Cutting down the list.

By Mike Jastrzebski

We're now five months away from our projected take-off day. Mary starts back to work today after hurting her back and being off of work for over a month. We've decided that beginning next week we will work on boat projects on her days off. On the days she works I will write until I complete the rewrite of Dog River Blues, hopefully before Christmas. At that time I will begin to work on the boat project list full time.

Our list started with 55 projects and over the summer I've whittled that number down to 42. The 13 items I've checked off have been mostly the easy jobs. I'll save the biggest projects for after Dog River Blues is completed, and I'm sure along the way I'll be adding to the list. What I don't understand is why it seems like such an onerous undertaking. After all, before we left Minnesota I did a complete refit which took five years.

I removed all of the hardware from the boat.

Painted it

Gutted the interior

And rebuilt it.

So why is it that I'm having so much trouble building enthusiasm for the project list? Partially I think I didn't expect living on a boat in a hot climate to be so hard on the boat. Partially I think it's because I've become used to spending my time writing which is much less demanding physically. And finally, I'm getting older. I'll be 62 next year and when I started on the refit I was only still in my forties.

Whatever the reason, the work has to be done if we want to go cruising. I guess I just have to get my rear in gear and get the boat ready to go, because I don't want to be sitting at the dock a year from now.