locker was a little scary. There was nowhere for the sparks to go but against the fiberglass hull and then ricochet all around in the closet. Several times I stopped and lifted the edge of my double filter mask to smell if anything had caught on fire. Even the backward side-saddle grinding went fine on the port side. The various sprawling metal structures that were in my way were gone. Next Spring, before I attach the exterior chainplates, I will put a couple layers of heavy glass cloth inside the hull to reinforce the area. I had to grind the inside of the hull smooth for the glassing.

It was a wonderfully sunny fall weekend; such a pleasure for late season boatwork. It was a little cool, especially in the mornings, so lucky for me I had layered up. So when I got back in the small space of the hanging locker, to grind the hull smooth, I was wearing long sleeves. Grinding off the chunks of fiberglass left by the J's, the dust had nowhere to go but to swirl all around ME! It was like working in a snow globe.  I was glad

to have had my arms covered.  Enough itchy dust did find its way under my wrists cuffs and under my hat to remind me for the rest of the week what a great day of boatwork it was; a Good Boat Karma Day!

Grunting at the Rock.

There is always something else to work on.  The boat project continues; lately more Sisyphean than Herculean.  On unseasonably sunny days, I've finished the fiberglass work at the gunwale.  When its been cooler and wetter, I moved to the interior.  The pilot berth on the port side of the main cabin has been removed.

A pilot berth is a bunk in which a pilot sleeps [duh].  A pilot, in nautical terms, is a person with the local knowledge to lead ships into foreign harbors or through unfamiliar rivers or canals.  On long passages, the pilot would need to sleep, but the Captain of the piloted vessel wanted the local expertise close at
hand.  Moreover, the pilot was not a guest who needed to be catered to or impressed.  Hence, the pilot berth was usually tucked in an unused space somewhere near the bridge of a ship.  Somehow, this tradition spilled over into pleasure craft.

My Cape Dory 28, hull #53, is an early version that included a pilot berth.  In theory, the main cabin could sleep four.  One to starboard on a single bunk, two to port on a pull out double bunk and a fourth in the pilot berth above and abeam of the double.  We would have to be REALLY good friends for all that.  The pull out double is really a one-and-a-quarter.  In modern sailing, the pilot berth little more than a place to drop things rather than stow them properly.  In a seaway, anything dropped on that bunk would be cast to the cabin sole ['thrown to the floor' for you landlubbers].  Moreover, the cabin will be more comfortable, and more symmetrical, with some modifications to this area.  I'm going to move the existing face, with the three holes for drawers, back

15" or 20", to create a shelf in place of the bunk with storage underneath.  The port side settee will be more comfortable this way as well.

There is just never enough time to spend working on the boat, but I've also been working on my life, and career too.  Nearly everything I've done in 2011 was a concerted effort to maximize my time working on the boat in 2012 and 2013.

Poking around after Sisyphus came to mind, I found a short movie that I remember fondly.  Dad's career running REMC's at the intermediate school district level in Michigan afforded me the privilege of seeing lots of interesting and creative filmwork. When I was in school, Dad's office supplied the films and filmstrips we watched in class. Later REMC's like his supplied video tapes and then computers along with other educational equipment and programs. Back in the day, Dad would often bring home a projector and some interesting film. I can't recall if I saw this Sisyphus short through Dad or whether I had spotted it because I had developed a taste for short films through him. Click here to watch the very cool short "Sisyphus" by Marcell Jankovics, a Hungarian graphic artist and animator, who was nominated for an Oscar in 1974 for this very film.  Its not unsafe for work, but if your volume is too load, the soundtrack will make your office mates wonder what you're watching.

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The Sisyphus image is a screen cap from the Jankovics film that I lifted without any permission from the "I Took the Liberty of Reading Your Mind" blog. The other images are before and after shots of my boat's interior taken by either me or my father.

Glassing the gunwale.

There is a confidence, a sort of comfort, in doing something you've worked hard to be able to do.  I've just completed my third week at the hospital.  I am so thankful to have found such a great place to be.  My new coworkers in the pharmacy are great.  The job is interesting and ever changing.  Working for a nonprofit community hospital is surprisingly enriching. Without being on the front lines of directly caring for patients, it is an honor to be a part of helping people.  The work feels more like an extension of me than just something I do.  There is a natural ease as if everything is coming together.

