I’ve spent another week in the boatyard working on a few projects, and have a few observations to share.
1. I loved my first 3M full-face respirator to death, and just got a new one to love. This time it came equipped with peril-sensitive sunglasses. I think anyone entering the boatyard for a long haulout should be so equipped.
2. Even though I am pretty hardcore as a do-it-myself person, it is still impressive to see professionals at work. This pic doesn’t show how close the travelift actually got to Flutterby when they took our neighbor away. I never was worried, although I did watch intently.
3. When the going gets tough…the professionals have more tools in their toolbox. I hired the yard to change my cutlass bearing. The job is going pretty smoothly, but they found that the shaft coupling just didn’t want to come off the prop shaft. I heard Dale muttering about needing something else to finish this job, a socket or something. Then he mentioned all-thread. Since his head was in the engine room along with his torso, I didn’t quite get it, and couldn’t even see exactly what the problem was. Off he went to get something or other, and then he returned and dove back into the engine room. When they left for lunch half-way through, I got in and had a chance to see what they were doing. Makes perfect sense, but I would have spent a lot more time figuring it out than Dale did.
4. I need to work more on “good enough.” Problems like a rudder post that somehow gets water inside it and the tiller arm being a little sloppy where it attaches to the rudder can be thought on and worked on for AGES. My best bet is to let a project like this sit while I do other things, and ask various people what they think is a good idea.
Flutterby left the boatyard almost a year ago, and we started cruising. Sure, we did some projects underway like mounting the oarlocks on the dinghy. Sure, we did even more projects while we stayed at Vero Beach over the winter and spring–We sewed sails and bought and mounted solar panels. But we weren’t hauled out, and more importantly, we weren’t in project mode.
We brought Flutterby back to the boatyard in June, “summerized” her, and drove west.
A week ago, we returned to Flutterby. Yesterday, I dropped Margaret off at the airport; she’s going to Florida to help her Dad through open-heart surgery, and I’ve got a couple weeks to do boat projects.
Finally, for the first time in months, I opened my to-do list, a dozen pages in an Excel spreadsheet. Some things were irrelevant. Some were completed months ago. I crossed those off. I tried to remember all the things I had listed when Margaret asked what we had to do before we could launch again.
Then I went outside with a couple wrenches and took out the bolts holding the tiller arm onto the rudder. I scraped loose the 3M-101 goop that I could get off, then forced the thing away from the rudder. Now it is off, and only a little sticky residue remains. After I clean it up I’ll be making it fit higher so that the steering cables don’t make that AWFUL gritching noise when it hangs up between the quadrant on the tiller arm and the turning blocks.
If this is enough adjustment, I won’t have to adjust the angle of those turning blocks too. Wish me luck on that one.
I’m sure that half of the people reading this are wishing I could have described an exciting job. But moving the boot stripe on the rudder is a later project, so exciting things like sanding, prepping, masking, and painting … repeat … repeat … repeat … will have to wait.
For now, the important thing is that I’m back to working on Flutterby!
But we are three thousand miles away, on our way to Burning Man tomorrow. For the next 12 days, we’ll be incommunicado with 50,000 of our closest friends.
What should we do?
Not this: “When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”
Instead, this: Practice non-attachment.
Sure, we’ve done some preparation. We left the boat on the hard in one of the best boatyards in the country. We removed everything from the deck before we left. A good friend has secured the dinghy so it won’t fly or float away. Another has agreed to check on the boat once the storm passes.
There’s nothing more we can do, physically. All the work now is mental and emotional. The worst thing that can happen is not damage to our boat, but pain or injury to dear friends who live in the path of the storm.
It’s just a matter of perspective. I lost my brother this year. Losing a boat would be nothing compared to that. A mere scratch to my psyche.
So I wait to see what happens, and I send calming thoughts to my friends in the path of the storm. I head to Burning Man with the knowledge that an entire city can be built and removed in the space of a week.
Flutterby has been “totaled” in a hurricane before. She was built and rebuilt, and rebuilt, and rebuilt. She can be repaired and rebuilt again, and we have the skills to do so. I’d gladly rebuild her again if I could have my brother back. As I often say, “It’s only stuff.”
