The Accidental Sailor: Labors of Lunacy

A Promising Fixer-Upper

In my heyday I could afford frivolous expenditures, like double-dip ice cream cones and subscriptions to boating magazines. It’s interesting to note, by the way, that these two discretionary expenditures are nearly equal in value these days. If you find yourself weighing their relative merits and happen to live by the sea, go with the ice cream.

Like all cellulose-based publications, which are dying by the barge-load from lack of relevancy, boating rags seem to recycle the same information every third issue. Amongst the repetition is the oft-rehashed Shakespearean theme of love’s labor, wherein some wave-smitten business consultant with time on his hands and a languishing 18v drill commits himself to a forlorn hulk with oodles of hidden potential. He then proceeds to dedicate the best years of his life, health, marriage, and if he had any, self respect, to the reconstitution of the thing to near-buoyant status.

Not me. I’m a turnkey kind of guy. In fact she doesn’t even have to start as long as the key turns. Saves on gas. But this one guy (I will not name names) makes Joshua Slocum look like an impatient hack.

I was sitting on the pot, where I do my best reading, taking in the story from my Boat US mag, which I get free, mind you, because of the annual towing insurance I happily shell out for. Therein I read of a man who proudly confessed to spending somewhere near half a century, and I don’t know, a hundred times the original value (while I think lopping off a finger or two in the process) to reconstitute a thing he’d found rotting in a field, into a boat.

A no-brainer. For a buck, she's yours. All you have to do is pay the salvage bill, the yard bill (ten years in arrears), re-power, redo the electrical system and gut the interior, all destroyed by salt water. Oh, and patch the gaping hole where she's been hulled.

Here’s the kicker. Over the decades he’d regularly exploited the free labor of his father and brother, neither of whom survived the project to completion. It isn’t explained how each met his demise, though there was no overt implication of boatyard accidents or murder. Let's just chalk it up to natural attrition.

I’m not the sort to denigrate the spirits of those who have passed before me, unless I knew and despised them in life, in which case their legacy is fair game. I’m sure this project had been a satisfying and bonding experience for all. I really mean that. It’s just, a little part of me wonders if the last words of either of the deceased were, “I don’t care what else you do (Son, Bro), you just have to finish this thing and put it in the water and see if it floats. Nothing else in life matters near so much.”

Or something to that effect. To which I would naturally have responded, “I’m on it, (Dad, Bro). I will not rest until I’m plying the high seas aboard her or I’m buried between the two of you first.” A little white lie doesn’t hurt once in a while, particularly when it’s told graveside.

Then I would have gone out and bought something I could’ve had some fun on right away.

But maybe I’m missing the point. I recognize the occasional perverse need to nourish something back to life from near extinction, which impulse is perhaps an extension of our own deep-seated desire to live forever. That compulsion exhibits itself in droves near water. It’s possible that some folks are truly happier fixing boats than boating in them. I, having once lived on a sailboat for a year and replaced the joker valve not once but twice during the period, recognize that what really makes me happy is living by the water, and occasionally playing in or on it. This is no great shame. Know thyself, is the dictum that comes to mind. Or as Deb likes to say, whatever blows your skirt up.

I have feet, not fins. And while I take pride in problem-solving and effecting certain types of repair, I’d prefer those problems surface only rarely and as far removed from the bilge as possible. That’s the way I hang.

By the way, that hopeless cause I’ve been alluding to? You should see her now. She’s a beaut.