You Bought What?!?!?!?!

What do you do when you're losing momentum on your current project? When you can't be bothered doing anything on it? When it all seems like too much work? You buy something bigger, in worse condition, that demands unrealistic growth of your already over-stretched skills and patience!!

The benefit is twofold; firstly, it reminds you that your current task isn't so difficult - that if you're prepared to even begin such a mammoth undertaking, you should be able to knock out what you're currently working on in no time!

Secondly, the speedy (rushed) completion of the task at hand reminds you how quickly things can get done, and how you do have the skills to pull this off.

That's the theory anyway.

This story begins with Wee Dave again perusing the pages of New Zealand's premier eBay knockoff, TradeMe. Listed in the wrong section, under a confusing title, I happened upon an auction for a 32 foot planing launch hull, with large, vital pieces cut from the hull, and the general appearance of something that would not be prone to floating. Ever.

"Ha!" I thought, "even I wouldn't buy that!" I realised after a few seconds that what I meant was "I really, really want to buy that. I must somehow find the money and space."

When I think of money, space, and a combination of hyper-positivity and unflinching self-belief that almost rivals mine, I think of one person. Hamish. A two minute phone conversation was all that was required to seal the deal - we were going to buy it, we were going to fix it, and we were going to be - LAUNCH-OWNERS.

The following few days were a blur, what I do remember is explaining to everyone that questioned our judgement in this investment that what they were feeling was "launch-envy", and being slightly worried that I may have some kind of manic euphoria disorder.

We ended up winning the auction, and drove down to Raglan (around 2 hours south-west) to pick it up soon after. Hamish and I giggled incessantly for the entire duration of the drive, and arrived to find something that was completely worthy of launch-envy, both in mine and Hamish's definition and the sense in which others' criticism was intended.

As you can see in the photo, it made my giant Bedford Van look small! On the con side, it did have some serious rot and a large hole in the bottom, plus it was only 28 (NOT 32 ) feet long. Still, LAUNCH-OWNERS!!