Hurricane Irene: Keep it in perspective. Stay safe. And keep breathing.
As froggies go, he wasn’t very big. He was about an inch long, smaller than all but the tiniest plastic ones in the toy store.
He wasn’t plastic, though. He was real.
The day we picked up my brother’s car was a tough one for me. The car was the largest thing Stevie had owned, and although my job was to eventually sell it for his estate, I was emotionally attached to it. Standing beside the plain-vanilla Camry with the keys in my hand, I got a little teary-eyed.
That’s when the the little green guy appeared. He crawled out from behind the passenger-side mirror and looked at me with big round eyes. Did he know he was an omen, or did he think he was just a frog? Was he really a Froggie?
When he passed away, Stevie’s living room walls were decorated with paintings of beaches and lighthouses, and in the center hung his doctorate, double-matted, in a heavy gold frame. In the place of honor, right below the doctorate: His froggie collection. That’s right, froggies. I never once heard him use the word “frog.”
Stevie's Froggie collection
Stevie had stuffed froggies, glass froggies, ceramic froggies, metal froggies, and plastic froggies. Some were elegant, some were goofy. One of them used to make croaking sounds, although I accidentally destroyed that capability when I ran it through the washing machine.
The first one came from a coworker, 15 years ago. He had such fun with it, calling it “Froggie,” and making up stories about it, that others began giving him froggies as well. A friend of his mentioned a “Froggy Battle,” which sounded epic. Dad sent froggies for birthdays and Christmas, and I gave him Seattle-themed froggies. Stevie never bought a single one for himself.
He referred to them by silly names: Santa Froggie, Big-Mouth Froggie, Squeaky Froggie.
Stevie was very protective of his froggies. When I sent him a stuffed gorilla named Curious George, he wrote back, “Did I tell you that curious george can stay but that the Froggys and their extended family have eminent domain!”
Stevie was in rare form with his thoughts about a February event called GroundFrog Day, in which a bullfrog by the name of Snohomish Slew offers his weather “frognostication.” He wrote:
“Snohomish Slew and I could become very good friends although as long as Mr & Mrs Froggie are around they cannot be replaced by an upstart tadpole from who knows where who can barely speak froglatin and does not see his shadow cus he probably don’t have one!! Plus he makes BAD predictions and as anyone knows…when you’re frozen like he was you are usually braindead upon arrival!! I guess I’m kinda hard on Slew this morning but ya gotta be kind of jealous towards someone who gets to live in a place called Flower World!”
At Stevie’s memorial, we displayed all the froggies, and afterwards, family and friends could choose one to keep as a memento. I ended up with more than my share of Froggies — Bendy Froggie, Spitting Froggie, Playskool Froggie, Sparkly Froggie, and a bunch of tiny plastic ones.
With Stevie on my heart, you can imagine what I thought when that live little frog climbed out from behind the car mirror, looked at me, and climbed back into his hiding place again.
I am sure that there are people who find frogs on their cars all the time. I am not one of them. Until that day, when I picked up Steve’s car, I had never in my life seen a frog on a car. So I had a name for this little guy: Omen Froggie.
Tiny Omen Froggie, sitting on top of Stevie's car
Omen Froggie was tucked safely behind the mirror when we drove the car to town for dinner. There was no sign of him when we came out of No-Name Pizza. Was he still in the mirror? Was he chowing down on pizza scraps? Was he hopping around Beaufort?
It was on the way home that he reappeared. At 55 mph, he decided to make his move. “Look! Froggie!” said Barry, who was in the passenger seat. Our little friend had crawled out from behind the mirror and was now clinging to the passenger window. With his tree-frog toes spread wide and his skin blowing in the wind, Froggie was enjoying a perilous — surely terrifying — joyride. “Hang on, Froggie, hang on!” I cried. I was a very distracted driver, paying more attention to the tiny passenger on the outside of the window than to the other vehicles on the road.
I didn’t want Omen Froggie to go flying off along the road and get killed. He was a Very Important Froggie, and I needed to return him to the boatyard, where he had come from.
