A Very Tacky New Year

So far during the absence of my wife from the boat I've avoided drinking solvents or going totally feral. The galley is quite full with unwashed dishes, but that is because of industry not sloth.
I'm midstream with the varnishing of the floorboards. Moose has eighteen mahogany surfaced floorboards and they average a meter by a half meter in size. Under them lie the ugly, grimy pipes and tanks that make up the unpleasant guts of the boat, and much like a person it looks better with the skin on. The boards needed re-varnishing and it can't be done with them in place. Irene's trip to Holland was timely, there would be no witness.
The immediate problem with pulling up a floor is that you need some place to put it; soon the cockpit was full, the top of the fridge covered and boards were propped up on piles of books on the bed, with wet varnish looking hopefully over the edge at the sheets below. I had a brilliant scheme though, I had thought the whole thing out before I started.
Of the boards that would be varnished in situ I did every other board so I could step safely around the tacky ones. I got half the boat done this way. Rain squalls passing two or three times a day made varnishing in the cockpit a nervous, but surmountable, business. The next day I wanted to pull the unvarnished boards up, but I couldn't step on the ones on either side; (this bootstrap business is doubtful). So I ended up standing with one foot in the battery compartment and the other in my underwear drawer trying to pull free a floorboard, and it only gets worse from here. The finished boards felt good and dry, but if you stood in one place for long you'd leave a footprint, as I write I'm wearing cushions, taped to my sock feet, to avoid leaving tracks; perhaps one more day, I hope. I can't even stand in front of the stove to cook dinner, so it's instant pasta for me tonight. Going to the head in the middle of the night, with a flashlight in my mouth, creeping along ledges above tacky varnish and avoiding pitfalls between tanks, is a drama, like rock climbing gone terribly wrong.
I hope you're all having this much fun this early in the new year!
Posted by J Duncan Gould