Time to stop before getting started

Due to to many items on the agenda the Tiki build will be on hold until at least summer 2012. Thought I'd say this since I hate it when I find a blog that just stops without explanation.

Time to find materials

Action has been slow since we're still in Annapolis and my build site in Maine. We plan to be in Maine with in a month so now is time to start investigating materials. My approach was to write up a letter with a materials list for the plywood, softwoods and some of the hard woods then e-mail that to several suppliers. The initial result is shopping around works! For just the 54 pieces of Okoume plywood( of 9mm, 6mm and 4mm thicknesses) with shipping resulted in an Annapolis supplier price of $6368 and a Toronto supplier of $3777, or over $2500 less! Note to other builders, always make sure to check on shipping cost for these big items, in this case one was $1896 and the other $472, and both to our Maine address. And the cheaper one is 100 miles closer and across an international boarder.

Also this is making me take a hard look at the plans and I'm finding they leave some things to the imagination of the builder. Such as on the first page the say to nail the butt joints for the hull sides using copper nails. Problem, no nails in the bill of material. Same for copper wire for the stitch and glue. Then there is a different type of issue where they say drill hole "Big enough to allow hull sides to open". Last time I checked "big enough" is not a measurement.

Oh well, not really complaining, it's all easily overcome but I can see an absolute newbie might have some anxiety.

On having less stuff.

I'm starting to experience a feeling that I last had about 6 years ago. 6 years ago we made our first break from the ordinary American lifestyle. But It all started 10 years before that when my father had died 6 months after retiring at the age of 60.5. He had worked hard and accumulated loads of stuff and dreamed of sailing off in his 25ton custom steel sail boat. He had been installing batteries when he died on a sunny warm October morning in Florida. We had been planing to sail the boat to Europe and mom would fly over. His death shook my world.

It took me about a year to really begin to understand what we missed. That's when I decided to leave "normal" life by age 45. Stocks were roaring so at 43 my wife and I were beginning our new life and selling the house, giving some furniture to Goodwill selling other stuff on Craigslist. I was a car/motorcycle nut. 7 years ago I had 4 cars, 3 motorcycles and a 34ft catamaran with twin inboard diesels for a family of 2.

Then one day as we sold some of that stuff I woke up and had this peaceful feeling and realized how much tension I had tied up in that stuff.  I then remembered a homily our priest had once given and in the end he had asked whether we owned our stuff or our stuff owned us? Now I knew. But I didn't get rid of everything, oh no 2 motorcycles and a car had to be kept in storage.

Well here we are years later and my life of stuff has again defied thermodynamics and increased in complexity. I was back up to 3 cars, 2 motorcycles, and a couple sailboats and wanting to build a Tiki. Something had to give. Now the Goldwing is sold and solid plans to sell the BMW and MGTD. And I've sold about 40 odd books and car/motorcycle parts and more to go. It really feels right.