Entropy

Odds are we could beat this guy in a match race

It’s a brisk Sunday afternoon, the approach of autumn hard on the wind. I’m comfortable in my living room alternating between a laptop and an old trumpet I’ve received as a gift from the estate of a deceased cousin.

I'm thinking this could add a new dimension to my sunset salutes, my having been limited in the past to the single note of the Bahamian conch horn manufactured during our 2005-2006 seabattical. How hard could it be to squawk out a rendition of Taps? I’ll check on YouTube. The answer to everything is on YouTube.

And what must Deb be thinking while listening to my first strangled notes? That her husband could definitely use yet another musical instrument he cannot play? What Deb says is, “I’m thinking I might like to go for a sail.”

 This girl is no sissy-pants

Yeah, but it’s kind of windy, and chilly too. I can see the tree limbs out the window, my attuned senses clocking the gusts in the mid twenties at the very least. I check UConn’s nautical buoy at Execution Rocks for corroboration. Frigging close enough. Let the frost-biters have their sick fun. I return to the laptop and google the proper technique for maintaining a brass instrument. I’m talking about the trumpet again.

 What was my excuse the last time Deb suggested we get out on the water and put to good use our marine investment? I believe it was a little too hot out, and there wasn’t enough wind.

What’s wrong with this picture? Beyond the fact that I’m a lazy-ass bastard and that sailing involves work, there is an ulterior motive for my avoidance. Entropy depresses me.

To go sailing I must collect the oars in the garage, and the garage door opener has been acting up. It’s definitely not the battery in the remote. I think the remote is just about shot. I checked the cost of a new remote online. Ridiculous. I’ll just keep squeezing the old one from positions picked up while watching Cirque du Soleil promos.

The oars also need a varnish job before they start to delaminate. Amazing how much two sticks of wood cost at West Marine. The oarlock sockets on our dink need work too. Stress cracks are forming on the gunnels at both fittings. Truth is, the whole dink is falling apart, and my previous attempts at fiberglass repair are a civic disgrace. I tell myself the look adds a level of theft protection. I hear voices anyway, and I trust they’re mine.

As we row away from the dinghy dock I’ll take a look at the gangplank I maintain myself because the guys who are supposed to don’t. The gangplank tires I installed need air before they flatten out or they will self-destruct, and then the rims will chew away at the plastic floating dock like the old ones did. The dock is a puzzle-lock affair made out of interlocking floating cubes, and when one of them has been punctured, a sinkhole forms around it. From whence follows death and destruction.

 Let's be clear, Vinny is not the problem 

with the gangplank

Our approach to the Laura Lynn reveals that the work put into making the hull sparkle has worn out its welcome. Pausing at the stern boarding ladder I can just see (the water is foul with algal growth. More on that later…) the rudder sprouting foliage, which means the prop will be even worse, which is bad for engine efficiency. Barnacles will choke off power and cause overheating (I forgot to mention the sea strainer), and the scraping off of the barnacles, which secrete a natural form of crazy glue in order to anchor exoskeletons composed of scalpel blade shards to things you own, will require a ritual swim involving bloodletting and the caking of every orifice I possess with dispossessed crustaceans.

Hoisting myself aboard, I am reminded by the twinge in my left shoulder that it will one day more than likely require surgery. But the shoulder is the least of my bodily concerns. Let’s not even go there. Let us rather consider the imminent destruction of our planet, shall we? Unless you’re one of those hapless Teabaggers? Because right now my bay looks like a couple of cargo ships dumped their entire Lipton stash overboard.

Sailing is not the green endeavor one might wish it to be unless you’re the Pardys, and they crap in a bucket. Deb and I employ an eighties-era engine in our boat, and diesel is now going for about six dollars a gallon on the water. I think we’re running low, but we don’t have a fuel gauge. We have to dip a notched stick into the tank to find out. To do that we have to assemble our cockpit table which covers the fuel deck fill when folded shut. Nothing we do on this simple vessel is simple.

