First One In Looks Like Rotten Eggs

And we have it all to ourselves!

Deb and I have owned our Laura Lynn for something like a quarter century now. Living up here in the Northeast we, as do all hopeful sailors, look forward to the annual spring launch with the patience of children the week before Christmas. As the weather turns promising and we finish our boat chores or promise to once we’re in the water, the anticipation becomes next to unbearable.

I doubt our boatyard is much different than others in these parts. It winters like a hibernating bear, with little evidence of life, quiet but for the slapping of halyards on breezy days. But when spring arrives and one stares at a perfect wind on the bay, or a still day that would be perfect for launching boats languishing on jack stands, nothing moves fast enough. Were an actual bear involved, I think most boaters would be willing to stomp on the sleeping creature’s den to get it the hell up and at ‘em.

Instead we inform the boatyard of our readiness, we pay outlandish bills long before the expenses can be appreciated, we wring our hands, busy ourselves with things we’d rather not be doing, and we wait. And wait.

But this year something marvelous happened, and I haven’t a clue why. We were in the water close to two months before we usually are, so early in fact that were one to view the expanse of Manhasset Bay, a not insignificant volume of water, we were for weeks the only moored vessel to be seen. What elation! What delight!

What a mess. For while boaters were virtually nowhere to be seen on the water, the year-round occupants of these parts had never left. I refer specifically to seagulls and osprey. These two avian forms deliver a one-two punch to any boater crazy enough to be first out on the water. They live to eat and shit, and naturally visa versa. Their only concern seems to be to find a convenient rest stop to complete their mission. As our boat was the only perch available, that’s where they went, and went. They fouled the boom, the dodger, the coamings, the winches, the decks, though remarkably I never caught them in the act. Had I, perhaps I could've formulated an effective strategy.

     A little elbow grease is all it takes, before every sail

I strung small stuff like spider web all over the boat, at first strategically, then willy-nilly, trying to see if I could divine what would deter them. They scoffed at my deterrents. I began to think they might be appreciating my janitorial services.

I also mentioned osprey, and it has dawned on me that back in 2009 I did a number on them in a post titled “Look Out Below.” I guess I should be happy it’s taken the osprey over a decade to return with a vengeance. I won’t then waste your time describing what slobs they are when they set a table on one of our spreaders in order to enjoy a seafood meal.

Besides hunger, love does appear to be in the air, and Deb and I witnessed two pair of newlyweds making homes for themselves on separate newly launched power boats nearby. I must admit that I thought more than once about not contacting our boatyard to inform them that a couple of yacht-clubbers are going to have to contest ownership of their boats if they don’t get out to theirs soon. My first thought was, better them than us, but I also noticed one of those boats was listing some to starboard, and it would be shameful of me to turn a blind eye to potential disaster. In any event, the bay is finally beginning to get populated with other options for our foul friends. In the meantime I’ve invested in devices looking like NASA rover antennae, said to ward of flying IFO’s. We shall see soon enough.

Safe Harbor

"The area that is now the town in Mamaroneck was purchased from Native American Chief Wappaquewam and his brother Manhatahan by an Englishman named John Richbell..." 

--Wikipedia

Deb and I have owned our Morgan 34 for close to twenty years now. Built in 1970 and having survived at least three previous name changes, she’s worn for us the name of Deb’s younger sister Laura, whom we lost to Crohn’s Disease a few short years ago. Our Laura Lynn rests on a mooring in Manhasset Bay on the north shore of Long Island, and like many boats launched by hopeful mariners she spends considerably more time languishing by herself than in the wishful company of her crew.

Our boat is still reasonably seaworthy despite her years. Sailboats generally seem to age as well as old sailors as long as there's someone around to care for them. I'm sixty-four now, with a host of my own deficiencies to monitor. Despite my being composed of hardware from an earlier era I continue to manage the myriad issues that have sunk many a sailor’s relationship with his chosen sea siren. 

Deb and I have seen precious little time aboard these past few boating seasons since one of life’s capricious currents deposited me on the continent’s Pacific shore. Being seasonally beached in LA thousands of miles from my home port caused me to question the continued funding of a vessel that lives on the East Coast, though she’s given us incalculable pleasure over the years. I'll not bore you with typical arguments for hastening the other happiest day in a boater's life. I will state that as in any cherished relationship, keeping things right between you and your love requires unwavering commitment.

In the midst of these personal concerns everything changed quite dramatically for all of us earthlings, and we find ourselves trapped in a dangerous reality, searching for ways of coping with a global pandemic that can exhibit a host of symptoms, the more benign among them being cabin fever. 

Deb has honed her culinary skills to James Beardian levels since the near annihilation of New York City's restaurant industry. Among other diversions, I dug out a birthday gift given to me a decade or so ago by Laura’s daughter Emily. It was a wooden model kit of a Chesapeake Bay Flattie, requiring the kind of skill and patience of which I’m typically in short supply. It took a pandemic to launch the project, but the Emily Ann now rests proudly on my desk.

