Living Aboard - Not Quite the "Simple" Life...

Dang it, we're having a down spell. Hence the "meh". We're just feeling meh, and I'll tell you why, it's tough to keep working on something whose reward is far off in distant la la land. 2013 right now seems like a date that will never materialize. I think of it as this magic time when we'll have "accomplished" all we needed to do on the boat and it will be "perfect" and "ready to go" and we'll have "done everything we should have already" to get her ship shape. 

The thing is these dreams of mine won't happen unless we keep doing the dirty work, and there's a lot of dirty work. See? She is looking pretty dirty:

Our biggest issue is, clearly, not having a mast still. It's in the shop folks and the heartache and drama that surrounds why-we-still-don't-have-a-mast is for another post; one which would require several glasses of wine for me to truly tell the tale.  Because of our mast issues we have not sailed our boat in two years. Two stinking years.   :cry:

It's hard to get up on the weekends and work on the boat when everything seems never-ending, when you know that you can't reward yourself with a sail around the bay when you're done with your work. It's demoralizing to hear people say, "Oh you live on a boat? You must take it sailing a lot!" and then you just kinda shrug and nod and decide it's far too long a story to explain that you haven't actually been sailing in a long time.

Now, don't get me wrong. This is not the "meh" post that signaled that we weren't going to continue with our plans and dreams with this here boat. Nope. This is the meh post that is hopefully going to kick my butt in gear (and by default kick Eric's butt in gear too.) This is my comparison post. These pictures are what I'm going to look to over the next several months as I try to get her less meh-ier. I think it's time to focus on getting this little lady looking good. If we can't have a mast for awhile, then we can at least get her real name up on the hull and say "sayonara" to Neverland. We can get the new canvas on order and get the topsides painted something other than that awful vintage cream color. We can even clean up the dinghy and get her looking happy again, and we need to, and we're going to.

No more feeling meh.