a quick riff on motivation...

SFSignal has everything you need to know (or more) about SteamPunk, a sensible and cheap bug screen at Small Boat Projects, and a guy driving a ferry (who pees into a cup on a regular basis) runs into a reef/island (can you say freaky?)...

Now that the aftermath of July 4th is a rather hazy memory of red hot dogs, macaroni salad and an uncontrollable urge to make things go "BOOM", it is back to business as usual aboard the good ship Boat Bits sailing the cyber seas... Sadly, business as usual is me sitting at the computer while I have my second cup of coffee trying to figure out something to write.

I write for a lot of reasons, but some days it's hard to get to it... Not unlike boat projects and boat building. The thing is if I sit down and start typing something almost always takes form and, while the resulting prose may be less than I'd hoped for, something does wind up getting written. I should also add, that as a serious caffeine junky, I don't get my third cup of coffee until the blog gets posted (the coffee being guarded by attack cats Buffy and Willow who like nothing better in the morning than some arterial bleeding mayhem) so you might say I'm kinda motivated.

The thing with boatbuilding and boat projects is that, in these modern times, motivation is in somewhat short supply. It's also no secret that folks of lesser motivation than you will become unhappy or angry if you insist in actually building your boat or doing major projects in a timely manner. As a veteran of many boatyards and projects I have come to believe that there are two kinds of people in boatyards, those who do get things done and those who don't and get pissed off at those who do...

When we were building our Wharram Tiki 31,way back when in Port Marly, I had the luck of being able to build a boat by myself on an island on the Seine with no real distractions. The downside is while we had no real distractions we also had no electricity so all of the boat was made with hand tools. I still have the calluses to prove it...

Loose Moose (our Bolger Jessie Cooper) was built in a hanger at the Charles de Gaulle airport alongside nine other builders who seemed somewhat scandalized that we actually intended to finish our boat and go sailing in that century... I know it is not a good thing and I'm not proud of it, but the last couple of months building the first Loose Moose was less about boatbuilding or going sailing but the motivation of pissing off people who said it was impossible to build a 26-foot cruising boat in less than six months...

When push comes to shove, you take your motivation where and how you can get it...

Listening to Leslie and the Badgers

So it goes...