The hardest task goes unfinished

Although I haven’t updated the blog, as promised, to include the various tasks we’ve accomplished, there is one daunting task that is yet unfinished. I’m sure you’ve all (by that I mean all four of you that read this) have reached some monumental task that has brought your progress to a screeching halt. This is the kind of task that creates an impasse and makes you wonder if you can ever move past it.

Without spoiling the upcoming blog entries where I’ll be filling in all the details of the work we accomplished, we’ve done some pretty substantial things. We pried up the teak and holly plywood and removed the rotten plywood from underneath, replacing it with new epoxy coated plywood. Not an easy task, but we were able to plan and execute it.

We rebuilt and lapped (ground to a perfect fit) the tapered bronze seacocks. We dropped the rudder, repaired the rudder tube, replaced the rudder and greased the rudder shaft. We faired the keel, which was a huge job. We ground off layers and layers of paint and repainted her.
We rebuilt the cooling system on the Westerbeke 27, replacing corroded parts and custom fitting others to save money. We even rebuilt the galley pump while underway, on out trip to Baltimore. We’ve worked and struggled to make Condor look almost as good as she did the day she was launched 25 years ago. In a sense, we have been able to turn back the hands of time.
You would think, or at least I think that you would think that there would be nothing that could stop these two people. But, alas, this one task has brought progress on Condor to a stop. I must confess, I have found the one thing that I cannot overcome.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not so conceited that I have to do it on my own. I’ve even enlisted the help of people I respect. These are people who I think are far more experienced and capable in this area. They have all offered their suggestions and yet the task goes uncompleted. I turned to a professional for some assistance and all he was able to do was complicated the matter.

Now, every time I go to Condor this one project hangs over my head and leaves me feeling lost and inadequate. So, I make up my mind to ignore this task for the time being and move on to another project. I’ve got a new deck light to install. I’ve got a replacement pressure water pump. There are other projects to complete. But every time, this one task completely saps my energy and I can accomplish nothing.

So, by now you are either so eager to hear what this project is or you have lost interest and aren’t even reading this line. I was shocked that this one thing could leave me so completely powerless.

I can’t pick a color! There, I’ve said it. I humbly admit that I can take a derelict boat and turn it around into a beautiful yacht, but I can’t pick a stinking color. We need to make a sail cover for our new mainsail before we can leave it rigged on the boat. That doesn’t seem so hard, does it?
We found color samples on the internet. I picked out what I thought was good. Suzanne was okay with it. Then I looked at the colors samples on a different computer and they looked completely different. The obvious pick didn’t seem so obvious anymore. How about Concord? That’s a nice blue – until you look at it on another computer and fine out it’s purple!

So, I turn to a professional. I go right to the source. I call Dan at SailRite and tell him I need his help. Dan’s a great guy, always ready to help. He offers to give me a few samples of the colors I’m considering so I can see what they really look like. So I name off the eight that we’re considering and he snips off some samples. Then her goes a step farther. He’s doing me a huge favor. He loans me his personal Sunbrella fabric sample book. This has all the 74 colors. And not just the printed colors, but real samples. So, armed with my eight samples and my book of 74, I head off to pick the color. Or so I try to convince myself.

I like Oyster. It’s a nice off-white that matched the off-white of the non-skid on the deck. Suzanne says it will show the dirt. Dan suggested Linen, but it’s a little dark. She likes Royal Blue, but it’s a tweed that is basically Pacific Blue with a black thread running through it. Okay, what’s wrong with Pacific Blue. It works for so many other boats. Yeah, that’s exactly the problem. It’s the color you see on almost every boat out there. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great color. But it’s the color everybody else uses. I want to be able to look around a crowded anchorage and spot Condor without trying.

So Anna offers her two cents. Logo Red. Yeah, I’d be able to spot Condor in a crowded anchorage – from the moon. No way! That’s not the way I want Condor to stand out. Allie, jokingly I hope, suggested Orange. Orange is just slightly more flamboyant than Anna’s Logo Red.

Capri is not bad, but I’m afraid it will look like faded blue jeans. Not that it’s bad, but I don’t want Condor to be known as the boat with the faded cover. The problem is that not all blues go together, or so I’ve been told. If you ask me, blue is blue. But, you know, when I hold those 14 different blues next to Condor’s boot stripe, none of them match.

And so, I sit here writing this blog entry because I can’t decide on a color to make the sail cover. And it seems that until I decide, I’m not going to be able to accomplish anything else. But, on the bright side, I maybe able to catch you up on all the projects we have accomplished.