Setback

Each cruising season brings with it setbacks and challenges. There can be numerous reasons: elderly parents; elderly cruisers; mechanical, structural, electrical, plumbing, and cosmetic difficulties; extreme weather events; and on occasion emotional and physical fatigue. That is quite a list and I should have included logistics. 

 

In our last decade on the water, each of the above, if not multiples, has occurred at one time or another. This “Post” Covid cruise is no exception. It appears that storing Carrie Rose in heated storage for two years can create as many problems as using her.

 

Without referring to the log, there have been electrical (generator, inverter/charger, and radio), structural (salon roof leak), mechanical (stuffing box fasteners), propane, and cosmetic (varnish failure). I am going to avoid the weather other than for the rain and fog, and Elsa the tropical storm, not to mention we are still sleeping under a down comforter. 

 

A justifiable question would be, “Why bother?” and I will have to search for a reasonable response. To think back over a fifty year boating career it has been a series of trying events punctuated by enlightened moments. 

 

Each fall, once back in the bungalow, I am surprised at how boring it is. Boring does not capture my meaning; maybe uneventful is a better concept. The life force (whatever that is) is down regulated. It is a feeling in the solar plexus that dissipates on land. I might be mistaking this for what is in reality GERD!

 

Carrie Rose is a familiar venue for setbacks, as are this Atlantic Boat Company’s moorings in Herrick Bay, Maine. Atlantic Boat Company is where Carrie Rose is kept in the winter and where the good people have helped us weather multiple setbacks. Now, there are two, well, really, four. 

 

The top of the list is the misbehaving electrical system. I upgraded it in 2019 and it has been a continual mystery since. It is state of the art with all the incongruity that multiple microprocessors can bring to a highly functional device if it can ever be fine tuned. 

 

I had a hand in installing it and as did several of the boatyard’s long gone electricians. Atlantic Boat Company’s present electrician has an OCD streak that is commendable for someone in his profession. He spent Thursday afternoon working his “little grey cells” to exhaustion only to declare the entire system a jumble.

 

I was prepared for the worse when all six foot plus of him stepped out of the engine room. What I received was a declaration to solve the problem but not until Monday morning with a clear head and the entire day ahead of him . . . at seventy dollars per hour. So here, Carrie Rose floats on mooring 5 that is attached to an eight thousand pound granite block resting between 12 and 22 feet on the bay’s bottom. 

 

With our free time Charlotte and I backtracked to places passed many time in hast: pottery and art studios; Fort Knox and the Penobscot Bridge’s 400’ observatory; used book stores; ice cream stands and Blue Hill’s new co-op. The next day was filled with the search for various needed goods that had us venturing to Ellsworth, home of most big box stores and traffic worthy of Chicago. We fled.

 

In times like these, to give myself an edge, I wish for a magical amulet or an idol to sacrifice too. My mother would bury St. Joseph upside down when wishing a house quickly sold but I doubt there is a saint devoted to boat maintenance. Like many other problems of the modern world, I am on my own to deal with past, present, and future setbacks. It is the price of admission.