Hostage

"This is the part that Cruising World doesn't ever mention," says Alisa.

The barky - behind a fence and under wraps

And the view up close - feeling blue on the bottom

Sailors talk about being "free", and I suppose our lives are very free, more than most.  But more so than freedom, I think it's self-determination that characterizes our life afloat.  We choose our destinations.  We shape our own course, literally and figuratively, and go where wind and whim will carry us.

Because everything is usually more or less up to us, we sailors are masters at getting stuff done.  When it's crunch time for boat maintenance, we make every hour tell a tale.

But when you pay someone else to work on your boat, you give up that self-determination.  Suddenly your progress depends on someone else's ability to finish their work.

I think this is one of the greatest drawbacks to not doing all your own work on your boat.

Temporary quarters

So when we made the decision to have the hull professionally spot-blasted, we knew we were buying a ticket for an uncertain ride.

From our perspective - well, it feels a bit like the boat is a hostage.  From our go-go pace of getting stuff done every day, we've gone to hauling out and then waiting two weeks to get into the blasting yard.  Now we've been in the blasting yard for five days - and the blasting isn't finished.  Note that I am NOT complaining about the pace of work per se.  The business can't be expected to have Galactic as their central priority, the way we do.  From their perspective, we're one of many jobs that are getting done in this busiest time of the year.

So we wait - and every day the yard bills mount, and, at least until the blasting is finished and we can take the wraps off Galactic, the bills for temporary housing mount.  We keep a good contingency fund for just this kind of expensive surprise, so in the big picture the expense isn't too bad.  But sailors maximize their use of money even more than they maximize their use of time - we happily squander an afternoon on doing nothing at all (outside of boat maintenance season!) but we never blow a hundred bucks for the hell of it.

But now we wait, with money and time both pouring away…

Luckily, we know two other boats in the yard who are either doing much bigger jobs, or have had found much bigger surprises, than we have - and the sailors involved are smiling through it all.

They give us a good model to emulate...