Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Quiet workings

Deb is in the city for a last few days of closing out "the stuff" and helping Daughter Middle. She will be back home before the weekend. In the mean time work continues, not only on the hull and steering vane, but with planning and coordinating cranes and trucks and lifts and departures.

Tradewinds is a much quieter place during the week than is Boulder. Indeed, a whole day can go buy where I may see only one or two people ... some days none at all. The day starts, coffee gets made, breakfast is finished and the dishes done, the day's work is reviewed and begun. The gulls circle overhead; wasps buzz around checking on progress, the palm sander hums, dust is made, holes are drilled ... it is about as far from my life as a corporate pilot and American consumer living in a major city as can be imagined.

It is a temporary lull of course, a transition lifestyle of just a few weeks. By the end of the month the truck will arrive. Even if there is some work to complete once on the coast there will surely be more activity, more hustle, than there is here. We will be looking at big water, then be floating in big water, and a third way of living in as many months will start to unfold. But for now I can almost feel the old life fading away, the quiet workings in my head even more pronounced than those happening to the boat. Corporate America smacked me up-side the face but we were planning to walk away anyway. I still check the news to start my day, but the constant displays of world-wide lunacy seem distant. It is sad that so many people work so hard at doing as much harm as they can to themselves, others, and the world; but there is little that can be done about it; the goal is not to add to the chaos. They would probably hate me as much as they hate everyone else if they knew but - truth to tell - Kintala is likely so far below their RADAR as to be non-existent.

Part of the reason for moving onto a sailboat was to shift my view of the world; literally and figuritively. How big that shift might be was a curiosity; but I'm beginning to realize it will be more pronounced than I could have imagined. Wherever it is that we are going ... it will be much further away than I thought.

2 comments:

Ken n Cheryl said...

We plan on cruising in 2014 on our smaller Catalina 30 for so many reasons ... the travel, sailing and people. But, like you, also want to get away from the crazy world we live in .. live in a simpler, slower, kinder world!

Deb said...

@Ken n Cheryl - this is my second day as a full-time liveaboard and I can already feel the distance growing from my former pace. It is absolutely fabulous!