Or had he come from the boatyard? Perhaps he had come from another dimension! Maybe he just popped into this universe to let me know Stevie was keeping an eye on his car. And me.
Omen Froggie did not fall off the car. He made it safely back to the parking space where we’d found him. I took a picture of him sitting, serene, on the roof of the car. And after that, I never saw Omen Froggie again.
~~~
(Click on a thumbnail to see full size)
Julie with Tree FroggieHank with Squeaky FroggieDaisy with the Wacky Quacker and Mt. St. Helens FroggieMeps with Seattle Bubble Froggie and Bendy FroggieBarry with Mr. and Mrs. FroggieJoy with Huggie FroggieJeanie with Glass FroggieMeps with Playskool Froggie, Sparkle Froggie, and the Little Froggies
I learned the art of subtle wave when I lived in rural South Carolina, the summer of 1984. On my one day off a week, my boss at the Beach and Tennis Club would loan me her car so I could buy groceries. Since the closest store was 15 miles away, I’d negotiated the loan of the car in my employment terms.
At first, I couldn’t believe my city-bred eyes. Every time I passed a car or truck on the 2-lane road, the driver waved at me. “Is something wrong? Why are they waving at me?” I wondered. By then, it was too late to wave back. I felt guilty. I was sure I owed them a wave.
When I started to wave back, I was doing it wrong. I was too energetic, waving with my whole hand. Eventually, I learned the technique. You hold the steering wheel at the top, and you don’t actually take your hand off the wheel to perform the wave. You just casually lift your fingers, keeping your thumb around the wheel. A little nod completes the split-second greeting.
All this comes back to me as I travel the Intracoastal Waterway, because this is a waving trip. All day long, I wave at people on passing boats, folks on shore, bridge tenders. When the days are long and our speed is slow, waving is an interesting distraction, a complex and subtle way to communicate without words.
Back in Georgia, traveling on a weekday in May, we might see one or two other boats, no houses on shore, and no bridges. Here in North Carolina, on a weekend in June, we have hundreds of boats, three or four bridges, and countless houses with docks. My arm could get tired with all this waving.
A primer on where to wave, using the Ladies Island Bridge for an example
In each encounter, there’s the question of who waves first, and who waves back. When I am about to be rolled by a big powerboat’s wake, I ignore any friendly waves by the boat’s occupants. I have an excuse — both my hands are occupied trying to steer Flutterby into their wake. I admit, that’s no excuse for my scowl.
When we’re passing a boat full of people, it’s interesting to see how many of them wave. Sometimes, the passengers look at us suspiciously when we wave. Then they notice their own captain waving, and they think, “Oh, it’s OK to wave.” So they wave, too, belatedly. Other times, the kids wave, but not the grown-ups. Or the grown-ups wave, and the kids look away, embarrassed.
I hesitate to wave at people whose have both hands occupied. Kayakers and fishermen, for example. I don’t want them to feel guilty for not waving back. The more inexperienced kayakers miss a stroke just to wave back at me. The savvy ones wave their paddles, mid-stroke.
Bridge tenders are another difficult one. Where the heck are they? I peer up as we go through the bridge, trying to figure out which reflective window might have a person behind it. Then I wonder if both their hands are occupied with bridge controls. Still, I wave gratefully and enthusiastically.
Swing bridges open very slowly, pivoting in the middle. When they’re open, the bridge tender is on a little island, isolated from either side of the road. Sometimes, they come out and watch us, waving or calling down a hello. They’re not in a hurry like the bascule bridge tenders, whose bridges open like big jaws trying to take a bite out of the sky. (And close like big jaws trying to take a bite out of my mast.)
I could write a whole book about waving technique. I love the super-enthusiastic waves that we get from tiny kids and pre-teen girls. Sometimes they even use both arms. One of them, today, shouted “You’re from Seattle? I LOOOOVE Seattle!”
When I see people on the dock looking particularly relaxed and sipping drinks with little umbrellas, I give them a wiggly-finger wave, as if we know each other. That leaves them puzzled. Sometimes I use my Princess Parade wave — elbow, wrist, hand, elbow, wrist, hand. That leaves ‘em laughing. But most waves are just a simple lift of the hand, palm facing out. It reminds me of kids playing Indians: “How!”
