Some days I wonder if we’re nuts ……….

………. and then I read something like this:

Swedish Ocean Racing Club - Sailing Poem

A small boy heard the ocean roar,
There are secrets on my distant shore,
But beware my child, the ship’s bells wail,
Wait not too long to start to sail.

So quickly come and go the years,
And a young adult stands abeach with fears,
Come on, Come on the ocean cussed,
Time passes on. Oh sail you must.

Now its business in mid-aged prime,
And maybe tomorrow there will be time,
Now is too soon, it’s raining today,
Gone all gone - years are eaten away.

An old man looks, still feeling the lure,
Yet he’ll suffer the pain, than go for the cure,
The hair is white, the steps with care,
The tide has turned, he is aware.

So all too soon the secrets are buried,
Along with him and all regrets he carried,
And it’s not for the loss of secrets, he cried,
But rather because he’d never tried

Its just me and the damncat today.  Marilyn caught the early Westjet flight back into the deepfreeze yesterday morning.  Yesterday was pissing rain and howling wind in the morning and then it cleared up in the afternoon.  Today looks to be a re-run.  I’ve been trying to get a messy project out of the way while Marilyn is gone. 

When we were still in Seattle we bought two fake teak boxes for the aft deck.  They look really good back there but the lids haven’t been standing up well to the weather.  I think they might be eucalyptus wood – can’t remember – but if I told you they were teak you’d probably believe me so that part is OK.  The problem is that the lids have rails with length wise grain and a solid top with the grain crosswise.  In this soggy wet climate the cross grain has swelled and split the ends of the lengthwise grain.  I was able to dry them out and pull them back together with a Rube Goldberg affair involving ropes and pieces of wood to twist the rope and right now I’ve got one of them set up in the main salon with fibreglass and epoxy curing on it.  With a bit of effort I’ll get the 2nd one set up tonight so that it will be cured on the first side by the time I get back from boxing wine tomorrow.

Two months ago when we arrived out here we started some wine at one of BC’s wonderful little wine shops.  Jim and Judy know about wine and this is the shop they use so that’s good enough for us.  I don’t mind making wine that’s good enough to serve company, I’m just not likely to know the difference.  We’ve got one batch of “good” wine brewing that will end up getting aged in their wine cellar.  The batch I’m taking off tomorrow is for immediate drinking – fruit flavoured alcohol in other words.  I told the woman at the shop that I’ll be putting it in bags/boxes because that is clearly the most practical way to carry it on the boat.  The “good” wine will have to go in bottles because I suspect that a large part of the goodness comes from the label and the bottle.  I’m not 100% convinced that all oenophiles would know the difference if I poured some of my homemade plonk into a fancy bottle and served it with appropriate fanfare.  But I could be wrong.