Eyes On The Prize

In the midst of everyone in the US getting ready for Christmas and Santa, while everyone seems to be decking their halls (and walls and lawns and cars) with festive decorations, I am trying my darnedest not to succumb to a fit of schmoopiness. While I might not be feeling very merry, I refuse to have a Blue Christmas and will instead focus on the positive.

 See, we had planned to be leaving NOW. Head the boat  for New Orleans, spend Christmas in my favorite US city and perhaps pal around with Dani and Tate ( who are such great peeps and unlike us, they are leaving soon so if you need to read about a boat underway, see their blog!) and then head east and south for the Caribbean. There was a fatal flaw in this plan. We had not adequately allowed for Captain Perfecto's need to complete the final bits of boat work with his requisite painstakingly, glacially slow but never the less absolutely gorgeous workmanship. Entire Pacific islands were created out of lava at a faster pace...

Everyone admires a perfectly restored boat which has been completely refit/rebuilt  with functionality, safety, structural integrity and beauty in mind. Not so many have the stomach to actually do the work required. I am certainly not going to fault those with a "go now" philosophy who will settle for "good enough" because if left to my own devices I think I would absolutely fall into this camp. But I am not a solo sailor. (which is good because I am still NOT confident in my docking abilities) I am 1/2 of a sailing couple and the needs of all must be considered. Mark NEEDS the boat to be finished to a level he is comfortable with. The difficulty is what he is comfortable with is, well, perfect. It's an obsession really. I have walked this path with him before at various times and I have found it best to just give him the latitude and space to do what he needs to do, cheer him on his successes, commiserate on the failures and be patient. The results have always been worth it in the end but I am not going to lie, it is not always easy to await the finished product.

So what work is being completed? A whole lot of varnishing. After having hit upon an application method that gives consistent results with Interlux Perfection Plus Varnish Clear Quart Kit , we thought we would try the same with Bristol Finish  . We have a friend who had excellent results with Bristol Finish and since we had some on hand, why not do a bit of experimenting? The good news? Bristol Finish does in fact provide a harder finish than Interlux. The bad news? It is really, really persnickety. We had such a time trying to get a good result with each coat and it just never happened. Basically, it just looked worse with each and every coat despite our painstakingly precise application. Bottom line for us is we will be an Interlux boat. Yes, we might have to sand and reapply a few coats a bit more frequently than we would with Bristol but this is offset by the fact that we can manage to get a really nice finish with the Perfection Plus.

The turtle shell should be reinstalled in the next couple of days and then we can start thinking about installing our rigid boom vang. Progress people, this is progress.

In the mean time, we've managed to sneak in the baking of a few batches of Christmas cookies which Kitty delivered to her "friends" at "her favorite store in the world"- Kemah Hardware. Kitty performed with her preschool class at the Christmas spectacular. We ran into Santa Claus at the Kemah Christmas parade. One of the benefits of catching the tail end of the parade, Santa has time to really listen to what you would like for Christmas. Santa even took the time to sit down and have a long chat with our wee girl and even wrote down what she wanted for Christmas " a pink truck. Not a pretend one but a REALLY real one". Santa then told her she might have to wait a few years but that he wrote it down so he would not forget and then asked her for another option to which she replied "it's all on the letter I wrote you".





So maybe we aren't leaving in a few weeks as planned. Things happen and you can either fight it or go with it. We are going with it, keeping on keeping on and keeping our eyes firmly on the prize. Soon. Very, very soon.