The Capt doing the four letter word "Work" at his deck aboard THIRD DAY


It sure seems like I've been spending more time off the boat lately than on it and of course while I'm away is when the entire crew gets sick leaving Lori to deal with not only the concrete iceberg behind the boat, maintaining the ships batteries, and keeping the kids alive but in keeping the blog posts coming! It begs the question of just what the AWOL Lazy Bum Captain is up to now by leaving the Admiral to deal with her normal long list of duties along with the mine.

Perhaps I could try to cover myself by reporting that following my 18 hour straight drive form Santa Rosilia to Bakersfield California I've been working honest 14 hour days with only a break for my 40th Birthday dinner with my folks in Bakersfield last Thursday, but as soon as word gets out of the great filet and bottle of wine I had at dinner, I may lose some sympathy. In fact getting sympathy for anything, while living on a sailboat in Mexico, is all but impossible, so I won't even try. What I will say is that my stupid little idea of starting up a business while cruising is going better than not only I hoped, but also feared. The thought and image I had as THIRD DAY was floating in the Mexican gold cost anchorage of Tenecatita last January was of me glancing at the laptop between SCUBA dives while the dive compressor was filling our tanks. My business partner in San Diego would build and ship the units and then send me an email profit statement. Ok, I may not have crossed that crazy line but looking back, I was dancing pretty darn close on the deck of a rolling ship!

First was the Annapolis Boat Show, followed by the trips to San Diego and now on the horizon are the January (Seattle) and April (Oakland) Boat Shows. I actually love the shows, but the work leading to and coming from the shows isn't something that fits nicely into the cruising template. The only thing keeping us from going crazy and feeling overwhelmed is that in the midst of the work hurricane we decided to buy a new boat and sell the old boat, thank goodness we didn't try to bite off too much! But honestly, I love it and feel right in my comfort zone sitting in the eye of the figurative hurricane. I know that Lori's comfort zone isn't in the hurricane's eye, but I've spent 15 years prior to cruising swirling around the vortex and find a strange comfort in chaos. I'm sure Lori will agree that I'm still adjusting to handling the stress change of having more to think and worry about than what boat project will be worked on next and will I eat at my favorite Taco or Hot Dog cart for dinner, but the attitude adjustment needed to coexist in both the cruising and working worlds is starting to congeal.

Escaping the four letter word "WORK" was never really a driving force in our decision to cast off cruising and since we are not the more typical retired cruising couple, the thought of working again doesn't sound or feel like some type of cruise failure with the punishment being an afternoon of working on an excel spreadsheet or a word document marketing plan write-up. I have always enjoyed work, ever since the days when my dad would have me strap on a tool belt and spend my teenage summers, weekends and holidays twisting electrical wire nuts and installing plugs and switches. I also love cruising, so now I just have to figure out a way to do both; learning the flexibility and new skills needed to keep one world from colliding with the other.

Spock once told Captain Kirk that there would be a space-time-parallel Universe disruption if the good Captain Kirk and the evil Captain Kirk tried to share the same universe. I do have a goatee so does that make me the Evil Captain Worker Rich? To some cruiser purists it may, but if I can give my kids the education of cruising, while at the same time giving them the opportunity of learning from their Mom and Dad working hard to keep the floating circus going then perhaps the space time continuum just may be strong enough to tolerate working while crusing. The real question is are we strong enough....to be determined.