I’ve tried some other, non-verbal, non-waving communications with mixed results. My attempts to communicate “slow down” always fall on deaf eyes. But a few times, we’ve been treated exceptionally well by boats passing, and a bow of gratitude is universally understood. Thumbs-up is another universal gesture, meaning, “I like your boat!”
Sometimes, when Barry comes up to take his watch, I wave at him, too. It’s just because I’m waving at everyone else, why shouldn’t he get a friendly wave as well?
Today, I noticed a lot of two-finger waves. Is that a modified military salute, or a papal benediction? Luckily, I have never, ever on the water, seen the “one-finger” wave.
Vero Beach is a very clean, pristine little town. Careful zoning prevents high-rises as well as any other ugliness. There are large, beautifully-landscaped homes owned by wealthy retirees as well as tidy smaller ones, where the hard-working younger set lives.
In addition to these neighborhoods, there are gated communities, protected from unwelcome riff-raff by fences and walls. These condo communities have additional rules to prevent unsightliness and untoward behavior by their own residents: No rollerblading. No pickup trucks. No open garage doors. Speed limit 10 mph. No soliciting. No one under 55. Pool chairs must be completely covered by a towel. No pets.
So how did these two grubby sailors from Flutterby, who are used to living in a boatyard, fare in pristine Vero Beach for five months?
We stayed in compliance easily, because nobody had thought to write rules about the things Meps and Barry will do.
One day, the neighbors found the front yard of Dad’s house completely full of soggy camping and kayaking gear. It was spread across the bushes, and Barry had tied clotheslines between the palm trees and the garage for our dripping jackets and pants. These remnants of a messy and disastrous Everglades camping trip were just a harbinger of the chaos to come.
Looks like a garage sale!
Luckily, nobody had written a rule against our soggy gear display. There is probably a rule agasint drying laundry, but it was not enforced.
Next, we tested the waters with a small project, refinishing the oars for the dinghy. I took them over to Dad’s backyard one afternoon. He wandered out of the house to see what I was doing, and he pulled up a chair to watch as I set up my sanding station. There were no sawhorses, so I compromised by propping the oars across a couple of folding chairs. Then I got out my random orbital sander and my red earmuff-style hearing protection. The sander is LOUD, especially since its bearings are in bad shape after all the fiberglass we’ve used it on.
Before I put the earmuffs on, I said to Dad, “I’m going to make a lot of noise now. You might want to go back inside.” “That’s OK,” he responded, “I’m way over here.” He was all of six feet away.
I just shook my head and started up the sander. The noise and sawdust didn’t phase him at all, and he kept me company until I finished the first oar.
Evidently, the project didn’t phase the neighbors, either. I’d just proven that his gated complex could handle a little bit of sanding, Meps-style.
After the oars were sanded, we suspended them in the garage and painted them with multiple coats of epoxy and paint. I worried that the fumes might get into the house, but it was well-sealed. None of the neighbors complained about that, either.
Then we went shopping with our friend Ann, and on top of her big Mothball van, we piled enough plywood and dimensional lumber to build a freestanding wooden lofting floor in the garage. All the sawing, screwing, and hammering still didn’t raise the ire of any neighbors, although Dad started grumbling about the loss of his garage for the car.
The lofting floor, ready to lay down
Over the next weeks, Barry set up first one, then two sewing machines in the garage. He made paper patterns and transferred them to fabric. Then he stitched them into sails, working late into the night. He closed the garage door at night to keep mosquitoes at bay, which helped keep us in compliance with the no-open-garage-door ruling. We were pushing that one.
We admired Mothball so much, Ann left the van in our care while she sailed her boat north to Maine. That was wonderful serendipity, allowing us to move vanloads of battens and yards across town without renting a truck. The longest battens are 18 feet, and they only stuck out of the van eight feet!
But surely, in the next phase, the neighbors would complain. They hadn’t written any rules against sanding aluminum or doing epoxy jobs in the driveway, but they probably should have. Any time you see your neighbor wearing a full-face respirator, he’s probably doing something he shouldn’t.
