Getting Ready For Winter or this Isn't Quite What I Was expecting To Do!

SHIP'S LOG:

#$%^%^#%^$%$&*%!!!!! Damn! It wasn't supposed to be this way . . . but it is and I am going to have to deal with it.
Step 1.) Get in all the sailing I can in the next few days.

Step 2.) Find a yard to store ABISHAG for the winter. I hate to say it, but I am probably going to go back to West Mystic Shipyard.. Joy of joys. I can't really complain because they really did a fine job on all the work that needed doing when I was last there. It is also the "homeport" for "Don the Electrician Magician."

Step 3.) Put together a plan for winterizing the boat, ie. the water system, the engine, the fuel system, the electrical system; taking off the sails, and hauling all that stuff I just hauled to the boat back from the boat to some place where it can spend the winter and not suffer too much.

Step 4.) Put together a plan for what work can be done during the winter months and what will have to wait from spring. The windlass is definitely going to get pulled and taken to a small electric motor shop to find out why it don't spin . . . electrically that is. Hopefully it will be something stupidly simple like a broken lead wire as oppose to a motor that has been shorted out because of water intrusion. If that is the case, it becomes a case of repair or replace, a tough decision for someone with no money!

If there is anything good in all this, it would be that there is little that "needs" to be done and what little there is will be simply "trace and replace." Perhaps the two biggest projects will be to reupholster the cushions( cockpit & interior) and replacing the "fixed-on-a-pedestal-taking-up-too-much-space" saloon table with something bulkhead mounted folds down for use and up and out of the way when unneeded. Of course, you just know that that list is going to grow exponentially!!!!!

MASTER'S PERSONAL LOG:

Curses on Bernnie Madoff, the housing market, sub-prime mortgages and the bastard who didn't buy my condo! "Blast and Thunder,(to quote Blackbeard), I could have been underway south for almost a week now. I even had a cousin I had forgotten about who is an big boat ocean racer, boat deliverer, with lots of free time on his hands, who considers the downhill run from Montauk to the Chesapeake a yawn-producing walk in the park. But here I am, trying to psyche myself up to get the boat ready for a winter snooze in New England instead of a slow cruise to the sun and the south. What is wrong with picture?

Probably nothing in the grand scheme of things, but this really isn't what I wanted much less expected. I am beginning to feel like "the Pilot" in the book, "SHOGUN," who keeps trying to leave Japan and get back to England, but keeps having the boats he builds destroyed by Toranaga. I keep trying to convince myself that it will all work out but sometimes that's faith, sometimes it's acceptance and sometimes it is just resignation. So I will spend another winter getting ABISHAG ready and getting me ready. But after awhile, getting ready is a drag and you really long for the going!!!!!!