"It's a hard, it's a hard, it's a ha-ard,, oh it's a har-ar-ard, well it's a hard, hard life...life on the hard. Life on the hard."

Eileen Quinn, cruising troubadour extraordinaire, sings this little ditty and whenever we find ourselves engrossed in the seemingly endless tasks on Polaris as she sits on stands in a boatyard-on the hard-we sing it, repeatedly. It is a time of great productivity, but pretty unpleasant work. It's also a huge drain on the bank account, yet so very necessary to keep our little boat afloat. And boy, is Eileen right. It sure ain't easy!!

Since we shed our dock lines from our moorage in Oregon in August 2001 Polaris has been flung from her watery bed and stuck on the hard ten times, in 4 southern states and 2 foreign countries. That includes 2 stints over Thanksgiving... one at Baja Naval in Ensenada, MX (by far, the best boat yard we've ever had work done and /or lived in) and another dangling from the travel lift in a yard in Fort Myers FL. The longest 'dry spell' was the 10 long months Polaris spent in RAM marine's storage yard in Guatemala while we tramped through North and South America.

This most recent hurricane season found Polaris at a boatyard in Alabama, on the edge of Mobile Bay, just up the Little Dog River. We returned to her there, at Turner Marine, in early October and barreled, head first, into an insanely long list of tasks intended to give her a much -needed face-lift.

Around the third time we lived aboard on the hard one of us made a new rule (she, the maker of ALL the rules). No more living on the boat in a boatyard. No more sleeping in filthy conditions and toxic fumes, and having to climb down a 10foot ladder in the middle of the night to pee in an unsavory work yard bathroom. Thus this rule demands we find some sort of retreat to return to after a grueling day. That requirement has led us to some interesting stays in the form of white-trash trailer parks, boring run-of-the-mill extended stay motels, or musty, insect-ridden tropical cabanas.

This time we spent 4 weeks in a cramped extended stay while checking tasks off our ominous list of projects and improvements. It was one full month of inhaling nauseating fumes and paint dust, tightrope walking on bouncy planks around the hull, and contorting our bodies to fit into awkward and unnatural angles. That followed by another two all-consuming weeks of labor from our slip in the marina.

This season we bit off some usually large challenges that included sanding down and replacing the non-skid on the decks, taking down and repainting the oil stained hull (remnants of the BP spill), repairing the steering quadrant leak discovered after leaving Roatan last season, recovering salon cushions, and replacing every hose inside the boat. Those things, besides the usual scrubbing, oiling, varnishing, sanding, bottom painting, leak prevention, and so on. Attempting most of the exterior improvements our selves often means the final result is not of the highest quality. We are both more than willing to do the work, but equally as unwilling to sacrifice our sanity to achieve perfection.

In the midst of this daily grind the first cold fronts of the season hit, much earlier than we expected. Since then we've seen temps plummet to the mid-thirties once and the low forties many times. Mom Nature is relentless in throwing us these curve balls. We've never owned a heater for Polaris...until now. We're not in Guatemala anymore Toto!

Inevitably, while immersed in the daily grind or freezing our butts off on chilly nights, one or both of expresses doubts about our strange and, oftentimes, less-than-comfortable lifestyle. But, much like going through childbirth, we soon forget the temporary angst and focus solely on the gleeful joy our "love child" engenders in the ensuing months.

And so it is now as we recover from the least glamorous aspect of our "carefree" lifestyle. Polaris has never looked better for our efforts. Painted from head to toe, and top to bottom, she fairly glistens as we make our way east and south through ICW* along Florida's panhandle. I do believe she was more excited than usual to strut her stuff. When we finally slipped off the dock lines in Mobile she seemed to jump under the helm like a racehorse at the starting gate!

Our destination for cruising season 2010-2011: The Bahamas. It has been eight long years since we plied the crystalline waters of Florida's eastern neighboring islands. Memories of outrageous fun, conch and lobster feasts, and scores of great new friends that year abound as we look forward to catching up with some of them again. We're also hopeful to meet a couple of our cruising buddies from the Western Caribbean somewhere in the island chain as well.

The "plan" is to work along Florida's Gulf shores with stops including Apalachicola , Tarpon Springs and Fort Myers before cutting across the state via the Caloosahatchee River and Lake Okeechobee to Stuart on the Atlantic side. Few boats do the latter part of this route due to a low non-opening bridge along the way. We hope to squeeze under with a few inches to spare (and possibly a few more white hairs on our heads!). From there we'll jump across the Gulf Stream to the Exuma chain of the Bahamas heading far enough south to beat the bitter cold, trade in our long johns for swim suits, and loose our shoes for a good long time.

As our latest boat yard memories and exhaustion fade with each passing nautical mile we move forward into a new year and another aqueous adventure. How will this season shape up? Who knows? It's a delicious mystery...



* Quick facts about the ICW: Intracoastal Waterway

It is a toll free (commercial vessels pay a fuel tax used to maintain the system) shipping route extending from Manasquan, New Jersey to Brownsville, Texas, with an uncompleted section between Tarpon Springs and Apalachicola, FL.

In total the ICW extends for nearly 3000 miles (4800 km) along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.

The waterway was made by digging canals to connect existing bays, lagoons, salt-water rivers, lakes, and sounds beginning around 1939.

The Army Corps of Engineers maintains a navigable depth for both commercial and leisure vessels (mostly 12' but 7'-9' in some spots), but that was before federal budget cuts. We can verify it can get much shallower in some spots nowadays.

The stretch of ICW along the Gulf between Brownsville and Apalachicola runs for nearly 1,100 miles (1,800 km) and runs mostly in the lee of the beautiful barrier islands dotting the shoreline off Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.