When we taped the promo sequence of our Childrens Public Broadcasting hopeful, "Ahoy Archimedes," I signed off with an antique sailing farewell, "Fair winds, a flowing tide, and following seas". This is a farewell in the original sense of “fare thee well.”
Fair winds are those blowing in the direction you’re bound. A “flowing tide” is the fortunate opposite of a “foul tide” (current against you). Following seas lift and seem to carry you – anyone who has tried to make headway in a “head sea” (waves opposing your course) knows what a buffeting, frantic, frustrating experience it can be.
The tide might seem a mega-force acting over enormous areas that has little application to tiny boats on its surface. At sea, yes. Onshore, it is to larf. When enormous areas of water attempt to empty from or fill up smaller areas of water, the resulting water pressure and consequent current can be shocking. Tidal bores in France and in China regularly set up six-foot to eight-foot walls of water moving at the speed of a bus up tidal rivers. The wicked “holes” between Buzzards Bay and the Vineyard and Nantucket Sounds see current twice a day that challenges the bladder control of staunch, experienced skippers. In one of them, Woods Hole, steel ocean buoys six and eight feet in diameter, weighing several tons, whip back and forth in the full flow, appearing at the surface only at one limit of their heavy mooring chains, emerging in a boil of water like sportive dolphins, sucked down again to make the next circuit and rear up at the other chain-limit. Tidal current fills and empties the Bay of Fundy inside Nova Scotia, making a waterfall that reverses directions twice daily, and giving ports at the head of the Bay a tidefall of (a flabbergasting) forty-five feet. To put this in perspective, the tide there would cover and uncover a four-story building twice a day.
When the tidal current runs against the wind, it sets up an unholy chop. At the mouth of the Cape Cod Canal, where the six knot SW current meets a steady twenty knot “smoky sou’wester,” standing waves of eight and ten feet set up in the channel off the Canal’s protective breakwater into Buzzards Bay. Watching a fifty-foot yacht expose half of her bottom, from forefoot to keel, before she crashes into the trough is impressive from shore but truly breathtaking from the deck.
One of the explanations I was making to Kai, a delightful kid who was part of our taping, is that a wave isn't what it seems. A wave is an energy pulse that travels through the water, while any given molecule of water stays pretty much in the same area, moving up, forward and back in a circular or elliptic motion. The water stays put (except for current effects) while the physical disturbance of the water travels on. The wicked surf on many beaches is an amplification phenomenon – the energy of the pulse rebounding from the shallowing bottom when the depth is less than a certain proportion of the waves’ height and period (length or time between crests). The rebounding energy increases the height of the waves without affecting the period, so the amplitude (height) of the wave is multiplied and, eventually, can’t support itself structurally and “breaks” – surf. There are tremendous waves at sea that can be very impressive from a small boat. It's not uncommon in, say, the Roaring Forties (40° south latitude) for seas to reach a regular height of forty feet and their crests, blown by wind, break in “combers.” Breaking waves like this are called “graybeards” in respect and awe. But the period of these graybeards, the length between crests, is dictated by wave physics uncomplicated by bottom amplification and can be a quarter or even half a mile.
In the vast fetch of the sea (“fetch” is the distance over which waves travel and grow) the waves around you may be generated by more than one factor. A storm working up the sea a thousand miles away can send its waves to you, and this “train” of waves (a long set of energy peaks) meeting your local waves at an angle can amplify, diminish, or alter the frequency of your wave conditions. It can be tricky to steer in a “confused sea” like this because the pattern of amplifications and diminutions seems random (which it ain’t).
Traditional oceanography was pleased with its wave theory until recently. Water is, after all, a relatively uniform fluid, so physical laws apply uniformly. Obedient wave equations had been built and confirmed. You seen one wave, you seen ‘em all. Professional bluewater sailors disagreed. Many have faced the phenomenon of “rogue waves,” which were considered folklore until sober reports from supertankers, research vessels, and sea-measuring radar satellites confirmed their existence. It’s now considered likely that, at any given moment, ten mountainous rogue waves are alive and rushing across the World Ocean for hours at a time, some in excess of a hundred feet. In 1943, for instance, the celebrated liner RMS Queen Mary had been pressed into service as a troop ship. She was capable of such extraordinary speed that she needed no conventional convoy escorts but she was sometimes accompanied by fast-moving, sub-killing Navy blimps. The Queen Mary met a a pair of rogue waves, startlingly larger than the “normal” storm waves around it. One wave was photographed from a blimp breaking OVER HER BRIDGE, ninety-three feet above her waterline. Bridge windows were stove in, the bridge flooded, and the Queen Mary, among the largest ships afloat, nearly went down in the battering. She listed 52° for several minutes before she righted herself and continued.
There are mysterious places – the Agulhaus Current off the Cape of Good Hope is one – that also produce rogue troughs, “holes in the sea.” A British warship encountered one in the 50’s, fell into the trough, and kept going down. Lost with all 600+ hands in a few moments.
A tsunami is not a rogue wave. Indeed, the energy pulse of a tsunami can pass under a ship without notice. It’s essentially a huge convex disturbance of the surface, of such a scale that a ship wouldn’t be able to detect it. When it reaches the continental shelf off the shore, however, bottom reflection of energy converts it to a giant, lethal wall of water.
The point is that our World Ocean is aqua incognita. It ain’t Kansas. It is an arena in which humanly unimaginable forces dwell daily. We don’t know a great deal about the ocean, so far, and haven’t devised a way to live securely on or in it. Bits and pieces of information drift in like flotsam to the shore. Space Travel? Captain Kirk and the Enterprise? Puh-lease. We’ve got places a few miles offshore where no man has gone before.
NOTE: SAILOR FOLKLORE
There is an ancient joke about sailors’ reportage: What’s the difference between a “sea story” and a “fairy story?”
A “fairy story” begins, “Once upon a time…” A “sea story” begins, “Now this ain’t no shit…”
Readers are assured that, within the limits of good-faith research and suppression of poetic license, the above ain't no shit.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
As Himself has often said, "No one can love the sea." It's too cold and cruel and unfeeling and dangerous. But it's difficult for a thinking person not to be fascinated or even obsessed by the sea. The cowboys say, "The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man," and the hayseeds may be right. But ocean fascination and being on the water is good for the heart and mind. Neither Adkins nor I have any pretensions of mastery or even professional knowledge of the ocean. We're shoreside dabblers, coastal sailors with occasional leaps across blue water. I'm glad that neither of us has false courage about the water. One is especially pleased that a romantic like Himself still has a healthy fear of setting out on the face of the mighty deep, even when it's shallow. Fear is a much-underrated virtue.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
HOPSCOTCH REMEMBERED
THE SUN CAME OUT this morning, so Laura and Hannah were out in the driveway. Hannah was drawing on the concrete with big chalk. I walked down and was drawn into the chalk drawing. Hannah lay down so I could trace her outline. This was so fine that Laura lay down and had hers done. I laid down but rather than flat-on-back, arms-outspread, I tried a lying-on-side profile. When I drew a cross for my eyes, the driveway became a crime scene. Naturally Laura insisted on her own crime-scene profile, which she got. I did two cross-eyes for this but it disturbed Laura considerably and she tried to wash out the "dead eyes" because, she said, "this is beginning to look sick."
She took the kabosh off our crime scene by drawing a familiar figure farther out in the driveway: a hopscotch matrix – one, two, three, double, six, double, nine, heaven. We showed Hannah how it was done. She refused to get into the racket but demanded that we continue.
I returned to my studio (proclaiming my intention to "use the potty," since Hannah is in the midst of intense potty training, big girl pants, &c) and looked down at the hopscotch matrix. What a familiar figure and how evocative! It was probably a game played when Gilgamesh was king. Of course it was a girls' game. I can't remember the play or the scoring and refused myself the time for Googling "hopscotch." It made me consider the flow of time, yet again this week.
When I began seriously fooling around with computers the industrial design studio with which I worked in Providence, RI, had a memory hard drive with a 2 GB capacity, a larger drive than I'd ever seen. We thought this amount of 0's and 1's was extraordinary, amazing, who could use so much? Sitting next to my keyboard presently is a SanDisk thumb-drive as big as a French fry with a memory storage capacity of 4 GB. I bought a pack of three at CostCo for under $30. Things change.
My first commercial flight was aboard a DC-4. The service of the “stewardess” was attentive and pleasant. We walked out onto the tarmac to board via a rolling set of steps. Our friends came to see us off (we were flying from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Tampa, Florida, by way of Atlanta, because Wheeling had no commercial airport). A 5’ chain-link fence separated the onlookers from the runway. In the air I got ear-popping gum as a matter of course. Later a meal was served handsomely with airline-monogrammed silverware. Each diner had tiny salt and pepper shakers. I was invited to look at the cockpit. It was more impressive than contemporary cockpits because radial engines need more complex monitoring than jets, require a "flight engineer" and have close to a hundred dials. The cockpit door was open most of the time. No one had highjacked an airplane. What a crazy idea. They'd know where you were going, right? You couldn't get away with it. What kind of a nut would highjack an airplane?
I'm proud to say that I received Flying Wings as a bona fide flight passenger when we reached Tampa.
I flew the week after 9-11 (I had lost a friend, Anne Judge, in the Pentagon crash that day) but haven’t flown since exploding underwear came into vogue, so I don’t know the drill of not covering one’s lap, drinking liquids or humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” during the last half hour of flight. One crazed Islamicist attempts to light his sneakers and millions of Americans take off their shoes. One supposes that next year we’ll be flying naked with a mood probe up our ass.
I’m one of those people who remembers early-childhood experiences, like the texture of the cast-iron crib at my grandparent’s summer place in the West Virginia mountains, or the sound of cars passing on the dirt road directly in front of that cottage, or the smell of the green, slightly translucent wallpaper cleaning dough my mother used at our house on Wheeling Island, or the smell of the pineapple-flavored rum my gramma and grampa brought back from Cuba. I remember the gritty feel and stony smell of Lava soap, always beside the sink because my grandfather, father and uncles worked in the shop. I liked the smell of Jergen’s Lotion, Lifebuoy soap, and my father’s green Mennen’s Aftershave. That was his smell. I loved spaghetti, partly because (in our Wonder Bread world) it was so exotic.
