Slow and steady wins the day (and drives me nuts)

 [Hilde's log]

This is our cockpit floor (looking forward toward the bow of the boat), with the new hatch rim laid out for size. It's a substantial hatch, made of cast aluminum, and quite heavy. When installed (which involves cutting a hole in the cockpit floor), it will be flush with the floor. Using this hatch, David will be able to access the back of the engine.

View looking forward to the V-berth. David was helping me sand prior to the second coat of varnish. You can see the contrast between the port and starboard sides and also glimpse the mess below. He's standing in front of the V-berth, which is jammed with cushions and boxes and who knows what.

The thing about boat projects is the time they take. 

It's maddening, for those of us used to computer quickness. It reminds me of my impatience, years ago, when the office got its first laser jet printer. Realize that I am of the generation that saw long legal documents hand-typed, when changes were typed on a separate piece of paper and then carefully cut and pasted into the original document. When the laser jet arrived at the office it was light years faster than the dot-matrix printer (which was the huge improvement over cutting and pasting and MAG cards). I caught myself standing at the laser printer saying “Oh, come ON” to documents that printed about 1 page per 2 seconds. 

All of which is to admit that wanting stuff done fairly quickly is a weak link for me. Now that we have an actual exit date, I am rarin' to go and am blocked by all the stuff that has to get done first.

Waiting is part of what you do when you do anything on a boat. Every last task takes doing a bit and waiting, doing a bit and waiting. The teak refinishing is 2-3 hours action and 2-3 days waiting, and you can't do anything else while waiting for it to dry because any mess will end up stuck to the sticky finish. Installing the hatch means ordering it and waiting two weeks for it to arrive and then waiting for good weather and time off for the installation.

Then there is chore reshuffle – when you discover you can't finish chore number 1 because chore number 26 has just muscled its way to the top of the list. Case in point: turning the boat around in the slip so David could more easily access the wind vane (he is moving the stern light to the back of the wind vane - formerly chore #2) and realizing the teak on deck is so awful it has to be moved up to chore #2, right after the hatch, lest we get kicked out of the marina for ugly boat trespass. We had it far down on the list because it wasn't necessary for us to get back aboard and because we didn't really have to look at it, but now we have to get presentable both to prevent issues with the marina and to salvage our pride. But it means that putting the stern light on just has to wait (again, no sawing, etc. around wet varnish).

The most common block to getting anything done is the "where the hell is the ___" syndrome. That is when you are all set up to do something that requires this, that, or the other tool and one of them is awol. It's either in storage, at the rig, hasn't been purchased, or (my favorite) it's right there on the boat but you can't see it because other project bits and pieces have covered it up.

Chores for this week: hatch install, sand and put on the 3^rd coat of varnish below, and, now, bleaching the gunnels to begin the deck teak refurb. Unless of course, something else comes up.

So we do a little bit and go home. Do a little bit and go home. Slow and steady. Oh, come ON.