Leap of Mexican Faith

I feel like I’ve looked at a load of the William Garden designed Formosa’s.  In the sailing community these boats have the nick name of Leaky Teaky’s.  The Teak deck’s leak like bottomless buckets.  I talked to one owner that told me he removed the teak on his and found that the majority of the bungs on deck had no screw under them but, they had drilled the screw’s hole in the deck.  I’ve had a couple of people tell me that they won’t come about without the aid of the Iron Genoa (engine for the landlubbers).  This one shows evidence of termite damage at the mast partners.  I was told that the roller furling blew apart just before the jib was shredded in a blow.  It has, for me, the least desireable bunk arrangement in the Master Cabin.  So, I put a sizeable deposit down on it and am flying off to Mexico to buy it of course.  I just like the boats.  It’s like having an ugly dog, you just love em and that’s all there is to it.  For those of us that suffer from a bad case of Nautical Narcosis, a boat can be sold with just a well drawn sheer line.  I am sure this boat is waiting for me to arrive so that it can begin sucking my bank account dry like a big floating leach.  A folk singer friend of mine wrote a song with what I consider the perfect line in it.  It sums up the relationship between all boat owners and their boats.  The line is, “My boat only loves me for my money”.  To most of us it is a painful one sided love affair,…that we walk into with both eyes wide open, over and over and over…..

Capt Ron

I have just completed an 11,000 mile drive around the country looking for the perfect boat to buy and live aboard, again.  What I found, and I think I knew this already, is that boat isn’t out there unless you build it yourself.  I looked at a steel three masted schooner that was gutted and thought about finishing her out.  I opted not to go back to boat building in favor of boat sailing.  I looked at more boats than I can remember .  Every one of them was in “sail away” condition.  And most of them were ready to go to sea, if you planned on donating the boat to the Artificial Reef Project.  The most fun was looking at the actual boat used in the movie “Capt Ron”.  It was,  if you can believe it, in worse condition than it was in the movie.  The poor owner had a “caretaker” living aboard that made Ron look like Capt Cook.  This week I head to Mexico to look at a couple more boats, wish me luck.

Hunting For Home

I’ll be shutting down for a short time here for a couple of reasons.  The first one is that I’ve just about burned this computer up and need to get another.  The second one is that I’m moving out of my house and leaving to find a sailboat somewhere that will serve as home.  I will buy another computer in the next week and begin relaying the stories of our adventures as we hunt for home.