We sometimes took road trips with my Uncle Charlie and Aunt Mary. One of the trips brought us to Washington, DC. The Smithsonian was wonderful. I put my nose into the tiny porthole of the Explorer II high altitude gondola, a black and white sphere sent manned into the actual stratosphere by the National Geographic Society. The old, uncirculated air smelled musty and dry. There were two sets of drinking fountains; it was disappointing that the fountains under the “COLORED” sign offered plain, uncolored water. At the National Zoo the keeper at the primate house showed us that the monkeys ate well, breaking off a dense, sweet cornbread made with honey, bran, seeds and vitamins, fed to the chimps. When he took a bite my mother, who was definitely a delicate creature, almost fainted. When I took a bite from the keeper before she could stop me, she was forced to sit down and recover. It was delicious. I wish I had a piece right now.
Things change. My G-4 Mac computer is now, ahem, "old." The notion of air travel as an elegant way to go is antique. Presently it's a feedlot experience. I’m an old guy now. Thank God for stents, Zoloft and Viagra. And also, thank God for the beautiful sun that burned through the rain and fog at last. Maybe I'll Google "hopscotch" tomorrow.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Childhood memories are odd artifacts. One wonders if they're honest. Things Adkins' grandson Max has said seem to reflect the long labor of his birth as a memory of his mother "trying and trying to get me out." Still, I must be aware that Himself can grow morose with too many memories. Looking back too earnestly ensures a stumble in the present.
She took the kabosh off our crime scene by drawing a familiar figure farther out in the driveway: a hopscotch matrix – one, two, three, double, six, double, nine, heaven. We showed Hannah how it was done. She refused to get into the racket but demanded that we continue.
I returned to my studio (proclaiming my intention to "use the potty," since Hannah is in the midst of intense potty training, big girl pants, &c) and looked down at the hopscotch matrix. What a familiar figure and how evocative! It was probably a game played when Gilgamesh was king. Of course it was a girls' game. I can't remember the play or the scoring and refused myself the time for Googling "hopscotch." It made me consider the flow of time, yet again this week.
When I began seriously fooling around with computers the industrial design studio with which I worked in Providence, RI, had a memory hard drive with a 2 GB capacity, a larger drive than I'd ever seen. We thought this amount of 0's and 1's was extraordinary, amazing, who could use so much? Sitting next to my keyboard presently is a SanDisk thumb-drive as big as a French fry with a memory storage capacity of 4 GB. I bought a pack of three at CostCo for under $30. Things change.
My first commercial flight was aboard a DC-4. The service of the “stewardess” was attentive and pleasant. We walked out onto the tarmac to board via a rolling set of steps. Our friends came to see us off (we were flying from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Tampa, Florida, by way of Atlanta, because Wheeling had no commercial airport). A 5’ chain-link fence separated the onlookers from the runway. In the air I got ear-popping gum as a matter of course. Later a meal was served handsomely with airline-monogrammed silverware. Each diner had tiny salt and pepper shakers. I was invited to look at the cockpit. It was more impressive than contemporary cockpits because radial engines need more complex monitoring than jets, require a "flight engineer" and have close to a hundred dials. The cockpit door was open most of the time. No one had highjacked an airplane. What a crazy idea. They'd know where you were going, right? You couldn't get away with it. What kind of a nut would highjack an airplane?
I'm proud to say that I received Flying Wings as a bona fide flight passenger when we reached Tampa.
I flew the week after 9-11 (I had lost a friend, Anne Judge, in the Pentagon crash that day) but haven’t flown since exploding underwear came into vogue, so I don’t know the drill of not covering one’s lap, drinking liquids or humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” during the last half hour of flight. One crazed Islamicist attempts to light his sneakers and millions of Americans take off their shoes. One supposes that next year we’ll be flying naked with a mood probe up our ass.
I’m one of those people who remembers early-childhood experiences, like the texture of the cast-iron crib at my grandparent’s summer place in the West Virginia mountains, or the sound of cars passing on the dirt road directly in front of that cottage, or the smell of the green, slightly translucent wallpaper cleaning dough my mother used at our house on Wheeling Island, or the smell of the pineapple-flavored rum my gramma and grampa brought back from Cuba. I remember the gritty feel and stony smell of Lava soap, always beside the sink because my grandfather, father and uncles worked in the shop. I liked the smell of Jergen’s Lotion, Lifebuoy soap, and my father’s green Mennen’s Aftershave. That was his smell. I loved spaghetti, partly because (in our Wonder Bread world) it was so exotic.
We sometimes took road trips with my Uncle Charlie and Aunt Mary. One of the trips brought us to Washington, DC. The Smithsonian was wonderful. I put my nose into the tiny porthole of the Explorer II high altitude gondola, a black and white sphere sent manned into the actual stratosphere by the National Geographic Society. The old, uncirculated air smelled musty and dry. There were two sets of drinking fountains; it was disappointing that the fountains under the “COLORED” sign offered plain, uncolored water. At the National Zoo the keeper at the primate house showed us that the monkeys ate well, breaking off a dense, sweet cornbread made with honey, bran, seeds and vitamins, fed to the chimps. When he took a bite my mother, who was definitely a delicate creature, almost fainted. When I took a bite from the keeper before she could stop me, she was forced to sit down and recover. It was delicious. I wish I had a piece right now.
Things change. My G-4 Mac computer is now, ahem, "old." The notion of air travel as an elegant way to go is antique. Presently it's a feedlot experience. I’m an old guy now. Thank God for stents, Zoloft and Viagra. And also, thank God for the beautiful sun that burned through the rain and fog at last. Maybe I'll Google "hopscotch" tomorrow.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Childhood memories are odd artifacts. One wonders if they're honest. Things Adkins' grandson Max has said seem to reflect the long labor of his birth as a memory of his mother "trying and trying to get me out." Still, I must be aware that Himself can grow morose with too many memories. Looking back too earnestly ensures a stumble in the present.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
GREEN BOATING
A discussion in today's "Marina, Boatingbuilding and Dealer Professionals" forum asked if "Green Marinas" were viable. This is a charged debate because the "professionals" depend on big boats for their profits, and the big powerboats get about half a mile to the gallon, if that.
But being on the water is so important, so precious. Watching from shore just isn't a substitute. You see the ocean and its life only beyond the surf. My contribution to the subject was:
The Green Marina is a goal. Even faltering steps toward energy savings and zero-added-pollution should be encouraged. Should Green Marinas harbor sailing craft only? Not necessarily; some motor yachts designed for modest speeds are fuel-efficient. And some small, economically disenfranchised boaters are zero-polluters. How many marinas welcome small scale sailors – kayaks, pulling boats and daysailers?
It's surprising to most wind-sailors how much fuel fast-moving demands. It's a guilty fact that we motor through calms, light winds and even headwinds. We might return to the slip after a trip out to the Farralones and back, motoring for a good part of the day, and use, perhaps, 7 gallons of diesel. The sport-fisherman across the dock has made the same trip at a higher speed, has admittedly covered more bottom by setting and pulling crab pots and trolling for stripers, but has burned more than ten times the fuel. Things change. Oil is no longer a negligible component of boating's future.
Being on the water is a rare privilege most landlocked souls aren't offered. The prime benefit of access to the water life is witnessing and being part of its powerful but delicate ecology. A responsibility comes with the privilege: we're obligated to do as little harm to the water we love as possible.
A Green Marina, even one with some contradictions and drawbacks, is a good start and a good example. Any Green Marina would remind its skippers to think more clearly about how they affect the water. If we saw more Green Marinas, the industry would inevitably push technology (still grounded in its high-ticket, twin-Chrysler, go-fast stage) toward efficiency and sensible conservation. It may not be too early to accept the logical expression of our privileged closeness to the world ocean: reducing fuel consumption at LEAST in proportion to reduction in automobile standards.
We don't want to lose marinas! They're critical portals to the water world, and they're a happy, colorful component of shore life. Marinas can't survive if they can't make money. Big boats make big profits. Fuel markups aren't what they were but they're part of the profit margin. What's the responsible, proactive, progressive, foresighted path? Green Marinas are one part of the answer: they're an institutional commitment to positive change.
The sensible path surely depends on reading the future as wisely as we check the weather forecasts: can go-fast powerboating continue as a highly visible symbol of boating's lack of concern for conservation? Will every big, creamy wake, so visible scarring the Bay, encourage legislators to make the boating industry a sop to Cerberus? Will legislation crack down on boating as a smoke screen for allowing trucking and auto manufacturers to ignore fuel reduction guidelines?
You know that I'm merely a gadfly in this discussion. My dog in this fight is a Chihuahua. But from a journalist's perspective, the boating industry might serve itself best by getting on the Green Barge and making its own changes.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself can offer himself to ridicule pitifully eagerly. One speculates that marine businessmen, boat manufacturers and even small-boat builders would prefer that amateurs simply shut up. But ridicule can be an honorable state for journalists, whose business demands that they step out onto the balcony of palaces and observe aloud that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Ridicule doesn't do journalists much lasting harm, and we suppose they must accustom themselves to the sting of cold water in their faces in order to say the critically important thing when it is, by common consent, ridiculous.
But being on the water is so important, so precious. Watching from shore just isn't a substitute. You see the ocean and its life only beyond the surf. My contribution to the subject was:
The Green Marina is a goal. Even faltering steps toward energy savings and zero-added-pollution should be encouraged. Should Green Marinas harbor sailing craft only? Not necessarily; some motor yachts designed for modest speeds are fuel-efficient. And some small, economically disenfranchised boaters are zero-polluters. How many marinas welcome small scale sailors – kayaks, pulling boats and daysailers?
It's surprising to most wind-sailors how much fuel fast-moving demands. It's a guilty fact that we motor through calms, light winds and even headwinds. We might return to the slip after a trip out to the Farralones and back, motoring for a good part of the day, and use, perhaps, 7 gallons of diesel. The sport-fisherman across the dock has made the same trip at a higher speed, has admittedly covered more bottom by setting and pulling crab pots and trolling for stripers, but has burned more than ten times the fuel. Things change. Oil is no longer a negligible component of boating's future.
Being on the water is a rare privilege most landlocked souls aren't offered. The prime benefit of access to the water life is witnessing and being part of its powerful but delicate ecology. A responsibility comes with the privilege: we're obligated to do as little harm to the water we love as possible.
A Green Marina, even one with some contradictions and drawbacks, is a good start and a good example. Any Green Marina would remind its skippers to think more clearly about how they affect the water. If we saw more Green Marinas, the industry would inevitably push technology (still grounded in its high-ticket, twin-Chrysler, go-fast stage) toward efficiency and sensible conservation. It may not be too early to accept the logical expression of our privileged closeness to the world ocean: reducing fuel consumption at LEAST in proportion to reduction in automobile standards.
