To be totally clear… I am truly in the thick of it right now. These last days will make or break us. But I do believe that I can make it to the start line. Which, for those who don’t know, is the impossible part. Everything beyond that is just a bonus. For the last year, every day of my life has been spent working on Phoenix do Mar. From the outside, she may not look all that different to the untrained eye. But everything above and beneath the surface has been touched, rebuilt, replaced, and strengthened, with my hands. She is a very different boat than the one that became my new home a year ago. This has been the hardest undertaking of my life. There have been days I thought I was finally getting ahead, only to tear something apart again the next morning. There’s even been a few days where Ive seriously thought about quitting. There have been failures, mistakes, setbacks, and more blood, sweat, and even tears left on this boat than I knew I had to give. To quote Captain Jack Aubrey fr...