Friday, February 21, 2014

Luxuries Have Become The Hardships - A Rant

Fixing your boat in exotic places.  That’s what everybody says about Cruising…  But not us.  That quote is about OTHER people… We did it right.  We moved aboard almost a year before we tossed the dock lines so that we would break everything beFORE we left…  

Yeah.  Right.  That’s what we thought.  

Back when I had a job, and quite a bit more unencumbered cash flow, we replaced the luxury items on our boat like the air conditioners and the refrigeration system.  Yes, we could have continued pouring money into the ones we had, but we figured that if we had NEW ones, we wouldn’t have to worry about it for quite a while.  That was turned out to be completely wrong!!!!

As we sit here in a beautiful and peaceful anchorage with sundowners in our hands.  The gentle winds are just beginning to get cool enough to think about going inside… The gulls chase one another off in the distance and we can hear the increasing crescendo of the crickets from the nearby shore.  Peace has fallen with the departure of that one lone Jet-Skier and we are enjoying life… well… almost.

We sit here and find ourselves having to make a conscious effort to enjoy our surroundings and push from our minds the now familiar worry about our refrigerator.  The luxury of refrigeration has become our biggest hardship, seconded only by the lack of warmth that our two very expensive AC/Heating units were supposed to provide.

Since we left home on September 30th, we have had our AC units and our fridge “fixed” in Pensacola, Clearwater Beach, and St. Petersburg.  We have spent many a cold night before we got to Pensacola because we were traveling and couldn’t find a repairman…  We have listened to one after another of them tell us how shoddy the workmanship of the prior workmen had been… but THEY would do it RIGHT!  Yeah, and here we are again with our fridge barely holding a charge…

So my mind has come up with the common denominator here… society.  It seems that whenever we come in contact with the “real world”, we end up with the short end of the stick.  Repairmen who don’t repair, insurance agents who don’t call you back, permits that never come…  And everything costs an arm and a leg!  Which would be OK if the service was good or the product worthy!  

Our best moments have been when we were freezing our tushes off and the needed repairs and insurance changes, and permits were just a future project.  Yes, when we get there, we’ll just call up a repairman, he’ll come out and fix us right up.  Oh, and we’ll call our insurance agent, tell her we need coverage for the Bahamas, and she’ll fix us right up.  and when we need those permits, we’ll call up the Bahamas Department of Agriculture and they’ll fix us right up!

They WILL fix us right up… because that’s what they DO.  That’s their JOB!  They are the EXPERTS!  Right!?  No, its a Big. Fat. WRONG!  

Nobody does their job anymore.  Back when I had a job, I was very conscientious about the work I did.  It wasn’t my job, it was what I DO!  My inability to control the work of others and my frustrations with incompetence and the irresponsibility of others was a driving factor in our decision to go cruising.  

We wanted to get outta there!  Before my mind imploded from the decreasing level of competence that can now be found everywhere.  The world is turning too fast, nobody can keep up with the work load, there’s too much to do and too little time and everything is just a mess!  I want off!  So…..

We stepped off.  We found peace and quiet and control.  Only the weather has been uncooperative.  We are happy when we can be masters of our domain.  Unfortunately for us, those little luxuries that we chose to bring with us, are causing us FITS!  And yet, my mind continues to rise from the doldrums and hope springs eternal… THIS time, when we go back to civilization and get our fridge serviced… it will WORK!  And we won’t have any more trouble from here on out.  <sigh>

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