We don't want to lose marinas! They're critical portals to the water world, and they're a happy, colorful component of shore life. Marinas can't survive if they can't make money. Big boats make big profits. Fuel markups aren't what they were but they're part of the profit margin. What's the responsible, proactive, progressive, foresighted path? Green Marinas are one part of the answer: they're an institutional commitment to positive change.
The sensible path surely depends on reading the future as wisely as we check the weather forecasts: can go-fast powerboating continue as a highly visible symbol of boating's lack of concern for conservation? Will every big, creamy wake, so visible scarring the Bay, encourage legislators to make the boating industry a sop to Cerberus? Will legislation crack down on boating as a smoke screen for allowing trucking and auto manufacturers to ignore fuel reduction guidelines?
You know that I'm merely a gadfly in this discussion. My dog in this fight is a Chihuahua. But from a journalist's perspective, the boating industry might serve itself best by getting on the Green Barge and making its own changes.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself can offer himself to ridicule pitifully eagerly. One speculates that marine businessmen, boat manufacturers and even small-boat builders would prefer that amateurs simply shut up. But ridicule can be an honorable state for journalists, whose business demands that they step out onto the balcony of palaces and observe aloud that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Ridicule doesn't do journalists much lasting harm, and we suppose they must accustom themselves to the sting of cold water in their faces in order to say the critically important thing when it is, by common consent, ridiculous.
MORTALITY
BY MY TROTH, I care not; a man can die but once: we owe God a death: I'll ne'er bear a base mind: an't be my destiny, so; an't be not, so: no man is too good to serve's prince; and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next.
William Shakespeare, Henry IV
A friend's mother-in-law just died, and another friend's mum is teetering on the brink. Recently I lost my dear mentor, Matt Finn. What can you say to friends, what can you say to yourself, about death?
We can't understand how folks depart, leave the husk, and don’t return. It’s not in our human makeup to grasp this finality. They leave, gone, that's it. All that experience, all those stories, all that humor . . . Gone. How can that be?
I’m an old dog and I still can’t get my logic around it.
I’m not comfortable with churches. Despite my science reporter’s background (or, perhaps, because of it) I’m certain that a benign current underlies our reality. But I can’t support the idea of ghosts or heaven or souls, if only because it would be too damn comforting to have these hedges. So I don't expect the Ghost of Christmas Past or my Uncle Pete to shuffle through rattling chains. I don't expect to continue in any way after I check out.
What bothers me most is the reality of what was. How can a day forty-five years ago – in late fall on a hillside in the mountains of West Virginia, when hickory nuts fell from the trees rattling on branches, and I felt the soft hand of Becky Barlow’s hand in mine – not be as real as what I see outside my window now? How can my mother's pies not be still as fragrant as the moment before they were cut, still warm? I see those times, I very nearly smell that pie. Where is the day and the pie? I don’t know. It’s one of the basically disturbing things about being human, this awful backlog of afternoons and evenings, moments and loved ones, that don’t logically exist in the present. Where did they go? Aren’t they still somewhere?
When you’re older dreams take on more authority. They have as much reality as the news, or what you see at the supermarket. If those dreams have such power to jog my emotions and stir my spirit, what about those gleaming gems of memory – intense joy, understanding, grief, frustration, desolation? It's hard to believe they're not in some sideband of time, some back-file of reality.
Maybe my low blood pressure has something to do with these delusionary wonderings. When I get up quickly from any chair I swoon a bit, as the mass of my blood readjusts and causes new hydrostatic pressures in my brain. These bits of dizzy pause are unscripted by logic, current events or the flow of conversation. It's possible these transient lapses predispose me to see the world as less that absolute, a garment sewn up loosely.
My doubts about the absolute nature of reality don't seem to affect my skeptical regard for acupuncture, chiropractic, Scientology, homeopathy or prayer breakfasts, but it casts a shadow of doubt on the whole damn river of time.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
As Himself grows older, he's more aware of his own lapses of sanity, as well as these lapses of swooning consciousness. He's often confided that he's crazier than he thought he was. One of his recurring fears is that he's lost critical opportunities because folks can sense his instability. True, he's a nutball, but I have less respect for most people's sensitivity than he does. The great majority of humanity wouldn't know their ass fell off unless they sat down quickly.
William Shakespeare, Henry IV
A friend's mother-in-law just died, and another friend's mum is teetering on the brink. Recently I lost my dear mentor, Matt Finn. What can you say to friends, what can you say to yourself, about death?
We can't understand how folks depart, leave the husk, and don’t return. It’s not in our human makeup to grasp this finality. They leave, gone, that's it. All that experience, all those stories, all that humor . . . Gone. How can that be?
I’m an old dog and I still can’t get my logic around it.
I’m not comfortable with churches. Despite my science reporter’s background (or, perhaps, because of it) I’m certain that a benign current underlies our reality. But I can’t support the idea of ghosts or heaven or souls, if only because it would be too damn comforting to have these hedges. So I don't expect the Ghost of Christmas Past or my Uncle Pete to shuffle through rattling chains. I don't expect to continue in any way after I check out.
What bothers me most is the reality of what was. How can a day forty-five years ago – in late fall on a hillside in the mountains of West Virginia, when hickory nuts fell from the trees rattling on branches, and I felt the soft hand of Becky Barlow’s hand in mine – not be as real as what I see outside my window now? How can my mother's pies not be still as fragrant as the moment before they were cut, still warm? I see those times, I very nearly smell that pie. Where is the day and the pie? I don’t know. It’s one of the basically disturbing things about being human, this awful backlog of afternoons and evenings, moments and loved ones, that don’t logically exist in the present. Where did they go? Aren’t they still somewhere?
When you’re older dreams take on more authority. They have as much reality as the news, or what you see at the supermarket. If those dreams have such power to jog my emotions and stir my spirit, what about those gleaming gems of memory – intense joy, understanding, grief, frustration, desolation? It's hard to believe they're not in some sideband of time, some back-file of reality.
Maybe my low blood pressure has something to do with these delusionary wonderings. When I get up quickly from any chair I swoon a bit, as the mass of my blood readjusts and causes new hydrostatic pressures in my brain. These bits of dizzy pause are unscripted by logic, current events or the flow of conversation. It's possible these transient lapses predispose me to see the world as less that absolute, a garment sewn up loosely.
My doubts about the absolute nature of reality don't seem to affect my skeptical regard for acupuncture, chiropractic, Scientology, homeopathy or prayer breakfasts, but it casts a shadow of doubt on the whole damn river of time.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
As Himself grows older, he's more aware of his own lapses of sanity, as well as these lapses of swooning consciousness. He's often confided that he's crazier than he thought he was. One of his recurring fears is that he's lost critical opportunities because folks can sense his instability. True, he's a nutball, but I have less respect for most people's sensitivity than he does. The great majority of humanity wouldn't know their ass fell off unless they sat down quickly.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
CLOTHESLINE
HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATIONS are fierce guardians of design morality, yard upkeep, and homogeneous property values. They've politely mentioned to a friend that her clothesline is not an approved landscaping feature. Of course they're polite. Bigotry and reminding folks that they have stepped outside accepted standards is always begun politely.
Her homeowners association is cowering before the persistence of image. When they see her clothes fluttering in the breeze, they don’t see a farm wife in the prairie wind but the stigma of the tenements, all those clotheslines hung between buildings, in air shafts, on tar roofs.
As a journalist, I should greet the association’s wet-jammie jitters as a compliment, since it stems in some part from one of the earliest and most powerful landmarks of photojournalism, Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements In New York, 1890. This photo essay made an indelible impression on middle and upper class consciousness and persists to this day. It revealed the “shame of the squalid tenements.” A few efforts were made toward improving conditions but it was clear that the shame resided with the tenement dwellers, and there was obvious pique that the poor had embarrassed the rich.
But there’s something odd in the tenement clothesline prejudice. The period in which we welcomed so many immigrants and enriched our national gene pool with so much genius and drive was one of America's golden times. Yet our central icon of America, also from that time, is the cowboy. In reality the cattle drover we celebrate as the Marlboro Man was another indigent, socially abhorrent member on the lowest rung of society. The literacy rate in the tenements was sky-high compared to the readin’ and writin’ of the cattlemen. The cowboy’s heyday was brief: the “Texas cattle for Yankee dollars” era of driving big herds from the Southwest to the railheads in Kansas and Missouri spanned only about fifteen years. In that heyday the drover was seen by most of society as a pariah, filthy and uncivilized, ignorant and rowdy. To be fair, this perception was probably spot-on.
But out of our tenements in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnatti, Pittsburgh, Albany, Hartford and other urban centers we saw invention, enterprise, social reform, striving, artistic expression, and a new national spirit of diversity and respect. Granted, it took a hundred years for that spirit to gather power and legitimacy, but our national conscience began in the tenements with all those fluttering, clean clothes strung between buildings.
What social upheavals did the cowboys offer? The spirit of independence and self-reliance? No historic evidence of that. Most cowboys were hired on as part of a local cattlemen’s associations or a big-business rancher’s outfit, often with eastern or British money behind them. They were mounted troops at the beginning of the undeclared "War of Western Consolidation" that squeezed out "small-holders" and established big-money agribusiness.
That war saw a prairie suspension of habeus corpus, death squad "regulators," lynchings and corporate terrorism. But it's not a war you found in your textbooks. Billy the Kid was one champion of the small-holders in the Lincoln County War. The Mussel Shoals War was a bloodier conflict waged in California, involving Leland Stanford and his robber baron colleagues. Mussel Shoals was followed with obsessive interest in the class struggle it represented by a writer and theorist in London, Karl Marx.
So why the cowboy and not the immigrant striver? It was probably the hat. Even today a good Stetson attracts attention. It surely wasn't the horse. In that pre-automobile era everyone knew horses, every streetcorner layabout presented himself as an expert on horseflesh. But the hat, now there was the key to romance.
So why isn’t our national romance grounded in the tenements? Bad hats? Mebbe. In large part the influx of intelligence and talent the United States received between the beginning of the Civil War and the beginning of the First World War is what made this country great. Immigrants, a sound and balanced Constitution, size and fortunate geography. There you have America.
The homeowners association should bugger off and read their history books a little more closely, damnit.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself exhibits a dash of unaccustomed passion in this rant, but he makes sense. Surely we could afford more diversity in our heroes. We recall the Pecos Bill archetype in our pantheon but we seem to have largely dismissed Paul Bunyan, Mike Fink, Davy Crockett and Joe Magarak. Dirty Harry should be turned away as a national model, of course, but he's the obvious product of Duke Wayne's legacy.
