Money Pit

37

That’s what a boat is.

Hobbies are rarely inexpensive…boating just happens to be a rather costly one.

If only they were not so damned wonderful to be out on when they are running well, when the weather is good, … ok…yes, there are caveats. But when I am out on the water and nothing is going wrong, it’s the place that I can utterly relax.

We got her out for a few hours last weekend, and it was glorious…. until it wasn’t.

Now it needs another four “boat bucks” worth of engine parts ordered so that Kirk can replace the risers, again.

It seems like just recently that Kirk replaced the risers, however, when we were down working on it today – Kirk redoing some wiring, me cleaning pretty much EVERYTHING inside – I came across a notebook that I used to use to document what was done when, where we went, who we rafted up with for an impromptu on-the-water-BBQ… I flipped it open and found “Replaced risers” under “2007”.

OK, fair enough, they were due for replacement.

We are lucky in that Kirk has the knowledge and expertise to do the work himself, as well as the rewiring he was doing today. A 45 year old boat needs a fair bit of TLC.

This is Chantelle, she has been bleeding money out of us for 22 years of her 45 years in existence, but she’s still pretty fabulous and we have still never, in all those years, seen another one like her on this coast. She’s well built, has a hull built for hurricanes, and can carry us both slowly and still have enough get up and go to get up and go when needed….and when we feel like paying for the fuel bill that getting up and going requires.

What’s the deal with the fire bucket?

Nothing at all, we just happen to have our boat in one of the boat houses that contains safety gear for the yacht club and the red bucket caught my eye as we were leaving.