There is a certain type of person that is attracted to old boats. There is a certain type of person who is attracted to the idea of restoring old boats. There is a certain type of person who dreams of someday cutting the dock lines and sailing off into the sunset. When you take these three types of personalities and you combine them all together, you end up with one of a couple of different sub types of person. You have the doer’s, the dreamers, and the derelicts.
The doers are the ones who no matter what, find an old boat, fix as much as possible and then take off.
The dreamers are the ones who no matter what, find an old boat, continue fixing it for as long as they own the damn thing and never leave.
And finally you have the derelicts who no matter what, find an old boat, start fixing it, figure they can do everything on the cheap, lose interest, lose money, probably end up divorced, move onto their boat, eventually the boat begins to sink and they end up on the hard where they continue to hoard others cast offs. The decks continue to be accumulate detritus with new “treasures” appearing often, the hull grows a great colour of green, the rust settles in, the strawberry plants are in planters around the keel, and there are 101 different projects on the go that will never see completion.
I think every marina in the world must have all of these types of people.
The sad part is that in Akupara’s current marina/workyard, as in most I would suspect, this class distinction is completely evident in the order of the boats placement in the yard. The boats nearest the gate stand the highest likelihood of ever returning to the water, and the boats closest to the back fence, well let’s just say, if they do not burn down, get crushed by another derelict when it finally falls over, or the owner dies onboard one cold winter night, will probably never move again.
Akupara was moved by the yard and was placed at the very back of the work yard. We are not happy. As a matter of fact, we are very insulted. And, to add to that, we are now very worried about Akupara’s safety. In all seriousness, the back of the yard has quite a few undesirable characters to say the least.
Now I will admit that we have been unable to get down to Akupara recently as I have been extremely sick since coming back from Ontario and I will also admit that we have purposely not completed any work on Akupara’s exterior, but to move us back to where the derelicts live is a wee bit insulting. We thought we were making good progress for the most part.
There is one positive thing that has come out of this. And that is a renewed sense of focus to getting Akupara back in the water as soon as possible.
As Captain, I have cancelled all shore leave going forward. The entire crew will be on deck both Saturday’s and Sunday’s until we are able to launch. If you are suffering from a cutlass wound to your right arm, that is fine, I will reduce your workload, as your left arm will still function and there are a lot of one handed jobs that need to be completed.
We need to get serious again and we knew that before discovering that Akupara had been moved. This is just a big enough kick in the ass to drive the point home.
We are now re-evaluating our plans to determine if there is a quicker way back into the water and will probably have work to complete once we launch, but it is better than leaving her where she is as all of our hard work could be stolen, destroyed or otherwise ruined by the locals.