If it Ain’t Broke…

  

Paint it.

An average cruising boat (at least in the circles we hang out in) has a to-do list that runs into pages. There are those occasional people who somehow put together a cruise-ready boat, and then pay someone else to maintain it. But for the rest of us, life revolves around repairing stuff when it breaks, fixing stuff so it won’t break, or installing new stuff after something breaks. 
In roughly that order.

 There are times though when nothing is actively broken, needing installed, or needing beefing up. When this happens, we move out of survival mode and into beautifying the boat. Actually, most of the time we go read a book, but this is why after living aboard for over a year the boat’s interior still needs painting.

When we first bought this boat six years ago, Evan told me it would take a year (or so) to build the cabin and get Ceilydh cruise ready, and then another few months to get her looking cosmetically good. The only stipulation I made was that I didn’t want to cruise on a half-finished boat. The boat ended up taking five years to get cruise ready and while it was more than half-finished when we finally left, it wasn’t finished, finished.

needs two more coats, then we'll do the white areas and the varnish...

 The parts of this boat that aren’t between 1-4 years old, are 23 years old. And I’m pretty sure the last time the wooden trim saw a lick of paint or varnish was roughly 23 years ago. I don’t know if it’s a man-woman thing, or a blind-not blind thing, but the all that old peeling varnish and battered paint makes me a bit crazy. Evan insists it’s not that noticeable and after all what’s more important to me, two functioning water tanks, or fresh paint. I kind of think it shouldn’t be an either, or situation. I should get to have a pretty boat and clean drinking water…

Although the water tanks are still a work in progress (we had a leak when we recently tested the first tank Ev rebuilt) but painting seems to be a job that is better suited to a hot Baja summer. So before we left La Paz we stocked up on paint, tape, and sand paper. The plan for the summer is that between more pressing repairs, we’ll paint. And varnish. And paint some more.

Today’s task is the galley. Goodbye, ugly, old water-stained wood. Hello, whatever colour the paint guy made us.