Seeking Inspiration
Where Next?
Bob Williams
Thu 27 Aug 2015 17:04
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Position: At anchor Ganges Harbour, Salt Spring Island
Wind: calm morning, to light south-easterly
Weather: mostly sunny
The last few days I have spent amongst the Gulf Islands, predominantly here
at Salt Spring Island but I have also spent a few days at anchor a little ways
south of here at Pender Island, while writing the final essay for my philosophy
unit. The philosophy unit finishes this Sunday, and I have signed up for a
creative writing course that starts the following week, with the view that it
might help me to make my blog more interesting, and perhaps open up my
perspective a bit. Then again I do not want to become, to put it crudely, a
wanker, so I am feeling somewhat ambivalent about it at the moment. I figure now
that I have signed up for it I may as well start it. The census date is on the
21st so if I find that I am not getting what I want our of it I can drop out of
it with no penalty.
This malaise perhaps reflects a broader problem for me just at the moment,
in that I am lacking inspiration for the next leg of my journey. I have in mind
to do some major modifications to Sylph's cockpit, in particular to replace her
heavy and cumbersome wheel steering with a tiller. I have been wanting to do
this for at least a decade and have carried a timber tiller in the V-berth for
the last fifteen years waiting to be installed, but have never been able to
justify going to so much trouble when the current arrangement works well enough,
and there is always some risk in making such alterations that I might make
things worse rather than better. However, I need to attend to some corrosion
under the cockpit and it seems to me the best way to do this is to cut the floor
out of the cockpit and thereby get to the hull underneath. I would also have to
dismantle the steering system to get at the hull, so it seems the two project
could best be done at the same time. Now the question is where shall I do
this.
One option is to stay in this part of the world, or perhaps head down to La
Paz in Mexico. There are of course pros and cons for each. The main advantages
of staying in Canada is that I have made a few friends here who, apart from just
enjoying their company, could no doubt help me with my projects, if only in
recommending where I could haul out and who could do the work I could not do
myself. On the down side it is coming onto winter and it might be a bit of a
challenge to live and work in the wet and cold. Plus Canada is going to be
relatively expensive compared to Mexico, though it is possible to live mostly
swinging off the pick here, so overall the costs of staying in Canada is not too
bad. Mexico on the other hand is a bit of an unknown. It is likely to be
cheaper, but then there are the interconnected issues of poverty, theft and
corruption to deal with – no doubt all quite manageable if one is careful and
can find the right contacts and advice, but if one gets it wrong the
consequences and costs might be very high indeed. Then there is the factor of
staying still versus moving on. If I stay I could explore this interesting part
of the world some more, maybe head back up to Alaska next summer, or, if I move
on, I get to explore new seas and lands to the south of us. Maybe I will
subscribe to some flipism* (a philosophy I read about in a Donald Duck comic
many years ago), and let the toss of a coin decide.
I am grateful to have the problems that I do.
All is well.
* Flipism is not actually all that silly, from that font of all knowledge –
Wikipedia.:
Now I really must get back to some more serious philosophising and
my essay.
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