We have a few closely held beliefs on Hello World. Money doesn’t provide happiness. These days it seems like we’re always after the bigger and better gadget. More stuff. Bigger house. Need more money to get more stuff. Even on the boat, where we can’t fit much of anything, we find that when we’re docked, we accumulate stuff so quickly. I know deep down that it’s just stuff. Stuff and money don’t make us happy (but it’s still hard to get rid of all of those shoes). We know this. It’s what we believe.
We do all of our own work on the boat. There have been exceptions here and there, when we simply don’t have the expertise to do a particular job, but for the most part, we’ve done just about all of the work and upgrades on Hello World. We’ve done this for 2 reasons: we’re always saving for the next trip (it’s so much cheaper to do it ourselves). And it’s really important to us to know the systems on our boat; be able to fix them if (when) they start acting up – especially because we’re likely to be in the middle of nowhere and have no one to rely on.
Last week, in a flurry of boatyard activity, working real jobs, prepping for multiple weekends out of town and fighting with insurance companies, we just couldn’t take it anymore. We could have prepped and painted the bottom (in fact, we started), but the prospect seemed daunting to both of us and we were completely unmotivated. Neither of us wanted to broach the idea, but we both were thinking the same thing; wouldn’t it be nice if we could just pay someone to do this for us?
We justified it to ourselves by saying Jason would have to take off of work to do the painting. That, in the end, the money was about a wash. But the reality was, we just didn’t want to do it. Enter the professionals.
We continually discover ways in which we are not nearly as hard core
as we thought we were. But then, maybe there's a little happiness in
that, too.
(before the brilliant idea to pay someone else to do this...)
3 comments:
If you're not cruising (aka working) writing the check for purely menial labor is worth it to me. You can always do the bottom paint yourself in paradise when you have all the time in the world. ;-)
We always thought that bottom paint prep and application was one place that it was worth paying someone to do the work. It's not complicated, so no worries about 'learning the boat' but it is toxic and time consuming.
Just think how much more time this frees up for your cadillac of boat refrigerators!
Just found your blog, and look forward to reading all of your old posts. Everything I read says do it all yourself - but I certainly see the merit in letting the bottom paint get done by the pros :) When I get to the boat ownership stage, I have a ready made argument for not doing it now - thanks! :)
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