Journal Entries

March 2007

3 March - I have been working on the interior of the boat for the past couple of weeks. Each morning I sand a piece of timber and put a coat of varnish on. Varnishing is a very time consuming messy practice but the results are worth the effort. The boat is currently pulled apart and there is sawdust everywhere. Each day I clean up the mess only to make it again the next day.

I am amazed at how beautiful the timber looks when a few coats of varnish are laid on. Below are some photos of the varnish work in progress.

The new folding table before varnishing

and after varnish.

and table closed. Note the new varnished rosewood paneling in the background.

You can see the distinct difference between the varnished timber on the right and the unvarnished timber to the left. I am yet to do the bulkhead wall but I'm very happy with the results so far.

9 March -This is a whole new chapter of my life and I'm not sure what my next step is going to be. I plan to spend this summer and the next winter in Queensland. I still have a few loose ends to tie up here.

What is bizarre is that I no longer have a job, but by not having a job I am actually saving thousands of dollars per month since I don't have my office or secretary. My life right now is in a total state of flux and I have no idea what I'm doing. I never used to believe in "signs" until I started to look for a boat a few years ago. As I go through life I believe that we are given signs but tend not to notice them. I have no idea where these signs come from but they are all around us. I was walking past a shop yesterday and out of the corner of my eye I saw the tiniest part of a greeting card with what appeared to be a picture of a sail. I actually continued right past the shop as they were getting ready to close. For some reason I decided to turn back and have a look at the card. I couldn't help myself as I love pictures of old boats. So I went back and pulled the card out of the rack. Below is a picture of that card.

It reads:-

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams"

"Live the life you have imagined"

Tell me I wasn't meant to find that card. The message was just what I needed as I'm on very unfamiliar and unstable territory right now. The quote is by Henry Thoreau and I have read some of his works recently including "Walden". So it was a fairly significant message.

10 March - Since I plan to do some travelling I figured that I will need to pick up some work. I have always loved the thought of having a little cafe somewhere. I thought the next best thing to owning a cafe would be to get a job making coffee in one, so I decided to do a coffee making course. I'm now a qualified barista (that's a fancy italian name for a bloke who makes coffee). I'm hoping to pick up a couple of days a week work making coffee somewhere. It has to be better than wearing a suit, sitting couped up in an office by myself. I also had a call from Peter Kerr who owns the slipway where I have the boat slipped and he asked me if I was keen to do some work on old timber boats. So things are starting to happen.