a meaningful "reuse" susan

“Reduce, reuse, re, re, cycle your trash… “ the beginning of a song I learned with my kids when they were young. I can guess where my commitment to recycling came from! My parents were young in the Depression but their families were the kind of people who worked hard and had options. They grew their own food, especially on my father’s side and they were “handy” with tools and could fix things that broke rather than discard them. So, with our new rigging we faced the dilemma that the existing roller furler did not fit. We would buy a new furler, but what about the perfectly functional Harken furler that was on Gypsy? I heard the points made about the fact that the equipment was old and no one was going to want to do what it would take to install an old part, but what were we going to do, throw it away?! I was conflicted! It becomes a gut reaction with me! I have gotten plenty of reinforcement in my lifetime that hanging on to random items pays off! We currently are not in a position to save anything! More than one time I voiced my frustration that we were not in a place where there would be someone who could find a use for this discarded part – either for the intended use or for some new ingenious invention! The best plan we could come up with was that we would salvage what we could from the mechanism and then we would cut up the metal and recycle it as scrap!

It was a busy day and I had my tasks on Gypsy; Dan headed over to the mast area to attach some hardware that he had removed when he painted the mast. He would disassemble the roller furler and get it to recycling. That was the plan. When Dan joined me at the boat he was beaming and told me I was going to be very happy!

Not sure what was to follow, he certainly had my attention! As Dan was removing the roller furler a man he had not seen before approached him and questioned what Dan planned to do with that mechanism. Dan explained that it had briefly served us well but since we were improving our rigging we had decided to replace the furler. This man has been living for years like a hermit crab in a shrink-wrapped 50’ boat salvaging parts from other vessels; patiently collecting the odd bits and pieces needed to complete his dream. Additions have been made to this “home” as they have come his way.
We have passed by this “dwelling” hundreds of times without knowing anyone lived there and probably would not have known anything of this man if it had not been for the roller furler. The resolution of this “reuse” dilemma couldn’t have had a more fitting ending. It is magical to me to realize the coincidence of the situation; a lovely coincidence it was!