Survival at Sea

“You’ve got to meet this guy,  I think you’ll really like him”.  That statement was how I set in motion the end of my first marriage.  She liked John a whole lot.  She liked him so much that she took almost everything I had.  The next thing I knew I was making a deal with a guy named Danny for a 42 foot Pivor trimaran to live on.  This may sound like I was living the high life but let me set you streight here, anytime you can buy a 42 foot sailboat for $4000 you are not going to live the high life.  You might be better off living in a cardboard box behind the strip mall.  Danny couldn’t find the title to the boat at the moment I handed over the money but I trusted him because he was the brother of a very good friend.  Yes I was young and stupid, I’ve already proved that.  I rowed out to my new home and found out that Danny hadn’t taken the trash out.  There were trash bags all over the deck so I began to clean up.  I quickly found out that the bags were carefully place on deck to cover the holes.  Did I mention I hadn’t really looked at the boat before I paid for it?  Did I already mention the young and stupid thing?  I got the trash bags, or deck patches, as Danny liked to think of them, off the boat and began to set up house.   Pivors were a boat that was built by anyone that bought the plans.  You didn’t have to have any knowledge of boatbuilding or even boats to begin building one and there are a lot of Pivors out there to prove it.   They were made of plywood and epoxy and that mix is very strong if you know what you are doing.  Most didn’t.  My boat (as soon as I get the title) appeared to have been started by someone who knew what they were doing.  Started but not finished.  Most boats that home builders start never get finished for the same reasons, 1 ran out of money, 2 ran out of time, 3 ran out of enthusiasm, 4 dreams had to make room for new baby.  My boat was never finished by the original builder.  I could see where the good work left off and the really bad work started by, as it turned out, by Danny.  He had finished off the interior of the vessel with T- 111 exterior siding.  This is a rough cedar plywood covering for your house.  I think I still have wood slivers imbedded in my body from the interior of that boat.  I figured I could live with that for a while.  What was real hard to live with was the roaches.  These were not the little German guys, these were the big dudes that run the state of Florida.  They didn’t run away when I turned on the lights because they were in mass and they knew they could take me anytime.  I secretly became chemical Ali and nuked the boat, with stuff that I am sure is illegal today, to rid me of the roaches.  It killed off the sick the old and the young ones but  the big strong alpha male types survived my attack.  And now they had an attitude.   I had a dog, because the former wife didn’t want him, and we slept together for protection.  He would growl to alert me that they were getting close.  My battle with them went on for several months as a stand off, nether side able to gain an advantage and nether side had an “Exit Strategy”.  It all changed the day I stood in the galley drinking my morning coffee.  I was looking at the T-111 siding behind the galley sink and thinking “This has to go today”.  I picked up my 28 oz Estwing framing hammer and buried the claw end in the paneling and ripped it off.  “Holy Shit”  the roaches poured out like liquid into the sink.  I was outta there.  From up in the Pilothouse I could see down into the galley and what my problem had been all along.  I was looking at what was behind the panel I had just ripped out, ……shelves full of dirty pots, dishes and silverware.  Rather than do the dishes, Danny had just paneled over them.  Now that I had found the roach command post the war turned in my favor.  Operation Mop Up didn’t last long.  However, I now had a new war to fight, Danny.  I didn’t know how I would get him but, I knew I just had to.   Soon after my thoughts toward Danny had turned evil, the Christmas Boat Parade passed my boat in the dark.  My boat had no anchor lights as required by law , but I felt safe tucked out of the way of every body.  I never counted on the lost 60 foot sport fishing boat  in the parade that was being skippered by a drunk.  He ran over my anchor rode.  He wrapped it up on both his prop shafts ripping his engines off their mounts, bending his shafts and cutting my rode.   Both boat were now adrift.  Lucky for me I was out on a date that night so, when the Coast Guard arrived on scene they couldn’t find the owner of the Pivor because,  as luck would have it, Danny still hadn’t given me the title to the boat.  The Coasties arrested the drunk and shoved my boat up on shore at the Sand Piper Resort.  Sand Piper wasn’t too happy about it, they were looking for someone to charge rent to and the Coast Guard was looking for someone to charge their huge towing bill to.  Not to mention the matter of a boat without anchor lights, unregistered  on the Federal waterway.  The drunk Captain was looking for someone to sue for the damage to his boat.  I moved in with my date and kept my mouth shut about the boat.  A couple weeks later I was out sailing with a friend when a speed boat pulled up along side us with Danny one of the passengers.  After a little small talk we invited him aboard our boat.  He asked me what I was doing and I told him I was moving out of state.  “What are you going to do with the boat?’, he asked.  I said I couldn’t take it with me and continued, “I might as well give it back to you, you still have the title right?  I’ve gotten my monies worth out of it.  It’s down at Sand Piper, just tell them it’s your boat”.  He couldn’t believe how nice I was being to him and thanked me over and over.  I kept a streight face as good as I have ever kept one.  Danny was never hear of again.  By the way, the owner of the sailboat I was sailing on was John, my x had dumped him too.  I love this life!

