Strangely compelling, but no one knows why

Yeah, there's a bit of spam in that total, but I prefer to be a light unto the nations.

I have been scribbling about refitting a boat since 2006, more or less a dozen years a slave to a dream of casting off, if I hope not this mortal coil, but that which ties me to land, with what I have laboured to make a well-found vessel. We are closing in, and fast, to the manifestation of that dream in the form of heading for salt water in 2019. My son is now 17 and he'll finish high school in seven months. You can imagine the to-do list is ample and the time, like the daylight, is short.

I've been eyeing the blog's odometer for some time. It ticked over the quarter-million mark today, which might be peanuts for the average bloviation about politics or similar outrage, but is what I consider respectable for the random blatherings of a half-wit with a wrench. The fascination of reading about a man learn how to do simple tasks he would've known how to perform mere decades earlier must touch a masochistic nerve, is all I can say. Nonetheless, this humble scribbling, replete with half-assery, bad ideas and compromises of both material and spiritual kinds, has brought me into the lower ranks of Those Who Sail.

This is generally not the same ranks as Those Who Drown.

I have received a great deal of advice over the years and have particularly benefitted from contacting...and learning from...active sailors and refitters...some significantly younger than myself (not that that is so hard to be these days) who have inspired me. Veterans and beginners all, I have learned from them and from my readers.

Thank you.