Syzygy Sailing

For the next two months I’m unemployed. This condition is not by choice. Nevertheless I intend to avoid feelings of guilt or worry by constantly working on the boat. Today was the second day of this mandated vacation.

Today I didn’t succeed in rewiring the nav lights (yesterday I didn’t succeed in fixing the diesel fuel leak). I spent all day doing it, and I finished maybe half of it. This is a job which I’ve already done twice and didn’t want to do even once. This third time it was because I accidentally cut through the wires while we were installing a portlight, in such a way that I couldn’t reuse the old wiring. Of course I only accepted this after taking apart half the ceiling which I enjoyed putting right back even less. Usually these things don’t faze me, they take their own time and I give it to them patiently. But today my coping system took a vacation and left me with the desire to hammer on everything in sight, to hammer the entire boat to nothingness. Nothingness wouldn’t need any maintenance.

So I spent much of the morning stuck up in the anchor locker again, and I wasn’t wearing a smile and feeling goofy like the last time I shoved myself in that uncomfortable hole.

This undertaking–i.e. planning to sail around the world–may be grand and romantic, but the reality of making it happen are thousands upon thousands of small victories and defeats. Each small task is necessary and requires total concentration; in such a state it becomes difficult to keep the big picture in mind. And sometimes I’d rather not think of that big picture, lest I become overwhelmed by the magnitude of the work that remains.

Tomorrow is another day, I know. Take the bad with the good, I know.