Work vs fun

The work to fun ration on Kintala has been badly out of whack. This isn’t to say working on the boat is all bad, though; as much as fixing things can have its own rewards, it isn’t always “fun”. But some things are starting to come together and the pressure, or at least the perceived pressure for me, is starting to ease.

The mast / hull joint is full of spar tight, the rig is taut and pins secure, the boat is happy to be all of a piece again and (they tell me) we can go sailing anytime we want. We “want” like, right now, but there are a few nits to pick. I know the holy grail of all cruising sail boaters is to be energy independent of the “green” kind. Word is that “green” means renewable and clean but in reality green means money, lots and lots of money. At the moment Kintala is semi-energy independent in a less green way. In the evening we fire up the Honda generator and burn about $3 worth of dinosaur juice to charge the boat, iPad, and smart phone batteries, heat water, etc. Guessing it would cost roughly 6K to turn Kintala really green, we have 5 and a half years to break even on the power situation. Not sure we have the best solution right now, but for right now it is the best we can do.

Yesterday Kintala’s new dinghy got a full load of air and then was dumped in the creek. Paddling around in that thing is a hoot; so long as the wind isn't blowing. Sometime in the next day or two we might actually try hanging the motor on it and see how it goes. Sometimes climbing up the learning curve is just a bunch of fun. We finished the mount to hang the dinghy motor on the stern rail (looks like a cruising boat). How to get it from there to the dinghy transom without dropping it to the bottom is a question we have yet to answer.

There is still a cabinet to rebuild so Deb can stop living out of a duffle bag. That has been at the top of the list for the last three days but each day something else elbowed its way to the front. Today is was dragging our hopelessly out-of-date life raft to town just to be told that there was no way to cert the thing as usable. Two thousand dollars will get us a nice shiny new one, though (the man admitted) 99 times out of 100 if one tossed an old one in the water it will work just fine. What to do, what to do?

Everyone has to make their own risk assessments. For now we are going to strap the old one back in front of the mast and drive on. Sure, if we had the pesos, Kintala would sport EPIRBs and personal locators, man overboard alarms, the best of AIS, a shiny new life raft (or two), the latest in Star Wars navigation gear, SSBs and Sat Phones and endless internet connections. She would also have a water maker and a washing machine and ICE CREAM … but if we had those kinds of resources Kintala probably wouldn't be a 1982 boat needing a ton of other work.

Still, we are in the water going on five days now, there is no water in the boat; and we have actually started to debate how we will head south; inside, outside, Dismal Swamp, Pamlico Sound… Just talking about it is kind of fun. We are going to meet some new friends tomorrow, and next week old friends from Carlyle will be around for the boat show. This is all good stuff. Slowly, oh so painfully slowly, the work to fun ratio on Kintala is starting to balance out once again.

More pics from the 66 foot 1903 Lawley as it left today.