Lost and Found

With my launch date only a few days away, I had almost everything checked, tested, loaded, and readied to go.  Everything, that is, except one very important piece: the backstay plate -- a critical part of the standing rigging that helps to hold the mast upright and in place.

Usually, when I haul out the boat each November, I detach the backstay plate and stow it with other removable parts of the rigging, such as the mainsheet blocks and the boomvang.  This year, I could not find the backstay plate -- a small triangular piece of metal that links the backstay (which runs to the top of the mast) to the transom and the mainsheet.  I could not launch the boat if I were missing this piece.  For want of a nail, the kingdom would be lost.....

On Friday, five days from launch, I spent nearly four anxious hours, deeply aggravated and inconsolably frustrated, searching for that damn metal plate.  I looked in the boat; I looked in all my boat storage totes; I looked in the garage; I looked at my work bench; I looked in my study; I looked in the basement; I looked in the mudroom; I looked in our bedroom; I looked in the kitchen; I looked in Dylan's room; I even looked in the trunk of the car.  Nothing.   ARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!

I was falling into a really foul and rotten mood, annoyed with my failing memory.  I am a reasonably organized guy; friends might say even a bit OCD in some ways.  My space may seem like chaos sometimes, but that is only an illusion.  There is method to my madness and everything is in its proper place -- until its not.  Every now and then I fall apart.  Now, at age 55, I was losing it.  I misplaced my wallet six times in the last two weeks.  I lost my car keys for a day.  I spent two days looking for an anti-theft bar and lock I purchased weeks ago for the outboard motor.  Once I went around the house looking for my glasses, only to realize after a half-hour or so that I was wearing them!

Dejected, I sat on the back porch, sipping a beer, phone in hand to check online how much D&R Marine (who stock parts for O'Day boats) would charge for overnight delivery of a replacement part. Suddenly, an epiphany: Could I have possibly left it attached to the backstay last November?  I walked across the yard in anxious trepidation, and sure enough there it was!

Sort of mimics the look on my face when I found the "missing" backstay plate.....