All the houses are decked out in light,
Spreading warm, festive cheer through the night,
But our Flutterby strand,
Is strung up just as planned,
On the inside — so selfish, but bright!
Yesterday, we installed 32 feet of 12V “warm white” LED rope light in Flutterby as our primary cabin lighting. It’s beautiful, efficient, and feels like Christmas! (photos to come when the boat is a little less messy…)
It was crowded, and parking was tight,
When we drove into Beaufort last night,
There were Santas and sleighs,
And a lighthouse with rays,
And the Gilligan crew was a sight.
But our friends from Quebec on the pier,
Say they’re lacking in holiday cheer.
“The parade is quite nice,
“But we’ve seen it now, thrice,
“And we’d like to be elsewhere, not here.”
When I wrote this, I thought it was cute, the fact that our friends from Giva will be out cruising this time next year. However, Val didn’t think the joke was funny, and he asked me to include his comments:
I like you to correct the blog you publish on your site.
As the thing goes, we did not say that they were lacking in holiday sheer.
I never ever said that we were tired of the annual Beaufort Holliday flotilla. It is a very nice event that we enjoy seeing every year. What we said was that it was the 3rd Chrismas flotilla that we saw and that we will not be here for the next one because we will be gone cruising. There is a big difference. If you are to report interview, please do it accurently and not with drama to make it interesting.
So did we never said that we were tired of being in the boat yard. We were tired of working on the boat because it as been so long and we want to keep on moving.
I am asking you to correct that incorrectly reported posting on your site or simply remove it.
I don’t think it’s funny
Val
I have set my fine shop-vac to “suck,”
But the dust flies around me, amok!
Now I’ve figured it out,
The solution, no doubt,
Is a “blow job” to get it unstuck.
I hate these steep learning curves! I cleaned the boat for four days, but the dust just reappeared. Finally, I attacked the crevices with the vacuum cleaner hose set to “blow” instead of “suck.” What a mess — this got the fiberglass dust out into the air (I was wearing a respirator), but after it settled, I vacuumed it up.
The conversations went like this: “You hungry?” “Yeah, I could chew my own leg off.” “Peanut butter OK?” “Absolutely!” And dinner would be peanut butter on tortillas on our laps. Again.
For two months, since our return from Burning Man, we’d been camping out. We slept in the back of the van and set up an outdoor kitchen under the boat. Our days, and evenings when we weren’t too tired to hold up our heads, were spent working.
Over the summer, we had removed every piece of hardware from the deck and temporarily sealed over 100 holes. By September, it was time to grind the rotted core around those holes, removing fiberglass and balsa and making horrible clouds of dust. The work required full protective gear, all the time — Tyvek suits, gloves, and respirators.
We emptied the boat of everything but tools. Our rented storage locker was crammed to the ceiling, and the boat was surrounded by plastic tote bins. The van was a total disaster, heaps of clothing divided into categories like “boatyard-skanky” and “going-to-town.” I nearly died of embarrassment when I thought I was going to a drive-thru with a friend, and we ended up at a pizza place instead. I was wearing boatyard-skanky instead of going-to-town clothes.
But the real storage challenge was the camp kitchen, located under the bow of the boat. The problem was, I just couldn’t stay ahead of the conditions.
When we first moved out of the boat, I fretted about the sun melting my chocolate. We rigged a tarp over the table, and within 24 hours, high winds had ripped it to shreds. So now I had to worry about hot sun and high winds.
I began the daily shade-shuffle: Moving my food bins from place to place several times a day, just to keep them cool.
After sun and high winds came the bugs, tiny, insidious flies that climbed into my bins and tried to get into my food. Now, in addition to working on the boat and shuffling my bins around, I had to clean the bins and repackage the food.
The days got shorter, so cooking had to be done in the dark with flashlights. I really hated those little bugs. They were completely invisible on a black skillet at dusk. Good thing I’m not a vegetarian. Good thing it was daylight when the black widow spider crawled into the Britta pitcher.
Then came the rains. I had put my canned goods in a big old cooler (no ice), and guess what? The cooler leaked! Now I had a nice collection of rusty cans. But there was some consolation — the bugs drowned, and I didn’t have to worry about keeping food in the shade — there was no sun.
