"this is getting tiresome"

[kerlandsen]

46 years ago, my dad, (RIP) and his college roommate built an A frame in the woods of Vermont. Just the two of them and their wives, my mom. My sister was born sometime during the roughly 2 year project.

This year I am turning 40. My siblings and I work every summer to repair, fix, upgrade many different things. The 75 year old college roommate is always there to help, but he keeps saying "this is getting tiresome, replacing the cap of the chimney twice in my lifetime"

I have been pondering this quote for a few days now. This week, I stepped onto my boat with the intention of fixing/upgrading a few things, the dodger mounting points, the mainsheet attachment to the boom. For both of those projects, the part in question fell apart in my hand. Glad I was there to put the new boom bail on. The old method was original and used a bolt into the cast cap at the end of the boom. The nut had clearly fallen off inside the boom.

These items are probably original to the boat from 1981. I hope that once I have replaced/fixed/upgraded the things I am working on they never have to be done again. Or I had better instruct my 6 and 3 year olds how to do this sort of stuff.

Just something on my mind as i realize that I am growing up. I am not sure I like it.

Think about the PO on your boat and where his frame of mind was when the previous repair was made. Think about your repair that you make now. Someday, someone will have to replace it. They may wonder why it was done a certain way. They may be impressed with how well it was done "back then". For me the work now is not tiresome, but when I am 75 and I have to replace the boom bail, that will probably be "tiresome"

Kyle

[Numbah134]

Some things there's no getting around it. Some things, what's really tiresome is that you could have done it better 46 years (or whatever) ago and spared yourself the pain now. Or as the pithy saying goes:

There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.

You can replace time with money, or "time and money" or...

...building a place in Vermont which I hope most of I won't have to mess with again in my lifetime, though some parts have a known shorter lifespan which I've planned for...and others may not turn out to work as planned. That's just the innate cussedness of inanimate objects, no getting around it.

Getting back closer to boats, I've got a nearly ironclad policy of putting either antiseize or theadlocker (or pipe dope, in the case of pipe threads) on anything threaded I work on, since all too often I wish the heck somone else had 30 years ago, and in 30 years it might well be me going back into the item with threads - and I'd like it to come apart.