Epilog...the Love Affair Continues

Did you notice that my first post about this boat was titled, "The Beginning of a Love Affair?"
"Affair" means other than your wife. Read on to see where this is going.

Now that the boat is finished, I am making plans for next summer. I will be going to local lakes near here and in Utah for exposure. I mentioned that I will be going to some boat shows. Tahoe, Coeur d’Alene, Lake Oswego, up near Seattle, to name a few. I needed pictures, I actually needed to finish by October so I could find water in a lake. And I didn’t want to turn it into an ice breaker.

My motto with hobbies is, no deadlines. As soon as you "have to get it done", it becomes a chore. So I spent more time at the shop, without making it a deadline. If I didn’t get it done, then there was always another year. But I finished it with about 3 weeks to spare, you know, water was still in the lake.

You’ve read the chapters and seen the pictures. As I went from one day to the next, I could hardly wait for morning to come. Yet if other things needed to be done, or a trip to see my grand kids, there was no urgency. But there was one thing I noticed that bothered me a little. I was anxious to get one step done, so I could start on the next. I wanted to get the framing done so I could start putting the bottom planks on, etc. And each night when I went to bed, I planned the next days work, seeing in my mind what I would do. I used to fly instrument approaches in the airplane the same way. In my mind. All the steps. Before I was in the plane.

You saw the beauty of that boat. I still can’t believe that I did that. I knew it had to be near perfect, but I am so surprised that it is.

A boat is a girl. A boat needs a name. I wondered what I would name it.

You may know that I was partially retired. I had no set working hours, just get the job done, which was managing a grain elevator. I was actually teaching the bosses son the drill. And his wife to keep the books and inventory correct. As they learned more, the less I worked. I had been doing this for 7 years, and I fully retired at the end of 2007.

So when I started on the boat in the spring of 2006, I had a lot of time for the boat. Now I didn’t neglect my wife. When I retried, she didn’t want me home all the time anyway. You know, like one of her friend’s husband, in his boredom, he rearranged her recipe book!

We teased each other a lot. I always had a hobby in the evenings. I built things out side, a garage, bridges, a grape arbor, a covered walkway for her vast yard, helped build flower gardens, etc. But I always came in from my model railroad, or my model planes, etc. by 9 PM and spent the last hour and a half before bed with her. Talking, rubbing her feet, laughing, watching TV. When I got my first computer in 1988, and spent so much time on it, she gave it a name. She called it "Meg" (It was a "Mega-Turbo") It had that name on the front.

So one day she teased me and said, "You spend more time on that boat than you do with me."

Now I had my name.

THE OTHER WOMAN

Here is my beautiful wife with her brother at 3 years.

Here she is at 17 years. Here she is at 45 years.

Here she is at 61 years with her lucky husband.

Here she is at 69 years.

I would never step out on this wonderful woman.

Here is the boat at 59 years.

Here is the resurrected boat.

Here is my resurrected wife. You know, the prime of life.

They are both so beautiful.

And that is the last thing I need to do on the boat. I’m having a graphic artist paint it on the transom later on.

I am going to expand these chapters and pictures into a loose leaf folder to display at the boat shows. So this gave me a start.

Thank you for reading and commenting. Read you on the blog, I am the OldBoatGuy.