Holding Pattern, you were right.

After many laborious hours organizing and reorganizing the maintenance and parts locker aboard Olivia, it has become painfully evident that the natural order of things (i.e. disorder) might just be a superior condition.

This weekend was unbelievably hot and humid. And yes, it seems like people had been sent just to aggravate us and test our patience. Take for example, Saturday night (gone to the ‘Dogs again) a normally pleasant and entertaining event, but this time it turned into one that caused me to drink more than my fair share of Rum Runners and kept them seething within the pit of my stomach well into Sunday. Just suffice it to say that I had encounters with two different people there who were definitely not on my favorite persons list. By evenings end, when I oozed below to the relative comfort of the newly trimmed and inviting V berth my feet were plenty round on the bottom. I would not be awakened from my fiberglass and wooden crypt until mid afternoon Sunday.

Initially I thought about sailing, but eventually discarded the idea for a blackened fish taco and some crab fingers at Dirty Al’s followed by a nap in the cockpit curled up on the bean bag like a wounded pelican.

Coming back into the land of reality around 1600, the day still hot and sultry, T-shirt clinging to me like I had just gotten out of the shower, I was seized by the manic notion to disassemble the winches and rebuild them, an annual project of some significance. And another one that I needed to cross off of my July list.  Maybe the heat had irrevocably fried my alcohol swollen brain.

Down below I went to get my tool bag from the maintenance and parts locker, then back up on deck. For the next hour or so I took apart our port and starboard jib sheet winches, cleaning the pawls, spindle and inside of the drums, lubing them up and putting the whole works back together. And yes, I lived dangerously, without the aid of something to catch any errant parts from going over the side. Our winches are ancient Westerly devices with winch handle integral, at the base. They are simple and elegant, and loosing a part to mother ocean would have been more than aggravating. It would’ve been close to devastating. Fortunately, the small parts, the pawls, are retained by springs. Leave it to thoughtful British engineering to eliminate the danger of overboard for these miniscule, but all important items.

All the while, the twins fished along the cement Muelle, eyeballing me with the vague and semi-interested amusement that only children have.

The dink had been in the water for over three weeks when I first decided to tackle the annual Cetol project, so I decided to pull it up and out of the water. In the course of getting it up onto the dock, I almost went over the side and into the harbor, landing with a audible thunk on my backside. Hey, docks are dangerous places and should only be traversed by the most experienced of us. Unquestionably no place for amateurs.

When I turned the dink over, there was a marine invertebrate biology project well established on its unpainted bottom, so out come more items from the infamous maintenance and parts locker as I dug deep into the bowels of the thing in the sweltering cabin. I had the A/C turned off, the ports open and the stereo cranked up; a little Buffet/Bluegrass/BobSeger/Tom Petty/Heart/Ted Nugent/Ludwig Von/Glenn Miller for the collective edification of my sedate and upwardly mobile harbor mates.

Scraping off nascent barnacles, a wonderful growth of Gracilaria algae, assorted Tunicates, Bryozoans and other colonial critters it wasn’t long before I had the little inflatable back to it’s original state.

Next chore: prepare the rub rail for re-gluing. Those of you with inflatable dinks probably know what I’m talking about. And it isn’t just a matter of applying a little epoxy or super glue either. These things require serious adhesives, thoughtful preparation and protocol.

The last Zodiac that I owned had been fixed with Gorilla glue.

I couldn’t really tell when I bought it because it was disguised cleverly by the overlying floor which had been reattached using the stuff. So I bought it for the discount price of $350 confident that all was well..... 

One day I was working on a sea grass survey, just motoring over a deep part of the project area, getting bottom depths, when I noticed that the whole front of the boat had suddenly turned see through. The bottom just peeled off like a banana skin as I frantically motored towards shore trying to keep a hold of all of the equipment before it could fall out of the yawning gap between the pontoons. By the time I hit the shoreline, there was only about ten inches of floor still attached, the rest streaming out behind the stern of the Zodiac, shredded by the prop. I deflated the infernal piece of s#it, took it home where it sat forlornly on the porch in front of the garage, gathering fetid rainwater, acting as a breeding ground for Dengue fever carrying mosquitoes. I always had the intention to “someday fix it”. I researched repair methods and materials, leaving it as a back burner project, until last week, when I dragged it out to the trash and finally admitted defeat.

No defeat this time. More items out of the hold to prepare this new inflatable for repair.  Soon I am sweating rivers of noxious, toxic ketones and aldehydes… by products of last nights debacle, and my mood has turned as foul and sullen as the stale and windless afternoon.

It is getting late and I decide to let the repair job ride until tomorrow, knowing that I have two more days this month to at least make a sizeable if not respectable dent on my never-ending list. The twins are about out of bait, and it seems like a late afternoon cool down session over at the Shitterballs is in order…

By now I am as drained and dehydrated as the Avon lying on the dock. I throw what I believe are all of the tools lying around into the bag, gather up the various bottles, tubes and cans of miraculous marine medicines, extension cords, meticulously labeled repair kits, reposed in plastic ziplocs, and stuff it all into the maintenance and parts locker, like one would toss together a good gumbo or bouillabaisse .

When I look down and survey my slapdash effort, I am stunned to see that there is actually more room now than when I tried oh so unconvincingly to arrange things in a systematic and organized manner. Unknowingly I have validated Nietzsche’s theory: Out of chaos comes order.