In the midst of the whirlwind

We are just weeks away from moving the boat east. Weeks. When did that happen? The house is being prepped for renters; selling it turned out to be a bridge too far in this economy. Maybe in a couple of years we will try again. But for now the mortgage payment is also a (long) bridge too far as well, so renting is the only option. Which is okay since the house is now just a house, a thing to use toward an end. It isn't really our home anymore so as long as the money works (i.e. we break even) all is well.

Kintala is now our home. On the boat front interior work progresses with hope of finishing up the last big project in a couple of days. You will know it’s done when pictures of our new aft cabin show up on the blog. The Cape Horn Steering system will be shipped soon. A package from West Marine arrived with new reefing and life lines. The survey is done, the team is coming together for lift and de-rig, transport and re-rig. Good-byes are being said, people (even perhaps a few who are not too sad to see us go) are wishing us well. And yet ...

I get my morning coffee, sit in the cockpit or up on the shore, watch the winds play over the lake, examine the sky to get my idea of what the weather will do, and plan out the day. In the midst of the rush there is no agitated hurry. I work at a steady pace, measure - cut - fit, look it over. In most things "boat" I am, at best, a journeyman and not an expert. It works, it doesn't look "hacked", but it will not win any shows; and that's okay. A boat is a machine / home that works as hard as its crew. Scars and scratches are a badge of effort and experience never earned by the idle rich. (We used to deride the idle rich as a waste and a disgrace - we should go back to that.)

I miss the sky; being an expert in a world full of people as good at what we did as me. I miss the flight planning, the challenge of a tight GPS approach, the view from 40,000 feet. Now I am the novice going to live in a new world (to some boldly, to others foolishly). And I am looking forward to some new challenges. I've decided that no matter what happens (absent abject disaster) we will just keep going until the end of 2014. It will be at least that long before we have put in enough time living on and sailing big water to feel like we know what we are doing (at least part of the time). There is an unspoken rule that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something before one can claim to be "good" at it. A year is officially 8765.8 hours long. (You could look it up.) We have but a couple of hundred hours on big water in the bank so I can promise you we will be the most cautious of beginners. The plan is to splash Kintala about 40 miles south of Annapolis, 3 or 4 weeks before the show. I will not be surprised if it takes me that entire time to move those 40 miles, and I make no promise of getting there at all.

But for today I'm going to finish my coffee, greet the herons and the cormorants, move gently around the wasps (who are only aggressive with me if I get aggressive with them) brush away the spider webs, feel the sun start to bake the lake, and relax in the midst of the whirlwind. This is my life now. We haven't left yet, but we are long gone...