The winds came back, and without a tarp over the stove, we couldn’t cook. Now things were looking a bit grim. We spent hours sitting in the van, knees against knees, watching the rain blowing sideways and fighting over the computer. Peanut butter tortillas began to appear more frequently on the menu.
The final straw was the cold. The van was warm, with a tiny space heater keeping us comfortable when the temperatures dropped into the low 20’s. But what about the kitchen? Grumbling, I bundled up and went outside, with a flashlight, to pack insulating items like flour and rice around glass bottles of vinegar and rose water.
When it was over — we moved back aboard the day before Thanksgiving — I realized that the camp kitchen had thrown challenge after challenge, but nothing insurmountable. There were no bears, no raccoons, and no food went bad. We didn’t starve or suffer vitamin deficiencies, and we only had to order pizza twice in two months.
Besides, the location was awesome. Our borrowed picnic table sat right on the water, so we could watch the parade of boats on the ICW. When dolphins came, especially at night, we heard them before we saw them. We were even far enough from most other people to give us a little privacy.
With the exception of no HVAC, poor cabinetry, a too-small refrigerator, and a leaky roof, we actually had an ideal kitchen. It had plenty of counter space — thanks to Val and Gigi. It had a great propane stove — thanks to Kris. It had a double sink (two dishpans) and running water — a half-gallon plant sprayer someone had abandoned at Burning Man. What more could you ask?
The next time I catch myself complaining about conditions, feel free to stop me. There are many people out there who don’t have peanut butter or rusty cans of artichoke hearts, or chocolate. We should all be so lucky.
You know you’re living in the South when…
YKYLITSW…someone uses the term “corned pigtails” in casual conversation.
I was chatting with Anique the other day about the big traditional Thanksgiving dinner she had planned. She was going to do a big ol’ stuffed turkey, using her Mom’s recipe for the stuffing, and a corned ham glazed with pineapple sauce.
“So what vegetables do you serve?” I asked, wondering what was considered traditional here in coastal North Carolina. She mentioned potatoes and sweet potatoes, and “collards cooked the way my Grandma used to make them, with corned pigtails.”
Huh? I didn’t want to sound like an idiot, but were the corned pigtails a separate dish, or part of the collards?
So I went to the Piggly Wiggly. Next to the collards was a big refrigerated case of things I don’t normally eat. Lard, and fatback (which looked like more lard), and something called “streak of lean” (that also looked like more lard). At the end of the table: A big heap of salted pigtails. But not corned ones.
I went back to Anique once again. “They only had salted pigtails.” She laughed at my inexperience with strange pig parts. “Corned, salted — it’s the same thing.”
YKYLITSW…a black widow spider crawls into your Britta pitcher.
Yesterday morning, I woke up to a heavy frost. Ice on the water bucket told me it had been super-cold overnight. I went out to get coffee from our outdoor kitchen and glanced at the Britta pitcher, which I figured had also frozen.
Our Britta is missing its lid, and there was something black in the top. A big, bulbous spider, curled up, apparently dead from the cold. I stared in surprise at the red hourglass on its — her — abdomen. I’d never seen a black widow before, but I recognized it immediately.
I used a stick to poke her and turn her over. Then I left her there, thinking “Barry has to see this!”
The sun came out, the world warmed, and Barry went over to see my dead spider. When he came back, he asked me, “Was she wiggling when you found her? She’s wiggling now.”
All I could say was, “Eek! Good thing I didn’t poke her with my finger.”
The next time I walked over, she was walking around in the top of the pitcher. The thought of her escaping and running around in my outdoor kitchen was disturbing, so I put a glass jar over her. A few hours later, she seemed dead again, and I capped the jar.
I told my friends I had saved the dead black widow, thinking to send it to someone. They howled with laughter. “Someone you don’t like a lot? How many enemies have you got?” “No, no,” I protested, “maybe a youngster with an insect collection, or…oh, never mind!”
YKYLITSW…signs have appeared in your neighborhood advertising “Flight-Trained Bobwhites.”
I have no idea what these are. Barry says I should call the phone number on the sign, just to find out. I wonder if they’re related to corned pigtails?
When the giant green tarp came off, a beautiful boat was revealed. She was long and slender, a classic design evoking an earlier era.
