Boat Yard Life.
A boat yard is home for a while for all boaters. Unless the maintenance of your boat is completely done and managed by others, you’ll spend some time in a boat yard. We are do-it-yourselfers and perfectionists, so that we spend a lot of time this winter in the boat yard. We enjoy doing everything ourselves and really like the results. We work hard, long days and hardly take time off because we also do want to go back in the water sooner than later.
And then there is the socializing with the other cruisers in the yard. The first couple of years in Puerto Peñasco, we nearly had the yard to ourselves. Since then every year the yard family is growing. There are sundowners, birthday parties, Thanksgivings and winter firepit barbecues. We share not only our boat troubles, repair stories and advice, but also family anecdotes, drinks, food and fun. The gatherings are usually impromptu pot-lucks and often initiated by someone with acute boat yard blues. We are stuck together in time and in the dust of the boat yard in this small community of cruisers. We share the love of boats and the sea and we are from all walks of life, ages, nationalities and cultures.
Although we are all living the life we chose and love, this life is not always sunsets and margaritas, instead it is always a lot of work and sometimes tedious and frustrating. Boats require constant and expert maintenance. Most boat projects involve a steep learning curve which causes stress because we don’t want to make mistakes with materials shipped in from far. And also we don’t want to make things worse. But on a boat, all seems to go worse first before going right. Everything takes way longer and is more complicated than the most conservative time estimate. All this can wear on us and makes every day seem like an uphill battle with the reward is way out there on the horizon: getting back in the water.
The last two weeks before splashing get even more hectic. The to-do-list gets revised into the ‘absolutely nows’ and the rest moves onto the ‘in next marina’, ‘soon at anchor’ or the ‘next time in the boat yard’ list. And eventually the lift arrives to splash our boat and we wave ‘good bye’ and shout ‘see you on the seas’ while motoring out of the harbor.
