{"id":143,"date":"2026-09-04T17:10:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T17:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sarmc.us\/?p=143"},"modified":"2026-09-04T17:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T17:14:13","slug":"the-boatyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarmc.us\/?p=143","title":{"rendered":"The Boatyard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are days when I sit in the boatyard in Bellingham, Washington, I wonder how I got here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A big, heavy, solid old cruising boat that has been sitting around for years, I bought her, I knew she needed work. Boats have a funny way of hiding their problems until you start taking things apart. Fix one thing and suddenly you discover two more things that need attention. A pump that doesn’t work leads to a wiring problem. A leaking fitting leads to damaged wood. A small crack leads to fiberglass work. Before long, the list seems endless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here I am, living in a boatyard and working on a boat that is almost half a century old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn’t particularly glamorous. Most days I’m covered in dust, dirt, grease, fiberglass or antifouling paint. I’ve spent hours crawling underneath the boat, working around the rudder, through-hulls and fittings, trying to make forty-six years of wear and tear a little less obvious. I’ve pulled apart systems that haven’t been touched in decades and looked at wiring that makes me wonder what the person who installed it was thinking. I’ve bought parts for things I didn’t even know existed and spent far too long trying to remove fittings that apparently decided they were going to remain attached to the boat forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the part of boat ownership that you don’t see in the photographs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The photographs show the boat sailing through turquoise water, sails full of wind, mountains in the background and a sunset behind the mast. They don’t show the hours spent lying on your back underneath the hull with a roller in your hand. They don’t show the frustration of trying to find a replacement part for something made forty years ago. They don’t show the days when you finish working and realize you’ve barely spoken to another person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that is probably what has surprised me most about being in the boatyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can be a lonely place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are people everywhere. You hear grinders and compressors running throughout the day. Someone is always sanding something, pressure-washing something, drilling something or swearing at something. Trucks come and go. People walk past carrying tools and pieces of boats. There are conversations happening around you all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you can still be completely alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you’re working on your own boat, you disappear into your own little world. You get focused on whatever problem is in front of you, and hours can pass without you really noticing. Sometimes at the end of the day I’ll climb down from La Sirena, stand there looking at her and realize I haven’t really talked to anyone all day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes that feels lonely. Other times it feels like exactly what I need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a huge difference between being alone and being lonely. Alone I am not, I have the best friends anyone could wish for, who will follow and join me on this journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a lot of time to think in a boatyard. When you’re sanding for three hours or rolling antifouling paint onto the bottom of a boat, there isn’t much else to occupy your mind. Eventually the physical work becomes almost automatic, and your thoughts start wandering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve thought a lot about my life while working on La Sirena.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve thought about where I’ve been, where I’m going and the people who have been part of my life along the way. I’ve thought about how quickly things can change and how easy it is to spend years doing what you think you’re supposed to do without ever stopping to ask yourself whether it’s actually what you want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point you have to make a decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can keep waiting for the right time, or you can just go. Sometimes, a situation appears that disrupts your whole life, the kind that takes you to your knees and leaves you dazed. But, when you eventually come to hard realizations and acceptance, you immediately get through it all, in an instant, in a flash. You remember who and what you really are. Then the going bit becomes really easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think that’s part of why I bought this boat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t buy La Sirena because she was the easy option. There were certainly newer, shinier and less complicated boats out there. I bought an old, but very capable heavy displacement cruising boat that needed a tremendous amount of work because what she represented was more important to me than how much work she needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She represented my outlook on life, always looking ahead at the possibilities, taking chances and always ready to take the road to adventure if it presents itself. You only live once and taking well calculated risks is always worth it, it’s a rich life if you make it so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A life where I can decide where I want to go and, at least to some extent, when I want to go there. A life where the weather and the tide matters more than meetings, schedules and all the other things that seem so important to people in the grind, until suddenly they aren’t, and then, it’s too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t think I have the whole thing figured out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Far from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are days when I’m incredibly excited about the future and days when I look at everything that still needs to be done and wonder how I’m ever going to finish it. Then there are days when I stand back and look at something I’ve repaired or painted and realize that, slowly, La Sirena is coming back to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe I’m doing the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is something strangely fitting about rebuilding an old boat while you’re trying to rebuild your own life. You spend your time deciding what needs to be repaired, what needs to be replaced and what is probably better left alone. You learn that some things can be fixed and some things can’t. You learn to work with what you’ve got.