Friends Along the Way, Living in a Boatyard, Living in Beaufort, NC, Rebuilding Boats

The maiden on the maiden voyage

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“Hey, is there going to be a party before you go?” I asked Ivan, when I ran into him in the lounge.

“Yes, I think tomorrow,” he said. His accent and careful pronunciation of English words makes him seem more solemn and serious than he is.

“What time?” I asked.

At this point, Val jumped in. He’s been grinding on his boat for over two weeks, a grueling and exhausting job. “Let’s start at noon…two pm…” he said with a grin. I rolled my eyes, knowing full well that boat work comes first, and parties don’t start around here until at least 5 or 6 pm.

So around 6 pm, we headed over to the dock where Kuhelli was moored, her extra-large Swedish flag snapping in the breeze. I’m going to miss that flag — putting it up on the backstay was one of the first things the crew did when they arrived. It’s been windy every day for the month they were here, and the flag danced with an exuberance like that of the crew.

I remember their arrival more vividly than most of our neighbors. It was April first, and we’d been spending the evening wishing Blaine and Suzy farewell. It grew cold and very late as we sat around the picnic table, sharing wine and stories. Past midnight, a car pulled up across the way at a boat that had been stored for some time. Several people got out and got a ladder and climbed on the boat. Even in the dim light, we could see that they were not average cruising-boat owners. Much too young.

Were they thieves? Vandals? Should we confront them?

They showed no signs of taking anything from the boat, so we decided to leave them alone.

For the next few days, half the gossip was about Blaine and Suzy’s departure, and the other half was about the three 20-something Swedish guys who’d come to fix up an older Halberg-Rossy and sail it back to Sweden. Ivan was the owner, with Lowe and Sigfrid as his friends and crew. (It actually took us forever to get their names straight — Ivan is pronounced “Even,” and Lowe sounds like “Loova”).

Anique teased them about their accents. Sigfrid came in one day, asking about jello. Jello is not a normal item in a marine chandlery, so she was completely flabbergasted. It finally turned out he was mispronouncing “yellow!” He need the pigment for his gel-coat repairs.

Like the young 3-man crew on Catania, they had boundless energy, and got more work done than any of us old-timers. Even after working well into the night on the boat, they would get up in the morning and go running. They scampered up and down the ladder like monkeys, taking it two rungs at a time going up and coming down frontwards with no hands. I saw Sigfrid doing push-ups on the dock and Ivan shinnying up the mast without benefit of a bosun’s chair or halyard.

One evening, we sat down and shared a meal, and we learned that they’d never been to the US before. Their impressions were fascinating, since they’d flown into Washington, D.C., driven straight to the boat, and not seen anything but coastal North Carolina since.

With Val and John, we tried to dispel some of their myths about this place we call “America,” going into heavy topics like immigration and politics and economics. Val has lived in Hawaii and Florida, and John has lived all over the US and sports Wyoming plates on his van, so it was a lively conversation about how different the rest of the US is from Beaufort, North Carolina.

One thing they did not like at all: The food. It took them several weeks to realize that Piggly-Wiggly was not the only grocery store, which would give anyone a bad impression of American food. They were amazed by the number of obese people and disturbed by the stuff sold as bread. Even when I brought them the best bread in the area, from the Havelock Swiss bakery, they were polite, but said it was not as good as Swedish bread.

They splashed the boat three weeks after they arrived, making me green with envy. But that was not going to keep me away from the bon voyage party.

Ivan had one more job to do up the mast, and Lowe quickly hauled him up to spreader height. We lounged on the dock, watching Ivan work and waiting for the barbecue to heat up. It was a perfect spring evening on the water, just enough wind to keep bugs at bay without blowing the brownies and salad away.

Sigfrid came back — he’s the most garrulous of the three. “As soon as we eat, we have to go get diesel. You’re all welcome to come along,” he said.

The party on the dock was starting to pick up momentum when Ivan looked at his watch and headed for the boat. Barry and I joined the three guys, and we steamed away from the dock.

