Abandoning a perfectly good ship

No, not Kintala. Kintala is a lot of things but a "perfectly good ship" isn't one of them. (At least at the moment.) I'm still grinding away on the list of things needing done before our Tartan is an operable boat once again.

I was talking with an old friend today. When he asked how things were going all I could think to say was, "Pretty good." Pretty good? I get paid a lot of money to do a job I like doing. Many of the people I love most in the world live close at hand. I drive a 350Z that makes a $1.20 with ease, meeting my occasional need for a burst of speed. (I does miss me some GSXR sometimes - a bike that filled my rush junkie need for a rush better than any ground bound vehicle I have ever known.) I live in the CWE in a pretty nice condo. I laugh much more than I cry, find joy every day and sadness only once in a while. On those rare times when I do get angry it is usually when involved in a fight I need to be involved in. And though not really one of the "good guys" I do feel I manage to be on their side when push comes to shove.

Deb keeps me around.

Pretty good?

"So," my friend asked, "when you get on the boat how will your life be better?"

I had to think on that for a bit, and the truth is I don't know that it will be better. All I know for sure is that it will be different.

And that is the point.

Were Deb and I born 500 years ago we might have been on one of the ships heading for the "New World." (Not that it was new to the civilizations already living here.) Two hundred years ago we might have been in a wagon train heading out to the "New Frontier." (Not that that was new to the civilizations already living there!) A hundred years from now we might have been on one of the "colony ships" heading to Mars or one of the moons of Jupiter. A chance to see and experience a new thing and help build a new kind of living? Why miss a chance to do that?

But we live here, not "back then" or "out there". What we can do is try a new way of living for us; lighter, simpler, more mobile, part of the seascape rather than voyeurs. And we may yet be counted as one of a vanguard, the leading edge of using technology wisely, shepherding energy use and consumption into good living without trashing the planet as we go.

That would be a perfectly good ship to be on as well.

In the meantime we are at the boat for a couple of days. Part of this weekend needs our attention back in the city and we missed being at the lake last weekend as well. So we made our escape to our dockside mini-condo in spite of the sub-freezing temperatures due over the next 36 hours. We will take the chance to fit the new nav station seat / storage box. (Ops, somewhere we measured something wrong. Nothing that 6 inches worth of rework here and 4 inches worth of rework there, along with a new end piece, can't fix. Have table saw - can handle.) Some other odd little task or two might get some attention. This cold and basically alone at the marina, it is best to pace one's self and take a little extra care with every move. Fiberglass gets brittle and water gets cold.

No use breaking a perfectly good ship.