She’s Not My Baby; She’s My Mother

The clean up has been going better than expected. Even stains that I thought would never be gone have disappeared with a little elbow grease and pressure wash. I finally took down the large, Lexan storm windows that covered the 7-foot salon windows yesterday. They had been in place 7 years, 3 months, and 4 days, buts whose counting.

I also removed the newer 1/10” acrylic panels over the pilot house windows. Getting up this morning, the boat is noticeably cooler. While I never needed the storm windows for storm or wave protection, this boat is designed too well for that, as insulation, they were great, stopping all condensation on the inner windows no matter how much cooking was going on, as well as keeping the boat warmer, allowing us to keep the Wallas diesel heater on minimum pretty much all the time when it was on at all.

As I thought about how the “storm” windows were never needed for their intended purpose, I was reminded of a story Thien (our son) related to me about a talk he had with his mother who had been terrified of the first waves (2 to 3 feet) she had encountered on Dauntless. He told me that in trying to comfort his mother he had cupped his hands together and rolled them back and forth, pointing out to Ti that his hands represented the boat, and we were nestled inside. That rolling of the boat was how the boat protected us from the seas and the boat was like our mother protecting us from the dangerous things in the outside world, just as she had protected him growing up.

Just as our mothers protect us, Dauntless does the same.

And maybe sometimes we get a kick in the ass.

As I was finishing taking pictures of the outside yesterday and most of the inside, since I had promised pictures to one and all, I slipped on the swim platform, which is about two feet from the dock. Into the water I went, cell phone and all. I wasn’t worried about getting crushed by the boat since I had tied her in a way so that she could not move further back (or forward for that matter). TI came out and pulled my cell phone from my pocket and then helped me out.

In the eight and a half years of having Dauntless, I have never fallen in the ocean. Never. Too many times to count, I have ventured out on deck to take a comfort break, holding on for dear life literally.

Once out and clearly uninjured the only damage having been done to my 3-month-old Samsung S21 which is now DOA, Ti spent the rest of the day muttering to herself in Vietnamese as to what a stupid husband she has. No translation was needed. She had told me numerous times this week not to get on or off that boat

So here I am waiting for daylight so I can take pictures again with Ti’s phone, which I am normally not allowed to touch.

Wish me luck.

 

Author: Richard on Dauntless

I’m an eclectic person, who grew up in New York, lived overseas for many years and have a boat, Dauntless, a 42 foot Kadey Krogen trawler yacht. Dauntless enables me to not only live in many different parts of the world, but to do it in a way that is interesting, affordable, with the added spice of a challenge. Dauntless also allows me to be in touch with nature. As the boat glides through the ocean, you have a sense of being part of a living organism. When dolphins come to frolic, they stay longer if you are out there talking to them, watching them. Birds come by, sometimes looking for a handout; sometimes grateful to find a respite from their long journey. I grew up on the New York waterfront, in the West Village, when everything west of Hudson St. was related to shipping and cargo from around the world. For a kid, it was an exciting place of warehouses, trucks, and working boats of all kinds: tugs and the barges and ships, cargo and passenger, they were pushing around. My father was an electrical engineer, my mother an intellectual, I fell in between. I have always been attracted to Earth’s natural processes, the physical sciences. I was in 8th grade when I decided to be a Meteorologist. After my career in meteorology, my natural interest in earth sciences: geology, astronomy, geography, earth history, made it a natural for me to become a science teacher in New York City, when I moved back to the Big Apple. Teaching led to becoming a high school principal to have the power to truly help kids learn and to be successful not only in school but in life. Dauntless is in western Europe now. In May and June, I will be wrapping up the last two years in northern Europe, heading south to spend the rest of the year in Spain & Portugal. Long term, I’m planning on returning to North American in the fall of 2017 and from there continuing to head west until we’re in Northeast Asia, Japan and South Korea, where we will settle for a bit. But now, my future lies not in NY or even Europe, but back to the water, where at night, when the winds die down, there is no noise, only the silence of the universe. I feel like I am at home, finally.

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