Her homeowners association is cowering before the persistence of image. When they see her clothes fluttering in the breeze, they don’t see a farm wife in the prairie wind but the stigma of the tenements, all those clotheslines hung between buildings, in air shafts, on tar roofs.
As a journalist, I should greet the association’s wet-jammie jitters as a compliment, since it stems in some part from one of the earliest and most powerful landmarks of photojournalism, Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements In New York, 1890. This photo essay made an indelible impression on middle and upper class consciousness and persists to this day. It revealed the “shame of the squalid tenements.” A few efforts were made toward improving conditions but it was clear that the shame resided with the tenement dwellers, and there was obvious pique that the poor had embarrassed the rich.
But there’s something odd in the tenement clothesline prejudice. The period in which we welcomed so many immigrants and enriched our national gene pool with so much genius and drive was one of America's golden times. Yet our central icon of America, also from that time, is the cowboy. In reality the cattle drover we celebrate as the Marlboro Man was another indigent, socially abhorrent member on the lowest rung of society. The literacy rate in the tenements was sky-high compared to the readin’ and writin’ of the cattlemen. The cowboy’s heyday was brief: the “Texas cattle for Yankee dollars” era of driving big herds from the Southwest to the railheads in Kansas and Missouri spanned only about fifteen years. In that heyday the drover was seen by most of society as a pariah, filthy and uncivilized, ignorant and rowdy. To be fair, this perception was probably spot-on.
But out of our tenements in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnatti, Pittsburgh, Albany, Hartford and other urban centers we saw invention, enterprise, social reform, striving, artistic expression, and a new national spirit of diversity and respect. Granted, it took a hundred years for that spirit to gather power and legitimacy, but our national conscience began in the tenements with all those fluttering, clean clothes strung between buildings.
What social upheavals did the cowboys offer? The spirit of independence and self-reliance? No historic evidence of that. Most cowboys were hired on as part of a local cattlemen’s associations or a big-business rancher’s outfit, often with eastern or British money behind them. They were mounted troops at the beginning of the undeclared "War of Western Consolidation" that squeezed out "small-holders" and established big-money agribusiness.
That war saw a prairie suspension of habeus corpus, death squad "regulators," lynchings and corporate terrorism. But it's not a war you found in your textbooks. Billy the Kid was one champion of the small-holders in the Lincoln County War. The Mussel Shoals War was a bloodier conflict waged in California, involving Leland Stanford and his robber baron colleagues. Mussel Shoals was followed with obsessive interest in the class struggle it represented by a writer and theorist in London, Karl Marx.
So why the cowboy and not the immigrant striver? It was probably the hat. Even today a good Stetson attracts attention. It surely wasn't the horse. In that pre-automobile era everyone knew horses, every streetcorner layabout presented himself as an expert on horseflesh. But the hat, now there was the key to romance.
So why isn’t our national romance grounded in the tenements? Bad hats? Mebbe. In large part the influx of intelligence and talent the United States received between the beginning of the Civil War and the beginning of the First World War is what made this country great. Immigrants, a sound and balanced Constitution, size and fortunate geography. There you have America.
The homeowners association should bugger off and read their history books a little more closely, damnit.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself exhibits a dash of unaccustomed passion in this rant, but he makes sense. Surely we could afford more diversity in our heroes. We recall the Pecos Bill archetype in our pantheon but we seem to have largely dismissed Paul Bunyan, Mike Fink, Davy Crockett and Joe Magarak. Dirty Harry should be turned away as a national model, of course, but he's the obvious product of Duke Wayne's legacy.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
CLINKER-BUILT
Every Tuesday evening at the Dolphin Club we give the pulling boats some care – repairing, sanding, varnishing, rebuilding. After we work three hours or so, we all eat together in the boat house at long tables.
A big crowd tonight, but not because it's Fat Tuesday and one of the members has made jambalaya. Big doings in the shop. Word has gone out that the Club's boatwright, Jon Belinski, is installing five new ribs in one of the older pulling boats. This is a rare demonstration of antique skills and methods, requiring teamwork, timing, speed and finesse. It's more than woodworking.
The ribs begin as tough locust staves. To bend this adamant wood into the fair curve of a rib, it must be cut to its cross-section and steamed in a long, closed, hissing iron pipe for half an hour. The locust ribs emerge at 200°F+ as limp as noodles. Limp for only moments. We will pluck ribs out one at a time with thick gloves and push them into the boat's inner shape, working feverishly before the inner heat dissipates and the locust stubbornness revives.
Contemporary sport boats are, in the old Massachusetts boatyard phrase, "built by the mile and cut off to suit." They're mass produced. You won't see ribs being steamed unless you haunt a cranky New England shipwright's shop peopled with wood-heads devoted to traditional (read "lavishly expensive") wooden boats built more carefully than a Hermann Miller coffee table.
We walk through the steps we will take in dumb-show first, noting where our feet will go, what will be in the way, who must step back, who must come forward. Everyone must work fast and in close concert, because the locust will be flexible from the steam box for less than a minute.
We take special care of these exquisite craft but they endure. Some are older than any of the people who work on them. And because why, mate? Because these 'ere boats is clinker-built, as light as eggshells but tough as pigs' noses. They are San Francisco variations on the Whitehall model. This means that they are rowing boats with a distinct and delicately cupped shaped, a "wineglass" transom (aft end), and that they're very light for their size, built in the ancient "clinker" construction.
"Clinker" is an Old English cognate of "clencher," which indicates that the boat is constructed of thin, overlapping planks of a light, flexible wood (in this case, white cedar) "clenched" to thin ribs with copper rivets. This fastening mode is a very old usage that binds more tightly than nails and more securely than screws. Indeed, nails and screws wouldn't have much to "grab" because the stock is so thin. The soft-as-cheese cedar is milled thin, not much thicker than 1/4" and about three inches wide. The ribs are only 5/8" wide and about 1/2" thick. While they're still whippy and hot, we will drill through and secure a rib, the lower part of an overlapping cedar strake (one of the curving horizontal planks) and the upper part of the next strake.
Now. A rib is whisked out of the steam pipe, slammed into the boat, bent against the soft interior curve of the strakes and forced under some of the boat's inner structure. Held hard, holes are immediately drilled, time management and tool quickness.
As soon as the holes are made a copper riveting nail is tapped through them. The "nail" is square in section to grip the wood more tightly. A round copper washer – called a "burr" – is forced over the square nail with a special riveting tool; it's like a chisel with a flat, blunt end drilled with a hole for the nail to occuply, so that whacking the burr down onto the nail forces the rib and strakes together. When the riveting tool is taken away, the nail is snipped off just above the burr and, while one partner "bucks" (holds a heavy iron on the nailhead end to prevent it from being driven away), the other shapes the soft copper with a small ball-peen hammer. This is the hammer with one flat head and one round head, made specifically for work like this – shaping the "mushroom" with the round head is called "peening". The copper is so malleable that it mushrooms over the burr and each stroke of the shaping ball-peen tightens the assembly.
It seems like intolerably fussy and unnecessary complication but it's the only thing that will bind these whisper-thin planks and light ribs into a remarkably rigid, nearly monocoque hull. It's historic, it's ancient methodology, very cool to watch and do.
Jay and I work as a team. Half the time I'm above the boat, tapping the rivets home, shaping the mushroomed-over heads in the soft copper. Half the time I'm under the boat, lying on the shop floor, holding the heavy bucking iron against the nail head. The shaping is a more focused task, it requires more care, but holding the bucking iron is heavier work.
There are compensations for that heavy work. Lying beneath the boat's lyric curves I see each strake describing a separate curved plane with a strake-thickness separating it from the next plane – graceful lines paralleling and harmonizing, the color of the varnished white cedar glowing golden and varying with the glare from every work light, shading from dark umber in the shadows to chrome yellow in the light. Beautiful.
The locust wood ribs emerging from the steam box smell bitter and damp. The drilled cedar smells like incense. The tapping and the calling between three or four sets of partners – two sets riveting, two sets placing new ribs – has a discernible rhythm and order.
The work had a sensible urgency and a splendid, strong outcome. What do we do in our lives that gives us much of that?
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself needs more physical work and more contact with working people. The abstract life of a writer and illustrator can be barren, like a room decorated with B&W print-outs of reports. A room and a life need color and a bit of mayhem.
A big crowd tonight, but not because it's Fat Tuesday and one of the members has made jambalaya. Big doings in the shop. Word has gone out that the Club's boatwright, Jon Belinski, is installing five new ribs in one of the older pulling boats. This is a rare demonstration of antique skills and methods, requiring teamwork, timing, speed and finesse. It's more than woodworking.
The ribs begin as tough locust staves. To bend this adamant wood into the fair curve of a rib, it must be cut to its cross-section and steamed in a long, closed, hissing iron pipe for half an hour. The locust ribs emerge at 200°F+ as limp as noodles. Limp for only moments. We will pluck ribs out one at a time with thick gloves and push them into the boat's inner shape, working feverishly before the inner heat dissipates and the locust stubbornness revives.
Contemporary sport boats are, in the old Massachusetts boatyard phrase, "built by the mile and cut off to suit." They're mass produced. You won't see ribs being steamed unless you haunt a cranky New England shipwright's shop peopled with wood-heads devoted to traditional (read "lavishly expensive") wooden boats built more carefully than a Hermann Miller coffee table.
We walk through the steps we will take in dumb-show first, noting where our feet will go, what will be in the way, who must step back, who must come forward. Everyone must work fast and in close concert, because the locust will be flexible from the steam box for less than a minute.
We take special care of these exquisite craft but they endure. Some are older than any of the people who work on them. And because why, mate? Because these 'ere boats is clinker-built, as light as eggshells but tough as pigs' noses. They are San Francisco variations on the Whitehall model. This means that they are rowing boats with a distinct and delicately cupped shaped, a "wineglass" transom (aft end), and that they're very light for their size, built in the ancient "clinker" construction.
"Clinker" is an Old English cognate of "clencher," which indicates that the boat is constructed of thin, overlapping planks of a light, flexible wood (in this case, white cedar) "clenched" to thin ribs with copper rivets. This fastening mode is a very old usage that binds more tightly than nails and more securely than screws. Indeed, nails and screws wouldn't have much to "grab" because the stock is so thin. The soft-as-cheese cedar is milled thin, not much thicker than 1/4" and about three inches wide. The ribs are only 5/8" wide and about 1/2" thick. While they're still whippy and hot, we will drill through and secure a rib, the lower part of an overlapping cedar strake (one of the curving horizontal planks) and the upper part of the next strake.