While Covid-19 has put a virtual stranglehold on my television industry, Deb is back to work, partly from home these last several months. Interestingly it's the “from home" part that has weighed heavily on her. Deprived of the personal interactions that fuel the human spirit whether at work or among family and friends, the absence of normal routine was doing a number on her psyche. Deb figured some fresh air was in order, and our boat seemed a safe method for achieving it.

Scan your harbor on any pleasant weekend and you'll see boaters who've come to your harbor precisely because it isn't their own. Boaters tend to be a tad restless, most of them anyway, though me not so much. But I needed to tend to my relationships, so that meant shaking off the cobwebs, getting serious about boat prep, hauling the big hook out of the garage (we have no windlass or anchor roller) and onto the boat because I can't sleep on a lunch hook, and neither should you. Oh, and looking at the map.

I doubt I'll ever be ready for another big trip like the one we took to the Abacos back when my back was more able. As I age, I recognize the loss of my always questionable capabilities, and I've simply lost confidence in my ability to keep us safe. I've witnessed eminently competent sailor friends lose more than the proverbial step, and on a sailboat things can go from fun to dangerous faster than, well actually faster than sailboats can go. Just recently I spoke to old friends who'd switched from sailboat to trawler, then onto cozy cottage, a common transition for snowbirds. 

I'm still willing to hazard the occasional overnighter, and on the local chart I could see an old haunt of ours that goes by the name Mamaroneck, christened so probably by some ancient band of white settlers who'd butchered the sound of the local natives' tongue before ultimately butchering the locals themselves and extinguishing their language forever. I'll offer my own translation of Mamaroneck, which goes something like this: "Place where the big water alternately swallows and spits up parts of our Earth Mother placed by the facetious hand of the glacier gods." It's an approximation.

I call Mamaroneck a haunt because we were there at least once before, so I kind of knew how to get there and back in one piece. It’s a short sail from home, and a quiet, amenable place to anchor if you pay attention to what the original inhabitants had to say about it.

We went there with enough supplies to stay alive for the requisite period, with some extra stuff thrown in for good measure. Nobody was going to freeze, starve or threaten the bartender is all I’m saying. It was all working out quite nicely and would have continued in such a fashion if I hadn't been stingy with the anchor rode. 

This calls for a flashback. When on our big trip back in 2005-2006, Deb and I ran afoul of the formidable forces of nature in St. Augustine, Florida. Our boat was hanging in that tumultuous harbor on a 35lb CQR with a short piece of chain and the requisite amount of nylon rode based on, you know, broadly accepted formulas. While we were doing a beer tasting at the local brewery, it turns out our boat was pirouetting around her center of lateral resistance amidst the tide and wind shifts. Our centerboard then proceeded to knife through the nylon rode, at which point our boat was set free to roam the anchorage until she was fortuitously lassoed by the alerted harbormaster. 

Discovering our boat securely tied to the municipal dock at the end of our shore escapade when she should’ve been out there at anchor was a sobering experience. I immediately inquired as to where I could buy an anchor and a bunch of chain and proceeded to do so at a chandlery that caters to professional fisherman. Getting little in the way of advice, I managed to purchase oversized chain, and I've since been burdened when weighing anchor by hand (have I mentioned that our boat has no windlass?) with the weight of all that chain, anchor, and goo typically adhering to it all. It tends to make one reconsider the whole mathematical scope formula nonsense, which is something you should not do.

 Deb manhandles the "lunch hook." 

Mine is a shameful confession on many levels. It'd been a while since I put the big anchor over the side with all that chain providing an impressive catenary influence. I'd marked the chain with zip ties at intervals but had forgotten what they represented. In any event, the evening was on the calm side and predicted to stay the same, the ground tackle had held us countless times up and down the coast since the St. Augustine debacle, and I was contemplating the aggravation of having to extract all that gack hand-over-hand the next morning when leaving. Which is another thing you should not let your mind do.

   

What, me worry?

It was a lovely afternoon, then a lovely evening, then time for bed. A while later, as is my custom, I awakened to tend to one of my nightly forays to the head. Those trips always involve me taking a look around to see if things are as they ought to be. 

Looking around for the visual markers I'd memorized during the day - the dip in Hen Island to the East that splits the island in two at high tide, aligning with the yacht club flag pole on the far side of the adjacent harbor that served as a stationary range, and there’d been a moored schooner just off our... what the hell was that rock outcropping doing a few feet from our hull??? ... the view wasn't making any sense to my muddled mind. 

