August 20, 2012
It’s said that boats are about compromise. You compromise when you choose a heavy boat over a light one; the heavy one carries more supplies and fuel but is slower in light winds. One mast versus two, or vice versa is a compromise. With two masts you can fly two smaller, easier to handle sails. With one mast, you have fewer sails to manage. You compromise when you choose 40 feet over 50 feet. The longer boat is faster, but more expensive and many of us out here have about all the boat we can afford. We lack sufficient funds for a bigger boat. That’s not all we lack.
Cyndi and I are often lacking fresh water (or at least we’d like to have more). We can make more with our watermaker, but then we have to use electricity, which we must ration. We can make more electricity but we only have so much diesel fuel to run the engine to make more electricity. On Legacy, we only have enough electricity for a refrigerator and not a freezer so we’re often lacking the foods we like.
We often lack the parts we need to repair one thing or another. We can only take so many spares because we lack the space to carry more. We can only buy so many spares because boat stuff is expensive and we lack unlimited funds.
It seems we are constantly managing scarce resources. “Lack” may sum up cruising better than “compromise.”
But we also have incredible abundance out here. We have an overwhelming abundance of beauty all around us. We have an abundance of time to read and relax and to spend with each other. Cyndi and I have found an abundance of great people to spend our abundant free time with. Amazing sunrises and sunsets are abundant and we see almost all of them. We travel in a abundant lands where fresh fruit hangs from trees and the waters are rich with fish.
I think I’ll focus on the abundance and not lack.
That’s all for now. I need to start the watermaker. Our batteries are a little low so I guess I’d better start the engine and run it while we make water. Oh, and also, I should put some fuel in the tank if I’m going to run the engine. That reminds me, we should take the empty fuel jugs to town and fill them today. Oh, if we’re going to town, we could also use some groceries. I hope we have enough cash.. -Rich
Update… January 2016…
Lack’s pressure has eased a bit for us because of some of the recent improvements on Legacy. We added a large solar panel and now have all the electricity we need. Because of this, we can run the watermaker more and take longer showers. We went an entire season without running the engine to charge batteries and therefore, we used much less fuel. We installed a new refrigerator that has a small freezer compartment and so provisions last through long stays in remote anchorages.
Even with these improvements, we still have to manage lack, but it’s even easier to focus on the abundance all around us!
