Sailboat maintenance is a life of quiet desperation. Actually, it's not all that quiet. There's a lot of cursing. It's day after day of tedious, solitary work that doesn't just seem endless. It is endless.
The only fuel that can sustain that kind of work is altruism itself. You have to do it for the greater good, because there just ain't no glory in it.
Sure you hope your work will pay off when you sell the boat, but your deepest hope is that all that boat karma is gonna come back around in your next boat -- and not just in the next life!
In a typical twist of our ever-strange lives, in January both of our boats got surveyed on the same day: Isabella, the boat we were selling, and Good Company, the boat we were buying.
The surveyor told Chip that Isabella was in awesome condition, especially for being 30 years old. He fawned over the teak and complimented the engine.
While this was amazingly gratifying and humbling, it was what we heard from Good Company's surveyor that brought it all around.
"That's a clean boat, obviously well taken care of." He told us it was in remarkable condition and the fix list would be very short.
A beautiful set of karmic parentheses.
The only fuel that can sustain that kind of work is altruism itself. You have to do it for the greater good, because there just ain't no glory in it.
Sure you hope your work will pay off when you sell the boat, but your deepest hope is that all that boat karma is gonna come back around in your next boat -- and not just in the next life!
In a typical twist of our ever-strange lives, in January both of our boats got surveyed on the same day: Isabella, the boat we were selling, and Good Company, the boat we were buying.
The surveyor told Chip that Isabella was in awesome condition, especially for being 30 years old. He fawned over the teak and complimented the engine.
While this was amazingly gratifying and humbling, it was what we heard from Good Company's surveyor that brought it all around.
"That's a clean boat, obviously well taken care of." He told us it was in remarkable condition and the fix list would be very short.
A beautiful set of karmic parentheses.
2 comments:
It says less about Karma and more about your standards.
Okay, and maybe some Karma.
Any sense you can make out of all the boat work we all do - is good with me.
After all of those stories about sanding and varnishing and sanding and varnishing and sanding and varnishing and repairing and did I mention sanding and varnishing, I'm SO happy to see that it was all for good. Everything you did is wonderful for Isabella and her new owners, and clearly you've found kindred souls in Good Company's parents. It was worth it.
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