It’s amazing how self-contained you can be on a boat. All the running back and forth to various marine hardware stores that happens when one is in port must either serve to stock up on a variety of otherwise superfluous supplies, or simply be unnecessary, because there is never any lack of things to be done, or stuff to do it all with, even when one is out sailing around.
This summer we had a lot of fun, covered a lot of ground, but we spent a lot of time just hanging around on the hook, too. But there was never a chance to get bored… there’s always something to keep you busy on board.
From pulling out and patching a leaking muffler to doing the same with the head (guess which was worse) to scrubbing two weeks of accumulated False Creek muck off the waterline to simply hanging out on a sunny day and polishing the stanchions, we always had something to work on. More importantly, we always seemed to have the things along we needed to work on it with. After two or three years of bumbling around wishing we had tools or parts to fix the inevitable problems that come up, we seem to have finally accumulated the right variety of gear to take care of most of what happens on the average trip. It felt pretty good to not constantly be pining for a port with a decent chandlery any time something came up.
Weather also played a big part. It’s a lot more enjoyable to haul everything out of the cockpit locker and go crawling around fixing pumps if all that gear is not getting soaked in a perpetual rain shower while it is out; it’s a lot less objectionable to pull yourself around the waterline in the dinghy scrubbing away if it’s almost ninety degrees out.
Whether it was a matter of weather, or better preparedness, or just a better attitude in general, this year I actually felt like I was ahead on maintenance and projects over the course of the summer. Years past, in remote waters, it seemed more a matter of running the boat hard, patching things up temporarily as they inevitably failed, and putting off all the big refit and repair work into a long and arduous process in the future. Choosing between the two after having experienced both, I will take keeping ahead any day.