In few hours I will finally lay hands on my boat again after 4 months. After purchasing Tranquillity, Kate and I went through a process of preparation that kept us apart and far away from the boat. For her it meant cutting the dock lines that kept her moored in NYC for a very long time. For me it was to wander the caribbean and harvest the necessary gold to start the restoration and equipment for Tranquillity. The rigor of New England’s winter contributed to postpone our project and the yard work. In some ways, we are still wimps.

We are brave however, when it comes to the decluttering process. We need to select and reduce our belongings to fit into a car first and then into a 29 ft sailboat. The task is not easy but I am lucky because Kate became a professional in this kind of operation and she is a great help. To reduce our belongings involves binning a lot of clothes and items, it means also merging departments and discarding surpluses. Sometimes I am terrified when I have to let go something, I feel like a real part of me is going away. Wait for an hour and this feeling disappears, and your pile of clothes and junk look more tidy, eventually fitting into a small place.

I am a very lazy guy and as many others I have this tendency to occupy all the available space, like a stuff Big Bang. Choosing a small boat means to seek discipline in this matter. There will be no space for the surplus, we will have to pick the essential and take care of what we have.

The decluttering process pointed out to me the importance of quality. While I was ironing my clothes I was amazed at how old but still beautiful is one of my shirts. That garment is probably more than 10yrs old and it has been with me in any place I traveled and went through third world washing machines, but it is sill pretty while other relatively new cheaper clothes show signs of wear. Quality is something to consider when purchasing equipment and even if we run on a small budget we should get few essential quality items.

Now we have no excuses, we finally moved ourselves and a well-sorted pile of things to the proximity of Tranquillity, in Fairhaven, MA. A kind friend, Keith, helped us to find a temporary nest in his parents’ house while we go through this project. For a long time Tranquillity will be not suitable for occupancy due to the restoration process and we will be shore-based in the place where Moby Dick took form, a place where the ocean is part of daily life and wrote important pages of history.