Bad idea.
He doesn't approve of people airing their "dirty laundry" on social media.
Not that he even has email or is on any other social media; he's just a little suspicious.
It's not like nobody knows that the boat has been out of commission for a few years and probably needs a good spiffing.
It's not like I am writing this as an advertisement for my bright-work skills. Not being very bright and all.
But I forget, sometimes, that I am a Yankee among Yankees, and circumspection is our motto. Don't tell anyone anything if you absolutely don't have to. Just keep your head down, do your work, enjoy the fruits of your labor, and be on your way. As in: off this mortal coil.
In a way I can see his point. For 40 years people have worked hard to keep this boat afloat, re-fastening, painting, hauling, storing, polishing, sail making . . .and no one's taken out full page ads trumpeting their good deeds. They're just happy Jeff Brown is still here.
Well, so am I. But I tend to forget, from one day to the next, that there are actually portions of my day that I rather enjoy, that are comprised of amusing blunders or tiny new learning experiences or small gifts from relatives long dead and a past only dimly remembered. This boat in my yard is so. . . different . . . from anything I do these days, that if it is the thing I can write about for fun, instead of what I usually write about which is the destruction of the Indonesian rainforest, the civil unrest in Aceh province, or the far-too-minimal amount of humanitarian support given to women cocoa farmers--and if by doing these tiny diary-entry things here I can get back on the track of writing more fiction, or at least more things that matter, then maybe the miniscule bits of my day that I find enjoyable will grow to be bigger bits.
Hey, it's worth a shot.
And already, Jeff has seemed to help me.
This weekend I learned to if not master, then control the heat gun to the point where the thought of doing the same thing to the green part of the hull is not so overwhelming. Plus, I filed the scrapers. Who's master of her domain now, who? I also removed the brass rubrail, in several pieces, making sure I didn't bend it, by tying string from the end holes to the scupper holes so it stayed straight as I brought it up and laid it on the deck.
Should there be photos of even that here? Wouldn't that be gilding the lily? Perhaps that's what Paul means by dirty underwear. Jeff at his most tired and worn out.
You may be wondering where my promised "helpers" were.
Don tells me that this is the nature of helpers. They exist in one's hopeful imagination, but seldom do they materialize when one needs them.
But getting the black paint off the bulwarks made me a little less depressed about my eyes, one of which just had rather unsuccessful surgery so that my middle vision is now quite blurry, and I can only see reeeeely close up (to about a foot) and then from 6 feet outward. So the "living" portion of vision now eludes me. Cataracts: my gift from a year in Afghanistan. It can possibly be corrected by (eek) lasik surgery (which I already had, 5 years ago) but until it heals I am in the pit of despond, only able to read tiny paperbacks . . . and peel paint off an obliging old sailboat. Which was quite satisfying and oddly comforting.
Then Paul came back to say that maybe a little social media wasn't so bad after all, and bummer about the eye, and then Steve said I could keep the heat gun for a week, and then I figured out a way to trick my reading glasses into letting me see . . . so the new moon, which had me in its grip, loosened by the end of the weekend. Plus Jennifer and I went out in kayaks yesterday to say goodbye to the seals on Cormorant Reef, who should be heading north in a week or two--there were about a dozen of them playing peekaboo with us for about an hour. Such cuties.
So between the boat and the water, living here did not completely suck this week.
little puppy head to the bottom right (Lord's Point/Stonington in background)
they were all on the rocks when we got here
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