Tough To Predict

    When Vicky and I first moved aboard the boat it was all about what do we do with, where do we put, our stuff. After going through all the stuff they left and sorting what to keep from it, what to toss and what to store, we eventually got to a point of ...most of our stuff on board, but not necessarily thrilled with how it's all working for everyday convenience to get to. It's a very complex human adjustment sorting one's "stuff", in a very tight and complex unit of lockers, drawers and cabinets that are formed in an odd shaped configuration following the lines of a boat hull that happen to be full of unfamiliar stuff, that you've never seen and not sure if you need or want. Many of these spaces are not of your normal closet or drawer type space that you find in a house, very far from it. As an example there is multiple storage forward under the 4" foam v-berth sleeping area only accessible by lifting a section of the foam up, but have no place to put that foam other than....hold it up while you rummage through what is there and what you want to be there.....all with one hand or your head holding up the foam so you can use two hands in the dark sorting. Like I said, it's complex! I'm digressing here......let's just say we got past most of all that and are now in a floating stage of re-sorting all that we started with at the beginning to the second power of resorting. But, we have projects too!

  I completed an aft cockpit locker shelving and line storage weeks ago and it's mostly all working but everything other than the line locker is having slight growing  pains to keep working in a flowing pattern as more stuff gets tossed or brought in and or needs to be put away quickly in a rain storm....and here I'm talking about tools, that have really not found a true permanent home. As I start my next project the tools are around here and there and I can manage finding them with many, many...."where did I put that's?" This also is very complex, the tools! Tools are a part of the very existence of our life as we can't afford  to pay others to bring their tools to our boat and charge us accordingly to fix things.......that's just silly!  I must fix things, I must build things to sort things better, I must have tools! The tools must have a home on board, but alas, not all of them as yet have someplace that can be called "home"  I will bumble through and do the best I can one project at a time and hopefully all these things/tools will gently form and fit somewhere to the hull and find a true home that will forever/next week keep them safe and give me easy access when needed. I won't even mention all the nuts, bolts and screws that are a part of THAT equation!

  Now the future....that is one tough cookie to predict. We will be hauling the boat out of the water and planting her in a working boatyard where we can do extensive exploratory work to the all the parts that keep the water out of all our stuff previously mentioned above. Should be sometime after the closing of our house that has thankfully started showing some promise of getting out of our life, but you can best assure....we ain't counting on it yet! That's the future man....who really knows? There will be surprises and I'll welcome them from this 33 year old sweetheart. She needs some grunt labor updates and I'm the guy to do it, I just hope the time needed on the hard will sit well with Vicky. We have to both work hard at getting her back in the water and leave the frivolous interiors mess as it is for that time. Bull forward, be dirty, work hard, work long....get 'er done!

  Being in the future now....after the haul-out, we can hope for a couple of months stay in the Bahama's and then return to work on the mainland, hunker down and just "be" or as I said to Vicky today....tell me your ready, tell me you want to go.... and we'll take this boat all the way south as she is (from after the hauling), island to island, as fair weather as we can and beat her all the way south to summer in the short latitudes "under" the hurricane line. The future is tough to predict!!!!!!!!!!