44hatch. I was greeted with the same old-
boat smell: a bit of mildew, a bit of diesel
and a lot of dust. After fi ve minutes of
checking that everything was super-
fi cially as we had left it three years earlier
— a small miracle, really — we climbed
down and ran whooping to the car, then
spent the day sightseeing.
To us, Oddly Enough was the same boat.
We knew her faults, her good sailing qual-
ities, and also that her interior was shabby,
because we had put everything into making
her seaworthy. After our time away, we
were very much aware of how she might
look to others, but in Kudat, we came to
believe it was a mistake to give her up. All
the old zest for sailing fl ooded back. It was
easy to forget that we had left the boat to
try to settle elderly parents in better living
conditions, and to take a break to see if we
really did still want to sail.
Three months later, when we left
her on the hard for a second time so we
could head back home, Oddly Enough’s
resurrection was obvious to everyone
who saw her. We’d cleared years’ worth of
extraneous equipment from her lockers,
painted her interior, polished and waxed
her hull, and touched up the paint that
was protecting her woodwork. Her
engine was functioning. She looked ter-
rifi c. We even had thoughts of raising herprice. We also daydreamed of returning
in the fall — perhaps changing out her
engine or getting the new mainsail we’d
promised ourselves. As happens among
cruisers, we’d made new friends and
connected with old ones, and visions of
destinations danced in our heads.
The new resolve lasted amazingly long.
But by fall, when we should have beenmaking plans to return to Borneo if we
were truly serious about cruising again,
we were once more embroiled in land life.
And I wasn’t excited to go back to Asia
to curious visitors in canoes, always being
the outsider, always behind in the lan-
guage. Tom didn’t want to be responsible
for Oddly Enough’s physical being. Why
all the waffl ing? Perhaps, as a friend said,
people get stuck in Southeast Asia.
Or maybe, as I believe, it’s hard to
quit cruising. Lots of people write arti-
cles about sailing, me included. Cruisersare living the dream. Who hasn’t been
told, “Oh, I wish I could do what you are
doing”? We know it’s a fantastic adventure.
No one tells you how to stop cruising,
though. Or how to reconcile the new life
with the old. Why relief at leaving the
boat behind isn’t such a bad thing.
So Oddly Enough stayed on the market.
She was a hard sell, and it was a disap-
pointing time to fi nd buyers. She’d been
put away ready to pick up cruising again,
not to sell. Initially the makeover in Kudat
didn’t have any apparent eff ect. Her big-
gest drawback was location. Penuwasa is
hot, dusty and foreign. The Tip of Borneo
is off the usual circuit for American boats.
Australians cruise to Sabah, but Penuwasa
doesn’t attract weekend tire-kickers like
marinas and boatyards do on more popu-
lated coasts. Without a major investment
in time and money, we couldn’t solve loca-
tion. If we were going to that length, we
might as well go cruising again.
We’d been dropping the price since
we’d fi rst listed Oddly Enough, and by the
time Tom and I visited her before the
refi t, we were down by half. Every year we
paid thousands of dollars in storage. Every
year she aged. The KP 44 website, where
we listed Oddly Enough, attracted dedi-
cated Peterson buyers but didn’t reach the
wider boat market. Finally we droppedImmediately, old, powerful
feelings came up. The
reality of selling made mepanic. As long as we had
the boat, we could escape.Phone 443. 758. 5671
for more detailsZodiac of North America, Inc 540 Thompson Creek Rd Stevensville, MD 21666
Phone 410 - 643 - 4141 [email protected]750 SRA
Aluminum D Collar
Dive door
Shock Mitigation
Assembled in the USA
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