Yesterday morning, Jim and Jeanne stopped by before heading out for a week-long sail. Jims brother and sister-in-law were visiting from Chicago, and were excited to bounce down the coast --from San Francisco, to Half Moon Bay, to Santa Cruz, to Capitola, and finally Monterrey.I invited them to hop on board Syzygy, to see an older boat thats not nearly as pretty. I pointed them toward the three-foot hole in the deck, in the stern, where the replica Chopard watches propane locker had been, and Jim said, You can see the guts of the boat. I said, Yeah, its sort of like an ongoing autopsy over here... or at least some kind of open heart surgery.We chatted for a bit, and they told me to send in the troops if they werent back by next Monday, and then they took off. I busied myself with boat work to distract myself from the thought of a week-long sail.
Theres so much to fix before we can sail for a week. That evening, I looked up and saw Kanga back in her slip. Jim was sitting on the deck, drinking a beer. I walked over, confused. Is everything OK? I was half amused, half worried.Ripped the replica Ulysse Nardin watches mainsail in two, Jim said. We had in two reefs, and we were out under the gate, and it was blowing pretty hard -- 25 knots -- and the sail just went bang!He showed me the tear, which extended from luff to leech along the edge of a seam. It looked, foremost, expensive. A new mainsail can easily cost a few thousand dollars.
I shuddered thinking about projects like that, projects that declare themselves important and urgent, projects that declare it so loudly as if to be proclaiming, Take that, you sonofa. Im jumping to the front of the line whether you like it or not.Only a week replica A Lange&Sohne watches before, Jim had invited a sailmaker to inspect his sails. After two hours of close examination, shed said that his mainsail -- about 20 years old -- was tired. Looking back, now, Jim said he thought the boat was pissed about being judged and criticized by an outsider.Jim took the whole thing pretty well -- what choice did he have? -- but I hated that his sailing plans had been ruined, at least temporarily.
