Bruising to go cruising
By Mike Jastrzebski
I've been working on the boat quite a bit lately, trying to get it ready to go cruising sometime before summer. If you were to come aboard Rough Draft it might not seem like I've gotten anything done. Boxes are piled on the top of boxes on the starboard settee, wires are hanging loose here and there, and I've been ornery as a bear, but work is getting done.
How can I tell? Well, today I scraped a layer of skin off my forehead while I was running wires for the new chartplotter. I was wedged into our aft quarter berth crimping wires together when I brushed the top of my head against a bulkhead that I swear wasn't there the last time I was back there.
Then there's the black and blue bruise on my leg where I banged it climbing into the quarter berth to begin with. And of course there's the true sign that I've been slaving away on the boat; the almost empty bottle of ibuprofen resting in the medicine cabinet. By the way, why is it that the ibuprofen bottle seems to be the only thing resting around here lately? (Note to self, time to go to Walmart and buy another extra large bottle of pain reliever, and while I'm at it I might as well pick up another box of bandaids, they're going pretty fast too.)
Sitting here I took a look at my to-do list and I see I have a couple of fun projects coming up. The bilge has to be cleaned and I need to replace a bilge pump and the shower drain box. After that the head has to be rebuilt and I need to replace some of the hoses.
Ah the joys of cruising — doesn't it make you want to rush out and buy a boat? The truth is sometimes I question the sanity of our decission to move aboard a boat, but I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing.
How about you out there, do you have a love-hate relationship with a boat?
Share on Facebook