Mothball, ready to roll
By now, the neighbors were blase about the stuff happening at Dad’s normally quiet, tidy house. They didn’t peer curiously into the garage any more when they walked their completely controlled pets on leashes. I’m sure there’s a rule about that. I wonder if that’s why one woman walks her cat on a leash.
Finally, all the irritating, rule-breaking projects were done. I posted a couple of ads on Craigslist and Freecycle, and obliging people came and took away all the lumber. One man was building chicken coops, and the other was building rabbit hutches. I doubt Vero Beach allows such critters; they probably came from outside the city limits.
We returned the borrowed sewing machine to our friend Linda. We loaded the tools, paint, and epoxy into plastic bins that would fit aboard the boat, along with the carefully-folded sails. The sewing table we carried back inside.
Then we stood back and looked at the garage, ready for Dad’s car.
There was no sign of the mess or noise that had completely taken over for almost three months. In fact, the garage looked better than before we’d arrived! Barry had installed a couple of ladder hangers for working on the battens. Now Dad’s ladder was neatly stored on them, instead of leaning precariously against the wall.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
We had made a BIG mess, and we had cleaned up all of it. This was in keeping with the biggest rule of all. Not a Vero Beach rule, or a condo complex rule, but a family rule: Do not mess up Dad’s house.
Someday, Dad will see our picture on the front of a sailing magazine. He can show his friends, saying “Look! These sails were made in my garage.” I have my fingers crossed that he’ll conveniently forget the sawdust and noise and chaos, and just remember my favorite part: How much we enjoyed his company for five months, the messiest Snowbirds in Vero Beach.
Barry sewing the mizzen sailThe car is outside, bikes and sewing machines are inMeps at work in the garageTaking the floor apart to give the lumber awayThe end result of all that mess
When I was born, my brother Stevie was 12. He told the family that Margaret was too long a name for such a little baby, and he proposed the nickname Peggy. It stuck for 17 years (I changed the spelling to “Peigi” at age 11). Now you know where the “P” in Meps came from.
Stevie passed away suddenly on April 16th. He was a kind, gentle soul with a great sense of humor. Losing him is like losing part of my name, part of my identity.
In the photo below, he is the tall, handsome athlete. The miniature person, looking up at him adoringly, is me. I’d just learned to walk.
Stevie’s funeral and a celebration of his life will be here in Vero Beach in mid-May.
Stevie and me in 1966. He was later known as Dr. Stephen T. Schulte.
On our mooring in Vero Beach, Flutterby usually hangs bow to the wind, gently hunting back and forth from one “tack” to the other. When there is no wind she faces a random direction, only moving when we walk about inside. But most days there is a breeze, and Flutterby spins back and forth, and sunbeams come through portlights and hatches to walk back and forth across the opposite wall, or our berth.
Yesterday, a little barge was working its way through the mooring field. Eventually it came up next to Flutterby to inspect our mooring. I’m one of those guys who likes work, and as they say, I can watch it all day. In that spirit, I had a conversation with the guys on the barge while one of them dove down to inspect our mooring anchor. I found out that we were on an old-style mooring with a ten foot long concrete piling — buried completely under the mud and shell bottom, with a chain going from it up through the float at the surface. Flutterby’s bow is tied to a ring on the end of the chain, free to spin around and hang whichever way the wind or current sends her.
Since the wind was always coming from the bow, on any breezy day I could open the companionway and the forward-facing hatch in the V-berth, and fresh air would blast straight in through the cabin. This is great if somebody just started to scorch things on the stove and you want to clear the air before the smoke alarm goes off. (Don’t ask me how I know!)
But today, all this changed. I motored for less than an hour to Flutterby‘s new home on a dock. It sure is convenient to not have a 5-10 minute dinghy ride (with its high risk of a wet butt) in order to go anywhere or do anything. In fact, I took a bike ride in my new neighborhood just for the fun of it, something I never got around to doing when the bike was a dinghy ride away.
