The Positive Things

…of Which There are Many

And some photos at the end.

Because I need to catch up about all those, to tell the stories, and to remind myself.

I’ve been making jokes about post traumatic outboard syndrome, but it’s true — being on edge all the time, and having to be ready for boatly things to go wrong because they did keep going wrong and there’s no room for that in skinny channels, and the fiasco salad that my planning turned into… it’s basically triggered C-PTSD stuff in me. I’ve gotten stuck in expecting everything to go wrong.

And that just makes everything go wrong.

Because honestly — I’m safe. I’m only fleeing weather and pain, not terrorism or starvation or gigafires. I’m privileged far more than I can justify, for reasons that shouldn’t even exist. I have a home, albeit currently (no pun intended) placeless. I can manage, and I believe things will work out somehow… because they do.

Beyond that, I am blessed on a daily basis. I may collect mistakes and unfortunate events like an unpainted hull collects barnacles, but the universe is built on balance, and I also collect stories that make me — and others — remember that despite what we see happening around us, human beings are flipping beautiful. We care about each other. We care about everything.

Because of that, whether we know it or not, we can (still) change everything.

I mean really everything. Change our minds, our habits, lifestyles, lives, systems, perspectives, convictions, the planet, the future.

Everything.

Everything except the real parts. Shed the parts that don’t work. What’s left is what matters.

So here, in no particular order, are the parts that really matter from through this crazy, weird, totally revised, stress filled, frustrating, incredibly beautiful voyage.

I live on a sailboat. However tremendously unlikely, i always knew it would happen and it is. She’s a very vgood boat, from very good people, and I’m unbelievably fortunate.

She’s such a good boat, she survived the boatmover from hell. She took it upon herself to organize a rainy Sunday to start our first voyage together, so that we wouldn’t be run over by a container ship or something when things went sidewards in the middle of the St Lawrence River. She’s so well built that she wasn’t injured when we hit something in Poonamalie Cut, or at Edmonds Lock. She brought us up the Rideau, and she makes people happy, and she has already started teaching me so much.

The dear people at Blue Heron Marine gave Skoro and this project such an auspicious — and kind — beginning.

Garmin actually shipped stuff to a lock station.

Some businesses sell at least as much care and conscientiousness as stuff.

People really do go out of their way to be good human beings.

Pizza places will deliver to boats.

Business owners use time they don’t have to help people they don’t know without telling anyone, and nourish their communities this way on a regular basis.

In extenuating circumstances, if you are so blessed as to run out of gas in exactly the right areas — but not till you touch the dock! — you can get gas delivered by boat.

Grouchy people do beautiful things, and they glow when you care.

MacGyver has disciples everywhere, and they’re even nicer. Plus, some of them are raising river fairies.

Angels can manifest motors. Sirens can fix them.

Dear friends and new ones can turn bilge water into cider, dispel storms, and rescue castaways.

I don’t know how many ships can pass in the night along here… but they can in broad daylight, despite how it might look sometimes.

Someone invented fenders. This is a very good thing. Someone else invented boathooks — equally brilliant. Ditto bug oil and window screen. And whistles. And sporks. And this list could get very, very long, so I’ll stop before that happens.

Speaking of boathooks, the lock staff where I broke the oar gave us a boathook… a very kind, and very appropriate, housewarming gift from the Rideau.

Shungite takes the sulfur egginess out of water.

There was a Scotiabank in Smiths Falls, so I could replace the debit card that’s now part of the river (I’m sorry, river). They have a really great manager. He’s also a very nice person.

There are other people with anxiety, and other things i have, all over… it makes me cry that we’ve made the world like that, but then I see us helping each other and always popping out of the woodwork wjen we need each other, and that means so much.

In all the crazy, only two sporks, the broken oar, and that bank card have been lost… pretty good overboard record.

The only human who’s gone overboard on this adventure didn’t drown and is quite fine. (And that didn’t happen on Skoro).

I wasn’t crushed between the hull and the lock wall when I fell at Jones Lock… Skoro has skinny skinny sidedecks but they’re just big enough.

Rogers switched the plan I have to include unlimited internet (not for me — for everyone with that plan).

I do have to move, but meanwhile, a lot of good people don’t mind me being here, and they support this project.

The genies in the bottles do exist… they work through humans to maintain their anonymity.

When we couldn’t find a dock and it was getting dark, someone escorted us to one with their lights on.

When I couldn’t leave my boat securely shut, kind people I hope I get to talk with more brought a hasp and lock and tools… now I can lock the hatch and go with so much less worry, ohmygoodness. There’s not much on here in terms of value except the personal value to me, but peace of mind when mooring in odd spots matters.

There’s lovely greens to forage all over the place, more than I even know. Many areas don’t use herbicides and pesticides any more, so the greens are good.

Someone I randomly met at a dock actually used their small piece of time off to help a strange little gypsyhermit bilge-bat they’d never met before manage the boat to reach Ottawa, and I have a new friend.

There’s a place for everything on a boat.

There are boat earworms…

Betty the bouy

Loved Gary the Garmin

But Gary the Garmin loved BOATS!

(You’re welcome 😁)

People who matter and people I’ve missed have been able to visit (carefully and with proper safety measures), and visit virtually… the connections between people are the connections that carry all the possibilities.

Someone in the administrative channels of the Rideau is perhaps considering my request to reconsider my request for mooring (please send encouraging energy in their direction).

Despite all the problems, things do keep working out, though not necessarily how I thought they might (or even close), and that gives me reason to believe that things will keep working out (in whatever ways they do).

There is still time for pulling rabbits out of hats… my own hat, and the collective battered hat we are all trying to save. The world is full of magic.

With hope and determination,

Ann

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