Whose Hobby is This, Anyway?

Mark just returned from a six-day conference in Orlando. Usually, I like to go with him on business – I work poolside while he sits in conference rooms all day, and I get to enjoy the rare luxury of a bathtub. But there are three very strong reasons I didn’t go with him: Florida – July – Disney.

Mark joked to his colleagues, “Yeah, she’s home, keeping the boat afloat.” Before he left, I fretted just a bit. For six day and five nights, I would be in charge of Mazurka. If something went wrong, I was the point person. This scared the hell out of me. Not like the captain was backpacking in Alaska and unreachable; and not like he didn’t leave me with a boat in working order – the water tanks were filled, the sewage was empty. In fact, everything on Mazurka is ship-shape – part of Mark’s plan to abstain from any work in the month of July and just enjoy the boat (if you own a boat, you are laughing hysterically right now). And except for the first few days of the month, when the varnishing project went a little long, he’s kept to this abstinence.

But I don’t know a whole lot about this thing I live on. When bells and whistles go off and stuff starts happening for no reason, my first reaction is to ignore it till Mark fixes it. My knowledge ends at differentiating the flat-head screwdriver from the Phillips, and sometimes I don’t even do that.

To be completely honest, I regard this boat as Mark’s hobby, not mine. He lived on it before I ever came into the picture. He loves working on it. There are few things that give him so much joy and peace of mind as pulling apart the entire boat and putting it all back together. This is not my idea of fun. We have divvied up the tasks among us – his stuff is outside, mine is inside, and I stay the away from the engine room. But on a beautiful Saturday morning as he’s pulling out the varnishing tools to recoat the teak on the deck one more time, I’m hiding.

Meanwhile, our fellow summer campers, our neighbors aboard the Harbor Dog, are re-canvassing their boat. It’s a big job, sewing canvas covers for the windows and side railings; they brings out the sewing machine on the aft deck and work close together, solving problems like how to make hundreds of holes for the grommets. (Answer: soldering gun.)

Mark and I both noticed this together-ness. This is what marriage is about, right? Working together on a joint project – whether it’s children, a boat, or life itself. So even if this was Mark’s boat long before I ever came into the picture, and even though boating is not my first choice in hobbies…I think the time has come that I have to give a little, learn about how this thing works, and start pulling my share of the weight.

It could be worse; it could be football.


(Captain in Training)