Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

Always a good read.

The link below from their website has the best description of boat projects I've ever read:

Beginning your work with bright-eyed optimism, you start project A, but soon realize that because your boat was built by sadistic gnomes, you can’t work on A before completing projects B, C, and D. D is located under project F, which will have to be dismantled in order to reach project D. Unfortunately, once you access project D, you accidentally spill water on electrical part G, which will now have to be replaced. Luckily, part G is very easy to access. It’s just inside locker H, but the hinges on locker H have been frozen shut by oxidation, so you’ll have to saturate them in WD-40 first, then clean up the rust and open them with pliers before you can reach part G. Eventually, you manage to lubricate locker H, access part G, replace it, fix project D, and reassemble project F. Now you are ready to complete projects B and C, but B requires a very tiny specialized screwdriver that you haven’t seen since El Salvador, and C requires the use of a bedding compound that will only harden in sunshine, and it’s the middle of the rainy season. You tear apart the entire boat looking for the tiny, specialized screwdriver, but can’t find it anywhere (although you do find some very swollen sardine cans from 1997 and shocking number of dead baby cockroaches) so you get off the boat and drive to three different stores looking for the goddamned screwdriver. No one has it. You get back on the boat and notice that a) you’re taking on water, and b) the bilge pump is making a very weird noise, so you reach down among the filth and slime of your nasty bilge, only to find the teeny-tiny-assed screwdriver sucked into the bilge pump. Using the bitch-whore-piece of shit-fucknose screwdriver, you finally manage to complete project B, the sun shines just long enough for the bedding compound to cure on project C, at which point you ascertain that the parts for project A are only available in Bologna and will have to be ordered in Italian.

Then your wife yells at you.

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