Ivan pulls away from the dock Lowe aboard Kuhelli Sigfrid gets his first experience at a wheel Barry enjoys Kuhelli's sunset maiden voyage Meps enjoys a turn at the wheel

It was only a couple of miles up the waterway to Seagate Marina, but we snapped a lot of pictures during that time. It was, after all, Kuhelli’s maiden voyage with her new owner. I was honored to be aboard for the occasion and felt vaguely useful because I knew approximately where the fuel dock was.

When we returned to the dock, the party had grown.

“This is the second time I’ve been on a boat, underway, in a week!” I said to Audrey. She sighed with envy. Desiderata has been here for over three and a half years, and she and her husband have been distracted from their boat work by all kinds of health issues in that time.

The other crew that joined the festivities was from Happy Hour, a boat smaller than ours with two parents and four children aboard. At one time, they had even cruised with their two older siblings aboard, and I was curious to know how they found bunks for eight.

The answer was a forward cabin (two kids), two settees (two kids), an aft cabin (privacy for two parents), and a bunch of cushions on the floor for the remaining two. I wondered if they all had bruises from stepping on each other!

Compared to that, the crew of Kuhelli had luxurious accommodations, with a private aft cabin, a v-berth, and an enormous dinette. Their center cockpit has a hard dodger and a full hard bimini as well, so they’ll be protected from the waves offshore.

That cockpit was big enough for the whole lively party. Listening to the chatter, I thought of how we’d been at a farewell party when Kuhelli’s crew arrived. I looked around, but the boats in the yard were quiet. Just as well, it would be hard to top this.

But not for the crew of Kuhelli. In addition to an offshore passage to Sweden via the Azores and Ireland, they plan a stop in New York City.

Just after dawn, I heard a horn. I stuck my head out the hatch and waved as the boat slipped away. The time they shared with us was just Part One of the adventure — the rest is still to come, and they’re going to enjoy every minute of it.

Kuhelli’s website is in Swedish, but has lots of great photos: http://svenskavinnare.se/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=12 (or you can chuckle your way through the machine-translated English version)

Sigfrid also has a great photo site here: http://picasaweb.google.se/sigfridj (“alantseglingen” are the photos of his trip to the USA)

Limericks, Messing About in Boats

The fastest job I didn’t do

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There’s a man in a white bunny suit,
Motivating by crawl and by scoot,
“Is that Randy, or Larry?”
I inquire of dear Barry,
“It’s not me, so the question is moot!”

I feel guilty, as they do the work,
On my keel, where the barnacles lurk,
Now I know that I must,
As amends for my dust,
Bake them brownies, from scratch, as a perk.
Plate of Export Department brownies
Export department brownies, from the Foodie Gazette.

When they started, their Tyvek was white,
Now they’re muddy and gray, quite a sight.
And the ground is aglitter
With sandpaper litter,
But the hull is now smooth, fair, and right.
Randy and Larry sanding on Flutterby

Friends Along the Way, Living in Beaufort, NC, Rebuilding Boats

Schooner or later

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Here’s a fun series of questions:

  1. When was the first time you went sailing?
  2. When was the last time you went sailing?
  3. Have you ever sailed on a schooner?

As I write this, I am on a boat, one that is firmly aground, with 7 sturdy jackstands beneath it and an 8-foot wooden ladder between me and the rest of the world. I go to sleep at night in the v-berth, my face just a few feet beneath the forward hatch. Before I close my eyes, I look up and see the stars and moon.

But I miss the motion of a boat. I miss the sound of water against the hull. I’ve gotten used to being on a boat-with-no-motion, but there’s definitely something wrong with it.

In the past year, we’ve visited friends whose boats are in the water, to remember the feeling. Stepping aboard Ocean Gypsy, I love the way the side deck gently dips to accept my weight. When we rode out to Honey Moon in the dinghy in January, I just wanted to throw my head back and holler “Yee haw!” as we zipped across the anchorage. A moving boat is a wonderful thing.

It’s moving. But it’s still not sailing.

