Check out the How Not To Sail Minute podcast HERE…
There’s one thing that having a cruising sailboat has taught me in spades… something that I, like many people, resist like a cat being offered a bath in an ice bucket.
And that is: When something needs doing on a boat, it typically needs it now… not “when I feel like it.”
Now, to be clear, I haven’t actually absorbed that lesson. Otherwise, my two jib sheet winches wouldn’t be so frozen that I can’t even get the spool-thingies off. They’ve reached a state of geological permanence that would make a Pharaoh envious. They aren’t just “stuck”; they have effectively become a permanent part of the boat’s structural integrity.
Read More about our big fun with the winches…
I suspect that if I were to apply a concentrated industrial solvent or perhaps a small amount of C4, the boat would likely disintegrate around the winches, leaving them floating serenely in the Gulf as a dual-pronged monument to my own avoidance. At this stage, they are less like nautical hardware and more like a very expensive, very salt-encrusted art installation.
So, I’m left with a choice: I can either finally stop resisting that ice-bucket bath and embrace the grueling reality of actual maintenance, or I can continue to treat my maintenance schedule as a series of polite suggestions, and wait to see which other part of the boat decides to go on strike next.
