“The dream,” wrote Carl Jung in The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1934) “is a small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul…”

I relaunched my boat on February 7th!

Look at my face above – I was jubilant that afternoon, to escape the shipyard and slide my boat back into the water. She had been out for seven weeks.

SEVEN WEEKS!

Dios mío.

Painting the bottom and installing the rudder cost 3x more than expected and quite broke my spirit in the process. Who said my prototype rudder was going to fit straight out of the box? SIX attempts it took! SIX! Everyone did everything they could to help. I am hugely grateful to:

Cree and his wife – owners of the Berkeley Marine Center

Gian Buongiorno (metal engineer with one of the greatest name ever)

Steve ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (master carpenter)

Julio (spray painter extraordinaire)

and to Richard, Eric, Bobby, the office team and everyone else. I was by the end, almost part of the furniture. For the final go Gian welded a plate between the upper two gudgeons. Alignment at last!

I vastly underestimated both the cost of the antifoul: $500 in total for primer, top coat, thinners etc, $385 to have the paint sprayed, as well as the labour intensity required of me to prep for the primer, sand the primer and sand the top coat. The things we do for a smooth bottom…

‘It’s over Lia’ said my bank balance.

‘Why are you continuing?’ said the chimp in my head.

‘NO!’ I told my bank balance and the chimp. ‘NO!’ I shouted them down. For weeks this battle continued. It’s a wonder I even got out of bed.

During this time I realised something.

This endeavour is NOT about rowing.

It’s about:

dogged

unwavering

perseverance.

As disabled veteran George M Moore Jr said, ‘A winner is just a loser who tried one more time.’

So it was with untold delight that I rowed across the bay on February 8th and discovered my boat had become 30% faster! And the next day too I was cruising at 3kts+ rather than 2kts+. Was it entirely down to my new Antrim-designed rudder? Or were my other modifications adding to this boost in speed?

I plan to tell my ‘Tale of 3 Rudders’ this weekend when I film Episode 3 of Lia Ditton’s Patreon Vidcasts! I’ll be letting you into the secret on the go-faster mods I’ve made and will explain exactly why I have decided to build a new boat.

Pop in the passenger seat to follow the journey to the journey –