Life in the boatyard

Welcome to the Hotel California…
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!
– Eagles

It’s getting dark and it’s time to call it a day. We are dirty, hot, exhausted, thirsty and hungry after making a minuscule amount of progress in our daunting list of projects. All our dishes are dirty, piled up in two overflowing buckets in the cockpit. Washing the dishes outside—with a hose in our improvised washing station made out of a block of styrofoam—is such a chore that we keep cooking to a minimum and try to reduce, reuse and recycle. “Was that the bowl I used for oatmeal this morning? Then it’s perfect for tonight’s lentils!”

A bunch of tools, boxes, books, some trash, half-used clothes, shoes, a cat and the occasional frog contribute to the mess that covers the entire floor. As we fail to find any energy (and any clean dish too), we decide to innovate and order pizza. There’s one catch, though. We have no cell signal reception.

We walk half a block to the boatyard’s office. It’s closed, but we can still use the wi-fi from the porch. Fending off the also-hungry mosquitoes, Kathy calls the pizza place, and with an amazing amount of willpower from both ends to repeat every sentence three times, they manage to agree that it’s all about one large vegetarian pizza (through a lousy wi-fi connection chilean and virginian accents seem like entirely different languages). She gives the address, and warns them it’s not a house but a boatyard.

“Our boat is…”

“No, just the address is fine.”

“But it’s a boatyard. There’s a hundred boats here.”

“The address is good.”

There is no point in arguing, since most likely the driver is going to get just the address anyway. We have to be alert for any signs of pizza coming in our direction, so we spread out: Kathy stays in front of the office while I grab one of the yard bikes and move to the boat. 45 minutes later our fears materialize: a car comes into the yard, the driver figures it’s the weirdest place to deliver a pizza, and decisively U-turns without a hint of slowing down, right in front of Ñandú. Before I can react he’s gone, leaving a faint smell of cheese and olives behind. I bike back to the office to give Kathy the news. She calls the pizzeria again. They say the driver will be back soon. They tried to show confidence, but were clearly just guessing. They were not entirely wrong, though. A long while later, when we were already resigned to a bowl of cereals for dinner, the driver comes back, this time actually looking for a potential delivery target. He apologized profusely, but that didn’t change the fact that the pizza was cold. Oh well. Still less depressing than corn flakes.

At least we escaped the cold pizza/warm beer combo, since the ice I brought on the bike from the gas station was still keeping things cold in our non-working freezer. When the boat is out of the water our keel-cooled refrigeration system doesn’t work. We downgraded the refrigerator to a pantry and the freezer to a cooler, which needs to be regularly replenished with ice. The ice of course takes half the space of an already small box.

Life on a boat is complicated when the boat is on the water. It’s twice that much when the boat is on the ground. And thrice as bad when she’s on this particular boatyard. That’s in part because of the water issue. The well water here has so much iron it will stain the boat yellow if you dare to use it straight from the well. The water in the restroom and showers is treated with salt which somehow makes it “softer”, less yellow, and, well, salty. Very salty. (If someone can explain to me how adding even more minerals to already impure water makes it better, I’m all ears). Since we don’t fancy brewing coffee with brine, every few days we have to request the boatyard’s courtesy car to drive to the fire station where drinkable water is provided at 10 cents per gallon, and survive for as long as we can with our 8-gallon load of potable water.

With so much time and effort needed just for the day-to-day domestic tasks, there’s little time and energy left to make progress with the boat projects. And the longer we take, the more likely we’ll break something or find more things to fix, in a never-ending, inescapable misery. And just in case you think I’m exaggerating, here’s a non-exhasutive list of our projects, large and small:

Retune the rig. Wax the entire hull. Fix gelcoat dings and cracks. Replace a chafed screecher sheet. Bring the jib to the sail repair shop. Clean stains from all of the metal parts. Mark anchor chain, again. Replace anchor rope with a longer chunk (after ordering the wrong size, returning it at a discounted price, and ordering the right one). Install clips to secure boat hook. Install padeye to shackle the main halyard when not in use. Make and install the final version of the rain catchers. Remove and reinstall two leaking hatches. Reorganize anchor locker. Protect tank tender hoses. Rethink and implement better way of attaching bridle to anchor rode. Put duct seal where the manufacturer forgot to. Change anchor shackles for ones with known rating. Fix watermaker, again. Pickle the watermaker. Change watermaker filters. Build and install spice rack. Improve food storage with hammocks, hooks and boxes. Heck, get boxes (of very specific sizes) for everything. Fix port diesel tank leak. Install box for bilge storage (to improve our autonomy without having to reload beer). Fix leaks in three windows. Fix daggerboard damage caused by angry anchor chain. Find freaking fuel blockage issue. Fix leaking diesel valves. Install mosquito-screen curtains in owner’s berth. Install latches to hold screens open for each hatch. Tighten a bunch of loose nuts and screws. Install shelves and holders. Install hatch for better access to storage space where the holding tank would have been. Install fairleads to prevent the screecher lines from ripping the composting toilet’s vent cover. Revarnish dinghy oars. Reinforce dinghy’s daggerboard. Fix dinghy scratches. Install additional oarlock (for sculling). Reinstall, correctly, a fairlead and block for the dinghy’s mainsheet. Bring dinghy outboard to a technician to change shaft seals. Repaint everything below the waterline: hulls, daggerboards, transducer, rudders, saildrive legs, propellers (requiring four different types of paint in total, each with its own idiosyncrasy and different instructions for surface preparation, application, and number of coats). Change saildrive, propeller and frigoboat anodes. Grease the propeller. Change engine oil and oil filters. Change fuel filters. Check raw water impellers. Wash the air filters. Retension alternator belts. Change saildrive oil. Reglue portside saildrive boot. Realign rudders. Align them again after I was told a more precise method. Find and fix source of rainwater leak into port engine room. Protect propane valves and regulator against potentially flying things in the propane locker. And there’s still a couple of things in the engine I’m supposed to check but don’t even know what and where they are (breather pipe, anyone?). And other things we should do but probably won’t, such as lubricating the winches.

Which brings me to the next issue. Having no internet access is perfectly acceptable if you are camping, but even though we seem to be camping (with a rather strange tent, I’ll grant you that), we are actually trying to get this boat ready for the ocean! And since we have no idea how to do half of the tasks in our list, we need those damn forums and youtube videos. So there you have an extra layer of complication, slowness and despair: your project is in one place and the instructions are almost one block away. And you cannot bring one to the other.

On the plus side, we do enjoy the camaraderie with our fellow boat fixers in the yard. We invite each other for sundowners, offer free and usually bad advice, make bets on who’s going to launch first, and talk about other neighbors on their backs. But mostly, we whine about our terrible life and share stories of boatyard misery and soul-crushing days.