Category: Sailing

The story behind the sailboat

~ Chuck ~ Leave a comment
The sailboat on temporary stands

There has been a sailboat sitting on a rusting trailer in the garage for many years now.  It is an 1973 O’Day 22 sailboat.  A relic from a previous life of mine – one of the unfinished projects that I kept through the divorce.

I’ve had the sailboat for nearly 10 years.  Or maybe 10 years, I don’t remember exactly when I bought it.  I think it was the year before Will was born.  But maybe it was the year after that.  I have never put it in the water.

So it sat in the garage.  The tongue of the trailer protruding into the driveway, an eyesore that went with the house.  The kids played in it.  It collected leaves and dirt.  Before sitting in this garage, it sat next to the garage at the previous house I lived in.

It was easy to make excuses on why it was never finished.  Having kids took up too much time.  Then the new house.  Then the divorce.  And so here it sits.  But in reality – it never got finished because it is easier for me to start projects than finish them.

It is a perfect sized boat.  It fits on a trailer.  It isn’t too large.  But it is big enough to have a cabin that fits 4 people.

It is also going into the water this year.

I am pretty sure of that.  Not because all of a sudden I’m good at finishing projects.  But it has now become a family project.  Susanna decided she was tired of it sitting in the garage, and she wanted to go sailing this summer.  So with a little encouragement from her, the boat is making progress.

The boys and I have lifted the boat off the trailer.  We have started progressing on the inside of the boat, and I have started working on the trailer.   The goal isn’t to make the boat perfect, but to get it in the water.  This weekend we will dig out the sails and see what kind of shape they are in.

It helps having someone around to keep things on track – and encourage me to finish things.  It is much more fun to work on projects as a team.

Sailboat Project Day

~ Chuck ~ 2 Comments

One of our family goals is to get the sailboat in the water by this fall.  Just one time in the water.   I have had a 1973 O’Day 22 foot sailboat for over 10 years and I have never had it in the water.  It is in the garage, and the trailer has lots of rot.  Too much rot to move the boat, so even if I wanted to get rid of it, I would need to repair the trailer.

The boat off the trailer on the stands

The first part of the project required lifting the boat off the trailer, pulling the trailer out from under the boat, and setting the boat down on stands.

The boys and I started working on the boat this afternoon when Susanna headed into work.  The goal for today was to finish this step of the project.  I couldn’t have done it without the boys.  Ben helped the first part of the afternoon, and Will the second part of the afternoon.    All three of us struggled to pull the trailer out from under the boat (one of the tires was very flat – made it even harder to move).  It took the three of us and the tractor to pull it out.

None of the usual complaining about being bored and not helping.  There was a period that I wasn’t sure that we would get finished today.

The next step is to clean out the inside of the boat.  Susanna is planning on doing that over the next couple of days.  Then we will evaluate the scope of the work remaining to get the boat in the water.

We even dug out the mast from behind the barn (the boys washed it).

We are all scraped up and banged up from the project today.  I’m tired, but I think Ben got the most banged up (not all of it was project related – a lot of scrapes playing around on his bicycle after a hard day working outside) – he got a good cut on the palm of his hand helping put the mast on it’s storage rack.

I haven’t forgotten my other projects.  I am still working on the kitchen island – but I can’t just have one project going on at a time.  I want to make progress on the boat before we break to paint the trim on the house in July (with Susanna’s sister, Rebecka’s, help).