This new togetherness extends as well to the hull and deck of my boat. Last fall, I ground a one inch radius at the gunwale; where the hull and deck meet.  Cape Dory had screwed the deck to the hull at about 8" on center, but I wanted a stiffer joint.   This weekend, and last, I've finally been glassing over my radius.  2" fiberglass tape followed by 3", 4" and 6" - about 65 feet in each layer by the time I got around the curve of each side of the hull.  There will be lots of fairing to do, but the long curve looks good actually.  I'm happier with the results than I had hoped to be.

The chainplates will be moved outward to external rather than through the deck.  Also, I have designed a floating toe rail similar to Fred Bickum's Fenix.  Any wave over the deck will have an unimpeded flow to go under the toe rail and off the boat.  Another project on the near horizon is to glass over the two large, aft most, cabin hatches.  This will allow me to re-drill and cut a hole for a somewhat smaller portlight, but one that will match the other six I installed last year.

For now, these old bones are tired.

Next please . . .

I can still feel the undulating rhythm; the random thud into the trough of a wave.  Standing at the forestay, tiller tied amidship, Sarasota Bay a slate grey color in the waning sunshine of early evening.  As I leaned against the stay, the water split below me at the cutwater, dolphins raced at the bow wave and I was in my element.  There was nothing else but the rush of my breath and the hiss of water against the hull.  And there was peace.  I've been waiting for that peace again.

Yet another part of that long wait is over.  The dearth of boatwork, caused by my Pharmacy Technician Course, is nearly over.  The coursework is done and I'd be certified now if it weren't for a slightly overwelmed Workplace Training Office at GRCC.  There are days I've considered that another factory job might have gotten me farther along. . . in the short term.  Can you get farther along in the short term? I don't know, but 6 months just above minimum wage was way longer than I originally planned. Builds character I hear.

I decided that, in order to do my career change well, I had to concentrate on what I was doing.  During the class, we memorized nearly 300 pairs of Generic/Brand drug names, learned about pharmacy operations, the requisite legal and procedural stuff, and a little about pharmacology.  The class went very well.

I currently have three hospitals and a big box retail pharmacy on a string.  Interviews and background checks abound.  The CPhT certification exam will get scheduled just as soon as all the necessary paperwork gets done.  Then I'll take a deep breath and do some boatwork.

The overall plan remains the same.  I need to get back to my boat.  She's been patiently waiting for me.  It's been hard to maintain the vision, to keep my sanity and my enthusiasm.  Its still here inside me, buried under flash cards and textbooks and pharmaceutical nomenclature.  I am chomping at the bit to get started again on the boat.  I'll go see her this week.  I won't be doing much real work until my certification exam, but, if I close my eyes, I can almost feel the sway of her deck.

Fancy Catch Up

Not the Heinz 57 variety, but a good old fashioned bring you up to speed "catch up."  Rather than continue the slog to provide content for two blogs and two websites, I have decided to consolidate. I was paying for more cyber real estate than I was really using anyway.

So welcome to BubbaThePirate.com!  This is where you will find my boat related blog posts. My non-boat writing blog is found here.  In case you have just arrived, this will catch you up.

In April 2007, I quit a nine year office job and bought an old sailboat. Not a romantic OLD wooden ship, but a fiberglass sloop just old enough, and just neglected enough, to be in my price range. She is a 28 foot Cape Dory; a wonderful little ship that I found in Bay City, Mi.

There was, however, a lot of work to be done; more than I thought. When I cashed in and checked out in Indiana, I felt like I was loaded. Comparatively so, I was more loaded than I had ever been, but that really wasn't saying much. I was quickly caught in the tarpit of "Bigger Project and Less Budget."

I was two steps past broke when I left Bay City and hit the road as a long haul truck driver.  In the beginning, home time was rare, but I worked on the boat when I could. As I moved up the ladder at various trucking companies, I was able to spend a little more time with my baby. In 2009, I moved the boat to a marina on the westside of Michigan. Now that she was only about 30 minutes away, I got a lot more done that summer.

