Project Boat

Acronyms are words consisting of the letters of several words or phrases.  Some of the more notable are scuba (self contained underwater breathing apparatus) and golf (gentlemen only, ladies forbidden).  While I learned that was what golf meant, I later found out golf was actually a variation of a Dutch word meaning stick, but the one mentioned above actually came into play in either the 18^th or 19^th centuries.

Another acronym word I find interesting is boat.   Boat derives its letters from ‘bring on another thousand’.

So you can picture my wife’s dismay when I acquired a boat recently.  Add to it this would be a ‘project’ boat.  This means, according to her, something that never gets finished.  I don’t know if she is far off either.  Just the planning of how to modify this project boat has consumed both time and dreams.

Yet another challenge with this project boat is I want it to do everything!  It needs to work for fishing in lakes, rivers and coastal waters (not the ocean and deep sea, but the calmer marine waters), hunting, and bowfishing.

And I want to have cameras so I can video.

See how this whole ‘project’ works out?  The more you think about it, the more you want, hence the never ending work and bottomless wallet.

Unlike some projects that men take up though, I do have a time limit.  It has to be ready for the rock fish run in late March.  Cold windy weather, rain and snow are huge obstacles.  Work is too.  So in the time constraints of designing and actually doing the work, I have to plan what I can do on good days as well as on bad days.

Now this project boat was in pretty decent shape when I got it.  That is a valid argument to the question “why change things”.  But in changing things, the boat transforms from a boat that I got recently to ‘my boat’.  I get to leave my mark.

Bare hull, a little elbow grease, and it begins to transform.  I figure I have about three good weeks to make it happen, and one weekend is all but impossible to get anything done.  Figuring out how to make it happen, then doing the work is very similar to any other activity.  It is very much like scouting for the perfect piece of land for deer, turkey or bear.  Instead of putting up a stand or building a blind though, I am putting together a floating vessel.

There is something both primal and intellectual in this modification.  First, the tightening of the knuckles and flexing of the muscles as pieces are put into place brings out the most basic of my instincts.  Then the progression continues as the thought process transforms into the mold of great thinkers such as Franklin, Edison, Ford or even Einstein.    Dabbling in everything from physics, to electricity, to engineering, the juices flow freely and a wry smile stretches across my face.  Borrowing a line from the old television show The A-Team, I love it when a plan comes together.

Even with this physical and mental work, it brings solitude.  This build relieves stress from the everyday world in ways a pill from the pharmacist never can.  It is natural.  It provides a focus, a means, and a goal.

It brings about peace.  And an acronym for PEACE is ‘positive energy activates constant elevation’.