The absence of explanation

I've been struck mute  - or rather, I was struck mute - for two reasons. First, my much-loved sister Barb came to Sydney for a few days. Somehow, by error and by design, I've organised to live the past 25 years in a different country from her. I regret that, for when Barb's around, I don't need to explain anything. There's  no-one who understands me so intuitively, nor who shares so many of my habits and mannerisms. We sound the same - even our children can confuse our voices. There's something in the way we move too. Perfect strangers ask us if we're twins. Needless to say, we don't consider ourselves to be alike at all (I'll always say she's the pretty one, and she'll always say I got the brains.) but what counts is that we grew up breathing the same air.

                                Here we are in NZ over summer. Definitely our mother's daughters...

So, that's one reason why I've been quiet. But there was something else. A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a terse note on Alaskan Mike's blog. Admittedly he and Alisa were in limbo, waiting for the birth of Eric Leo (who arrived, in a great hurry, on April 28 - welcome, little man!). Mike wrote that he has a standard for blogging - Blog Only When You Have Something to Say. The business of clogging up everyone's computers with the "mental chaff of the moment" he leaves to others. Ouch. Where does that leave this blog? I wondered...

I could sit Alex down and get him to detail exactly what he's done on the boat over the past two months, instead of glibly reporting my impressions. Fuel injectors overhauled, solar panels fitted, new car radio installed blah blah blah. It's all very important stuff. Boat maintenance is where cruising begins and often ends. But it can also be an end in itself. Alex is the first to say that he's probably taken twice as long to do the work on Kukka that we planned because a) he's learning as he does it and b) he enjoys it so much. You know the line, the one from the opening chapter of the Wind in the Willows, where the Water Rat explains the charm of boating to Mole, to whom the river and riverside ways are a novelty. `Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING--absolute nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.'

My hope - actually it's better than that, it's a conviction based on our shake-down cruise last year - is that once we go sailing, the distance between us (the Rat and the Mole) will narrow. I will become more involved with the boat as a machine, and Alex will see beyond its workings. When that happens, the blog will have something to say about us. I'm looking forward to that.

But back to me (just joking). We took the staysail off the boat today, with Mikey's help. It needs a new line down the leech (the back edge of the triangle) to stop the sail from fluttering. Fortunately, the mainsail, which is incredibly heavy and unwieldy, looks good to go. As of today, I also have access to the interior of the boat, vacuumed and shipshape. There is not a loose wire in sight. The man is a gem. Without ceremony, I re-hung the ugly curtains which I had intended to bin. The time for worrying about aesthetics has gone. This week we'll be figuring out how to maximise the space in our storage cupboards. Now that's something I know a lot about. Finally.