Nothing will flush the after-effects of a nice bottle of Gruner faster than the realization that you're dragging anchor. As is my custom, I shifted into panic mode, telling Deb we had to get the boat started and out of there pronto. I didn't know if we were minutes or seconds away from a very painful rendezvous with what was listed on the charts as "Spike Island." The wind had picked up, the tide had risen considerably, and I hadn't paid out enough rode. Once again I felt the familiar trio of urgency, fear and nausea that occasionally visit the incautious sailor.

I'm going to skip a whole lot, because we survived. The engine started, we yelled our confused exchanges over the wind and diesel noise, likely awakening many of the sleeping seaside residents and maybe some of the souls of those long-lost native Americans. I didn't harm myself hauling the anchor up and we didn't wreck the boat, both of which outcomes had a reasonable chance of occurring that night. 

We reset the anchor back where our evening had begun, paid out more than enough chain based on the aforementioned formula, set it but good and slept hardly a wink the rest of the night. Morning broke, a lovely sight to behold for creatures unequipped with night vision.

We contemplated the path our boat had to have taken the night before in order for us to have threaded a needle between various rocks and hard places along the shoreline. We watched a gaggle of paddleboarders out for a morning jaunt around Hen Island, which was back where it belonged. I wondered if the town was talking about us. We had our coffee and breakfast. I pulled out my GPS manual to relearn how to set an anchor alarm (I’d been terrified by false alarms in the past and had given up the practice). The manual was glued shut from an old leak at an overhead portlight. Guess I’ll have to print it out someday.

I lifted the anchor, hosed off about five pounds of dense mud from its flukes, lashed it to the foredeck and we drove home. I mean... oh you know what I mean.   

                                   

                                                                

Deb had gotten her well-deserved dose of fresh air while emotionally removed from the monumental stress of a global epidemic. I believe she said that the stress she’d experienced the previous night was a welcome change of pace from the kind she’d been experiencing of late. Deb always locates the silver lining.

I myself received another reprimand from our Earth Mother about paying proper respect to her formidable powers. At my age, will I ever learn? Anyway, having returned to dry land we slept that next night in a bed that hadn't shifted from where we'd placed it years ago. 

 The new "manual windlass" in training 

                                                

                          

Soup du Jour

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

Deb and I had been enjoying some face time with relatives on terra firma while our Laura Lynn sat comfortably affixed to the anchorage at Three Mile Harbor on the north side of the south fork of the island called Long Island for good reason, in the state of New York. I believe only women are capable of following that description through to the end, but check the map and it’ll all make sense.

For me there’s always something about travel taken on a sailboat that makes me wish I’d taken up flying planes as a hobby. For several days we’d been tracing a meandering path around peninsulas and islands, getting further diverted by shoals, weather systems and equipment malfunctions. But that’s the charm of sailing, isn’t it? I recently heard from my pal Ron about a trip he and his daughter had taken aboard their Alberg 35. They’d cut their planned adventure short to circumvent approaching weather. Upon returning home after two days out, they’d hopped in a car and visited the harbor they’d just returned from, just to have dinner. Northport really is a cute town. You should visit it somehow.

During our planned return to Block Island, we visited Deb’s prized cousins Todd and Kat, and their two precocious sons. These are authentic water people, Todd having proposed to Kat as they waited for a nice wave set while perched on their respective surfboards. He did so wordlessly, letting the banner towed by one of the pilots working the beach banner ad trade (I’m telling you, a plane will get the job done) speak for him. If that isn’t cool, I don’t know what is.

Todd had recently acquired a bigger boat, naturally, one with a pair of Chevy engines, so you know we could’ve gotten somewhere on it right away, but when we considered an evening of frivolity and the many stages it would take to actually get a crew out onto the water and to a destination where barbecue was in the offing, we opted instead to all hop in the family SUV and hightail it to Montauk. Boats are definitely fun, but an essential nautical skill is the ability to rationally assess and manage time. 

While enjoying shore life, we were made aware of the impending visit of the first named tropical storm of the season. Had Deb and I driven out to see our relatives, I would’ve gone, “Well now, that’s interesting. Pretty early start to the season.” Instead, with our boat anchored three days from her home port, I went something like, “Son of a freaking bitch! You have got to be kidding me!”

You really have to admire the degree to which meteorologists can predict the timing, path and severity of large-scale weather systems these days. That admiration, however, is dampened by prognostications that target your present location. Deb and I had to decide whether to hunker down or skedaddle.

I tend to be a hunker-downer type. Deb is a skeedaddler. She won the battle of strategies, aided and abetted by swarms of no-see-ums that hounded us as we bid adieu to land and hopped into the smallest tender ever to have been built by a West Marine vender. I considered what it would be like to sit for two days on a boat with nothing much to do except swat insects while waiting for a hurricane to plough through.

