I wonder what it feels like to love a hobby or sport so much that you can’t think of anything but when you’ll be able to do it next. Sex doesn’t count. I thought I had some of those hobbies, but as I get older I realize my relationships with them have changed. I think retirement has changed them, too.

Every 10 minutes I had an internal conversation that went something like, “We’re so selling this &^%$#@ boat,” and, “How could I possibly give this up?” And that was before one of our steaks slid off the plate and into the water before it got to the grill.

When Steve and I were still working we’d spend all week getting ready to go sailing. I’d shop, pick up blocks of ice for the ice box, pack our stuff, plan a route and we’d head out on Bolero either late Friday or Saturday morning, and have to make it back on Sunday to get to work on Monday, weather be damned. If it was supposed to be really bad we wouldn’t go at all, but any hint of reasonable weather and we were off, and lemme tell ya, we’ve sailed home in some really nasty conditions. So the plan was to have all this spare time in retirement to just… go. We’ve used our boat less in retirement than we did when we were working. Why? Well, life happens. Appointments, commitments, other plans, bad weather, bad weather forecasters… I could go on and on. So I have boat guilt; here we are spending money on something we don’t use. And I have to say owning a boat is a lot of work, which happens at times when it would be fun doing other things. Commissioning in the spring happens at the same time as garden work, and decommissioning in the fall is when we should be raking leaves and getting ready for Thanksgiving. And all that planning and shopping and lugging in order to go sailing in between? I’m not as gung-ho as I once was.

Steve and I talked about selling the boat, and we agreed we needed to take our time and think everything through before making any decisions. It’s still early in our retirement and things change, so we agreed we should not do anything hastily. Just after that discussion we headed to Cuttyhunk for an overnight. Every 10 minutes I had an internal conversation that went something like, “We’re so selling this &^%$#@ boat,” and, “How could I possibly give this up?” And that was before one of our steaks slid off the plate and into the water before it got to the grill. Hence the love/hate.

Now there is one more variable to consider. While Steve and I both have had issues with skin cancer and had bits of things excised, it has always been the non-metastasizing basal cell kind. No longer. Steve was diagnosed with early stage melanoma, and I want to wrap him in cotton wool and hide him from the sun. He, of course, has other ideas, so I will be the one chasing him down with broad-spectrum sun block and his Tilly hat, which he’s refused to wear since a friend of ours made fun of it. The doctor will be removing the nasty spot in a couple of weeks, and says it’s thin and very early stage so he is positive, but I’ll still take any prayers anyone is willing to offer up.

So now what? Business as usual for this year; motor her across the harbor and have our boatyard pull her out of the water and up onto the hard, swearing as we change the oil and try to keep the oil plug from falling into the bilge, winterizing the engine and water hoses as we decommission, lugging all of our boat stuff into the basement for another winter and dropping the sails off at the sail loft to be cleaned and inspected. Then we’ll go to Knuckleheads for lunch in our work clothes and drink beer at the bar and talk about how nice it would be to sail her to Florida and the Caribbean instead of pulling her out of the water some winter. Pass the sun block.

Bolero

Bolero

Deborah