Project Log: Wednesday, April 15, 2015
In early March, 2015, I went public with my decision to
put Momentum on the market and sell her.
(original for sale page is
here). While
this announcement was surprising and seemed out of the
blue to many, the decision had been in the works for
some time--over a year--and, while I had mixed feelings,
I had no doubts about the choice.
After only about six weeks on the market, I sold the
boat to a local buyer who would keep the boat in Maine.
We came to an agreement that included me completing
certain existing projects on the boat and adding a few
others, which I'd work on in due course aiming for a
launch date in late June 2015. For continuity's
sake, I'll continue to post the last stages of the
project here on this site through launch time.
The events leading to my decision to sell the boat after
investing much time and money were essentially simple
but might seem complicated or questionable to casual
readers who, of course, were not inside my mind during
the last few years. (You weren't, were you...?)
What happened, and where did it all go wrong?
Well, it didn't really go wrong...but things definitely
changed. It was a gradual, yet
inexorable--and, with the benefit of hindsight,
obvious--process that started back in 2010 with my
decision to seek and purchase a different type of boat
after years of sailing various other boats. For a
while, my focus was entirely on the project, perhaps to
a fault since, without other diversions, I was spending
all my time in the shop--during the week at work, then
on weekends "for fun". And it was
fun, but I pushed myself hard because I didn't want the
project to linger and take too long. I liked to
finish projects, not work on them forever. All
well and good, at least to start.
Looking back, what really changed everything--though it
took a while to truly manifest it--was a vacation we
took in fall 2010, stopping at Prince Edward Island and
Cape Breton, Canada. The boat project was still
brand-new and fresh at this point, but what stuck a bee
in my bonnet was revisiting PEI--my family used to
travel and camp there in the summers back when I was
little--and noticing plenty of beautiful land for sale.
On a whim, upon returning home, I looked online and
found property prices up there to be very reasonable and
affordable, which sparked the idea that we should buy
some. But those thoughts died off for a while, and
it wasn't till summer 2012, the first summer after
selling our boat
Glissando, that I returned to the real estate
and PEI disease with a vengeance. At the time, we
owned a fifth wheel trailer, and my idea was to find
some of that inexpensive waterfront land on PEI and use
the trailer as a cottage. Great idea, right?
During the summer, I spent a lot of time researching
property, soon coming to the realization that (of
course) there was a reason that much of that land was
inexpensive: it wasn't very good (or at least not
good for our purposes). Inevitably, this led to me
increasing the price range of my searches, which in turn
started bringing in not only raw land, but also land
with PEI cottages. Before long, I'd abandoned the
idea of buying undeveloped land in favor of a search for
a cottage property. We sold the fifth wheel.
Buying a property with a cottage seemed do-able, and for
the time being, when the whole mess was theoretical, I
could ignore the obvious conflict between the boat and a
seasonal property. This was partly because I was
pretty sure that we'd have to rent out a cottage in
order to offset the costs, which would limit our time up
there and somehow make it all work, not that I really
detailed the whole idea out to that extent: I just
knew what I wanted, and we went for it. The point
is that even at those early stages, I thought there was
a way--and, more importantly, a desire--to juggle both
pursuits.
In the event, during another trip to PEI in September of
2012, we bought an old waterfront cottage. In my
typical way, I was most attracted to one that was full
of potential, but needed updating, despite telling
myself all along that I didn't want a project. Ha.
But the purchase price--despite, at the time, an
unfavorable exchange rate thanks to the depressed US
dollar--was so low that it seemed we'd no choice but to
buy it: perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime chance to own
some excellent waterfront.
2013 was a sort of landmark year for me, and for the
whole works that eventually led to the sale of
Momentum. I was involved in a major work
project at the time, and this complicated and lengthy
job had forced a work stoppage on Momentum for
much of the spring and summer, as I needed the time to
get through my work backlog. Although we managed
many long weekends up at our new place--along with an
ongoing project there to update the interior--I was
pretty swamped at home with work, and even later in the
summer when things calmed down, I found I had no desire
to rush into the shop and work on my boat.