In January, we took a day to help our friend Dick motor up to New Bern in his steel schooner, Ula G. It was fun to get out on the water, but Dick picked one of the coldest days of the year. We joked about the cold as we huddled on deck, wearing every scrap of clothing we owned. In our foulies and hoods and gloves and PFDs, Dick could hardly tell us apart, although Barry does have a lower voice and I giggle more. At the time, I thought about how nice it would be when the weather warmed up and we could actually sail.

Yesterday was the day I’d been hoping for. We had originally planned to drive up to New Bern and help Dick take his parents out sailing. That plan fell through when they left a day early, but we decided to go up anyway.

With the help of Dick’s friendly neighbors to cast off the lines (the freeboard on this boat resembles that of a container ship), we headed out the Neuse River.

Back when I learned to sail on a simple catboat with one sail, I had jib-phobia. I was intimidated by the thought of a boat with more than one sail. I was also petrified at the thought of operating a boat bigger than 20 feet.

Now, here I was, aboard a real schooner, almost fifty feet long, with five tanbark (Dick calls them orange) sails to choose from (we used three), and all the attendant lines and strings to play with. I no longer have jib-phobia, having sailed on sloops and ketches and yawls and junk rigs. I’m not afraid of really big boats, either. Seems like all our friends have ‘em.

I laid on the bow with my head hanging over the bulwark, mesmerized by the bow wave as the hull sliced through the sparkling blue water. The sound of the water was like celestial music.

Back at the wheel, I sat astride the helmsman’s seat, and I did throw back my head and let out a hearty “Yee haw!” Dick laughed and teased me about my “shit-eating grin.”

For Dick, it was a whole different experience from taking his 79-year-old parents out the previous day.

“Was this the first time they’d seen your boat?” I asked.

“It was their first time on a sailboat,” he admitted.

That made me pause. The first time they went sailing? Friday. The last time they went sailing? Friday. Their first time on a schooner? Friday.

The funny thing is, only one of my answers is substantially different.

The first time I went sailing? 1982. The last time I went sailing? Saturday. The first time on a traditional schooner? Saturday.

There’s one more question to ask, and I suspect that here, our answers will diverge greatly. How often would you like to go sailing?

I suspect that Dick’s parents are content with the amount of sailing they’ve done in their lives: Once.

But I want to go sailing again. I want to hear water against the hull, want to sit at the wheel and go “Yee haw!” I want to hang my head over the side and watch the water flowing past for hours — every day.

(There’s a related limerick: “News of the Neuse.”)

Living in Beaufort, NC, Rebuilding Boats

Flowers under Flutterby

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Pollen patternI made a comment to Kenny last week about our struggles to paint between spells of wind and rain. “Better hurry,” he said, “pollen’s coming.”

We didn’t finish in time. Amazing amounts of pollen drifted over everything, tinting boats and vehicles and ground yellow. When it rained, there were strange pollen patterns on our hatches, and yellow rings on the ground when the puddles evaporated. We put our painting aside.

The pollen is just another sign of North Carolina spring, along with a tiny white flower blooming under our boat. At night, we hear the sound of peeping frogs, and the birdsong at dusk is like an orchestra. There have even been a few early mosquitoes, no-see-ums, and dolphins.

Flutterby with flower underneathThere’s another sign of spring, up on the high bridge that soars over the boatyard. We are so used to the sound of bridge traffic, we hardly notice cars and trucks as they pass by. But a motorcycle makes a different sound — and when I heard several of them crossing the bridge, I looked up. They just kept coming, and I counted 26 in all, out to enjoy the beautiful weather.

Last week, we had our first northbound cruising boat, Lady Simcoe. Gordon and Susan had been out cruising the Bahamas for the winter, and now it was time to lay the boat up and go back to work in Canada. They invited us aboard, and we sat in their cockpit, drinking Fire in de Hole Erotic Rum and hearing their stories. Barry hadn’t seen the label, and he asked me, “Don’t you mean exotic?” But there is nothing exotic about rum in the Bahamas — and the dancing lady on the label is definitely erotic.

