Where is the line between dreadful, soul-sucking work and the boat life we have chosen?

A recent dinghy repair had me walking the knife edge of this question.

Was I happy?

No.

After 9 months sitting on the grass at a boatyard in Langkawi, our dinghy’s wrinkled tubes breathed an air of neglect. Hauled out, it was hard to remember its importance. The dinghy is our family car, dive and rescue boat.

What Was Involved in the Dinghy Repair

Fixing a leak on a dinghy is not that different from fixing a leak in a bicycle tube. But it takes a lot longer.

The task had me sanding and picking at wiggly bits of paint, and applying an industrial glue.

It was exactly the kind of job that twenty-year-old me would have bicycled past, wind in my hair, thinking “Carry on, loser.” But I would have missed the point entirely.

me

The reason our dinghy was leaking air placed me firmly in the crosshairs. Behind the backdrop of the Malaysian sunshine and a bottle of dish soap was the knowledge that, after seven years of ownership, I had still not made a canvas dinghy cover. (See also my post from 2018 where I buy a sewing machine).

We can make excuses for me. I am crossing oceans. I am homeschooling our kids. I am making meals. I am brushing my hair. But the short story is if I could pin the blame on someone else, or an act of God, I would have approached the dinghy repair with swagger. Instead, our dinghy was repaired with regret, high determination, low knowledge, fueled by Ramen noodles and take-out food.

Our catamaran was being put back in the water in mere days. I had to get the process right. At first, that looked like me sitting around watching YouTube videos and not a lot like progress.

When Does the Job Begin?

I made lists. I listed required materials and wrote and revised procedures. The planning part seemed to be taking away from valuable time that I could be putting to better use – doing the actual work.

Trouble was, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t want to just wing it, make further mistakes, and learn from a tumbleweed ball of mistakes, leading to more disappointment and a lower starting point than where I began.

My motivation was this: if I screwed up on the ratio of mixing rubber to hardener, a patch could come undone, the dinghy tube might spring off the aluminum frame and my entire family could wind up in the surf with our legs dangling over hungry sharks and unforgiving coral.

also me

Practically speaking, the materials were located inside our boat, hoisted in the air, well above our dinghy. The dinghy was on the ground below our boat and could only be accessed through a flight of metal stairs. I did my best to avoid running back and forth, scorching my feet at the top of the stairs and hopping onto our boat.

As I began to work, the micro mistakes compounded my work and frustration. My best-laid plans needed to be rethought.

Someone kicked out the plug of the sander. Rain clouds formed on the horizon. Rick disagreed with the size of a patch I made because Hypalon fabric is hard to get and in short supply.

I placed the patches. Two important patches rippled in their placement. Rick suggested that I should have called him before applying the patches.

Rick’s comment bothered me.

The rippled patch bothered me. A lot.

The Evil Twins of Dinghy Patches

In the dark beneath our boat, I tore at the wrinkled patches, picking away at the sides and working at the rubber. In some places it peeled like chicken skin and in other places it threatened to pull off the top layer of the dinghy. I was determined to set it free. My patches looked amateur and would loosen in short order.

If I was going to do this job, it was going to be done once and right.

When Does It End?

Faced with hours of work to redo the wrinkled patches, I took a shower and steamed in more ways than one. As I simmered, it struck me that Rick was just as motivated as I was to get things done properly, and that his help would be appreciated.

The next day I began again. Under the heat of the Malaysian sunshine, working with rubber in puddles of greasy water, I placed a step ladder to reach patches on the dinghy that needed attention. Balancing a pot in one hand, I used my other hand to scale the steps, mindful not to drop the rubber glue on the dinghy tubes.

When the surfaces were fully prepped, I let Rick apply the patches that had been removed. It was a job done right. Later, he said that he made the suggestion because he could see that I was being too tentative about the placement. The glue was unforgiving and set the minute the patch touched the dinghy. I was happy to offload this task, to be honest.

So, a before and after photo doesn’t tell the whole story.

Twenty-year-old me would have seen a person hunched over a boat and thought, “Why?” She would have missed that my purpose had nothing to do with the boat at all, and everything to do with my family.