Our friends Dave and Lilka decided to paint the interior of their house a while back. A buddy of theirs wisely told them, "you can't afford to paint". Puzzled, they asked their friend what he meant. He explained that once you paint a few walls, all the other walls look so dingy that you just HAVE to paint them. And, then, of course all that fresh new paint makes the living room carpet look really old and dirty, so you have no choice but to rip it out and replace it with bamboo flooring. Now, next to your "brand new living room", the kitchen really begins to look outdated, and while you rip into the kitchen you might as well tackle that rewiring you've been meaning to do. Of course, the bathroom is right above the kitchen, so if you're going to be bustin' into the ceiling maybe you should do that bathroom expansion you've been thinking about....and on it goes (and on they did!)

Boat projects are a lot like that. We started with a lengthy "to do" list which included standard maintenance items like painting the bottom, varnishing the wood and waxing the boat. But next to that newly-sanded wood was a really ugly white caulk joint that would look much better in black. And beyond that clean, new black caulking were some bungholes that needed repairing (so, that's where that term came from!). And you know that waxing we were planning on...it's not quite doing the job, so maybe we should rent a machine and apply rubbing compound to really polish that fiberglass. Oooh - that looks nice and shiny now, but that gloss brings out the imperfections even more! Maybe we need to wet-sand the entire hull to get rid of those color blotches......and on it goes.

So, we've decided to forgoe sailing this season and instead spend the next few months working on Scappatella....NOT! But it's easy to see how people spend year after year working on their boat and never leave the dock. You really can get too anal about all this stuff!

Anyway, enough about bung-holes and such...back to painting the bottom - although at $400 per gallon, maybe we really can't afford to paint!