The beauty was marred, though, by the piles of dusty and mildewed gear that appeared on the ground under the boat. I wandered over to meet the new arrivals. “Looks like you’re having a yard sale over here,” I quipped.
Susie and Ron had the look of aging hippies — gray hair in a ponytail, young eyes surrounded by a network of sun-baked smile lines. Susie was wearing a path to the “free” table in the lounge, donating large jars with handmade burlap covers and labels that said things like “bulgur.”
Friendly, but too busy to talk.
A day later, their adult son, Ocean arrived, along with two of his friends. The story emerged in the form of boatyard gossip, with everyone contributing the tidbit he or she had garnered from the busy crew.
Ron and Susie had cruised Catania for 22 years, and Ocean had been born aboard. Now the parents had “swallowed the anchor,” living ashore in Maine. After six years, they realized they weren’t going to cruise on the 71-year-old boat again. Storage fees had added up to nearly the value of the boat.
I wish I knew know who came up with the plan — whether Ron and Susie offered, or whether Ocean asked. But the plan was this: To refit Catania and then hand her off to Ocean, who would sail back to St. Thomas. The timing was tight, so the young man recruited two friends to help with both the refit and the delivery.
The crew worked so fast and so hard that the rest of the boatyard community watched, astonished, with something like envy. While Barry and I agonized over tiny fiberglass patches, Catania’s crew fiberglassed the entire topsides. While we worried about painting the pads under our stanchions, they painted the entire boat. We haven’t even figured out what engine mounts to install, and they replaced their entire engine. One of them even carefully hand-painted the name of the boat on the sides of the classic yacht.
At night, the five of them, plus an aging German Shepherd, retired to a small tent trailer in a secluded part of the boatyard. We never saw them, except during daylight hours when they were working flat-out.
Finally, after about three weeks, they launched the boat, and she sat at the dock for a couple of days. The frenzied preparations continued, and the air was full of anticipation for the crew of three young men.
On a Sunday morning, the boys left Bock Marine. From the high vantage point of my deck, I watched the hugs and group photos. As they slipped the lines, Susie called out “Bon Voyage!” It was a touching moment, watching the older generation turning the family home over to the younger generation.
I ran into Susie a little later. She looked vibrant and happy; Ron looked tired. They were doing final cleanup and giving away even more stuff. We took the Britta pitcher; Blaine took the table saw. Then the truck was gone, headed for Maine. Where the boat had been was an empty space full of jackstands, cribbing, an old engine, and an abandoned windsurfer.
That night, I went into the lounge. “Did you hear? Catania is back at the dock. They had a leak.”
“Bummer,” I said, thinking of our friend, Dan, who has launched his boat four times and had to pull it back out for repairs each time. This sort of thing is not uncommon.
On Monday morning, I saw the three young men on deck, folding sails. Susie and Ron, who had been well on their way to Maine, returned around mid-day. Susie was smoking a cigarette, something I hadn’t noticed during the previous three weeks.
The Travelift came, hauled out the boat, and returned it to the original spot. What happened next left me incredulous.
They put the kelly green tarp back over the boat. Then the three young men got into a rental car and headed for the airport. It happened so fast, the gossip couldn’t keep up.
I ran into Susie a little later. “They got out the inlet, but they had some concerns. Ocean’s not sure what he wants to do, maybe come back next fall, or else we’ll sell it.” She seemed a bit shell-shocked.
“But, but, but…” I spluttered, unable to understand. By my reckoning, if they had two weeks planned for the passage, they had two more weeks available to work on the boat.
In just a few hours, the story went from heart-warming to heart-breaking. If I hadn’t been here to witness the drama, I wouldn’t believe it.
We’ve been working off and on for almost a year. Val and Gigi have been here a little longer, and Oscar has been here for over ten years. But our slow-but-steady pace allows us all to make progress, enjoying the process, without burning out.
As a reminder of this, Catania sits quietly under her green tarp, waiting for Ocean to return.
Hey, the deck is done, let’s celebrate!
So we went and ate plate after plate,
At the Golden Corral,
But it sapped my morale,
‘Cause this stomachache will not abate.
