Coasting through a non-winter

Yep, I'm doing some serious work on the boat this weekend.  Got out my tape measure - figured we need about 60 feet of new water line to replace the pressure side of the system throughout Kintala. Make a note, 60 feet.  Then we helped Friend Joel drop his mast so he can fit a new furling system for his head sail.

Wore me out. Time for a break, maybe a nap. The last of the drive train parts is at the machine shop and due back in a week or so (whenever they find a few hour slot between real jobs to throw my one-off custom onto the C&C machine) so I should get rested up. A major thrashing looms in the near future that should end with Kintala actually being able to leave the dock under her own power again. It has been 338 days since the magic green flowed and Kintala became The Boat; 132 days since we were towed home. She has been broken and tied to the dock for about 40% of the time we have owned her. Fortunately most of those days overlapped what passed for winter this year in the mid-west. She would have been tied to the dock anyway.

Some other projects have been completed and we have had a wonderful winter season at our nearly abandoned little marina. The future is a little less clear than it was with our departure date set back, the housing market as dead in the water as the boat, and a couple of open questions as to how we get from "here" to "there." But that simply puts us in the same boat (bad pun but I couldn't resist) as a lot of other people trying to navigate uncertain times. Mean time projects are getting completed, Deb and I are spending most weekends surrounded by lightly flowing magic, and many of the people I love most in the world are near by. This winter has been a coast.