It took me a year to recover before I started working on the boat again.

I know how it feels to recover after a major disaster. The wind goes out of your sails and you just can't bear to look at the project for awhile.

The problem is that you can completely lose momentum and some people just never recover and 20 years later they still have a partially completed project gathering dust in the basement.

Somehow you need to get back on the horse right away, but then again you don't want to make any hasty decisions about how to deal with the issue.

I find the best thing to do is to keep working. But start with some other aspect of the project that needs doing. Maybe you need to cut material for a coaming, or get your fiberglass ordered, or make a tool to pull staples.

Work on something that helps your project move forward, but that gives you a little time to consider options for you disaster.

Usually there is a quick and easy way to get around a problem. I've split partially stripped boats apart enough times over the years, that now I know it only takes a few minutes to glue it back together. I've dropped partially glassed boats on the floor and had to repair glass, laid down a complete layer of glass only to have to strip it off, cut strips too short, drilled footbrace holes in the wrong place, cut deck fitting holes the wrong size, cut cockpits in the wrong place, dealt with non-curing epoxy, decks that didn't match hulls, on and on.

Don't let a mistake stop you. Find some other task that needs doing, and keep moving forward. I've come up with some of my best ideas by trying to figure out how to recover from a mistake. Give the mistake a little time to suggest a solution, but try not to walk away from the project for too long lest you never find a way back.