Now. A rib is whisked out of the steam pipe, slammed into the boat, bent against the soft interior curve of the strakes and forced under some of the boat's inner structure. Held hard, holes are immediately drilled, time management and tool quickness.
As soon as the holes are made a copper riveting nail is tapped through them. The "nail" is square in section to grip the wood more tightly. A round copper washer – called a "burr" – is forced over the square nail with a special riveting tool; it's like a chisel with a flat, blunt end drilled with a hole for the nail to occuply, so that whacking the burr down onto the nail forces the rib and strakes together. When the riveting tool is taken away, the nail is snipped off just above the burr and, while one partner "bucks" (holds a heavy iron on the nailhead end to prevent it from being driven away), the other shapes the soft copper with a small ball-peen hammer. This is the hammer with one flat head and one round head, made specifically for work like this – shaping the "mushroom" with the round head is called "peening". The copper is so malleable that it mushrooms over the burr and each stroke of the shaping ball-peen tightens the assembly.
It seems like intolerably fussy and unnecessary complication but it's the only thing that will bind these whisper-thin planks and light ribs into a remarkably rigid, nearly monocoque hull. It's historic, it's ancient methodology, very cool to watch and do.
Jay and I work as a team. Half the time I'm above the boat, tapping the rivets home, shaping the mushroomed-over heads in the soft copper. Half the time I'm under the boat, lying on the shop floor, holding the heavy bucking iron against the nail head. The shaping is a more focused task, it requires more care, but holding the bucking iron is heavier work.
There are compensations for that heavy work. Lying beneath the boat's lyric curves I see each strake describing a separate curved plane with a strake-thickness separating it from the next plane – graceful lines paralleling and harmonizing, the color of the varnished white cedar glowing golden and varying with the glare from every work light, shading from dark umber in the shadows to chrome yellow in the light. Beautiful.
The locust wood ribs emerging from the steam box smell bitter and damp. The drilled cedar smells like incense. The tapping and the calling between three or four sets of partners – two sets riveting, two sets placing new ribs – has a discernible rhythm and order.
The work had a sensible urgency and a splendid, strong outcome. What do we do in our lives that gives us much of that?
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself needs more physical work and more contact with working people. The abstract life of a writer and illustrator can be barren, like a room decorated with B&W print-outs of reports. A room and a life need color and a bit of mayhem.
Monday, February 15, 2010
THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE CAN BE VERY LOUD
Dean Torges sent me an e-mail that I skimmed too quickly. He was telling me about salvaging a boat trailer and designing a new chicken house around it. [See Dean's wonderful blog at http://www.bowyersedge.com/]
This is nice enough, I suppose. But I somehow read that he was making a wonderful chicken house out of a houseboat, one of those fiberglass monstrosities 12' X 24' with a flying bridge, upper deck, and sliding glass doors to the spacious, dumb cabins.
Whatinhell got into my head? Where did the houseboat come from? It seemed like such a logical idea at the time, a pre-built structure to be pillaged, pierced and repurposed. I figured his high-voltage ingenuity dictated clever ways of dragging it about, perhaps just skidding its hull through the wet grass (it worked for the Stonehenge builders). I saw him saber-sawing through the bulkheads in fantastic high-rise patterns to make nesting boxes. I envisioned a chicken yacht.
This is a little like my deafness: I hear far more interesting things than people actually say. They're talking about "Ford mini-vans" and I'm hearing "Nordic blini fans." Anyone who knows me recognizes that it doesn't take much to set me off on a stirring fantasy of turbines from Denmark or Norway hurling potato and applesauce blini into vast solar-powered ovens by the hundredweight. Then I'm curtly corrected, brought back to pedestrian reality, "We said VANS, and where did you get this 'blini' notion?" I'm always disappointed. I'll think about those mighty pancake mills for days. I'll be almost able to smell the richness of the blini and hear the chunka-chunka-wheet sound of wholesome food a-making. Rats.
I'm sure the chicken trailer is nice and all. I'm sorry to have expected so much more. Wow. That would have been sweet, though.
This quickness to leap at folly has something to do with spring, no doubt.
I love my naps. But this was the first day I could comfortably open the window by my bed and sleep transported by warm breeze curling fragrant around me. The earth opened its heart and the leaves released volatiles of newness, buds and tender leaves. I slept like a four-year-old, and when my timer went off, telling me to get up and do some paying work, I told it to bugger off.
Spring has also subverted my attention in an old, familiar way. I was examining the March/April issue of WoodenBoat, in which I have an article and illustrations. I had a bit of a gloat about the illustrations and leafed through the balance of the magazine happily. Then I left it open beside my computer at the "classified" pages. Oh, dread temptation, oh, encouragement to covetousness.
The little B&W pictures of the boats seize me, tug me into their worlds helpless, and I am sighing over a Herreshoff H-55 Marco Polo Schooner – perhaps the only ugly boat L. Francis Herreshoff ever designed but, glorioski, what a performer and what a liveaboard! Slim and long, with three masts and three marconi sails, a jib, and provisions for staysails in the tradewinds. 6000 mile diesel range, capable of 14 knots with a modest quartering breeze, a blue-water cruiser. Be still my heart.
And here is a 27' gaff yawl, a Tern adapted from my favorite vessel, the Rozinante, another L. Francis Herreshoff design but this was perhaps his masterpiece of grace and cunning and sleekness. The Tern was retro-designed and built by my friend Nat Benjamin in Vineyard Haven. Only 27' but achingly beautiful, like a young Katherine Hepburn in a French-cut tank suit.
There's a 20' pilot-house motor launch on page 132, built for the owners of the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, to survey the waterfront activity in 1929. Rebuilt, restored, the winner of many gold-plater shows, as jaunty as she is salty.
Yes, and a piss-elegant 28' sharpie, an Egret, modeled after a British gunkholing camp-cruising design of the 1890's, rigged as a cat-ketch with a big damn centerboard and a shallow-water balanced rudder to steer without cares into the thin, thin waters where other sailors would be forced to wade.
Here is Cyclone, a rare 36' Van Dam Limousine. She's a varnished wonder with a howling inboard motor under exquisite alternating light-and-dark planked deck plates, a bow like a switchblade and a tucked-in, tumble-home flat stern that should always have a flag fluttering on a turned cedar standard. Her sisters were designed in the 1920's to take swells and dudes . . . well, wherever wet they wanted to go, probably with a professional boatman in a discreetly bullion-free pilot's cap.
And, stone the crows, this 46' flat-top, plumb-bowed Elco laid down in 1929, twelve years before Elco started churning out the most stirring boats ever employed in the service of our country, the immortal Elco PT boats. But this flat-top is a gent's yacht with a big damn saloon, teak decks . . .
There, you see my difficulty. Spring churns up the lees of things. I hear not only the voice of the turtle but the lap of little waves against the dock, and I smell copper bottom paint and fresh-sanded cedar. Oh, I will not leave this world with any grace at all. I love it all so much.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself is much less sane than he assumes. That he can dress himself and wave bye-bye is not enough to qualify him as a solid citizen. He views the surrounding world through a coruscating scrim of mental fireworks that seem to spring spontaneously from his uncivilized brain. It is difficult for a pragmatic soul like me to countenance such license but we've been together for so long that I have come to admire his skill at decorating a dull landscape with fantastic projections. One hopes he doesn't need reality as much as the rest of us and, of course, he has me to fend it off.
This is nice enough, I suppose. But I somehow read that he was making a wonderful chicken house out of a houseboat, one of those fiberglass monstrosities 12' X 24' with a flying bridge, upper deck, and sliding glass doors to the spacious, dumb cabins.
Whatinhell got into my head? Where did the houseboat come from? It seemed like such a logical idea at the time, a pre-built structure to be pillaged, pierced and repurposed. I figured his high-voltage ingenuity dictated clever ways of dragging it about, perhaps just skidding its hull through the wet grass (it worked for the Stonehenge builders). I saw him saber-sawing through the bulkheads in fantastic high-rise patterns to make nesting boxes. I envisioned a chicken yacht.
This is a little like my deafness: I hear far more interesting things than people actually say. They're talking about "Ford mini-vans" and I'm hearing "Nordic blini fans." Anyone who knows me recognizes that it doesn't take much to set me off on a stirring fantasy of turbines from Denmark or Norway hurling potato and applesauce blini into vast solar-powered ovens by the hundredweight. Then I'm curtly corrected, brought back to pedestrian reality, "We said VANS, and where did you get this 'blini' notion?" I'm always disappointed. I'll think about those mighty pancake mills for days. I'll be almost able to smell the richness of the blini and hear the chunka-chunka-wheet sound of wholesome food a-making. Rats.
I'm sure the chicken trailer is nice and all. I'm sorry to have expected so much more. Wow. That would have been sweet, though.
This quickness to leap at folly has something to do with spring, no doubt.
I love my naps. But this was the first day I could comfortably open the window by my bed and sleep transported by warm breeze curling fragrant around me. The earth opened its heart and the leaves released volatiles of newness, buds and tender leaves. I slept like a four-year-old, and when my timer went off, telling me to get up and do some paying work, I told it to bugger off.
Spring has also subverted my attention in an old, familiar way. I was examining the March/April issue of WoodenBoat, in which I have an article and illustrations. I had a bit of a gloat about the illustrations and leafed through the balance of the magazine happily. Then I left it open beside my computer at the "classified" pages. Oh, dread temptation, oh, encouragement to covetousness.
The little B&W pictures of the boats seize me, tug me into their worlds helpless, and I am sighing over a Herreshoff H-55 Marco Polo Schooner – perhaps the only ugly boat L. Francis Herreshoff ever designed but, glorioski, what a performer and what a liveaboard! Slim and long, with three masts and three marconi sails, a jib, and provisions for staysails in the tradewinds. 6000 mile diesel range, capable of 14 knots with a modest quartering breeze, a blue-water cruiser. Be still my heart.
And here is a 27' gaff yawl, a Tern adapted from my favorite vessel, the Rozinante, another L. Francis Herreshoff design but this was perhaps his masterpiece of grace and cunning and sleekness. The Tern was retro-designed and built by my friend Nat Benjamin in Vineyard Haven. Only 27' but achingly beautiful, like a young Katherine Hepburn in a French-cut tank suit.
There's a 20' pilot-house motor launch on page 132, built for the owners of the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, to survey the waterfront activity in 1929. Rebuilt, restored, the winner of many gold-plater shows, as jaunty as she is salty.
Yes, and a piss-elegant 28' sharpie, an Egret, modeled after a British gunkholing camp-cruising design of the 1890's, rigged as a cat-ketch with a big damn centerboard and a shallow-water balanced rudder to steer without cares into the thin, thin waters where other sailors would be forced to wade.
