Hauling out can, counterintuitively, be a very indulgent experience. It's a good time to treat yourself a bit. I like to have a beer while I'm putting the tools away at the end of the day, and then another one (or two) with my late dinner. Ice cream every night, too. And if there happens to be one around, I love watching TV at night after my day in the yard.
In a way, I'm channeling a different sort of existence - I work at manual labor for twelve hours, then come home to treat myself a bit, then get up the next day and do it all over again. For as long as we're in the yard, I have no ambitions beyond doing that every day. For me, it's the only way to approach a haul-out.
For Alisa, though, the experience is a little more hectic. I've been getting to the boatyard at eight in the morning, and leaving by eight or eight thirty at night. That means she's been herding the boys through the nightly circus of dinner-bath-bedtime all by herself. And we're in this strange house instead of being on our home turf aboard Galactic, so domestic life is that much harder to keep organized.
Now, long-time readers of the blog know that Alisa is not a complainer. Actually, she is more not-a-complainer than anyone else I know. But the other morning, as she was dropping me off, she looked up at Galactic, sitting on a cradle and surrounded by scaffolding and said - Jeez, it makes you wonder if it's worth it.
She paused for just a second and then added - Oh right, but when we're sailing we're queasy and half-miserable and then we wonder if it's worth it.
It was, I'm sure, just a tiny moment of clear-headed thinking about this life of constant-here-to-there that we're embarked upon, and I don't think it will last.
But, all the same, it will be good to get back into the water.
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