9/6/2015 0 Comments Confidence! There has been a shift in me in the time between taking the boat up to the Boatworks to repair the damage caused by the trawler, and coming back down.
I am not the same person. The fear has subsided and been replaced by a confidence I didn’t have before and I can’t really identify why. Perhaps it is true that time changes everything – perhaps it was because my skills at maintenance increased and with it a sense of do-ableness for the whole thing. I don’t know the answers but I am liking the effect. Of course there still are and always will be challenges but it feels different to me. Yesterday we dragged anchor. Only Liam and I were home – Erina was doing her boating license - and a sudden wind shift whipped up the Broadwater and sent a whole bunch of boats flying. We had been securely anchored for a few days and at first we were pretty sure we were just being pushed back on our anchor chain but after watching and assessing for a while, we decided that we must have dragged a little. It took such a short time to pull up the anchor, move the boat well away from any of the surrounding boats and then re-set it. No fuss, no drama – despite the tightness of the turn I needed to make to get us away from the boats around us! The anchor didn’t grab at first but then, just as I was considering whether to pull it back up, we felt that familiar wrench and knew we were held fast – a good bit of time in reverse with no movement confirmed that we were now nicely set. The snubber went back on and I turned off the engine and we went back to what we had been doing – we took it so thoroughly in our stride that Liam and I kept smiling to ourselves. Times have most certainly changed. We have focused on our strengths and noticed how over the past six months our skills have increased. We’ve learned and listened and watched others doing things on their boats and while none of us is likely to be pulling apart the engine any time soon or rebuilding it, we have all, without a doubt moved closer towards confidence in ourselves and our ability to handle the boat. People complement us on the work we have done on the boat and that means the world to all of us. We left Boatworks with not just the repairs done but also with a new paint job on the hull, completed while we waited for parts to arrive. We also installed a new solar panel to ensure the new batteries were well-fed! And then last week I bought a fantastic new generator that is keeping the solar topped up beautifully and so quietly! It even has a remote starter so we can push a button down below to turn it on and off. Argos has never looked so good or been in as good condition. And anyone who knows her can see how much she has improved over the past six months. That’s got to be part of this new-found sense of ‘I can do it-ness’ that has come over me – the fact that having never done any of those other tasks – sanding, filling, preparing to paint, paintin - and certainly not with the specialised products I learned to use while at the Boatworks – I can do it – I can do this - and maybe it brings with it a sense that I can do those other things too. George MacDonald, my most beloved author – the man who inspired CS Lewis, Lewis Carrol and JRR Tolkien to write – said that if a man can do something, a man can do anything. There is a strong sense of that in me right now. A profound awareness that I am managing things I never thought I would be doing and doing a great job of it. When people compliment me on my paint job it builds my sense of what I can do in so many other ways. When I handle tying up the dinghy at a jetty (oh yes, I can do all that now too, all by myself!) I have a strong sense that it will only be a short time and it will be Argos I will be steering in! And instead of thinking how hard it all is, I find myself rather amazed that I had ever thought it all beyond me. When we were left at Macleay Island on that unknown mooring, someone sent me a message – a quote about how a bird isn’t afraid of the branches breaking in the storm because her trust isn’t in the branches but her own wings. The quote encouraged me to not fear the storm that we were being pounded by, but to put my trust in the skills we had already acquired to manage the boat and keep safe. At that time it was a big ask! But from where I sit now I can see, without a shadow of doubt that in the last six months we have all strengthened our capacity to fly. We still have little moments, struggles, fears – like all boaties – but gone are the overwhelmed feelings, the I can’t handle that’s, and any sense of anxiety about the future. We have come this far and have only good things ahead of us! We are currently anchored in Bums Bay, Southport, surrounded by friends, old and new, and have a plan to head off to do a bit of sailing north shortly. We may not get as far as the Whitsundays but we are really looking forward to getting the sails up and getting some practice handling Argos on the ocean on our own. We will be sailing in company with a friend – someone very experienced who will be in close contact with us in case something should happen that we can’t manage alone. We’ll do short day sails with confidence knowing that someone is close by. I would not have imagined for a moment that we would even be contemplating doing this – even just a few months ago! But we have come so far now that we know we can handle this too. Six months ago I thought we’d be tying Argos up at a marina and living on board – now I can see that time has healed more than I could have imagined and that we are more capable than I ever thought possible!
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September 2017
Our life aboard Argos has been seriously challenged this year with the surprise departure of our skipper. As a writer, diesel mechanics and the complexities of many aspects of Argos’ on-going maintenance are way beyond me! We would like to see Argos continue to sail and eventually hope to use her to offer support, encouragement and a break to people who are struggling in their lives. Any on-going help towards maintaining Argos would be greatly appreciated and enable us to achieve this goal.
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