Here is Cyclone, a rare 36' Van Dam Limousine. She's a varnished wonder with a howling inboard motor under exquisite alternating light-and-dark planked deck plates, a bow like a switchblade and a tucked-in, tumble-home flat stern that should always have a flag fluttering on a turned cedar standard. Her sisters were designed in the 1920's to take swells and dudes . . . well, wherever wet they wanted to go, probably with a professional boatman in a discreetly bullion-free pilot's cap.
And, stone the crows, this 46' flat-top, plumb-bowed Elco laid down in 1929, twelve years before Elco started churning out the most stirring boats ever employed in the service of our country, the immortal Elco PT boats. But this flat-top is a gent's yacht with a big damn saloon, teak decks . . .
There, you see my difficulty. Spring churns up the lees of things. I hear not only the voice of the turtle but the lap of little waves against the dock, and I smell copper bottom paint and fresh-sanded cedar. Oh, I will not leave this world with any grace at all. I love it all so much.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself is much less sane than he assumes. That he can dress himself and wave bye-bye is not enough to qualify him as a solid citizen. He views the surrounding world through a coruscating scrim of mental fireworks that seem to spring spontaneously from his uncivilized brain. It is difficult for a pragmatic soul like me to countenance such license but we've been together for so long that I have come to admire his skill at decorating a dull landscape with fantastic projections. One hopes he doesn't need reality as much as the rest of us and, of course, he has me to fend it off.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
VALENTINE'S DAY
Today is Valentine’s Day.
I prefer the pre-adolescent view of this odd glitch in the year’s topography: those little candy hearts with “I love you” and “be my own” imprinted on them (I don’t know how they did that, by the way). I remember sending valentines to everyone in class, and to getting everyone’s valentines. We didn’t know what we were faking. We thought it was something teen-agers and adults did, fell in love, sighed and sang, danced to sad music, wrote strange letters full of poetry. We were too young for the concept of “bittersweet,” and took our milk chocolate straight and creamy.
Later, when we thought we knew love, we were even less informed. We hadn’t learned about the “terrible otherness of people” and about the inevitable, groaning, tectonic shifts of spirit under the lace-rimmed valentine hearts. We didn’t know how dangerous passion could be because passion was our daily bread. We were passionate about Elvis and Bardot, Corvettes and dragsters, the Team and the flag. We didn’t know there were passions so different from pop-wonder.
As a boy I’d seen a hundred copperheads, walking in the woods and along streams. Oh, another copperhead. Then one day I saw a real copperhead, glorious in color and mesmerizing in pattern, beautiful and ugly, fat, flat-bottomed with wicked walls of perfectly elastic muscle mounting to a clean ridge of spine, with a nasty, squirmy rat tail ungraceful and incongruous at the end away from that broad, merciless, uncaring, cold-blooded strike-head. I stared. The copperhead, storing sun heat aboard a flat rock in a small stream, sensed me, its busy and intelligent tongue flailing the air in tiny strokes. Naturally, I ran. I didn’t run: I fled, a rout, a headlong retreat from reality. But even as I levitated up a near-sheer bank (already a hundred yards from the careless monster) the hundreds of copperheads I had casually witnessed fell in a broken-ice, shattered image to become . . . water snakes.
So when I discerned that love was different, dangerous, toxically powerful, uncompromising of plans or friends or intent, it was too late. The passion was much too powerful for my frail balsa wings and I crashed disastrously. It was not a mighty crash because my soul was not very large. It was mostly a folding up of paper-thin illusions, a crackling more than a crash. But I’d met passion, so all the flirtations and romantic notions dropped in the same broken-ice shattering to become . . . sweet little valentine hearts, “I love you,” “Be my own.” Available in bulk or in cellophane bags.
And later, more times than I’m comfortable specifying, I ignored the reality of love, insisted on the Disney version, crashed, burned, crumpled, destroyed many good components in a careless life. Because I was careless about the best things in my life, cavalier, as if they would always come, replacing themselves with even better wonders. My God, it’s taken me so damn long to see anything about this business of living. I lost, more than once and more than twice, the most precious things I’ve ever held, and it is a conscious, weight-lifting effort to forgive myself for my lack of respect.
So today is Valentine’s Day. And when I recognized the day in the morning an old song blew through my head like a draft:
I'm through with love
I'll never fall again.
Said adieu to love
Don't ever call again.
For I must have you or no one
And so I'm through with love.
I've locked my heart
I'll keep my feelings there.
I have stocked my heart
with icy, Frigidaire.
And I mean to care for no one
Because I'm through with love
But even if I don’t know life better than a passing nod, I know myself. I know I’ll be looking for that strange sickness the rest of my life. Knowing how dangerous, poisonous, corrosive, ungovernable and unforgiving it is, I’ll walk right up to it and smile like a yokel, hoping to be loved by Love.
There’s a cruel old joke about a miner heading for the saloon. His partner says, “Are you gonna sit down at that poker game again?” A shrug, a nod. “Hell, don’t you know that game is rigged?”
“Yah. I know. But it’s the only game in town.”
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
For a supposedly bright man, Himself has a weak spirit and a haphazard tendency to delusions. In many ways he shouldn't be allowed out on his own.
I prefer the pre-adolescent view of this odd glitch in the year’s topography: those little candy hearts with “I love you” and “be my own” imprinted on them (I don’t know how they did that, by the way). I remember sending valentines to everyone in class, and to getting everyone’s valentines. We didn’t know what we were faking. We thought it was something teen-agers and adults did, fell in love, sighed and sang, danced to sad music, wrote strange letters full of poetry. We were too young for the concept of “bittersweet,” and took our milk chocolate straight and creamy.
Later, when we thought we knew love, we were even less informed. We hadn’t learned about the “terrible otherness of people” and about the inevitable, groaning, tectonic shifts of spirit under the lace-rimmed valentine hearts. We didn’t know how dangerous passion could be because passion was our daily bread. We were passionate about Elvis and Bardot, Corvettes and dragsters, the Team and the flag. We didn’t know there were passions so different from pop-wonder.
As a boy I’d seen a hundred copperheads, walking in the woods and along streams. Oh, another copperhead. Then one day I saw a real copperhead, glorious in color and mesmerizing in pattern, beautiful and ugly, fat, flat-bottomed with wicked walls of perfectly elastic muscle mounting to a clean ridge of spine, with a nasty, squirmy rat tail ungraceful and incongruous at the end away from that broad, merciless, uncaring, cold-blooded strike-head. I stared. The copperhead, storing sun heat aboard a flat rock in a small stream, sensed me, its busy and intelligent tongue flailing the air in tiny strokes. Naturally, I ran. I didn’t run: I fled, a rout, a headlong retreat from reality. But even as I levitated up a near-sheer bank (already a hundred yards from the careless monster) the hundreds of copperheads I had casually witnessed fell in a broken-ice, shattered image to become . . . water snakes.
So when I discerned that love was different, dangerous, toxically powerful, uncompromising of plans or friends or intent, it was too late. The passion was much too powerful for my frail balsa wings and I crashed disastrously. It was not a mighty crash because my soul was not very large. It was mostly a folding up of paper-thin illusions, a crackling more than a crash. But I’d met passion, so all the flirtations and romantic notions dropped in the same broken-ice shattering to become . . . sweet little valentine hearts, “I love you,” “Be my own.” Available in bulk or in cellophane bags.
And later, more times than I’m comfortable specifying, I ignored the reality of love, insisted on the Disney version, crashed, burned, crumpled, destroyed many good components in a careless life. Because I was careless about the best things in my life, cavalier, as if they would always come, replacing themselves with even better wonders. My God, it’s taken me so damn long to see anything about this business of living. I lost, more than once and more than twice, the most precious things I’ve ever held, and it is a conscious, weight-lifting effort to forgive myself for my lack of respect.
So today is Valentine’s Day. And when I recognized the day in the morning an old song blew through my head like a draft:
I'm through with love
I'll never fall again.
Said adieu to love
Don't ever call again.
For I must have you or no one
And so I'm through with love.
I've locked my heart
I'll keep my feelings there.
I have stocked my heart
with icy, Frigidaire.
And I mean to care for no one
Because I'm through with love
But even if I don’t know life better than a passing nod, I know myself. I know I’ll be looking for that strange sickness the rest of my life. Knowing how dangerous, poisonous, corrosive, ungovernable and unforgiving it is, I’ll walk right up to it and smile like a yokel, hoping to be loved by Love.
There’s a cruel old joke about a miner heading for the saloon. His partner says, “Are you gonna sit down at that poker game again?” A shrug, a nod. “Hell, don’t you know that game is rigged?”
“Yah. I know. But it’s the only game in town.”
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
For a supposedly bright man, Himself has a weak spirit and a haphazard tendency to delusions. In many ways he shouldn't be allowed out on his own.
Friday, February 12, 2010
MINE CANARIES
CREATIVE PEOPLE have always lived in the thin ends of the bell curve, out on the fringe, scuttling about and picking at the table scraps of big money. The exhibits I've had a hand in designing, the books I've created, the articles I've written, the films with which I've worked – they've all been secondary fruits of "loose money" freed up for social projects by embarrassingly large profits. When profits dip, artists are the mine canaries of capital flow: we fall dead off our perches before the big guys can feel the pinch. Looking around me I see a lot of empty perches. And there's a bit of a rasp in my throat, as well.
What follows is part of a reply to the director of the Bay Area Discovery Museum, a lovely place for little guys. I proposed we collaborate on some exhibits and he, graciously and reluctantly, confessed that the BADM didn't have the funding to pursue anything new in this crunch. I replied:
Yes, the economy is harsh, but I can’t imagine any other result from our global adventuring. As Shackleton said, “Adventure is a sign of incompetence.” We don’t seem to manufacture anything in the hardware store, now. Many of our best young men and women are scattered across the world fighting and dying for folks who don’t want us there. We’re fouling our nest but can’t seem to stop. The rolling juggernaut of corporate America more or less ignores all our objections and cries. Yet we DO live in a favored land, and our culture IS strong, has a work ethic, and has good roots. The problem could be that our leaders don’t demand much of us, or much more than merely spending. The children you and I try to encourage will reap the whirlwind, and that right soon.
My current book project is Black Bonfire, about the end of cheap oil. It’s inevitable, calamitous, and much, much closer than I imagined when I began the book. The book is directed at young adults, giving them an overview of energy as they enter adulthood, as they become citizens. When you want to do an exhibit on just how deeply oil has become the warp and woof of life, give a shout. If you’re sitting inside, everything you see – from wood paneling to steel shelves to plastic pens – is or was put together by oil. Oil that we won’t have.