Gordon and Susan told us one disquieting thing about cruising in the Bahamas. In order to get crucial weather information, all the cruisers listen to a daily radio “net.” The net’s at the ungodly hour of 6:30 am, which keeps the cruisers on an early-morning schedule. “Parties would break up at 8 o’clock, and we’d all be in bed by 9.” They laughed, but it doesn’t sound like much fun to this pair of night-owls.

Soon, we’ll be seeing more tanned northbound cruisers like them on the waterway. Which ones will stop for a haulout? We can only wait and see, and look forward to meeting them.

Closeup of Flutterby flowerThere is one thing I’m not looking forward to. A couple of our cruising friends left their vehicles here while they are in the Caribbean. Any day now, they’ll be back, and I’m a little embarrassed that we’re not gone yet. “What? Are you still here?” Then they’ll tell us about their cruising adventures, and we’ll tell them about epoxy-squirting disasters and paint jobs with stigmata and tiny white flowers growing under our boat.

And then we’ll all laugh and go out to dinner. I’m looking forward to that.

Friends Along the Way, Living in Beaufort, NC

Tiny town

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It’s a tiny town, you can hang around with me
It’s a tiny town, and ev’rybody knows what you been doin’
(with apologies to David Byrne)

We’d put away the tools, cleaned the sanding dust, and moved a few things to storage to make the boat presentable. Dinner was cooking, and we had the makings for sangria. But as I looked around the boat, I worried about the next few days.

Would Dad be comfortable here with us? He has more room in his walk-in closet than we have in our combined living room, kitchen, dining room, and office. Would he like Beaufort? It’s a tiny little town, and we don’t know anybody here.

A friendly honk interrupted my survey, and I scampered down the ladder for a hug. Dad had driven from Florida to Myrtle Beach for a conference and get-together with journalist friends. A few more hours of driving brought him to Beaufort, where he planned to spend five days with us.

First, though, he had to master the ladder. Although Flutterby‘s centerboard makes her much lower than most of the sailboats in the yard, it’s still a daunting 8 feet to the cockpit. Then about 4 feet down the companionway to the interior.

Barry and I do it dozens of times a day, in the daylight and in the dark, with arms full of tools and groceries and boat parts. We’ve had occasional slips — at least three bruising incidents on the companionway. I also took some priceless video of Barry going down the big ladder facing forward. About halfway down, he lost his footing and slid plink-plink-plink down the rungs, making a sound like a xylophone and landing in a heap at the bottom. Only his dignity was hurt, which is why he grabbed the camera and deleted the video.

Dad and Flutterby

Dad navigates the ladder onto Flutterby

Anyway, Dad made it up fine with us hovering anxiously, and was soon ensconced in our salon. Over the course of the week, we spent lots of time there, talking, listening to music, and spreading out newspapers, books, laptops, notecards, food, and beverages. My fears were groundless — the only spatial challenge was vertical. At 6’2″, Dad’s head brushes the ceiling, and going into the head is like climbing into a hobbit-hole.

I had planned short daily expeditions to see local sights, like the Maritime Museum and Fort Macon, and I’d checked with our boatyard expert, Larry, for restaurant recommendations.

By Tuesday, the rain had cleared, and we were at the Backstreet pub, listening to a lively Irish band and eating corned beef and cabbage. We were having a blast when along came our neighbor, John. Then we struck up a lively conversation with a couple from the University of Tennessee, and the two professors found lots to talk about. John left, and along came our Burning Man friend, Jeff. All this, in a town where we don’t know anybody.

Dad and Margaret at the Backstreet

On Wednesday, I suggested we check out the live music advertised at the Sandbar. So we parked at Town Creek marina, and I noticed our friend Ted sitting in the cockpit of Ocean Gypsy with a friend.

I called down from the parking lot. “Hi! We thought we’d come over and check out the Sandbar this evening.”

Ted told us, “You’d better come have a drink with us instead.”

Ted and his neighbor, Ron, said the Sandbar was a great little bar and restaurant. But the couple who ran the place weren’t getting along, and the woman left. She took the liquor license with her! This resulted in the police coming out on Saturday and shutting the bar down.

