Life on Land

Layla is “on the hard” in Beaufort while we work on projects and wait for the end of hurricane season.

So, how is that going?  CHAOS.  Between trying to complete the growing list of “to dos” on the boat and at the house, we have chaos.

Chaos has taken over every square foot of Layla, as we replaced all the settee cushions with parts and tools and boxes of stuff.

The settee cushions are now piled up on our living room floor waiting to be cleaned.

It was not long after setting foot on land that we had “project piles” in various stages of incompletion scattered around the house, porch, yard, shed and boat. As no task is as simple as it first appears, we have been distressed to see project piles grow in size and number as completing projects has been hampered by waiting for a repair, new parts, new design ideas, cooler/dryer weather or, sometimes, having sufficient enthusiasm to overcome procrastination.

Model building of the autopilot linear drive took over our reading room floor.

Canvas measurements for our butterfly hatch cover took over our dining room floor.

Striping the salon table took over the only shady spot in the yard.

Varnishing the salon table took over the shed.

And drying fresh coats of varnish took over the back porch on sunny days or the entrance to our kitchen on rainy days.

It is typical to lose track of the progress on some tasks, such as when we have conflicting trouble-shooting recommendations from equipment user manuals obviously written in Norwegian (autopilot), Japanese (engine, transmission, and many others), or other languages which are then translated, poorly, into English. Conflicting recommendations also come from the “experts”, and there are thousands of generous “old salts”, arm-chair sailors, boat yard workers, technicians, friends and sales people, all eager to give advice on solving our problem. All progress slows as we attempt to sort through it all, try some recommendations, or just throw up our hands and walk away until another day.  

Our biggest frustration, one that is constantly recurring, is losing stuff. Things just disappear. How many times can we lose the same thing over and over again? Or lose something else, that thing I just had in my hand, while I was looking for that lost bag of disassembled hardware needed to re-install the single side band radio we just got back from the manufacturer (who, by the way, said there was nothing really wrong with it)?   Of course when there are two of us involved with losing stuff, it makes great entertainment (sometime later).

Here is an except from one of our conversations:

He said, “Do you know where that bag of screws went? It was right here at the Nav station. I see you moved some things around here… Why are you looking under that pile of stuff that obviously hasn’t been touched in days? No one would have put it under the pile.”

She said, “Are you sure you are not confusing this bag of screws with another bag of screws? You know we have another bag of screws that looks sort of like that.”

He said, “Oh crap, now where did that bolt to tiller arm disappear? I thought it was safely here in this tray in the Nav station.”

About 10 minutes later he said, “I found the tiller arm bolt.”

She said, “Great! Where did you find it?”

He said, “I found it in the cup holder in the truck.”

She said, “I thought you said you put it right here in the Nav station?”

He said, “Never mind. Let’s look for that bag of hardware.”

We found the bag of hardware for the SSB under that pile of stuff that obviously hadn’t been touched in days…..