You know that feeling, when the wind picks up a little bit and you can hear it humming through the rigging, your boat sways just a little bit then settles back down? No? Yeah me either, or at least I’ve almost forgotten how it feels. The reason is for the last month we have had Palarran out of the water and up on stands in a boat yard. For you land lubbers, ‘yard’ does not mean a lovely lush grass covered piece of land. I means, paint and diesel stained asphalt lot.
Every 15 years or so you dirt dwellers have to put a new roof on your house, well, us water dwellers have to pull our boats out of the water every 3-4 years and get a new paint job done on the hull to keep junk from growing on it. We are doing the work ourselves, so it is taking a little longer than it would if we had paid someone to do it.
It’s not all that bad, but there are a few things that, after a month have gotten pretty annoying.
Number one being the elevation of our companionway (front door). It is now 15 feet in the air and only accessible by ladder.
Number two is we cannot use the head (bathroom) on the boat. I imagine right now your saying….”Dang, CB. That seems like it would be number one on the list!” Well, your wrong and I’ll tell you why, if you’ll stop interupting me. You see everytime someone has to use the bathroom, they have to climb down the ladder and walk across the yard to the crappy bathroom in the shop. Now, I’m not a gentle flower, but imagine if you will, a bathroom that is maintained and used by boat yard workers and diesel mechanics! Ennui!!!
Third annoyance is not being able to cook at home. Technically we could, but that would result in dirty dishes, and that means one of two options. Washing them in the sink, but since the sink drains overboard and into the yard that option is not an option. So the second and only option is to grab all the dishes and soap, toss them into a bag. Climb down the number one annoyance, walk across the yard and into the bathroom, the cleanliness of which would not be too out of place in a mexican prison, wash them, walk back across the yard and climb back up the number one annoyance…….fuck it! We just eat out, which gets old after 4 weeks, believe me.
And the forth annoyance, the gawd damn boat is not level. In the water the boat is level, it moves but it’s level. On the hard and in the stands, it is about 3 degrees out of level from front to back. Which is just enough to make me slowly slide feet first out of bed everynight.
Over the course of this month I’ve done a little study and have discovered that on a thermorest mattress with cotton sheets at a 3 degree angle it takes about 3 to 3.5 hours to slide 21 inches. As it turns out, the distance from my foot to my knee is 21 inches and since I go to bed about midnight at 3 or 3:30am, my knees reach the end of the bed and hang over. Causing much discomfort and I wake up, crawl back up the slope and go back to sleep. At 6:30 am (3 hours & 21 inches later) my knees are again at the end of the bed and it’s time to get up for work.
I’m sure there are a few people reading this that might state that a crappy nights sleep should be ranked higher that number 4 on this list. I’m now going to explain why I rank it lower as it does have one redeming quality.
When I get home from work, I drop my stuff (much to the displeasure of Tawn) in the order of how likely I’m going to need them for the rest of the night. Keys, wallet, cell phone? I’m at home. Don’t need them, so they are first to be dropped, usually right at the Nav station (desk). Shoes, socks? Kicked off next, right by the galley (Kitchen) sink. I’m now in front of the TV/Xbox360, might as well loose the pants. By the time midnight rolls around, I”m down to boxers and a t-shirt. Time for beddy-bye. (Begin annoyance number 4 sequence)
I’m not a morning person. I hate them, and as such, I tend to run on auto pilot for a solid 30 minutes after waking up. So as it turns out having the companionway (front door) 3 degrees downhill from the bed in this one instance is a good thing.
Assisted by gravity, I slowly stumble down the 3 degree slope grabbing clothes, shoes, cell phone, keys…etc, and whatever else I need for the day. All of which as I explained in the paragraph above has been ingenously (Tawn has another word for it) laid out the night before for me on my way to the compainionway. I’ve now got a slight bit of momentum built up from the stumble downhill, which carries me up the steps to the cockpit, then down the number one annoyance, across the yard to the number two annoyance, which coincidentally and comedically typically results in another form of number 2 :P and on to work, which technically could be considered the real number 1 annoyance, but won’t be for the sake of this story.
But if all goes as planned, we should be back in the water and back to “normal” tuesday of next week.