Here we go kids! From hot glue sticks to a plywood template to no-sh&* Coosa stringers buttered up and good as new! Thanks as always to the hard-working crew at Perdido Sailor who allowed us DIY’ers to work beside them so we could learn the process. Hope you all enjoy seeing our boat’s bones brought back to life!
WOW. Only $30 to go to Give the Gift of Cruising! You could be the donor that gets me there and then YOU could be the winner! Shut up! I’m serious. GET ON BOARD!
They say you just have to write what you’re feeling, so this is what’s coming out. Some days this whole HaveWindWillTravel gig is exhausting. I am a one-woman film/write/edit production team. I am my own camera crew. GoPro goes everywhere with me, along with my mega-grip selfie stick. I always have my laptop at hand to scribble down some musings or chapter intros. I publish two videos per week, one blog. I have two self-published books on Amazon that I promote and market. I’m trying to get started on my third, but it never seems like there are enough hours in the day. But you know what?
I don’t miss the office.
Seriously, that was my cell, with the little path to my chair picked out between boxes upon boxes of records, depositions, transcripts and files. The sheer volume of my obligations was literally stacking up and threatening to topple over onto me. Some days I wake now and I feel a little pressed for time to review footage, complete a video, write a blog post or get any number of the other things I need to get done in between the time we are currently spending at the yard trying to get our little boat back in the water, but the “stress” from those obligations can never compare to the gut-wrenching, sweat-inducing pressure I used to put on myself while in the practice.
I harbored such vivid fears of screwing up, disappointing my partners or blowing a case that it often made me feel sick and woozy. I knew if a certain number popped up on my phone, it would be one of my partners asking me questions I probably could not answer. If my assistant came into my office and said “We need to talk,” I believed it might be because I had made some major mistake in a filing that might severely impair my client’s case. I sometimes flung myself awake at night worried I had missed an irreversible filing deadline or failed to ask the one singular most important question in a deposition. I’m surprised I got much done I was so busy worrying.
Why am I sharing all of this? I had a good friend say to me the other day, while I was buried down in the engine compartment of our boat, greased up, uncomfortable, contorted in pain trying to thread the tiniest nut on the end of a steering cable clamp:
“I’ll bet you wish you were back sitting in an office right now.”
I stopped fiddling with the nut, I let my arms rest and I had to look at him and tell him: “No. There’s not a day that goes by.”
I’m sure it surprised him a little. But, while I still work incredibly hard to create and produce consistent, quality content to promote my books, my YouTube channel and my Patreon campaign, I no longer experience that gut-wrenching, stomach-convulsing fear and stress that I often experienced while “at the office.” I am now in the driver’s seat of my career and I am now the only person I must answer to when assessing my work performance, progress and goals. While I am very tough on myself, I no longer fear disappointing a partner, losing a client’s case or costing the firm millions. The only thing I fear is disappointing myself which I have yet to do. Even when the return on investment on my productions isn’t as impressive as I would like it to be, I am proud of what I created and garner immense pleasure from those who write to me and tell me they’ve enjoyed a video or one of my books or an article that I have written. That is my true measure of success.
I hope you all have been enjoying the content! If so, please support my Give the Gift of Cruising campaign on Patreon to help me create more and share the cruising lifestyle with more people. Thank you!
Lots of decisions to make here on the rigging kids. Going from rod to wire is going to take a lot of modifications on the upper fittings and the forestay … don’t even get me started. And, taping? More taping? YES! We prepped the boat up once again for the fiberglass repair as Video Annie gets ready to clock in at the yard.
Only $48? That’s great! Just a teeny bit more to go. Get inspired. Get on board!
Seems our hack job didn’t really pass muster and we have, in the words of Brandon with Perdido Sailor, “a lot more to do.” So, bad news and now a very BIG decision to make. What do you think we should do?
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Lookout! The DIY’ers are on the loose. Have grinder, will cut. We made a real mess of things in the bilge, but we gutted the stringers. Tell me, what do you think of our end product? Are we done cutting?
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Mmm-hmmm, we make “hazmat” look good. First real dig into our rotten stringers. You’ll be shocked to see how low we can go! Then we suit up solid to start buzzing into the fiberglass. Here we go!
