LAND FEVER

I've been working five days a week since early March. It's a financial pleasure as it allows me to pay bills and buy some things for the boat and replenish BIANKA's sailing fund. But, the work requires a Monday to Friday schedule. It does not allow much time for updating this blog and even less time to work on the boat. It's been ten years since I've had such a schedule. It takes some getting use to once you've led a relatively unscheduled life. But, I can tolerate it a few more weeks. Because of this I've only been able to work on the boat on the weekends. So I was at Union Station Friday night waiting for an Amtrak train to take me back to the boat with plans to take care of some projects in preparation for launch in May. Unfortunately, a tree somewhere north of Baltimore decided it was time to cross the Amtrak tracks that night stopping all train service for hours. The result was my window to get out of Washington rapidly closed and another weekend working on the boat was lost. You might say that I've come down with a serious case of land fever. The cure for which is to get on a boat with no planned schedules and no fixed address and no place to be as soon as possible.


or to put it another way:

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

- Herman Melville