Blog Post 100

January 12, 2016  Hours spent building to date:  1,972

This is post number 100 since August 8, 2014 when the project began.   I have changed a lot since then.  I have joined the runners, quilters, mountain climbers and little old ladies with 248 cats as a true obsessive.  When I’m not working on the boat, I’m thinking about the boat.  When I’m away from the boat, I long to get back.

There have been only two times in my life when life and work have been joined in such an invigorating blur:

— My first job out of college as a cub reporter on the Salinas Californian.

— The planning and launch of USA Today and USA Weekend.

Every day then was a pastiche of new, challenging experiences.  Not all were good, but life was really, really interesting.  The anxiety level now is not what it was then, but I am feel very fortunate so many years later to once again go to sleep Sunday night in pleasant anticipation of the work to begin Monday morning.

At my age, I seem to run into people who seem to be a little lost, who are looking for what comes next.  I am not much on quotations, since I can never remember them.  But this one from the English novelist George Eliot has helped make me a boatbuilder:

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

Speaking of boat building, which is the real object here, I have about wrestled the forward deckhouse framing to a draw after bouts with compound curves, compound bevels and trapezoidal window shapes.  More on that later this week.

Window dray fit — inside

Window dry fit — outside