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There’s a point in every relationship where the fun “dating” phase ends and you start to really get to know a gal. At first, she’ll make sure she’s always “put together” when she knows she’s going to see you. She’ll tidy up her place if she knows you’re coming over, and she’ll always try to be in a good mood around you. It’s not like she’s putting on airs or anything, you’re getting to know her, on the surface, you just haven’t yet seen the “real her”─raw and exposed. After a few months, efforts to always present herself in a certain manner will wane and she’ll start to let you see little things about her that reveal more about her true nature. Maybe she wears a retainer at night. Perhaps she keeps a really messy sock drawer. She is annoyingly particular about how you load the dishwasher. She snores. Any number of things that weren’t uncovered in the easy, fun dating phase and, at first, they kind of drive you crazy.
But, over time, you come to find these are the things you really love about her. The intimate workings of her personality─her quirks. The things no one else knows because they’re not as close to her as you are. You start to see the method behind the madness of her seemingly sock disarray. You get her systems. You know what makes her angry, what makes her tick. And you love that you do and that no one else does. That’s when a relationship really starts to form. When you get to really know her.
That’s what we’re going through right now with our boat. When we first bought our 1985 Niagara in April, 2013 she was ready to cruise. We made our first passage on her, across the Gulf of Mexico from Punta Gorda, FL to Pensacola, FL, right out of the gate and she carried us through some very rough seas seemingly with ease.
Then we spent an awesome year sailing and cruising her around our local anchorages and to the Florida Keys. While we experienced some common gear failure and deterioration, for the most part our boat performed beautifully the entire time. We doted on her and made some upgrades and enjoyed every minute on our wonderful boat.
Then the dating phase ended.
When we started spending more time on her, looking in lockers and under the floorboards, we started to uncover some things. For one, we found our mast stringers were rotting. They had been for a while. We also found our hand rails were leaking, our lazarettes were leaking, our port lights were leaking. Let’s just say a bunch of stuff was leaking. Once we completely disassembled her to make the stringer repair, we found many other little annoying things about her─some hoses were deteriorating, some modifications were not done the right way, some (okay, many) things needed to be re-bedded.
And, it started to drive us crazy! You had to start to wonder if this was really the gal we first met in Punta Gorda and had been cruising around on for two years. Had she been putting on airs?
The answer is no. She was always there─her quirks and finicky systems─just lying under the floorboards for us to discover. But, we had to get her raw and exposed to really see her. We had to uncover every inch and once we did we found these were the things we really loved about her. Sure, she’s got some leaks, some corroded wires, two very sad rotten stringers that need to be repaired.
But, she’s got good bones. She is a solid, well-built, well-designed boat. Once we took everything apart and could see the ingenuity of her systems and the durability of her construction, that’s when we really got to know her. It may seem like a lot of work disassembling your boat and scouring every inch, but you have to really expose her to get to know her, to appreciate her. Phillip and I have gained a wealth of knowledge about our amazing boat during this entire repair. While it has cost us a good deal of time and money, we know it is the absolute best thing we could have done before setting off to really cruise in our boat─get to know her. Every system. Every locker. Every inch. That’s when the real relationship begins. We know we’re building a bond that will keep us together─functional, fulfilled and afloat─out on the water.
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Prepping our boat for the fiberglass job took a lot of cleaning, a lot of a plastic and a lot of tape, cut mostly by my teeth! Pretty cool to see her all ready for surgery, though. Lookout rot! Here we come!
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It seems the boys at the shipyard like to pick on the DIY’ers. But, we can take a few light hits. We’ll probably need their help along the way when it comes time to disassemble and fix all this stuff, so bring it on boys! Many thanks to the www.perdidosailor.com guys for giving us hell.
Thanks to my Patrons who help me share the journey. Get inspired. Get on board.
You guys watch closely, because we’re counting on you to help us put all of this crap back together. Preparing the boat to pull the mast turned into one heap of a mess, but don’t let it get you down! Getting that stringer fixed will get us one step closer to sailing south!
Thanks to my Patrons who help me share the journey. Get inspired. Get on board.