Sailboat Thoughts: Spring Will Come Again

[While mulling over happy memories I almost named this post “The Ghost Of Christmas Past”. Such bad timing. It’s Halloween! (*Also, if your only exposure to “A Christmas Carol” involves Muppets or Bill Murray, do yourself a favor and read the real story.)]

The Ghost of Christmas Past used memories of happy prior holidays to start shaking Scrooge out of a dire state. I’m not Scrooge by a longshot but I found myself basking in happy memories.

My thought, worth whatever value you wish to apply to it, is that it’s always Christmas Past or at least potentially so. Societies shift, generations change, things adapt or, as seems to be the case lately, they don’t adapt. You cannot be sure where your path leads. Today might be your future’s happy memory! This isn’t a black pill telling you shit always gets worse; it’s a bit of stoic truth to mull over.

In 2019 I went on a solo camping/sailing trip. (Story in Walkabouts Spring 2019. Photos here.) That story was when I introduced my homebuilt sailboat on this blog.

At the time, my biggest concern was that folks would mock my crude but plucky little boat. God bless ya’, nobody mocked my little boat. Thanks!

I’d worked hard building that simple little box and was rather proud of it. I was also utterly shocked at how well it performed. Don’t let appearances fool you; if the details are right a boat seemingly shaped like a brick can sail like a boss.

I don’t generally put my heart on my sleeve so I almost didn’t mention the boat. The reason I did was to encourage anyone else who’s considering the challenge. So the first moral of the story is this:

“If you want to build a boat, for whatever variant of ‘boat’ applies to you. Do it! Start NOW!”

I built a boat and it’s a happy memory. I posted about it in 2019. That was before… whatever now is. What is now? I’ve heard it called “Clown World”. I’ve called it the “Bidenverse”. Some folks just swear. Others just shrug. We all know “now” is uncharted and unstable. We know “before” will never return.

It’s not how much cynicism has been built-up that shocks me but how fast it happened. 2019 was just a few years ago! As Hemingway wrote of bankruptcy, change happened in “[t]wo ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

We feel it in our bones. “Gradually” is over. Today we live in “suddenly”. That’s not a value judgment; just an observation.

When I was sailing that boat, it was still “gradual”. I was aware of historical election shenanigans (especially in Chicago) but they were from far removed, sepia-toned, history. For most of my life votes appeared to be mostly and broadly statistically sound. A small incremental growing “margin of cheat” was suspected, possibly undeniable, but it wasn’t anything we lost sleep over.

That was 2019. A year later everyone looked at vote counts and knew in their heart what had happened. People on both sides knew it. You can smell Enron accounting from a mile away. Of course, humans are adaptable. Since it is more or less illegal to think otherwise about half the populace has decided what looked and smelled like shit was actually roses. I don’t blame them, it’s a pain in the ass thinking otherwise.

Just to be sure I’m in the “good” category” I say right here and now that “it is unquestionable that Joe Biden is so popular that he got the most votes in history”. I want that on the record! Joe Biden got 81,000,000 votes and has the political prisoners to prove it. There is never doubt comrade!

Is 2024 going to be an “election” or an election? I don’t know. You don’t either. We both have a hunch, which most of us will not voice in mixed company. I’m not going down that rabbit hole today. The point is, it wasn’t a thing I pondered in 2019.

When I was sailing my boat I also figured the “freak out of 2016” couldn’t last forever. Hillary wasn’t coronated as pre-ordained so half the populace put on dumb hats and ran screaming in the streets. I assumed their panic would burn out. Panic is exhausting. Terror is bad for you. Eventually you give yourself over to mental illness or snap out of it; they’d return to jobs and lives and reality. I was wrong. The panic will last “until it’s over”. I have no idea what event will define “over” (possibly the StaPuft Marshmallow Man). “Fizzle in a few years” was an incorrect guess from naïve 2019.

In 2019 I didn’t expect to live in a nation with political prisoners. I didn’t expect Epstein solutions to go unquestioned. I didn’t foresee lawfare and corruption bordering on (crossing into?) the complete collapse of the rule of law.

In 2019 people sometimes got sick and nobody shit themselves over it. I didn’t anticipate the reaction to an illness (any illness, even Ebola) would push us over the edge. Not just us but many nations. A 99.7% survivable event crushed not just America’s economy but its society. In the end, it crushed souls.

That’s where I’m going with this. In 2019 I thought things were already weird but I had no idea how weird they could get. I thought things were already stupid and unstable. I fretted over $2.30 gas and $20 trillion in debt; not that various governors would shut down high schools and the President would try forcing injections into me.

Now, I fondly remember 2019. $2.30 gas and a “mere” $20 Trillion in debt; sounds like heaven!

I also remember sailing my boat. It was good. And here’s the next point; it is good right now too.

Even if the world is a smoking radioactive crater, you can go sailing.

My time in 2023 was spent in hospitals and inevitably a funeral. And now the boat is under 3″ of snow. But spring will come. There’s always hope.

I woke up this morning with a new idea for my “next” boat. (Once you build one boat you’re always scheming about the next one.) I could insert a through-hull copper pipe here and it would function like this. The mind, pulled forward by the soul (at least a healthy soul), does not dwell on what might have been. It sees the future and it sees the best of what might come. My mind, while I was sleeping, was building the next boat.

That happy thought had me grinning all through my Halloween morning coffee.

Then I had another thought. A few weeks ago I was snoozing in a tent with a woodstove. In 2019 a “hot tent” wasn’t on my radar screen. I had done winter camping decades ago but my main technique was “youthful toughness and stupidity”. With age, I’d faded out of that hobby. By 2023, I have exquisite gear (see here and here). More importantly I’m gaining abilities as I test the gear. In 2019 the future I anticipated didn’t hold either the good or the bad of now. I don’t like the horror of political prisoners but I shouldn’t ignore the joy of happy plans for a new kind of winter experience.

I stumbled across Joe Lanni’s LUCKY DUCK, The ultimate built-on-a-shoestring racer.

Joe came across the Puddle Duck Racers during his many wanderings down the rabbit holes of the internet. “They kept popping up,” he says. “I kept reading how surprised people were by how well the boat actually sails, despite being so easy to build.”

Here’s a photo of my version of the same boat. Pretty isn’t it?

One day you’ll look back on today, you’ll be better off if it’s a happy memory. So if you need to build a boat, do it.

Happy Halloween folks,

A.C.