Conflict

By Mike Jastrzebski

It’s true that a good book needs conflict, but that’s not what I’m talking about today. I’m talking about the conflict that arises from trying to write and living the cruising lifestyle.

As an example. Saturday I finished the third draft of my work in progress, Stranded Naked Blues. This is good, so what’s the problem? Nothing major, but one of the big problems with living aboard is lack of space so I never buy more than one ream of paper at a time. Yesterday I went to print up the manuscript so that I could read the manuscript out loud and do one more edit before Mary gets to the line editing. Unfortunately, I was thirty pages short and that meant that the first thirty pages were not available for me to get started.

Again, not a big deal. It was mid-afternoon and I figured I’d go into St. Augustine today, Monday, and pick up another ream of paper. Alas, it was not to be. We woke up to high winds and whitecaps in the mooring field. Since the wind was supposed to stay at 20-30 knots throughout the day we decided not to take the dinghy in and we called for a shuttle pickup. Wouldn’t you know it, the marina cancelled the shuttle for the day. They figured they could get us into the marina all right, but they were afraid that once the tide changed they might not be able to get us (those of us on mooring balls)  back to our boats.

That  meant no paper, and worst of all Mary couldn’t get to work today. Hopefully the weather will settle down by tomorrow and I can get into town and get some paper, but the editing will have to wait for another day. So goes life when you live on a boat.

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