So how do we, as creative workers, survive the present economy? Dunno. We’ve always been on the fringe, depending on an upstream flow from the largesse of wealthy patrons, not too far removed from Cosimo de Medici. I suppose we can hope that the wealthy will always be wealthy. I’m not sure that will be borne out in the cultural upheaval. I don’t want to sound apocalyptic but major institutions will change. The hoary dictum, “What good for USSteel is good for the country” isn’t quite so true.
Perhaps we’ll survive like that marvelous soul William Kamkwamba, who built a windmill in his yard from junk and electrified his African village. What do we need with the Incredible Hulk and Batman when we have Kamkwamba? Perhaps we’ll build our exhibits out of local junk, building from the midden pile of Marin society. Our work could come to resemble the ancient trade of the storytellers who traveled from village to village, sitting under trees and eaves to spin out tales that amazed and informed.
[Jon Steward interviews Kamkwamba at http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-7-2009/william-kamkwamba]
Artists. We're all canaries trying to survive this oppressive atmosphere, clinging to our wobbly little perches with our feeble claws, and still singing brightly. How many friends do you have who are paralyzed by dread and frustration? On the other side, how many artists do you know who are doing jes' fine? If it weren't for Zoloft, we'd have a mass suicide of artists (something like M. Night Shyamalian's The Happening) and the balance of the population would say, "Whatinhell have they got to complain about? All they do is sing and swing."
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
What Himself neglects to acknowledge is that living on the fringes is a choice, not a profession. I could be demonizing the victim by bracing him thusly, but living on the fringes is inherently dangerous and unstable. The deep, strong current is where the action is, not the back eddies in the reeds. It's artistic hubris to assume the world will pull you triumphant from the edges and proclaim you its darling. Himself has a task: get into the mainstream or perish. This is harsh advice but so is the economy.
What follows is part of a reply to the director of the Bay Area Discovery Museum, a lovely place for little guys. I proposed we collaborate on some exhibits and he, graciously and reluctantly, confessed that the BADM didn't have the funding to pursue anything new in this crunch. I replied:
Yes, the economy is harsh, but I can’t imagine any other result from our global adventuring. As Shackleton said, “Adventure is a sign of incompetence.” We don’t seem to manufacture anything in the hardware store, now. Many of our best young men and women are scattered across the world fighting and dying for folks who don’t want us there. We’re fouling our nest but can’t seem to stop. The rolling juggernaut of corporate America more or less ignores all our objections and cries. Yet we DO live in a favored land, and our culture IS strong, has a work ethic, and has good roots. The problem could be that our leaders don’t demand much of us, or much more than merely spending. The children you and I try to encourage will reap the whirlwind, and that right soon.
My current book project is Black Bonfire, about the end of cheap oil. It’s inevitable, calamitous, and much, much closer than I imagined when I began the book. The book is directed at young adults, giving them an overview of energy as they enter adulthood, as they become citizens. When you want to do an exhibit on just how deeply oil has become the warp and woof of life, give a shout. If you’re sitting inside, everything you see – from wood paneling to steel shelves to plastic pens – is or was put together by oil. Oil that we won’t have.
So how do we, as creative workers, survive the present economy? Dunno. We’ve always been on the fringe, depending on an upstream flow from the largesse of wealthy patrons, not too far removed from Cosimo de Medici. I suppose we can hope that the wealthy will always be wealthy. I’m not sure that will be borne out in the cultural upheaval. I don’t want to sound apocalyptic but major institutions will change. The hoary dictum, “What good for USSteel is good for the country” isn’t quite so true.
Perhaps we’ll survive like that marvelous soul William Kamkwamba, who built a windmill in his yard from junk and electrified his African village. What do we need with the Incredible Hulk and Batman when we have Kamkwamba? Perhaps we’ll build our exhibits out of local junk, building from the midden pile of Marin society. Our work could come to resemble the ancient trade of the storytellers who traveled from village to village, sitting under trees and eaves to spin out tales that amazed and informed.
[Jon Steward interviews Kamkwamba at http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-7-2009/william-kamkwamba]
Artists. We're all canaries trying to survive this oppressive atmosphere, clinging to our wobbly little perches with our feeble claws, and still singing brightly. How many friends do you have who are paralyzed by dread and frustration? On the other side, how many artists do you know who are doing jes' fine? If it weren't for Zoloft, we'd have a mass suicide of artists (something like M. Night Shyamalian's The Happening) and the balance of the population would say, "Whatinhell have they got to complain about? All they do is sing and swing."
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
What Himself neglects to acknowledge is that living on the fringes is a choice, not a profession. I could be demonizing the victim by bracing him thusly, but living on the fringes is inherently dangerous and unstable. The deep, strong current is where the action is, not the back eddies in the reeds. It's artistic hubris to assume the world will pull you triumphant from the edges and proclaim you its darling. Himself has a task: get into the mainstream or perish. This is harsh advice but so is the economy.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
MORE SMALL BOAT TALK
I REMEMBER a daysail with the Traditional Small Craft Association up in the Sacramento Delta. I had an idyllic morning and afternoon aboard a Redwing 18, a home-built plywood skiff with a big cockpit and a cuddy. WoodenBoat sells the plans for about $100, and I'm wondering how many Redwings there are, carrying couples and families over small waters.
I'm accustomed to big, powerful sloops and ketches in the 36' to 65' range – OPB's, other people's boats – but that odd little outboard in the complex little sloughs of the Delta offered a scaled-down, wholly delightful adventure.
The four-stroke, ten horsepower engine was quiet at the pokey rate of travel the slough mandated, perhaps 5.5 knots. Conversation was easy, the banks were lovely and the birds were plentiful and varied – egrets, green herons, great blue herons, redwing blackbirds, crows (my favorites), wrens, robins, mockingbirds . . . Some spoke of seeing otters in less-traveled sloughs. The cooler with sodas and lunch was in the shade of the cuddy cabin. The day was fine though I could see that a canvas Bimini cockpit cover would be a blessing in the depth of summer.
An oddly pleasing part of the voyage was the wheel, itself. It was a small galvanized workboat wheel, with its six teak hand-spokes extending the cast galvanized spokes, mounted on the starboard face of the coach house. The little engine swung to it, and the engine controls were mounted to the right of the wheel. Perhaps the comfortingly elderly wheel made it feel more like a sea boat. We're all suggestible, subject to delusions, me more than most. I remember it as one of my favorite little passages.
I love big boats, long may they wave, but I'm speculating that the marine industry must expand the base of small boaters. Small experiences may lead to big-boat purchases in time. Even an 18-footer consumes an appreciable amount of marine equipment, year by year.
I could be way wrong about this. If I were a businessperson I wouldn't be a writer. For boatbuilders already set up to produce grand vessels the only course is to winkle out high-ticket owners from the Fortune 500. One thinks of steep oil price increases, however, and wonders what big breweries were thinking just before Prohibition. Some actually went into the root beer business.
Welcoming a wider public to life on the water is good sense and good seed. By and by most dinghy sailors want a bigger boat for longer voyages, and for learning new things. Young people who play on the water with their families are more likely to invest in a big boat when they have families of their own. Should boatbuilders and chandleries be thinking about what Stewart Brand calls "the Long Now?"
I find such peace and a settling of the soul on the water. I can't imagine not getting onto the water – on a big boat, a Redwing 18, or an innertube. Water is the only magic I know. So I'm an advocate, and were I the Pied Piper the trail of my tiny-footed band would lead to the shore. I want kids to see the grace of the water, and to see the shore from the ocean perspective – both useful visions.
Adkins
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
It's true that Himself is calmer and more lucid, less flighty and anxious, when he returns from a trip around the Bay. Perhaps other men center themselves in the woodshop or on their bicycles or hunting moose. Himself is a Water Healer; get him off the shore for a few hours and he's nearly tolerable. He says that the problems of the land diminish in proportion to the height of the trees as he sails away from the dock. Is it merely one form of temporary nepenthe, or is it like the old Norton Utilities program that rearranged your hard drive storage into logical, faster segments? Either way it's better than vodka.
Adkins
I'm accustomed to big, powerful sloops and ketches in the 36' to 65' range – OPB's, other people's boats – but that odd little outboard in the complex little sloughs of the Delta offered a scaled-down, wholly delightful adventure.
The four-stroke, ten horsepower engine was quiet at the pokey rate of travel the slough mandated, perhaps 5.5 knots. Conversation was easy, the banks were lovely and the birds were plentiful and varied – egrets, green herons, great blue herons, redwing blackbirds, crows (my favorites), wrens, robins, mockingbirds . . . Some spoke of seeing otters in less-traveled sloughs. The cooler with sodas and lunch was in the shade of the cuddy cabin. The day was fine though I could see that a canvas Bimini cockpit cover would be a blessing in the depth of summer.
An oddly pleasing part of the voyage was the wheel, itself. It was a small galvanized workboat wheel, with its six teak hand-spokes extending the cast galvanized spokes, mounted on the starboard face of the coach house. The little engine swung to it, and the engine controls were mounted to the right of the wheel. Perhaps the comfortingly elderly wheel made it feel more like a sea boat. We're all suggestible, subject to delusions, me more than most. I remember it as one of my favorite little passages.
I love big boats, long may they wave, but I'm speculating that the marine industry must expand the base of small boaters. Small experiences may lead to big-boat purchases in time. Even an 18-footer consumes an appreciable amount of marine equipment, year by year.
I could be way wrong about this. If I were a businessperson I wouldn't be a writer. For boatbuilders already set up to produce grand vessels the only course is to winkle out high-ticket owners from the Fortune 500. One thinks of steep oil price increases, however, and wonders what big breweries were thinking just before Prohibition. Some actually went into the root beer business.
Welcoming a wider public to life on the water is good sense and good seed. By and by most dinghy sailors want a bigger boat for longer voyages, and for learning new things. Young people who play on the water with their families are more likely to invest in a big boat when they have families of their own. Should boatbuilders and chandleries be thinking about what Stewart Brand calls "the Long Now?"
I find such peace and a settling of the soul on the water. I can't imagine not getting onto the water – on a big boat, a Redwing 18, or an innertube. Water is the only magic I know. So I'm an advocate, and were I the Pied Piper the trail of my tiny-footed band would lead to the shore. I want kids to see the grace of the water, and to see the shore from the ocean perspective – both useful visions.