Friday seemed like a good time to try the G.C., which our boatyard friends are always talking about. We celebrated with Clark, of Undaunted, who had launched his boat that afternoon. But the acres of food were overwhelming. It reminded me of Two Scoops Moore, who sang: “I can’t stop goin’ back to the big buffet…probably have a heart attack, down at the big buffet.”
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Having driven over 15,000 miles across the USA this year, we’ve seen hundreds of them. Crosses beside the road. Each one saying, “a life was lost here.”
It’s a sobering reminder of the risk we take every time we get behind the wheel.
In some states, instead of homemade crosses, there are signs posted by the Department of Transportation. Wyoming takes down homemade memorials and replaces them with a sign showing a dove on a broken heart. Driving by at 55 mph, the Squid Wagon’s top speed, they look a lot like the logos on portable defibrillators.
The signs in South Dakota are easier to understand. They feature a red “X” to mark the spot, and the thought-provoking words, “Why die?” In some places, there are two, three, or four of these signs together. Four lives lost here.
Doing research for this essay, I found that there’s actually a name for them: Descansos. It’s the Spanish word for a place of rest, a memorial erected at the place where someone died.
Seeing one makes me think, “Am I driving carefully enough?” But in all my life, I’ve never come face-to-face with a traffic fatality.
Until last week.
We’d just driven 750 miles from North Carolina to Florida, and after arriving at Dad’s house, we needed to take a walk and stretch our legs. We decided to look up an old friend we hadn’t seen in over 10 years.
“Are you sure you don’t want to take my car?” Dad asked. No, we assured him, we wanted to walk.
It was an OK walk, except for the lack of sidewalks. I was especially nervous about bad Florida drivers, so I waded through the mud and high grass and trash by the side of the road, to give them plenty of room.
On our way home, Barry and I were walking along holding hands. Nervously, I kept pulling him further away from US 1, over into the puddles.
And then my day was shattered by a terrible sound behind us.
I turned, and as I took in the scene, I started running back towards the intersection. All I cared about was the large man who lay in the center lane. I was pulling out our cell phone as I ran, saying to Barry “He’s not moving – he’s not moving – please, let him be OK!”
I was running, but everything was in slow motion. I took in the motorcycle pieces scattered across the road and the large white van pulling over to the shoulder, but I couldn’t figure out how it happened.
A small group converged in the middle of the road. A woman got on the ground with the prone man. “He’s breathing,” she said, her face on the pavement beside his helmeted head. Cars were passing only a few feet from the two of them, and I began waving them out to the right-most lane. A few minutes later, a police car arrived, and Barry and I left. We hadn’t actually witnessed the accident, and we didn’t want to be in the way.
I was shaking as I walked. The man hadn’t spoken or moved a limb, but his midsection was twitching in a frightening way. Was he going to be OK?
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept reviewing the scene, trying to figure out how he’d been hit, and how he could survive his injuries. There had been no blood, only the ominous dark stains of oil and coolant and fuel under the pieces of his motorcycle.
The next morning, my Dad pointed out a small newspaper article. A 26-year-old man was airlifted to a hospital, where he died. I turned away, tears in my eyes.
His name was Cory. He was engaged to be married in a few months, and he left behind a 7-year-old son. He was a chef at the Moorings Yacht Club.
Cory was killed by a large van that made a left turn out of a parking lot onto the busy highway. The driver must have been in a hurry, or on the phone, because Cory was hard to miss. It was broad daylight, and he had a bright orange motorcycle. He was not a small man. He wore a full-face helmet that matched his bike, despite the fact that helmets are not required in Florida.
A day later, a cross appeared at the intersection. It said “RIP Cory,” and it was decorated with red foil heart-shaped balloons. Every time I passed it, my eyes were drawn to it. Once, as I sat at the stoplight, I watched a jogger pause and look at the photos of the deceased. I felt a lurch in my chest, thinking that Cory was still alive when I saw him.
My happy vacation was subdued, impacted by the senseless death of a stranger. It was a first for me, walking by the scene of a fatal accident, and I won’t ever see motorcycles the same way.
Please, drivers, slow down and be more careful. Whether it’s a motorcycle, a bicycle, a jogger, or another car, it’s a person. None of us wants to be obliterated, replaced by a cross by the side of the road. I don’t ever want to hear that terrible sound again, and I still cry for Cory, even though I never knew him.
