Boats run in families, I’ve noticed. It is like an infection.
My brother went in the Navy, and I think that’s where it came from. Shortly after getting out, he caught a ship. A sailboat to be precise. It was only about 20’ and the diesel engine was all seized up from not being used, but there it was in the yard.
A lot of boats end up in yards. It is a harbinger of not floating. Some say.
Then my father caught the ship from him, even though he didn’t know squat about ships. He just wanted to be in the swim.
Then my father died and we lost track of that ship. I just forgot about ships in settling the estate.
Fast forward some years and here I am, catching a ship of my own. It’s the one I now have and will probably be the only one I ever have at the rate I’m going.
I’ve owned it twice and am now resigned to owning it as many times as I need to. After all, why not own the ship that won’t go away?
There was an interim period when my ship was lost that my brother caught a ship which is now sitting somewhere waiting to get looked at. We think it’s okay but maybe not. I don’t know.
There was a period of time when the other side of the family, the one with the marine biologist, went back and forth with ships, but not for several years. Now they caught a vineyard and what’s with that.
Meanwhile my ship is sitting two ships down from the guy that recently owned it and now doesn’t. He has a new ship, a better one, one that is conceptually available to sail, just not at the moment when he is a long-haul truck driver and has three days off a year. Under those circumstances, we all just wave at the water and drink in the ship that is sitting on the land.
A good reason to have a vineyard.
The only place that really OWNS ships is the boat yard. As Herman Melville said, and I paraphrase, Some say possession is nine-tenths of the law. I say possession is the whole of the law.
