Here is an odd linguistic point to ponder while your conversing with
your boat. Many languages are built on nouns assigned to gender, but
several languages also assign nouns into animate or inanimate objects.
Almost all languages gender link a vessel to being female. However, most
aboriginal cultures and several other languages have assigned boats to
being animate nouns (possessing life or a soul) By such a standard
communicating with your boat and her sister in process would
only be... (dare I say) logical

Boat building is I think an undertaking of both the cerebral and
an act of faith. At the same time we measure and plan our cuts,
we also take it on faith that when we gouge into a piece of wood
with steel we will find something, Something animate.

When I lived in Greenland. (Thule and Sonderstrom) I used to
see the Inuit carvers and other artisans routinely begin work
by asking the soapstone, wood, ivory etc. what
it wanted to be. They continued talking to it as if the project was
being worked in partnership. Despite my western, age of
reasoning way of thinking, I still often find myself slipping into
conversation with my boats both in the water and on the strong back.
As you noted in your own experience, I too sometimes I feel like I am
brought to the right answers by that silent piece of wood on the strong
back. By the keel lively in water. In the end, I think any one who has
ever spent more then cursory time liberating animate forms out of the
inside grain of various chunks of wood is aware on some level, that wood
is a soul-full medium to work in.

I think Joseph Gribbons said it best:
"There are many sailors who insist that wooden boats have a soul; that
unlike their mass-produced sisters, they are truly living beings. For the
uninitiated, it is easy to be skeptical of such conceits and to dismiss
them as merely romantic notions. But romance is not infatuation;
it is the engagement of heart and mind, and there are few contrivances
as utterly engaging as boats built of wood. There is something profoundly
important in fashioning timbers and planks for yachts and boats
something very spiritual in the shaping of material. Perhaps it has
to do with ancient things; a blending of of ancient skills with an ancient
resource. Or perhaps it has to do with with the honor of transforming
something so grand and graceful as a tree into something so lithe
and lovely as a boat. Certainly there are few opportunities in life
these days to blend art, science and the natural world in so
dramatic a fashion." -From Wooden Boats, From Skulls to Yachts

Enjoy the conversations,
!RUSS