As a result, we sat in Ted’s spacious cockpit and swapped stories about book-publishing and sailing and life until it was almost dark. Dad got to see what a properly-outfitted Freedom 33 looks like, and we got to know Ron, who’s recently published a book, Sailing With Carol. All this, in a town where we don’t know anybody.

On Thursday, we took a ferry ride to Oriental, which considers itself the “sailboat capitol of the world.” We stopped at a waterfront park on the way and ran into a couple who’d been on the ferry with us. Dad ended up in conversation with the husband, and Barry and I started chatting with the wife…were we standing there in the sunshine talking for 30 minutes, or 45?

On Friday, we went into Beaufort and strolled Front Street, stopping into a few shops. We were browsing in Rocking Chair Books when Ted came in to see the owner, Kelli. After he introduced us, we were chatting with Kelli, and in walked our neighbor, Oscar. All this, in a town where we don’t know anybody.

The funny thing is, Dad has an even older friend here in the area, but he told me they’d been out of touch for a while. When he looked up his friend in the phone book and called him, I could tell something was amiss.

Dad had asked for Woody Price. Unfortunately, Woody had died eight years before, and his 94-year-old widow never, ever called her husband “Woody” — only “Woodrow.” Once they straightened that out, they had a nice chat.

When Dad finally got off the phone, I asked him how long he’d been out of touch with the Price’s. “I got Christmas cards from them for years, with a painting of their little saltbox house,” he reminisced. Then he told me he’d last run into Woody by chance during a trip to the Outer Banks. His wife hadn’t been with him on that trip, though.

Later, I checked the family photos on my computer. Dad’s last trip to the Outer Banks had been in 1971. He hadn’t seen Woody for 38 years, and hadn’t seen Mary for over 40. With his incredible memory for details, he made it sound like it was yesterday.

So many friends, new and old, in a tiny town where we don’t know anybody.

Friends Along the Way, Limericks, Messing About in Boats

In like a lion

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I’m complaining: “This weather is dumb!
“It is March, and now springtime should come!”
When a knock and a shout,
Makes me stick my head out,
“Well, hooray! Here comes Dick! Where’s the rum?”

After a teaser week of spring, we are now freezing! Outdoor temperatures were in the 20’s (Fahrenheit) when Dick arrived today, giving us a welcome respite from work. We enjoyed a warm and toasty gab-fest with tea and bakery-fresh bread, followed by pizza and rum.

Rebuilding Boats

Into the Void

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We’ve been working with epoxy for quite a while now.  Meps probably wrote describing some of the messes it can make.  But today’s repair was one of our biggest messes so far. Actually, the word we used to describe it today was considerably less nice than “mess.”

Sure, epoxy is sticky stuff and gets on a lot of things. Sure, many jobs are best done applying it with a (rubber gloved) finger, which means eventually all fingers, and as a result, all tools, are covered with gooey epoxy. We’ve gotten used to that.

Today we started with a normal job — reshaping a porthole opening. Our new bronze portlights don’t quite match either the previous plastic ones, badly installed by the prior boat owner, or the ones put in by the factory decades ago. The resulting hole is too big in some places, too small in others, and has voids and ugly old screw holes. After grinding out bad stuff, we fill the holes with thickened epoxy, then screw in a wooden mold and add more epoxy around that, making a near-perfect shape for the new port.

This went pretty much as expected, but it was the 6th portlight we had repaired that way, and we had the drill down.  The next job was one we had only done once before.  It also involved more yelling and excitement the last time, so we didn’t expect it to be easy or straightforward this time either.

You can’t see it, and neither can we, but there is a void in our boat, between the cabin sides and cabin top. There was a piece of teak trim along this line, which functioned as a sort of eyebrow above the portlights. It was mounted with a lot of screws, which failed and allowed water intrusion. When we drilled them out, we found that many were connected via long void channels. So much for the squirt-a-little-thickened-epoxy-with-a-syringe solution…

So on the night of our big mess, we made a bigger batch of epoxy than usual and thickened it with Cab-o-Sil. Using a plastic spoon, a spatula, and our fingers, we started filling an empty caulking gun tube this messy goo. The batch was big enough to start heating up from the chemical reaction of kicking, warning us we have to move fast. Then we fought with the plunger and the caulk gun. By now, there was enough epoxy on everything that changing gloves was pointless.