Peter

I can’t for the life of me remember exactly how or when I met Peter.  I’m sure it was on the dock in Stuart, FL though.   I just remember we were always buddies.  I was living on a wreck of a 42 ft Pivor Trimaran and he had a Pearson Vanguard.  We were sailing bums, dock rats and waterfront bar supporters.  I was fresh from a divorce and he was from the Isle of Man.  He’d left his home at the age of 17 and sailed around the world twice on a 26′ sailboat.  He cruised for a few years with Tristan Jones and was the finest sailor I’ve ever known.  He had real sea sense and salt water in his veins.  Well what ever it was that was in his veins had a head on it.  I didn’t fully grasp his level of knowledge until the first time we cruise together.  He needed to renew his cruising permit in the states which entailed leaving, checking in at customs in the Bahamas and then returning to the states.  It sounded like fun to me.  Queig (five in Galic because it was his fifth boat) had no visible means of navigation aboard.  “I took a bit of a hit of lightning a few years back and never replaced anything”, he told me when I asked if we had a VHF.  When we cleared the inlet he stood on the bow and looked at the water and the sky, after a while he pointed and told me to come round to that heading.  Off we sailed with a bone in our teeth and 57 miles later we glided streight into the slip at West End.  Peter was what is known as a Wayfinder or a Polynesian Navigator.  He could read the waves and ripples in the water.  Each island disturbs the waves as they pass and their pattern as well as the clouds told him where we needed to go.  I learned to listen to this crazy Manxman when he said anything about sailing.  And for that matter, women and dark beer too.  West End was a big Club Med kind of a resort where you paid a set price and everything was free after that.  The plan was to pick up a couple of girls and when ever they got drinks they would get two extras.  We were like rum soaked pirates for the weekend.  Monday morning we headed back to Florida with our heads in our hands.  I was on watch as we approached the coast around three in the morning.  I was expecting to see the sea bouy and the entrance to the Worth inlet but I wasn’t picking up the light of the bouy.  I could see the lights of the city, the smoke stacks of the power station and the lights on the bridge but, no sea bouy.  It had to be there somewhere I kept telling myself as  I sailed closer and closer to the coast.  It wasn’t long before Peter rolled out of his bunk and stuck his head up through the companionway, “What’s up” he says, and I told him what was going on.  He looked at me, smiled and said, “Ahh yes ya bloody Scot, isn’t it easy to convince yourself you’re right mate”.  Of course he was right, that’s exactly what I was doing.  We turned south and began looking for a fishing boat to ask where we were.  It was a much better idea than sailing smack into the beach.  It wasn’t long before we saw a boat and sailed up to it.  “Ahoy there!” we called.  I need to mention that Peters boat had no electronics of any kind which ment no running lights on a black hull.  I say this because of what happened next.  We were instantly drenched in blinding light as M-16s came out of everywhere.  We hadn’t found a fisherman, we found the DEA, US Customs and the sheriffs Patrol looking for drug runners.  And we had scared the bejesus out of them.  “Where are you coming from?” was the call from their boat.  “The Bahamas”, I answered.  “Prepare to be boarded”, they yelled back and on board they came. 

