Sailors are dreamers
09 September 2011 | Galveston
Sailors are dreamers, doers, achievers, encouragers, and the hardest working people I know. Around the boat yard there are several of us rebuilding boats with actual hopes of going some where. There are those that sit on the broken boats or not so broken boats and say they are going somewhere, but you can tell they aren't going to make it anywhere, anytime soon. And then there are "us", the ones who are working on our boats non stop. Maybe not making great steps forward all the time but getting something done every day no matter how small. Everyday, never a break, never a holiday, relentlessly as if we are all possessed by some strange madness that makes us contort our bodies in to tight places, sand endlessly, grind and lay fiberglass, paint, stretch cable, climb into bilges, and cuss at engines. But we are the ones that are going to go somewhere. We are of the 1% of the 1% who actually are fallowing are dreams regardless of the sacrifice we have to make. We live frugally, we drive old beater trucks, all are cloths are stained with paint or 5200 or epoxy, we are tan and healthy, and the only thing we know how to talk about is boats and the places we plan to someday visit or the places we've been to. This talk also has a healing effect to our minds. Invigorating to the spirit. Working on a boat can be very overwhelming, with thousands of task to accomplish. Dealing with this day in and day out can bring you down, wear you out mentally and physically. Somehow the others since this. And we end up giving each other pep talks and lighting the fire anew. Sometimes its just a few words, sometimes it long drawn out story's (sailor really do like to tell yarns). It's kind of a tribal thing. We all work alone on our boats but we are a community, a brotherhood of toiling sailors. As one boat's crew gets close to completion and is making ready to set sail for their dream trip, we all get excited, we share in the triumph. It proves to all of us that dreams ready do come true and that all this endless work really isn't payment for some sins in our past, but is rewarded with a life on the sea of our dreams.