Cogito, ergonomic sum: I sit up, therefore I am…not going to a back doctor. (Before and after photos for this one can be found below, on the website.)
My Dad had a terrible slouch,
As he sat at his desk or the couch,
But we found a new chair,
And he sits upright there,
So he no longer whines and says, “Ouch.”
Most of the boats in the yard stand mutely on their jackstands, leaving us to wonder, “What’s the story here?” Our only clues are the boat’s position, her condition, home port, and the detritus on the ground underneath. That, plus a little watching, snooping, and gossiping.
At 27 tons, the ketch Wind Lore towered over us on her jackstands. I’d once parked the Squid Wagon in her shadow to do an oil change, and wondered about the varnished teak and homeport of Shelburne, Nova Scotia. She was in excellent condition, and there was nothing stored underneath to give us clues.
Then, one Sunday morning, our watching yielded some information. In a flurry of activity, a white PT Cruiser pulled up and a family piled out. They stood looking up at the boat, taking pictures. Then they drove away.
“Hmmm…maybe that boat’s for sale?” I wondered out loud.
A few hours later, a beige Toyota Camry arrived with what looked like a rocket launcher on top. Three more people got out, this time climbing onto the boat via a very tall ladder.
Now I had two pieces of information, and I said, confidently. “Those must be the owners, getting it ready for the sale.”
I was absolutely and completely wrong.
That day, we met Rick and Mary Jane, Wind Lore’s owners, and Frank, Mary Jane’s father. They had about a week of projects on their list, and then they planned to launch the boat and cruise down to New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
But what about the people in the PT Cruiser? Like us, Rick and Mary Jane were mystified. Barry and I still marvel at the coincidence, having boatyard strangers take such an interest in that particular boat just hours before Rick and Mary Jane arrived.
The next day, we received a coveted invitation to climb the sky-scraping ladder for a visit aboard the boat. Sitting in the salon with a glass of wine, the companionway seemed very familiar — Rick pointed out that it was a Formosa, the model of boat featured in the cult sailing film Captain Ron. We all laughed about the fact that the crazy engine room in the movie wasn’t authentic, it was a set. And the infamous shower scene wasn’t filmed on the boat, either. Dang.
In the next few days, among conversations about projects and people and boats and places, I asked an innocent question. “Will you leave your car here when you go to Florida?”
“We’ll have to come up and get it, I guess,” said Rick. “You want to take a road trip?”
“Oh, yes!” I sang out. Barry was looking askance at me, but he knows that I won’t miss any opportunity to visit my Dad in Florida.
After Wind Lore slipped her lines and headed south, a massive cold front came through, making their trip down the ICW a chilly one. Back on Flutterby, our progress was slowed — our Awlfair wouldn’t “kick,” and it was no use applying paint in these temperatures. Not to mention how miserable we were, personally, huddling in the van with a tiny space heater.
Finally, the cold eased, but then came torrential rains, three inches in one night. When we awoke on Election Day, our boat sat between the Intracoastal Waterway and something I call “Lake Bock.” In the past, I’ve jokingly called our location “puddlefront.” We took off our socks and wore sandals, wading through ankle-deep water as we packed the car.
Then we got into the Camry with the rocket launcher (actually a rooftop gear carrier) on the top and headed for I-95. When we arrived at New Smyrna Beach and Wind Lore, 11 hours later, Mary Jane had dinner for us, and our Canadian friends were patient with us as we watched the election returns.
At some point in the evening, Mary Jane turned to me and asked, “Did you know we just had an election?” I was embarrassed. “Er, not really.” Less than a month ago, the Canadians held a Federal election, just as important to them as ours is to us. Turnout was the lowest in Canadian election history, perhaps because of all the noisy campaigning going on just to the south.
The following morning, I awoke refreshed after a night on their glamorous boat. I looked around at the hand-carved teak doors, the sunshine pouring into the spacious salon, and the palm trees ashore. I could hardly believe my luck as I put my jeans and raincoat away and changed into shorts.
Rick and Mary Jane thanked us profusely for saving them a trip back to North Carolina for their car, but that seemed unnecessary to me. The pleasure, actually, is ours.