Living in a place that is tied down at 4 corners, unable to move, is just weird! Now the sunbeams only make one very slow transit per day. And the wind: It blows whatever direction it wants to, possibly from the starboard side of the boat all day. It is just plain weird, and that is all I can say about it!
I’m goin’ to a party
And I hope you are hearty
So please don’t be naughty
For it’s a punky reggae party (Bob Marley)
There goes the neighborhood... Flutterby in front of Vero Beach's posh homes
From Flutterby’s mooring to shore is about 150 feet. It’s a lot farther, if you measure it in dollars.
Tonight, there’s a birthday party at one of the houses on shore. The lawn is full of dressed-up people, and they’ve got a live reggae band. What I can’t figure out are the two chickens in the yard. I’ve never noticed those before. Perhaps they were a birthday present. Perhaps they’re serving really, really fresh chicken for dinner. Or maybe that’s the backup singers.
OK, that’s enough about the chickens. I must be hungry. I wonder what kind of people can afford to hire such a professional-sounding band for a birthday party?
No boring ol’ farts, no boring ol’ farts
No boring ol’ farts will be there
Singin’ no boring ol’ farts, no boring ol’ farts
No boring ol’ farts will be there (another verse from the same song)
My curiosity sends me to Zillow.com, where I look for information about our shoreside neighbors. The house with the party is just over a million dollars, but it’s not for sale. The one that is, though, is even closer; it’s the one whose windows we look right into. It’s a 3-bedroom, 2-1/2 bath rambler with a swimming pool. You can buy it for just over a million dollars. Or rent it for $7500 a month.
Or sit out here on a mooring and look into the windows, for $400 a month.
Turn your lights down low
And pull your window curtains…
(from another Bob Marley song)
It’s a good thing I like reggae, and the birthday party band in particular. I’m sure everyone over there is shouting, unsuccessfully, to be heard over the music, like this:
John: “Blah-de-blah-de-blah chicken?”
Mary: “No, I don’t want to dance with your chicken.”
John: “I said, blah-de-blah-de-blah CHICKEN!”
Mary: “You want me to to remodel your kitchen?”
Out here, we can’t turn the music off, but we can easily talk over it. It’s like our own private dinner concert (no boring ol’ farts here!). Because this is Vero Beach — known as Zero Beach to the younger set — the music stops at precisely 9:30 pm. I’m disappointed.
I once had a business trip to Semiahmoo, a stunningly beautiful resort near the Canadian border in Washington, with two coworkers. When the desk clerk handed out room keys, two of them faced the water, and one faced the parking lot. The two other women looked at me in consternation. I had the most seniority, so they were certain I’d claim one of the waterfront rooms, leaving them to fight over the other one. Instead, I picked up the parking lot room key, saying, “Enjoy the view. I’m going sailing tomorrow, and if you count both sides and the transom, I’ll have over 75 feet of waterfront property all weekend.”
That comment comes back to me as I listen to the reggae-chicken birthday party. Tonight, they’re enjoying their waterfront property and sharing it with their friends. But they are paying an awful lot just to be looking at us! And we are not paying very much to be looking in their windows, enjoying their music, and laughing about their chickens.
Let me tell you, it takes a joyful sound
To make the world go ’round
It takes a joyful sound
So come a come and rock your boat (one last verse from Bob Marley)
What's that white thing on the dock? A shoebox, a bookshelf, or a boat?
On the big day, when we launched Flutterby, I didn’t pour all the champagne over the bow. There was some left in the bottle, so a bunch of us went down the dock to where a little wooden shoebox, about six feet long, sat waiting. Kris and Barry picked it up and dangled it down to the water by its painter, letting it down with a splash. Way, way down there in the water below the high dock, it looked for all the world like an abandoned piece of furniture. Somebody tossed a couple of wooden oars into the shoebox-bookshelf, and then they all turned to me, expectantly.
Uh-oh.
There it floated, nine years in the making, waiting for the builder to test it. I felt like the ancient Roman bridge designer who had to stand under his bridge when the first load went across. What if I was too heavy? What if it flipped, or worse yet, slowly sank? I could hear the blub-blub-blub in my imagination. But it’s amazing what adrenaline and an audience can do. White-knuckled, I climbed down the ladder into the tiny vessel that I had given birth to from a pile of plywood.