This last Summer, I worked part time for four months and got even more done! Of course, working part time while refitting an old sailboat is a perfect way to go broke. So last Fall, I went back to driving full time and delivered office furniture all over the Eastern United States. It was a good little company, and a good job, but I was not able to dedicate much time to my writing.  Also, I was dead sick of Winter Driving.  Life is too short not to like what you're doing.

So, I'm entered a new phase in January. I quit my commercial driving career to enter a job training program. The program was subsequently delayed, and delayed again, so I looked at other options. I am now about halfway through a course that will lead to a national certification as a Pharmacy Technician. The cert should travel well once I'm sailing.

For now, I'm working part time, going to school and working on the boat.  My recent boatwork was in planning out what all needs to be done before she is launched again. It appears that I have more manhours, and more money, to spend than will be available this Summer. Hopefully, next summer she'll be in the water. She'll let me know when she's ready.

Off Route!

The road undulates over the hills. Pastures, farms and patches of forest alternately flys by just over the ditch on either side of the highway. A hawk soars in lazy arcs over the right-of-way fence. And on the dash, the GPS flickers every quarter mile or so to update the perspective of its little map. The sad fact is that many drivers are paying more attention to the 4" LCD screen on their dash than they are to the hawk, the trees and the landscape.

As a salacious billboard crests the hill, the driver is suddenly hungry and takes the next exit. The drive-thru window is a half mile down the side road. Halfway there, the GPS starts to blink "OFF ROUTE . . . OFF ROUTE . . . " Off Route is how this last week went for me.

I resigned my Commercial Driver job, the whole career actually, to get off the road, out of the snow and ice, and to devote more of my time to writing. It was a solid plan supplemented by a training program, that would lead, most likely, to a new job. The new skills would not only help with my own boat project, but could easily be applied to future work in and around marinas and boats. Though I had almost enough cash to make it through the training period, I was halfheartedly some kind of part time work to keep me out of trouble. Perfect!

The last two weeks have been great. I've been working hard to "detox" myself from the dust and diesel of the road. I've been meditating, exercising, eating well, working on my music stuff, and writing. I set up an rigorous hourly schedule; like Summer Camp in January.

On Wednesday, I got a call from the Community College doing the training. Due to "modified hiring projections" at the sponsoring employers, the start of the training would be delayed for a month. A MONTH!! I've been unemployed for two weeks already. Much as I'd like to, I cannot go 10 or 12 weeks without any income.

Like a jab from the twin tines of a meat fork, my frustration at the disruption and the necessity of amping up my job search had blown my rigorous schedule to pieces. I've got some good job leads, though, and I can afford to be picky. The Bubba the Pirate Motto has always been "Eat when you're hungry, work when you're broke." It wouldn't be nearly as poetic if I had said "go back to work just before your broke."

Don't wait for the Lottery

Back in 2006, I was working with a Life Coach on my career options. She was very good and we dug deep. Despite working on a career transition, I ended up realizing that what I really wanted to do was to take off on a sailboat. Early in 2007, I started doing just that. I bought a boat that I could afford because it needed some work and set out on my path toward sailing off. One of the coaching tools we used was the question: What would you do if you won the lottery?

What would you do, after you paid your bills, after you gave money to friends and family, and after you had partied your ass off? Consider this a serious philosophical question. What would you do if money was no object? What would you do if any of your dreams could come true? Hands down, no question, my answer was: Voyaging by Sail. I would take off on a boat and chase the horizon, visiting remote and unspoiled places.

So the next even more serious question is: why aren't you working toward that goal now? If you really want to do something, not having enough money is just a cop out. There are versions of your dream that are attainable. Perhaps, your current priorities are just not focused properly.

There are many ways to pursue the course you would choose. If you map out, intricately, the choices you have, and the choices you've made, you can find a way to walk the path you dream of. It will not likely be a straight line. It will be difficult, gut wrenching hard work. Nevertheless, it is possible to pursue some version of the life you wish you had. Why on Earth would you do anything else?