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you learn patience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boats are very good at teaching patience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They don’t care about your plans. They don’t care that you wanted to finish the job today. They don’t care that you’ve already spent more money than you planned this week. There is always another problem waiting somewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually you stop fighting it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You just fix the thing that’s in front of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then you move on to the next thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think that’s probably a pretty good way to approach life too, as long as you always remember that you cannot save everyone or everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the other things I’ve discovered here is that boat people understand. You don’t have to explain why you’re doing this. You don’t have to explain why you’d rather spend your afternoon crawling around a bilge than sitting somewhere comfortable. You don’t have to explain why an old sailboat is worth all the trouble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone will walk past and ask what you’re working on. You tell them. They may have had the same problem. They might know a trick, have a spare part or know someone who can help. Sometimes the conversation lasts five minutes and sometimes it turns into an hour, even if you have a paintbrush in your hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a kind of community in that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn’t always about becoming friends. Sometimes it’s just the simple understanding between people who have all chosen, for one reason or another, to make their lives be more by owning a boat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone here is working on something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually it’s a boat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But maybe it’s more than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe we’re all working on our own version of the next chapter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there’s Birnie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He’s still getting used to all of this. He’s nervous, but he likes to be close to whatever is happening. If I’m working on the boat, he wants to be nearby. If I’m underneath the boat, he’ll want to be somewhere close and keep an eye on things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He doesn’t care about antifouling paint or chainplates or bilge pumps. He doesn’t care whether La Sirena is ready to go sailing or whether I’ve managed to fix the latest problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as he’s concerned, if we’re together, things are 100% okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a tendency to romanticize this kind of life. It’s easy to imagine that buying a sailboat and heading off into the world is all sunsets, quiet anchorages and sailing through beautiful places. The reality is that it requires a broad range of skills, planning, capability, calculations and adaptability. You have to be able to take the rough with the smooth and love every moment of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m sure there will be plenty of those moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is the reality before that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right now it’s Bellingham. It’s a boatyard. It’s dirty clothes and sore muscles. It’s finding another problem when you thought you were almost finished. It’s wondering whether you made the right decision and then getting up the next morning and carrying on anyway. I think I had a shower a week ago? I might remember to have one tomorrow, if I get time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s nothing wrong with being certain, or not knowing exactly how everything is going to work out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All you have to do is just keep going, confidence and knowledge of your abilities and accepting your shortfalls is extremely important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

La Sirena isn’t finished. But she’s getting there. Every repaired chip, every replaced fitting, every pump that starts working again, every coat of paint and every problem I manage to solve is another little step forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually the work will be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boat will go back into the water. The sails will up and I’ll finally be able to cast off the lines and leave this boatyard behind, albeit into the rugged and tumultuous Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When that happens, I know I’ll be excited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I also think I’ll be a little sad to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because this place, uncomfortable and dirty and frustrating as it can be, has become part of the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where La Sirena came back to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And maybe this is where I started to come back to life too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t know exactly where we’ll go from here. I know there will be plenty more work, plenty more things that go wrong, challenges that I will overcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also know that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting for the perfect time to do something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The perfect time is as soon as you can make it happen. Life is short, so chase dreams, not people or status. In the blink of an eye, life can change. Make every blink count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, La Sirena will leave this boatyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when she does, I will be leaving with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not because everything will be fixed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not because I’ll have everything figured out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But because I’ll finally be moving forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And maybe that’s really what this whole thing has been about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are days when I sit in the boatyard in Bellingham, Washington, I wonder how I got here. A big, heavy, solid old cruising boat that has been sitting around for years, I bought her, I knew she needed work. Boats have a funny way of hiding their problems until you start taking things apart. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":147,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-restoration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarmc.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarmc.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarmc.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarmc.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarmc.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sarmc.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"https:\/\/sarmc.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarmc.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarmc.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarmc.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarmc.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}