Which reminds me: I think we have to pump out the head soon. Landlubbers do not appreciate the miracle of modern plumbing nearly enough. You tap the handle and get pissed if it sticks. Where does it all go? As if you even care. We boaters must carry our sloshing effluent around with us until we run out of space, and we don’t use a dipstick for that measurement.

Above deck, the weathering of all the brightwork is demoralizing. Brightwork, for the uninformed, is a euphemism for rotting wood caked in flaking varnish. It was just two years ago that I stripped every board foot of lumber for the second time, and applied too few layers of varnish once again. The elements have returned to mock my work in short order.

 As I've stated in the past: a total waste of time

The mainsail cover is ragged, as is the jib’s UV cover. Deb made great efforts to repair the dodger, which is old enough for about every seam to have been dissolved by the sun. All the canvas should arguably be replaced, but that argument will fall on cheap ears. I’ll just stare at the threadbare material instead of the scenery, and blame our boat’s mediocre performance on blown-out sails. I’ve heard that’s a more than reasonable excuse.

Below decks I follow a regimen that reminds me at every turn how old our boat is. I open the main hatch, which now leaks. The Lexan is cracked, but it has been cracked for as long as we’ve had the boat, so the leak is a surprise. There are other leaks as well, as evidenced by a check of the bilge. I have no idea where they originate, since water collects even when it hasn’t rained. I keep a hydrometer from an old aquarium (never ever own an aquarium) to tell if it’s fresh or saltwater, but it doesn't seem to be working. It thinks every fluid poured into it has infinite density. Deb just takes a lick. Seriously, she is nuts.

Readying the engine gives me the most angst. I’ve never stopped the slow leak in the secondary fuel filter, which should be changed. I neglected to change the oil last season also, thinking we were going to sail through the winter. Deb did, anyway. I knew better.

I always hope the engine will fire up the first time I push the starter button. More often we get a series of clicks. Having run all the prescribed tests, I suspect there is more than one cause to the problem. I hate when that happens, and it happens a lot. I’ve decided that part of the solution, battery replacement, is overdue. We have three batteries, and they are very heavy. Replacement is a simple process requiring little more than lots of money and a series of lacerations from hoisting dense blocks of applied chemistry into painfully tight compartments.

When the engine does fire, it announces its return with a cloud of dark smoke, a perfectly healthy response for a diesel engine. Screw the environment.

I recently discovered rotting of the cored deck at the hawsehole. I know! What the hell is a hawsehole, and how did I discover it? It turns out a hawsehole is a thing that needs maintenance. I discovered this from having stubbed my toe on it.

My neighbor, an avid sailor who loves trouble, tells me I don’t even want to know what’s involved in dealing with a spongy deck. I already do know, and he’s right, I don’t want to. Searching the sky for succor, I notice the worn halyards leading to ancient winches, and spreaders in need of inspection. I am told the wooden spreaders of the Morgan 34 are particularly suspect, subject to rot and ultimately rig failure. We will have our rig removed this winter for inspection, another added expense.

The obvious issues instill in me a darker thought. There are things I cannot see in the nether regions of the boat that could cause worse problems than poor sailing performance. I suspect the secluded stuffing box, embedded chainplates, buried wiring…

One of the common characteristics I find among sailors like my neighbor is a seeming pleasure at the discovery of problems, which they then get to tackle with perverse abandon. I do not share this trait. My common response to the discovery of common boat problems is pathetic and unprintable.

And so the prospect of a pleasant day on the water is inevitably accompanied by the even more compelling concern as to what I’ll discover that will most probably cost me money and aggravation. Last time it was a jammed mainsail car (we should never have bothered raising the main) that will need some sort of attention, I guess.

On the bright side, the boating season will soon come to an end and we’ll have our vessel stored on land, where she belongs.

Day is done