I was still hanging onto the ladder with a death grip when Barry handed me the bottle of champagne.
It felt like a toy boat, something that should be christened with Kool-Aid. But I wanted the gods of the sea to take this thing seriously, so I poured champagne over the “bow.” (Since the boat doesn’t have a pointy end, it’s a little hard to tell which is the front and which is the back. It would probably row just fine sideways, if I mounted the oars that way.)
“I christen thee Flutterwent!” The name was Kris’ idea. It rolls off the tongue better than Flagondry or Rockcoach, two bug-based Spoonerisms that sound a lot worse than Flutterby.
Before I knew it, Barry was climbing off the dock to join me in the boat, I think because I had the bottle of champagne. Or maybe because he wanted to swamp it and go swimming. Surely this thing was not rated for two adults, was it? Thank goodness the Coast Guard wasn’t around to see the open container in an overloaded vessel with no lifejackets.
But she didn’t ship any water when he climbed in. We sat there, facing each other, grinning, and passing the champagne bottle back and forth. Meanwhile, the current was carrying us away from the dock. Whoops! Time to do something about that!
Using ridiculous 7-foot oars as giant paddles, we paddled through the marina and over to the ways, where Flutterby awaited us. The scariest part was getting back out again! I didn’t know how stable it was, but I knew how stable I was — not very. I guess the adrenaline got me out of the boat as well as into it, although by now most of our audience had lost interest and wandered off for happy hour. I was already plenty happy.
You might be wondering, why would anyone use such a strange-looking, tiny dinghy? Normal cruisers go back and forth from their boats in stock gray inflatables with stock outboard motors. Why not the Flutterbies?
For years, Barry wanted to build a 34-foot sailboat with me. This terrified me, because I was afraid of power tools. I’d had an accident in college with a bandsaw and nearly ended up eight-fingered Meps.
In 2001, our housemate, Sharonne, signed up for a beginning woodworking class. For the first four weeks, the students built toolboxes using a table saw, joiner, planer, biscuit-cutter, and sander. For the remainder of the class, they worked on their own projects. At the end of ten weeks, Sharonne proudly brought home the toolbox and a tall bookshelf that she had built with her own hands.
I signed up for the next session and built the same toolbox. Then the teacher sat down with the class and told us we were free to start on our own projects. He went around the room and asked each person to say what they wanted to build. “A CD rack,” said one. “Toys for my grandchildren,” said another.
I never checked to see if the toolbox would float. It would make a great dinghy for the dinghy.
When he reached me, I said, “A boat.”
“A toy boat?” asked the teacher.
“No, a real one.”
The rest of the class stared at me.
“This is Woodworking One. You can’t build a boat on Woodworking One,” said the teacher, with a smirk.
“Don’t you remember Sharonne, from last term? She built a bookshelf. I promise my boat will be just like a bookshelf.” He rolled his eyes and made me stay after class to convince me that I couldn’t build a boat.
The following week, I showed him the plans. Phil Bolger’s Tortoise dinghy looks a lot like a floating bookshelf, so he reluctantly permitted me to start. A couple of months later, Barry and I loaded my plywood dinghy on top of Peepcar and brought it home. I’d done the final assembly in Woodworking Two, with a more encouraging instructor.
The good news was, I still had all my fingers. (So did the instructor from Woodworking One, who’d nearly run his hand through the table saw helping me cut the framing.) The bad news was, it wasn’t a boat yet.
It was a thing of beauty, constructed of luan plywood with pine framing and copper ring nails. For the first year, it sat on our back porch. For the next five, it hung in my in-laws’ garage.
I was proud of my accomplishment, so I told people that I’d built a boat. But whenever Barry heard me say that, he’d correct me. “No, you didn’t. It’s not finished.”
In 2008, I painted it with epoxy resin to protect the wood, and we tied it on top of the Squid Wagon. We drove from Seattle to Flutterby in Beaufort, North Carolina, via San Diego, with that tiny, funny-looking boat on top of the van.