Now, I named the boat Momentum for a reason:
losing my momentum on the project was a major blow, but
between work commitments that year, plus the new
cottage, it wasn't till September that I really returned
to the boat, and was able--with some difficulty--to get
back in the swing of things during that fall and winter,
with my eye on launching in 2014.
During that fall and winter, I made a lot of progress
towards that end, but after a while it started becoming
a chore as I pressed harder and harder trying to get
enough done to launch the boat, working through a
never-ending list of "must do" projects, facing the
usual frustrations involved with boat work, while
at the same time worrying about some of the outfitting
costs and logistical issues that I'd have to face at
launch time...and all the while all I really wanted to
do was get away from it all and relax at our place on
PEI, where I'd found a level of pleasure that I'd not
experienced in some time. I think it was because
it wasn't a boat that I found it so relaxing. But
I'd been all about boats ever since I was 9 years
old...how could I possibly feel that way?
How I could feel that way was the internal struggle I
dealt with for most of 2014 and into 2015.
Throughout, I felt pretty sure about my thoughts, but it
still was sort of hard to admit to: the boat guy
needed to get away from boats. Boating as a hobby
and lifelong obsession had led me to a successful and
enjoyable career in the business, but that had also led
to my becoming oversaturated with a good thing.
Never mind that I couldn't (nor did I wish to try to)
divide my free time between two such obviously
conflicting destinations. I've always been the
type that prefers to do one thing and do it as well as
possible, rather than one of those who has to have their
foot stuck a little bit into 47 different things (which
always seemed to unsatisfying to me, watching such
behavior from my perspective). All in, or all out:
that's me.
Looking back as I worked my mind around what was going
on, I came to realize with the clarity of hindsight that
it was this issue as much as any other that had led me
to buy the motorsailer in 2010 and to sell Glissando
in 2011, and was apparently also the mechanism
that, still unsated, led to the weird out-of-nowhere
decision to seek and buy a waterfront cottage in another
country 8 hours away from home.
Frankly, the struggle I mention was more about
justifying to the world, as it were, my thoughts and not
much about how I actually knew I felt.
Honestly, I'd been sure about the need (and,
importantly, the desire) to sell the boat since spring
2014, but it was hard to admit even to myself that this
was the case. But my boat-related energies
had to go towards my livelihood, not my supposed
pleasure--and in fact that's where I wanted to expend
them. I wanted and needed a different sort of
release from work. Too much of a good thing is,
well, too much.
The boat was far from complete, and whatever else, I
knew I had to complete her. A second long break
from the project during summer 2014 was re-energizing
enough to motivate me to work my way through most of the
remaining project list before putting the boat up for
sale--and exposing my betrayal to the world.
The hard work and effort and thought I've put into this
boat are not wasted. I learned a lot--I do every
time--and greatly enjoyed the project. I'm proud
of the boat. The new owner feels fortunate to have
her, and I'm glad on his behalf. While I was "all
in" on this project from the start, I never formed a
particularly emotional connection to the boat--perhaps
because I've become necessarily more clinical and
detached since I do this work every day; perhaps because
all I ever knew her as was a project; perhaps for other
reasons.
My heart lies in PEI now. My wife loves it; the
dogs love it. But the point is that I'm neither
sad nor overly gleeful at this turn of events. I'm
happy to sell the boat and see her go to someone who
will use her often and benefit from the comforts I've
built into her. The circumstances of the sale mean
that I get to see the boat go in the water, for which
I'm glad. I'm also happy she's no longer mine.
I'm happy to have had the opportunity to do this
project: perhaps a life-changing experience in
every sense of the phrase. I regret nothing, but
obviously if I could have known five years ago how
things were going to turn out, I would have made
different decisions. I look forward and
don't waste time on reliving the past; after all, it's
the past. Learn from it, but don't pick it apart.
So there you have it, whether you wanted to know or not.
From this point on, these logs may change somewhat.
Now, I'm working on someone else's boat, and while I've
striven always to maintain a professional tone to these
writings, now it clearly will be. But it makes
sense to maintain and complete the record of this
substantial project here on these pages, rather than at
a different location, and so I will do.
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