And then the fun begins. It’s dusk as we go outside. I insert the end into a hole, as tight as I could, with a rubber adapter that fits the hole snugly. With a finger on my free hand, I plug the next hole. Meps is holding fingers over three or four, maybe even five more holes. I start squeezing the trigger, trying to force the goo a distance of about three feet, with holes every eight inches or so.

At a recent trip to Lowe’s (the hardware store, not the grocery), we got one of the better caulking guns, and it has twice as much leverage as a cheap one — lots of oomph! But this same pressure is now against our fingers, which don’t exactly fit the holes. As I force epoxy past Meps’ fingers, she starts hollering, “I can’t hold on!” and the pressure is rising at the earlier fingers. Two of them squirt out about a quarter cup of epoxy, but it hasn’t hit the end of the line yet.  I keep squirting, we both keep pushing, and she keeps fussing. Finally it gets through the void and comes out the last hole.

As fast as possible, I remove the gun, flailing about for a safe place to put it that won’t leave epoxy all over the deck. Meanwhile, another quarter cup squirts out the entrance hole. Meps is frantically trying to cover more holes with all her fingers, like playing an oversized gooey flute.

I grab for the tape, to cover the holes, but our gloves are too slimed by epoxy to find the end of it.

When we go down below to mix our second batch of epoxy, I notice the worst part. There is a blowout in the main cabin — behind a wooden trim piece, a hole went into the same void I was filling. Now, as Meps mixes up the next batch of epoxy, I see a huge white blob of epoxy spurting from behind the trim and oozing down the side of the cabin. Ack!

It was completely dark by the time we finished emptying three caulking tubes into the void. We used a half gallon of vinegar to clean up tools, like the wrench, the screwdriver, the box cutter I had to use to find the end of the tape, and the droplight we weren’t expecting to need. The caulk gun alone took a half hour, and the blowout inside took even longer. We also had to clean epoxy off a hatch, the deck, the toe rail, and the cabin side. As a result, we spent longer on cleanup than we did on the job itself — just as necessary, but a lot less rewarding.

Living in a Boatyard, Rebuilding Boats

Ten thousand hours

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I had a chilling phone conversation with my friend, John, last week. He’s been following my adventures in the boatyard, and he was puzzled by something. He phrased his question using an example he knows a lot about: Rally racing.

According to John, in the world of rallies, there are people who drive race cars (in his case, navigate), and there are people who work on race cars.

So he wants to know, am I just someone who works on boats, instead of sailing on them? Because in the years he’s known me, all I seem to do is work on boats.

I was flabbergasted. You know that story about the emperor with no clothes? That’s how I felt. “No, no,” I protested, “I’m not one of those people, like Oscar, who just work on boats forever.”

Oscar is the fellow here in the boatyard who has been working on his boat for 14 years with no sign of progress.

Still, I started to wonder, how does my working-on-boats time compare to my sailing-on-boats time?

Since I met John in 2002, I have worked on boats for 44 weeks and sailed on them for 25 weeks. Barry’s numbers are even worse — he’s worked for 48 weeks and only sailed for 23 weeks.

This brings to mind another phone conversation, this time with Lee. I was talking about my steep learning curve in fiberglass layups, portlight replacement, hatch installation, painting with 2-part paints, and all the other things I’m trying to learn this week. He pointed out that there’s conventional wisdom saying that a person needs to do something for 10,000 hours before they master it.

If I’m working toward 10,000 hours of boat repairs, I’ve got a long way to go.

Meanwhile, Lee points out that I already have my 10,000 hours in things like writing and graphic design. I would add marketing, editing, web design, content management, business analysis, cooking…

Which explains why it’s so much easier to sit down and write this than it is to fit a new hatch.

I also already have my 10,000 hours in one other area: Sailing. To answer John’s question, I’ll get back to that one of these days — after I learn how to fix boats.