Vacation?

Flybridge ladders make great tool
benches it seems...

Back for another stretch of working on First Light. Even with good progress being made launch date is still just a fuzzy event lurking somewhere in an uncertain future. But time spent on the boat is more than just time spent working on the boat. Each time we climb aboard I am a bit amazed that this thing actually belongs to us. Even sitting on the hard I have come to love the living space. From the forward main cabin to the stern cockpit everything feels like just the right size in just the right place. It is fun to imagine being anchored in No Name Harbor, watching the party from the fly bridge while sipping sundowners.

Until that day, working on the boat really is what being at the boat is all about. We are chewing up vacation days to get it done, but it makes for a strange kind of “vacation.” About 10 minutes after the tools start to appear all thoughts get focused on the task at hand. Just figuring out an initial approach to some modification, worn out “this,” broken “that,” or uncovering some bit of carnage due to rot, is the first hurdle. In the aviation world, whole manuals are written on the proper way to do just about any repair or maintenance task required. It is a level of precision that most people walking down the jet way have no idea exists. But boats? By comparison the marine world is the wild-wild-west of repair, maintenance, and servicing. Walk around any do-it-yourself boat yard (and some open only to “pros”) and see. Pretty much anything goes, and everything has.

I assume it is different in the super yacht world, but I don't know anyone who sails in those rarified waters. In our case, there is no maintenance manual specific to First Light. No parts manual. Even if there were, decades of after market parts, modifications, and repairs make her a unique collection of bits, with quarks and weirdness hiding in places no one would have guessed. Accessory units like engines and generators have some good documentation, but it ends where the accessory and boat come together. For example, there are maintenance and parts manuals for the 4BT3.9 engines in First Light. But they say nothing about how those engines are mounted and melded into the boat to make for a working whole. The same can be said for just about every pump, valve, relay, wire, and switch in every system. Helicopters are often described as an odd collection of parts flying in close formation but determined to head off in their own direction at the first opportunity. In like manner, boats are an odd collection of parts engaged in synchronized swimming, with any part being heavier than water determined to sink at the first opportunity.  

Sometimes facing a new job it is a bit scary, with no real idea of how to get done what needs to be done. But then comes the figuring, planning, cutting, fitting, backing-up and trying again (accompanied by the appropriate language) and making it work. The hours disappear, tools get misplaced and rediscovered, a little blood normally gets shed (again accompanied by the appropriate language). The path toward the finish will take strange and unanticipated twists. Time is lost while sourcing materials. What looked like a good idea at first didn't take into account some bit of impossible access or a weird, boat determined, shape. Eventually it all seems to come together and when the sun sets it feels like it was a good and proper way to spend one of the days allotted to this life. And with each repair, each modification, First Light becomes a bit more “our” boat. Something ever more rare in our made-by-a-machine, they-all-look-the-same, buy-it-in-a-box, then throw it away, world.

But that same sunset also brings sore arms, an aching back, bruised hands, and legs that feel like lead after countless trips up and down ladders and in and out of hatches. There is also the feeling of never having enough days to spend. So each day gets pushed to its limit and necessary compromises are made. Time is always running away, with funds often dwindling away as well. Much as we hate to admit it, there is no promise of it all working out in the end. But that is the way of all of life so we carry on.

Working on the boat comes with the live-aboard life (for most of us anyway). But we don't live aboard so we can work on the boat. I remember a lesson learned decades ago from my life-long, professional truck mechanic Grandfather: "Getting it perfect is always the enemy of getting it done." From him I learned to be a hard core pragmatist with just a hint of OCD. First you have make it work. Then you make it as safe as possible. Then, if time and money permits, you can make it as pretty as you like. It isn't easy, and there are few hard and fast rules. Just remember that the goal is to be on the water as safely and comfortably as possible.

It is a strange mix of skill, means, patience, personality, and creativity. I am happy to be back at it again. Even if it does make for a strange kind of “vacation.”