The ant and the elephant along the California coast (April 2008)
It looked like an ant on top of an elephant. All the way across the USA, we got reactions like the guy with the toothpick in his mouth who sauntered over to Barry, not noticing me nearby. “What is that?” he asked. “Some kind of storage pod?” “No,” said Barry, “It’s a boat.” The guy looked more closely and said, “Oh.”
Then Barry added, “My wife built it.” The guy cracked up laughing. He thought it was the punchline to a really funny joke.
The epoxy wasn’t UV-resistant, and by the time we crossed the country, it already needed sanding and painting. We didn’t have anywhere to store it out of the weather, so we rented a 5×7 storage unit and stuffed it inside, using it to store other items — just like a bookshelf!
For another two and a half years, when I said, “I built a boat,” Barry said, “No, you haven’t.” I’d glare at him. Couldn’t he just shut up?
That was getting really irritating, so last summer, I took the poor neglected dinghy out and put it under Flutterby. It was time to finish it, a job only I could do. If I let Barry help me, then, when I said “I built a boat,” he’d still have an excuse to correct me. “No, you didn’t. We built a boat.”
My sawhorses sat on some turf with boatbuilding history. Between 1983 and 1995, Bock Marine built and launched over 30 boats in that spot, including the 122-foot White Dove Too. Like the WDT, my dinghy was brought from another location and completed on that hallowed ground. But there are some differences. Their ships were steel, launched using a dramatic side-launching technique (this is a hilarious photo of people running from the splash) instead of our painter-dangling end-launching technique. I calculated the ratio of length-to-time-under-construction: At 6.5 feet and 9 years, Flutterwent’s ratio was 505. Knocking out a couple of 85-footers a year, Bock’s was 2.1.
I finished the dinghy in the heat of the summer, using all the woodworking, epoxy, fiberglass, and painting skills I learned on Flutterby. While I was working, I wore headphones and hearing protection. Not because of the power tools, but because I was tired of all the men in the boatyard wandering over to stare. I was tired of explaining that I was not building a hard dodger to cover the companionway.
When I was done, I said to Barry, “I built a boat.” Then he hugged me instead of correcting me.
It still wasn’t completely done, having no means of propulsion. But it’s past midnight, and I am done for tonight! Tiny boat, big story. I’ll put the photo essay below and save the rest for another time.
Barry and Kris drop the dinghy into the water, stern-first. "Yikes! Who's got the painter?"With nerves of steel, I step into the floating box. Ted, who has launched many dinghies, was there to help, and Barry had the painter and the champagne.You can tell from my hand that I am afraid to move, for fear it will sink or tip over.I haven't sunk yet. And I have the champagne. So I'm smiling.Oh no! Here comes Barry to see if he can swamp my dinghy.As the current carries us away from safety, I say, "You want some of this?"Giggling, we pick up the oars and paddle into the sunset. She tracks like a shoebox instead of a soapdish.Getting out is trickier than getting in. Barry made sure the champagne bottle was safe, but I think it was empty by now.Whee! Barry has fun scooting under Flutterby's bow line. At 6-1/2 feet long, the Tortoise dinghy is just long enough for a nice nap.
1. I loved my first 3M full-face respirator to death, and just got a new one to love. This time it came equipped with peril-sensitive sunglasses. I think anyone entering the boatyard for a long haulout should be so equipped.
2. Even though I am pretty hardcore as a do-it-myself person, it is still impressive to see professionals at work. This pic doesn’t show how close the travelift actually got to Flutterby when they took our neighbor away. I never was worried, although I did watch intently.
3. When the going gets tough…the professionals have more tools in their toolbox. I hired the yard to change my cutlass bearing. The job is going pretty smoothly, but they found that the shaft coupling just didn’t want to come off the prop shaft. I heard Dale muttering about needing something else to finish this job, a socket or something. Then he mentioned all-thread. Since his head was in the engine room along with his torso, I didn’t quite get it, and couldn’t even see exactly what the problem was. Off he went to get something or other, and then he returned and dove back into the engine room. When they left for lunch half-way through, I got in and had a chance to see what they were doing. Makes perfect sense, but I would have spent a lot more time figuring it out than Dale did.
