12 Feb. 12
Sunday, my absolute favourite day of the week. It’s always been the day to relax rest and recharge. Even though we don’t really take the day off I tend to potter around a little and not take on any challenging work for the day. Specifically on a day like today when it is raining it is great to just spend most of the day watching movies or just lying in bed. We still haven’t managed to install our new 12 volt fridge and have the old one under the boat with all our stuff inside so when we need a drink or something we have to climb off the boat and fetch it downstairs. It has been very convenient owning a cat instead of a mono hull having the workspace under the boat so we didn’t require a garage to work from. The last mile of a race is the hardest is what Ryan told me when I described to him how de motivated I was feeling. Wise and true words. Perhaps the predicted rain for the next few days will be just what we needed to get back our drive and allow us to eventually get the boat finished. Lola and I have been debating taking some time off away from the boat to try and rebuild our will to get finished. Normally the rain just pissed me off as if it was sent to prevent me from working but now I am grateful for the break.
15 Feb. 12
The last few days have just flown by and it feels as if we don’t get anywhere no matter how much we work, nothing gets done. Our new isotherm 12 volt fridge is working eventually after having to take the long cut and run new wires directly from the batteries but is still not properly built into the cupboard that we made. Our wind charger bracket has finally been fitted but the charger itself still has to be painted before we can install it.
Yesterday we had a guy from Durban come and see us about our water maker. He said he would send us a mail with the prices to modify test and fit the water maker but will only install it on the boat once we get to Durban.
16 Feb. 12
The last few days have seen me slowly slipping into despair again since nothing ever seems to get done on the boat. We started installing the new fridge about a week ago and only managed to complete the installation this morning only to discover this afternoon that the whole thing heats up and all the cupboards around it are getting excessively hot. So I drilled a few holes into the cupboards and hope this solves the problem. We sanded down the crossbeam and will start painting it tomorrow as we know this is a week’s process. We installed the wind charger but that is also not working and seems to drain the batteries as opposed to charge them. All in all nothing is working and I feel as if I am just wasting my time. Oh and after inspecting the new sea cocks that we hired someone to do I don’t have any faith in what they did so will have to re-do them myself.
17 Feb. 12
Last night after the kids went to sleep Lola and I took a slow stroll down to the foreshore and sat on the one and only broken bench. When we passed the clubhouse bar I commented that some people spend their entire lives in the bar and I am glad that I passed that point in my life for there was a time that this was all that I did. For a while we just sat in silence in my own thoughts I tried to remind myself why we are doing this trip. I don’t know what was floating around in Lola’s head but she allowed me the time to stare longingly at the few boats tied to the mooring buoys. When we spoke I told her that the dream of cruising is locked in those boats gently bobbing away on an anchor in a remote anchorage. But the reality of cruising is going from yacht club to yacht club, possibly meeting the same people in all of them along the way. She then told me that it won’t always be like that and we will find remote islands and seclusion somewhere along the way. To which I sarcastically replied yes we will find these “remote islands” on a week day and on the weekend they will be infested by thousands of fisherman arriving in their four wheel drive double cab bakkies just like Pelican island directly across the water from us. She smiled at me and started easing me into an obviously planned discussion about how little work we actually have left to do on the boat and how soon we could be on our way. The discussion was filled with obstacles from my side but she managed to climb over these as they arrived one at a time and somewhere during the moonlit night she managed to lift my mood. Wise woman.
No comments:
Post a Comment