Have you ever had something happen and just as it does you recall a string of innocent things you have done that will now look very bad.  I was having just those thoughts.  We were sailing on a moonless night with no lights on.  We weren’t using the head on the boat because it was the sail locker now.  That ment that when we were polishing ourselves up, for a night of plundering the town, we had to do it at the galley sink.  I had a mirror that we could prop up on the hand rail above the sink to comb hair and wash our faces.  While we were underway the mirror was laid flat on the table the fiddle rail to keep it in place.  In the 70s and 80s any mirror laid flat on a table ment one thing, coke.  This is what was going through my mind as I lead the Customs agent into the main salon.  I had my laundry in a racket ball bag on the table and as the agent began to settle down in the dinette I quickly zipped it up and threw it into the darkness of the cabin.  As soon as I did it I thought, Oh, that didn’t look to suspicious did it Mike.  The agent slid the mirror out of his way to put his clipboard down on the table, “Who’s the boat registered to?” the questions began.  He never looked at the mirror or the bag I was so quick to stash.  When he got done with his questions he said, “Well I guess I should have a look around”, so, I picked up a flash light and pointed it in a couple different directions and he looked where ever I pointed.  I kept thinking that this was some kind of game they played with smugglers before things got ugly but, it wasn’t.  They said goodnight and gave us directions to the inlet.  We were about nine miles north of where I though we were.  I could see why we were loosing the war on drugs.  The next day, after checking back in with customs, we sailed up the coast to Stuart.  As we neared the inlet a grey plane with dark windows did tight circles on our mast and then buzzed the surf line a couple times.  They were making sure we weren’t dropping of square grouper (bails of marijuana as the fisherman called them) .  As we crossed the demarcation line a sheriffs Patrol boat came along our starboard side and announced that he intended to board us for a safety inspection.  Peter said, “No”.  “What do you mean, no?” said the sheriff.  Peter answered, “No, I’m a foreign vessel and you do not have permission to board”.  He pulled back the folded dodger that covered the Isle of Man sticker.  “But you are in US waters”  said the sheriff.  “It doesn’t matter.  I can’t just board you if you are sailing in the Isle of Man” Peter argued.  This conversation went of for around 45 minutes until the sheriff had no idea if he could or couldn’t.  He actually had his hat off and scratching his head saying, “I think I can”.  Peter said, “Look the only way you can board a foreign vessel is if you are invited”.  The sheriff was quiet for a moment then asked, “Would you invite me aboard?”.  “Sure” said Peter, “Come on aboard”.  We were nearly at our anchorage anyway.  We became very good friends with the sheriff and always laughed about our first meeting.  We never settled who was right.

The last time I saw Peter, he had lined up a job for the two of us slurping tropical fish in Jamaica.  That’s snorkeling all day with what looks like a giant hypodermic to suck up the fish for pet stores.  The problem was that I had met a girl.  Change of plans.  I cast off his lines for him and watched him sail out of sight.  I got a post card a few months later.  A picture of the little bay that he worked in, the caption just said, “It’s Eden, Peter”.  Later I found he had sailed on down to Bonaire and gone from my life.  Perhaps we will cross wakes again some day.  That would be a good thing.

Vernon Davis

He seemed to be very good at not being noticed.  He didn’t walk with a stride or even a shuffle, he slid.  He was short and thin with hair that looked more like a five o’clock shadow.  He should have been dead for years but, he just refused to go.  He raced speed boats years ago and was world champion for several years until he crashed.  He was thrown right through the side of his boat, they said he wouldn’t live through the night.  Vernon and his wife Lessie were married at the age of 14 and had lived in the same house ever since.  They were both 84 years old when I first met them and still very much in love.  I always thought that he was still living because he wouldn’t leave Lessie. 

Vernon had always been a boat builder and builders of race boats came from all over the country to get his opinion on hull design.  He didn’t have much in the way of formal education but, he could just look at the hull shape and tell you that removing 1/4 inch from the bottom of the transom would give you another three or four knots.  When the US Navy needed 110′ wooden mine sweepers built in WWII they were led to Vernon’s door.  When they asked to see his plans, Vernon held up a square stick with marks all up and down the sides.  They went nuts at first but were soon convinced, after he explained that the each of the four sides represented each of the offsets of the hull, that he knew what he was doing.  He built 110′ boats for the Navy with no plans drawn anywhere.  I found myself teaching wooden boat building for the local college in Vernon’s old shop.  The same shop that had been George Washington Creef’s, the developer of carvel planking, and the shop that the  replica of the 15th century Elizabeth, the Elizabeth II, was built in.  This shop predated the Civil War.  It dripped history and I felt a heavy responsibility that came with it.  As I would teach the class, Vernon would slide in silently from somewhere and just stand in the corner with the wry smile that never left his face, watching.  After class he would take me aside an give me a boatbuilding lesson.  “Do it this way – do it that way”, never in front of the students.  He taught me the stick method, the joggle stick technique and to leave the tape measure in my tool box.  In the fifteen years that I was teaching I learned quit a bit as is usually the case when teaching anything but,  with Vernon there, I learned the old techniques that are mostly lost today.  Teaching in that historical shop ment that I had a constant stream of “experts” walking in the door telling how to build a boat.  Vernon watched this too.  He told me about his first boat.  “I set up my saw horses in my backyard and began to build.  It wasn’t long before they began to stop by and tell me how it should be done.  Seems everyone in town had an opinion about my boat.  Being that this was my first boat, I followed their advice to the letter.  When I got her done I stepped back to admire my first boat.  It was the ugliest thing I had ever seen.  I set it over on the side of my backyard and began to build another boat.  Right away they all showed up again and began to tell me how to do it.  I stopped them with a raised hand and said, “This is my boat, that’s yours over there”‘.  A good lesson in life, I’ve built my own boat ever since.

