It's Complicated

Idée fixe: an idea or desire that dominates the mind, an obsession.

When I bought my first sailboat in nineteen oatcake (or thereabouts), I had a well thought out list of criteria. “sustained ability to float” was high on the list, along with “dry down below” (which, I now realize, may become a personal criterion in the not too distant future), “pointing ability,” “blister free,” and so on. However, right at the top came “full headroom.” While all the rest of the criteria were negotiable, this one was not. My idée fixe.

Where this desire for loftiness came from, I have no idea (I have always been a scrawny, bendy 5' 8"; a perfect frame for coping with confined spaces), but I got stuck with it. As a result, Boat Number One (a Virgo Voyager), in spite of being only twenty-three feet long, had over six feet of headroom. From certain angles it looked just fine, but caught exposed, with its butt hanging out, it struggled to hide its resemblance to a very tall bathtub. On a mooring, in anything above a moderate breeze, it was a wild thing, gyrating like a bronco machine in a bar. It had redeeming features, though. Did I mention full headroom?