Getting there is half the fun because we love walking through that boat yard. It's total eye candy for a boat geek. The fiberglass beasts perch awkwardly on metal stands, literally fish out of water. Sometimes I like to think that the boats are old proper ladies and when their undersides are showing they feel all embarrassed.
There are the obvious things to gawk at when strolling the yard. The lines of a classic, seaworthy vessel. They decay of a long neglected hull. The one off boats that don't seem to fit in.
Zach loves reading the home ports on the transoms and talking about where they came from. It's been a game to find the boat from farthest away.
But more than anything when I look upon these hulls of all shapes, from ports all over the globe, tools of the trade tacked on to their decks I can't help but see a dream. Each boat represents someone's dream, sometimes a dream fulfilled, sometimes a dream dashed. Or somewhere in between. Each vessel is a story. Somebody looked at her and said, "You and I are going places." Someone raised those sails and cut the engine and felt that surge as the boat propels you forward under wind power alone. Someone dropped the hook somewhere new and sat back in that cockpit full of the joy and wonder at navigating from Point A to Point B. But each of these boats stand aloft and alone now, dried out and waiting. Waiting for a day at the spa before another season with her owner. Waiting for badly needed repairs. Waiting for a new partner in adventure, a new dreamer to point her bow toward the horizon.
"A RED one with an EYE mommy! Why that boat got eyes?", she chirps snapping me out of my own dream state. Yes, red with eyes, blue with a stripe, molded fiberglass, bent wood, furled canvas, dreams in suspended animation. Waiting.