In Finance, there is a concept called the "present value of money." Its a bit like what J. Wellington Wimpy meant when he said "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." Wimpy wants a burger today but the price is too low for the cook if he has to wait until Tuesday for the money. Wikipedia says Present Value "is the value on a given date of a future payment or series of future payments, discounted to reflect the time value of money and other factors such as investment risk. Present value calculations are widely used in business and economics . . ." Blah, blah, blah your present value of winning the lottery is ZERO. It is such an incalculably small probability that it just ain't gonna happen.

Moving yourself toward your goal, by whatever baby steps you can, creates forward motion. Without motion your dream's present value is also basically zero. With coordinated action, however, there is a life changing space that opens up in your heart when you are working toward something meaningful, something that you really want to do. Your feet no longer shuffle aimlessly down an indiscriminate trail. You are walking the path that leads to your dream. It is not possible to calculate the positivity. Your life is your own and you have moved the present value calculation of your dream to priceless.

The way the lottery works, NOT winning does not affect our lives at all. With 14 Million to One odds, we can't really expect to win. The odds cannot be improved no matter how we play. Winning would certainly change anyone's life, but there is little chance of that happening. Yet when you begin your own work toward your own goal, you are improving your odds at every step. The only downside to going your own way is that the gut wrenching work is going to take longer than you expected. You'll have heartache and pain, travails and tribulations, delays and dead ends. Nothing good comes easy. This is true whether you want to escape the "system" like I did or if you want to chase a promotion at work or if you want to start your own business or any other option you can think of. The gist of my argument applies across the board. 

Byron Katy, says "Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do."

I understand that not everyone is able to make the same choices that I made. Further, no one's dream will be just like mine or anyone else's. I don't think that defeats the argument. If you focus on what you want, you can find a way to get closer. And just like the unexpected twist of my coaching experience, you may pursue something long enough to find out it isn't what you want. You may stumble upon something better. Keep trying! Those people shuffling aimlessly, staring at the dust kicked up by their shoes are not going to get anywhere. They are not going to be happy. If you look to the horizon and concentrate, you will find your way.

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Postscript 2014/10/30
I'm still in Michigan just until next summer. I have a different boat than the one I was working on here. See the beginning of the new boat series here. 
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Postscript 2016/01/30
There's this thing about mice and men and their plans. Anyway, I helped deliver a Westsail 42 from Stony Point, NY to Florida in early 2015. After that, I joined the cult. I didn't want any other boat. Find the start of that here. I found a neglected Westsail 32 floating on a mooring in Miami and bought her. The refit will likely take into the Spring/Summer of 2018. That story starts here.
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Postscript 2018/11/29
I am in Michigan for several months, helping the family. Emma is about half way to being back in the water. When I get back to Fort Pierce, she'll be waiting. I figure I have about 6 months of work to get her launched again. Stay Tuned.

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Postscript 2020/09/18

I was actually in Michigan for almost a year and a half. In the meantime, I sold poor Emma and subsequently ran into an older gentleman who wanted to find a good home for his Bayfield 29. I'm on the road, making some money, and semi-quarantined. In February, 2021, I plan to get back to that boat and get her in the water. 

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Postscript 2023/05/17

I launched the Bayfield, sv Ruth Ann, the first week of December. I have finally been living the life I was striving toward. I wtite this from a free dock at a City Marina in Jacksonville, FL. Life is good. I won my lottery. 

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Postscript 2024/03/10

I've been on the water for about 16 months. Ruth Ann and I have been down to Florida from Wilmington, back up into the Carolinas for the summer, and back to Florida for the cold weather. I'm hoping to get to the Bahamas soon, but it might be next winter. Life is still good. I won my lottery. 

Creative Deconstruction

I'm starting to think that they built this boat without even considering that someday someone would take it apart. All the deck hardware, save for a few items at each end, has been removed.

The removal of the stanchion bases just about killed me yesterday. Contorting into spaces and positions that my old muscles were not intended for. At several points I was holding on to a ratchet that was slipped on to a nut I could no longer see, while reaching outside as far as I could strain against the porthole, holding a screwdriver in a pair of Vice Grips so I could reach the slot on a bolt that was six inches beyond the reach of just my arm. I didn't do any boatwork today. Tomorrow, if it doesn't rain too long, I'll begin grinding a small radius all along the sheer for glassing the Hull/Deck joint.