Sameness

It is still cold and luckily for me I have some Valentine's obligations this weekend.

I did spend a few minutes with the boat. Everything is good. Jenny sits comfortably and patiently and appears to have withstood the high winter winds just fine. The tarp, which I have already complained about, is slowly coming apart and will definitely not make it another season unlike every previous heavy duty tarp I have owned. TarpsOnline.com remains on my bad list for all the reasons I have already written about and won't bore anyone further.

I spent some time reviewing my interior plans and coming up with hard materials lists. After owning the boat for nearly six years I find myself still tweaking the plans and trying to visualize how it will all come together. There are a myriad of details to consider and I am sure I won't get it all right anyway. I am sure I will wishing I had done it some other way someday.

I had a car repair bill and a heating oil bill come in together which amounts to about three weeks take home pay so I won't be ordering any supplies right away. A few sheets of cherry veneered plywood would go a long ways at this point so I might try to squeeze it in next month.

My big debate right now is whether to launch the boat in the spring or keep it out for the coming season. One the one hand. I would like to try sailing the boat for real. I miss sailing and last season was a bit of a disapointment.

On the other hand, thinking realistically, I will be lucky to sail once every other weekend. That was the case with my last boat and with a full time job plus part-time stuff, other weekend chores, variable weather, etc. I don't see that situation changing much. I hate the idea of having a boat sit for two weeks between day sails. It seems like such a waste of time and resources. For a single daysail once every two weeks a sailing dinghy makes much more sense to me.

If I don't launch I should make good progress on the interior over the summer and have no problems finishing up the sailing hardware, getting a good 8-10 coats of varnish on the exterior teak and such. With an interior I will get a lot more use out of the boat too. With an interior I can make the most of my free weekends by sleeping over on the boat so the hour or two's drive each way to the mooring will be much easier to justify (I am definitely not going back to the nearby Merrimac river mooring) and I can think about spending some real quality time on the boat rather than half day sails here and there.

These are just my thoughts at the moment. I chose the Triton because while I like coastal cruising most of all, I realized that I might have to keep a real job and the Triton is small enough to be a decent daysailer that doesn't demand too much attention if I am busy earning a living. I hope for cruising but the Triton is a nice daysailor too. Maybe I should be happy with my every other weekend daysails and remember how lucky I am to even have this option.