Now back to the real world

While I'm interested in what happens at National and International levels, my influence is limited. My gaze is far but my arms are short.

Now it's back to my home projects. It was a brisk morning at 19 degrees. Once temperatures rose above freezing I tackled some outside projects. One was the repair of a stone wall that keeps the soil in our little garden. By rights I should probably have torn it all down, dug below the frost line and built up from there. With a shoulder still on the mend, it wasn't going to happen. Repairing the top section was tough enough.

I'm trying to balance my time and energy. In recent years I've been putting a lot of time into boat projects at the expense of house projects. That's why I started the day with the garden wall. Only once that was done was time to play with the sailboat.

The mast and sail have to be set up on land so measurements can be taken of the rig before a new sail can be ordered. To have room to do that the boat had to be moved back about 8 feet. Should be easy, right? Just hook it up to the van and drive it back.

Normally it takes just a few minutes to hook up the trailer. Anyone who's ever taken a boat out of storage knows the first boating adventure of the season never goes smoothly. In my case it was the boat jack. It was rusted in place. I've had good ones and cheap ones and they all seem to only last a year or two. Even those with grease fittings that allowing for regular lubrication fail. Probably I should just buy cheap ones and keep a spare.

Without the boat jack, it took a tire jack, blocking, a large pry bar and the assistance of my lovely wife to get it hooked up. By then my shoulder was too sore to set up the mast and rigging. In my younger days I would have pressed on. Maybe I would have gotten away with it and maybe I would have really damaged my shoulder. Older and wiser, (and slower to heal) I decided to put that project off until tomorrow.

-Sixbears