Adkins
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
It's true that Himself is calmer and more lucid, less flighty and anxious, when he returns from a trip around the Bay. Perhaps other men center themselves in the woodshop or on their bicycles or hunting moose. Himself is a Water Healer; get him off the shore for a few hours and he's nearly tolerable. He says that the problems of the land diminish in proportion to the height of the trees as he sails away from the dock. Is it merely one form of temporary nepenthe, or is it like the old Norton Utilities program that rearranged your hard drive storage into logical, faster segments? Either way it's better than vodka.
Adkins
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
ARTICLE FROM SOUNDINGS by William Sisson
OK, I admit it. I’m a sucker for good-looking small boats. Always have been.
The latest one to catch my eye is the Whiticar 21, which is both gorgeous and one of a kind. It’s the only outboard boat ever built by Whiticar Boat Works, the noted Stuart, Fla., builder of quality cold-molded offshore sportfishermen.
This little gem was built in 1966 for T.R. Garlington of custom boatbuilder Garlington Yachts, who used to run her a mile or two out into the Gulf Stream on fair days to fish for sailfish. She was completely restored in 2009 by Paul Scopinich, who owns Scopinich Boat Works in Stuart, which is known for its quality fighting chairs and custom boats.
Scopinich bought the 21-footer about eight years ago from a local captain and stored it in a garage until last year, when business slowed and it seemed like a good time to tackle a refit.
“I pulled it out of the garage in June, and we all went at it,” Scopinich says. The cold-molded mahogany-planked hull was in surprisingly good shape. There were a few soft spots on the deck, on one of the frames and around the aluminum windshield, but otherwise the structure was sound.
Scopinich was impressed by how well the little Whiticar had weathered its 43 years. “The hull was perfect,” he says. “They go overboard when they build stuff. They don’t forget the epoxy.”
The only structural changes Scopinich had to make during the restoration were replacing a few planks and frames. In breathing new life into the Whiticar, he and his team completely rewired the boat, put a teak deck over the original cold-molded plywood one, added a teak helm pod and two new helm chairs, and rechromed all the original hardware.
He replaced the aluminum windshield with a lovely wooden one that Whiticar founder Curt Whiticar sketched for him on the back of a nautical chart. “Curt, who is 94, is the one who built that boat,” says Scopinich, who enjoyed consulting with the spry nonagenarian during the restoration of the former Ju Ann.
At one time, the boat was powered by a Mercury Black Max outboard. Scopinich hung a new 90-hp Suzuki 4-stroke on the transom and replaced the Suzuki stickers with new specially made Mercury ones from the Black Max period. Nice touch. He painted the hull “fighting lady yellow,” with a “snow white” deck.
In all, he figures he has about 850 hours into the project, which wrapped up in November. Scopinich has put a price tag north of $80,000 on her, although he says he may wind up using the boat himself. For photos or to contact Scopinich, go to www.scopinich.com, (772) 288-3111.
She is a lovely little dayboat with a strong pedigree. Makes you wish boats like this were the rule in our world today, rather than such an exception.
ADKINS COMMENTS to the Marine Industry Forum
What a sweetheart of a boat, and what a reassuring story about trustworthy construction, respect for the vintage form, and the care that our older boats deserve. The icing on the cake was the collusion of her original, 90+ builder.
I'm wondering if we in the marine sector are reading our compass correctly. A lot of us are surely following the rest of American business by scrapping over the disposable income of the very wealthy. That's the common wisdom. Granted, she was rebuilt as a gold-plater with a gold pricetag, and one hopes the builder is rewarded with a good price. But when I see a sweet little boat like this I wonder if we shouldn't be selling the water-life to a more modest demographic of families and young people. Perhaps boating can once again be an ideal of egalitarian sport. It wasn't so long ago that New England yacht clubs were places you could meet folks with very different net worths – a senator, a young middle-class family, or a retired bass-fishing guide. Perhaps we're seeing an era of small boat exploration again.
WoodenBoat is running a series on "Getting Started In Boats" (I've written two of them, but they're all quite good). Young men and women are making impressive kayak trips, camp-cruising along the coast and even out into the big sounds, very like the dreamy, iconic voyages of the Rob Roy in 1866, or some of the pre-1900 voyages down the coast in decked canoes and kayaks.
The only thing we know about oil is that it will become more and more expensive. If the house of Saud falls, which seems more probable than possible, the price of oil will spike immediately. Folks who now motor out of San Francisco Bay for good fishing around the Farallones simply won't be traveling that far, if at all (80 gallons @ $4/gal for a day of fishing?). A contemporary problem is abandoned vessels, often sound and well-fitted, abandoned by owners who simply can't afford the continuing costs of fuel, insurance, slips and maintenance. Perhaps some of the gracious, big twin-screw behemoths will survive but the bottom will drop out of marina service and marine sales. Unless we cultivate a new market in family boating aboard small, home-maintainable vessels, kit-boats, small adventurers.
My meetings with the Traditional Small Craft Association show a lively interest in both old forms and in small adventures on a budget. Are we doing enough to encourage a new market? Are we emulating that sterling character, that admirable waterman found in all Coast Pilots, the Prudent Mariner? Who's watching the compass?
Adkins
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
IT'S ABOUT TIME himself paid attention to his blog. He's been reliably informed that the only way to raise his creative profile is to put himself out into the current, to float his work in the channel. Direct selling does creatives very little good. Most of his "big mailings" have netted nothing, nada, goose egg, while his major commissions seem to drop out of nowhere. Nothing drops from nowhere. He's needed a bit of prodding but Adkins is at last beginning to use his blabby facility and send it out again. "Watch this space," as they say. He needs a crotchety dwarf like me to nudge him into action.
Braxinoso
OK, I admit it. I’m a sucker for good-looking small boats. Always have been.
The latest one to catch my eye is the Whiticar 21, which is both gorgeous and one of a kind. It’s the only outboard boat ever built by Whiticar Boat Works, the noted Stuart, Fla., builder of quality cold-molded offshore sportfishermen.
This little gem was built in 1966 for T.R. Garlington of custom boatbuilder Garlington Yachts, who used to run her a mile or two out into the Gulf Stream on fair days to fish for sailfish. She was completely restored in 2009 by Paul Scopinich, who owns Scopinich Boat Works in Stuart, which is known for its quality fighting chairs and custom boats.
Scopinich bought the 21-footer about eight years ago from a local captain and stored it in a garage until last year, when business slowed and it seemed like a good time to tackle a refit.
“I pulled it out of the garage in June, and we all went at it,” Scopinich says. The cold-molded mahogany-planked hull was in surprisingly good shape. There were a few soft spots on the deck, on one of the frames and around the aluminum windshield, but otherwise the structure was sound.
Scopinich was impressed by how well the little Whiticar had weathered its 43 years. “The hull was perfect,” he says. “They go overboard when they build stuff. They don’t forget the epoxy.”
The only structural changes Scopinich had to make during the restoration were replacing a few planks and frames. In breathing new life into the Whiticar, he and his team completely rewired the boat, put a teak deck over the original cold-molded plywood one, added a teak helm pod and two new helm chairs, and rechromed all the original hardware.
He replaced the aluminum windshield with a lovely wooden one that Whiticar founder Curt Whiticar sketched for him on the back of a nautical chart. “Curt, who is 94, is the one who built that boat,” says Scopinich, who enjoyed consulting with the spry nonagenarian during the restoration of the former Ju Ann.
At one time, the boat was powered by a Mercury Black Max outboard. Scopinich hung a new 90-hp Suzuki 4-stroke on the transom and replaced the Suzuki stickers with new specially made Mercury ones from the Black Max period. Nice touch. He painted the hull “fighting lady yellow,” with a “snow white” deck.
In all, he figures he has about 850 hours into the project, which wrapped up in November. Scopinich has put a price tag north of $80,000 on her, although he says he may wind up using the boat himself. For photos or to contact Scopinich, go to www.scopinich.com, (772) 288-3111.
She is a lovely little dayboat with a strong pedigree. Makes you wish boats like this were the rule in our world today, rather than such an exception.
ADKINS COMMENTS to the Marine Industry Forum
What a sweetheart of a boat, and what a reassuring story about trustworthy construction, respect for the vintage form, and the care that our older boats deserve. The icing on the cake was the collusion of her original, 90+ builder.
I'm wondering if we in the marine sector are reading our compass correctly. A lot of us are surely following the rest of American business by scrapping over the disposable income of the very wealthy. That's the common wisdom. Granted, she was rebuilt as a gold-plater with a gold pricetag, and one hopes the builder is rewarded with a good price. But when I see a sweet little boat like this I wonder if we shouldn't be selling the water-life to a more modest demographic of families and young people. Perhaps boating can once again be an ideal of egalitarian sport. It wasn't so long ago that New England yacht clubs were places you could meet folks with very different net worths – a senator, a young middle-class family, or a retired bass-fishing guide. Perhaps we're seeing an era of small boat exploration again.
WoodenBoat is running a series on "Getting Started In Boats" (I've written two of them, but they're all quite good). Young men and women are making impressive kayak trips, camp-cruising along the coast and even out into the big sounds, very like the dreamy, iconic voyages of the Rob Roy in 1866, or some of the pre-1900 voyages down the coast in decked canoes and kayaks.
The only thing we know about oil is that it will become more and more expensive. If the house of Saud falls, which seems more probable than possible, the price of oil will spike immediately. Folks who now motor out of San Francisco Bay for good fishing around the Farallones simply won't be traveling that far, if at all (80 gallons @ $4/gal for a day of fishing?). A contemporary problem is abandoned vessels, often sound and well-fitted, abandoned by owners who simply can't afford the continuing costs of fuel, insurance, slips and maintenance. Perhaps some of the gracious, big twin-screw behemoths will survive but the bottom will drop out of marina service and marine sales. Unless we cultivate a new market in family boating aboard small, home-maintainable vessels, kit-boats, small adventurers.
My meetings with the Traditional Small Craft Association show a lively interest in both old forms and in small adventures on a budget. Are we doing enough to encourage a new market? Are we emulating that sterling character, that admirable waterman found in all Coast Pilots, the Prudent Mariner? Who's watching the compass?
Adkins
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
IT'S ABOUT TIME himself paid attention to his blog. He's been reliably informed that the only way to raise his creative profile is to put himself out into the current, to float his work in the channel. Direct selling does creatives very little good. Most of his "big mailings" have netted nothing, nada, goose egg, while his major commissions seem to drop out of nowhere. Nothing drops from nowhere. He's needed a bit of prodding but Adkins is at last beginning to use his blabby facility and send it out again. "Watch this space," as they say. He needs a crotchety dwarf like me to nudge him into action.
Braxinoso
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