Just before I moved away I bumped into Vernon at the post office and chatted for a few minutes.  As I turned to leave I asked him to tell Lessie “Hi” for me.  It was the first time I can remember that smile not being there, “I wish I could” was all he said.   The love of his life was gone and I don’t expect he waited around much longer.

Arrrgh! It Be Sailor Talk

The only comment to my last post reminded me that sailors speak a different language than landlubbers (people) do.  It’s a language that is born of the necessity to communicate without any misunderstanding while at sea.  I could say, “Would you attach the big sail to the wire thingy at the pointy end of the boat” or I could say, “Hank on the Genny”.  I could go on for pages and pages with a Sailor to People Dictionary but I think I’ll skip it here.  What has always fascinated me is word and phrase origins.  The more I sailed the more I found how much of the “Old Sayings” and words we use came from sailing.  Even the heels on our shoes came from sailors using them to keep their feet from slipping off the lines in the rigging.    On the old fighting ships the cannon balls were stacked in little pyramid-shaped piles on deck.  The iron cannon balls were set on a stand of spikes that was made of brass.  Young boys were employed to deliver the balls and powder from below to the guns during battle.  The sailors called them “Powder Monkeys” or just “Monkeys” because of their ability to crawl and climb around in the small spaces.  The brass stands were called brass monkeys and when it gets cold enough the brass constricts faster than the iron and the balls fall off and roll around the deck.   So, I would say, “It’s Cold Enough To Freeze The Balls Off A Brass Monkey”.  The old sailing ships were built very heavy and could never be taken out of the water after they were launched.  The seams between the planks on the sides of the boats were stuffed with something called Oakem that looked like old Manila rope.  When it gets wet it swells up to ten times it original volume, making the boat water tight.  After time  the seams would begin to leak and be in need of recaulking.  The problem being that if you pulled out the Oakem to replace it the boat would quickly sink.  The solution was to take the boat to the shallow water and waite for the tide to go out.  They would begin with the lowest plank and start calking or as it’s called by sailors and boatbuilders, “paying”.  The trick was to stay ahead of the rising tide.  The seam that is just below the waterline of the boat is called “The Devil”.  If you don’t get the job done fast enough the water overtakes the empty seams and the boat will sink.  If it doesn’t get done, “You’ll Have The Devil To Pay”.  One night  it was blowing hard and I was trying to get the anchor down in a small cove.  The wind was blowing me toward the rocks on shore.  I dropped the anchor over the side and watched as the anchor rode payed out (I watched the anchor rope run over the side) when all of a sudden the end of the rope went over the side too.  I had forgotten to tie it to the boat.  Anchor and rope gone to the bottom and the rocks still looming.  It’s for this often repeated screw-up that the end of any rope on a boat is referred to as “The Bitter End”.  The list goes on, in the days of sail the big clipper ships would have a million dollars worth of rope in the rigging.  When a rope would break the two ends would be spliced together rather than buy new rope.  This money saving technique was known as “Making Ends Meet”.  Here’s one that even most sailors don’t know,  the terms Port and Starboard, meaning left and right side of the boat, came from the Vikings.  Their boats had the rudder on the left side of the boat and not rear end.  If they tied their boats up to the dock on the rudder side it would be beaten against the dock and destroyed.  So they had a side for the rudder and a side to tie to the port.  The rudder was called the Steornborgh (sp I’m sure) but the British sailors mangled the pronunciation to steeringboard which with their accent the rest of the world heard it as starboard, port and starboard.  I could go on but I think that’s enough for one post.  I just wanted to show you that you are more of a Jack Tar than you thought.  What’s a Jack Tar?

