When did our dock lines become chains?

By Mike Jastrzebski

Mary and I moved aboard Rough Draft on September 2, 2003 with the intention of taking the boat from Minnesota to someplace where palm trees grew. We spent two months in the Lake City Marina on the Mississippi River getting the boat ready to go. We left Lake City and sailed (motored really) down the Mississippi to the Ohio River, up to the Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway and down to Mobile, Alabama where we spent nearly two years. It took a hurricane to get us off the docks in Mobile.

After that we spent 3 months in the city mooring field in Key West.

And now we've been docked for nearly five years behind an apartment building in Ft. Lauderdale.

There-in lies the problem. We knew we had to work until 2011 when we started this trip, but we never expected to spend this much time in one location. You see, we don't take the boat out while living aboard. It's just too much like work and not enough like fun. It takes hours to secure everything on board, disconnect from shore power, and toss off the lines. Then its forty-five minutes to get out to the ocean. After a three or four hour sail we have to go through it all in reverse, so we save our sailing for bouts of moving from one location to another.

We're planning on moving out in a couple of months now, but we're finding it a little difficult. We're making excuses to stay even though neither of us likes it here.

We talk about how much more money we could save if we stayed another year. That's true, but we'd be even better off if we stayed here five more years. Neither of us wants that.

We talk about how well my books are selling and that if we stay I could write another book in a year. Of course, I can write anywhere. At anchor. At some other marina.

So why are we still here? It's those damn chains. I think it's time to get out the hacksaw and get to work on those chains. It's time to get this boat moving again.

Any of you out there reading this feel like you've been where you are for too long? What are you doing about it?

 

 

 

 

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