Basic Seamanship

Her length over all was 26 foot, a 6 foot beam and a 4 foot draft, she was a needle through the water.  A Luders, an L16.  The first time I laid eyes on her she was on the hard waiting for someone to buy her and put her overboard, someone to breath life back into her.  These were down sized meter boats, built for a 15 year old kid to sail while the parents were out racing the real thing.  I fell in love with her lines that were first penned back in the early thirtys.They were called L 16s because although the total length was 26 ft, she was only 16 ft on the waterline.  My hull was cold molded 1/4 inch mahogany plywood with the trunk cabin of the early boats.  I put her in on Lake St Clair north of Detroit.  I was new to sailing in those days, my experience was mostly sunfish and such.  I was anxious to head out on a long voyage .  My plan was to sail from the US side of the lake and make for the Thames River on Canada’s side, 26 miles away.  I headed out on a beautiful day early in the morning.  There wasn’t a breath of air and the lake was a sheet of glass the color of grey and burgundy.  No sound but the putting of my 4 hp outboard hung off the stern.  Not another boat in sight, I had the lake to myself.   I decided to hank on the genoa and get ready for the breezes that were sure to come up as the sun warmed the day.  I tied off the tiller and made my way forward to the bow and began the task of attaching the sail to the forestay.  Everything was as perfect as a young man could hope for.  A wonderful boat under me making about 4 knots towards an empty horizon  filled with the unknown.  I was lost in the moment.  Without any warning, I was hanging in mid-air about 5 feet above the deck.  The wake from a large boat that was out of sight had caught us.  The overhangs created by long deck and short waterline made the boat a big rocking horse and it had just bucked be off.  In that second or so I hung in the air my head filled with the thoughts of a man about to die.  The chances of me coming back down on that very narrow bow were nil.  I was single handing, a basic seamanship no no.   No harness or Jack line to save me.  The tiller was tied off so the boat would continue on without me.  The motor was chugging along at around 4 knots, about 3.5 knots faster than I could swim (if I was in training for the Olympics).  I was about 10 miles off shore and though I could swim that far, the water temperature would kill me long before I got there.  I had a quick premonition of being neck deep in the cold Michigan water and watching the boat I loved slide away with out giving me a second thought.  With a bang and a splash, I landed half on half off the deck grabbing at anything, I latched on to the sail I’d been working, and somehow,  was back on the boat.  How I did it I don’t know.  I’ve always said that the best bilge pump in the world is a scared sailor and a bucket, I can tell you that a scared sailor can do anything, do it well  and do it mighty  fast.  I could hardly walk back to the safety of the cockpit where I sank with a case of the shakes a drunk would be proud of.  Damn! there was no bottle of anything on the boat to settle me down.  I just sat there remembering something my father had taught me, “One hand for yourself, one hand for the boat”.  I had failed to follow a time honored practice of holding on with one hand (one hand for yourself) and working with the other (one hand for the boat) and it had nearly cost me my life.  Years later when I was teaching a Coast Guard Licensing course at the College of the Albemarle I used this story to drive the lesson home.  I would also note to them that 50% of people that go overboard at sea never get back on the boat alive and 70% of sailors bodies that are recovered at sea, have their zippers down…they died peeing off the side of the boat using both hands for themselves.

Heading out for a brush with eternity