We were up at the crack of dawn, or thereabouts, having worked out the math on how to hit Plum Gut at slack tide. I was all over that task for the second time, having come through the infamous slot and into the protective cradle of Long Island’s East End several days earlier. Once again I was priding myself at my finely honed seamanship, feeling very much like a sailor who’d done his homework, when the teacher that is Mother Nature threw in an opportunity for extra credit.

Fog started to roll in just as we approached that swirling confluence of water and boats that is Plum Gut. As the veil was drawn about us, we began to hear foghorns distressingly close to our position. I had a déjà vu moment from a trip many years earlier, when the same sort of thing happened as we approached the boulder-lined breakwater at Cape May.

Let me know if we're going to die now

Back then I followed the lead of another vessel that had issued a security call, indicating it’s position, direction and intent. I did the same again this day, and was greeted by the voice of a ferry captain, who requested I switch to channel 13, which I did. If he’d asked me to turn around and go back to where I came from, I would’ve done that too. As an aside, the term “ferry captain” just doesn’t pack the kind of manly punch it ought to. This guy was commandeering a vessel that could destroy us in a New York instant. It is big, has limited ability to maneuver, and carries a payload of humans with time-sensitive agendas. They might have felt it if their chauffeur had sliced a small boat in half on the way to Connecticut, but they might not if they’d been snoozing in their cars.

Channel 13 is the recognized frequency used by commercial traffic. I had my conversation with the ferry captain, who said he had me on his radar, which was soothing. But there were a lot of other vessels out there, which was not. We had no radar. What we had was a whistle. I commenced blowing into it, and its shrill pitch made my ears ache. Coast Guard protocol requires a vessel to issue a warning blast at least once every two minutes in limited visibility, and the conditions called for more frequent toots. Jesus, there were horns all around us. I was hyperventilating as this little whistle vacuumed the air from my lungs after a two-second report.

It then dawned on me that I had an option onboard, a conch horn born from our trip to the Bahamas those many years ago. It had a note much like that which I was hearing from the invisible fleet around us, and a restricted air passage that let me extend the length of my warning without passing out.

I made a radio announcement to anyone listening that I’d shifted from whistle to conch horn, figuring this might help anyone tracking our progress. I was met with radio silence. In retrospect I suspect the listeners out there were laughing off-mic over my needless details (I tend toward more explanation for my behavior than less), and I bet that if one had opted to respond, he might’ve said, “Captain, if you want to eat a can of baked beans and can fart loud enough, that’ll work too.”

What they look like when you can see them

We never spotted a ferry, but we did watch as the occasional sport fisherman ghosted by. Once we saw several in a small parade, which I imagine is an effective schooling strategy. Deb followed our GPS course (you just have to love GPS) through the Gut, and shortly thereafter the veil began to lift, too late for her satisfaction. She told me afterward that had she known what we were in for that morning, she would’ve voted with me to sit another couple days at anchor to let Arthur pass us by.  I have no idea what voter turnout will be like on future trips.

Block Island Redux

I believe this is an aid to navigation, 

but I do not understand the significance of the avian icon

Those of you who are regulars to this site (that would be me) may remember a little trip Deb and I took a while back, one I partially documented here, in a story that actually got published in a local boating magazine. When I say partially, I mean I mostly documented my having forgotten a crucial piece of gear from our sailing inventory, my fanny pack. The rest of the trip was uneventful, if you don’t count the many eventful experiences we had after I was once again in possession of my wallet.

So let’s get a few things out of the way. This time I remembered to clip on the nerd bag. Oh yes sir, I got that part right this time. And this time we never made it to Block Island.

But let’s be fair about this. We all know that cruisers’ plans are writ in Jello, and while it had been some time since we’d been back in the sea saddle, I soon felt the old touch coming back, which comfortable feeling lasted for nearly an hour.

We’d set aside a ten-day period once again to get ourselves out East, have some fun, and get ourselves safely home. Deb had a start date back at work, and I even felt confident enough in my abilities to announce that if some situation, such as equipment failure or the off chance an early tropical storm were to strand us somewhere short of home, I’d get her to the nearest harbor, from which point she could mass-transit herself back to civilization while I displayed my single-handing skills to the admiring water traffic.

The first equipment failure was discovered when I plugged in our chart plotter and proceeded to fixate on a screen that announced the absence of satellites in the sky. Oh great, the entire global positioning system had picked this moment to crap out. I mean, right?

There are Old Salts petrifying in dive bars the oceans over who’d be buying rounds over my predicament, as there’s no place for guys like me in their precious world. If you looked at the road ahead, it was one we’d traveled before, it was protected on either flank by welcoming coastline, it was well patrolled, and positively littered with safe harbors. Furthermore, we had paper charts aboard, and if I really wanted to sissy out, I could just tag along behind any of the myriad boats plying those harbors.

Okay, no idea. 

Instead I considered the only viable alternative for a weak mind. I’d have to use the nav app on my iPhone, a decision I dreaded, since I really need to get a new prescription for my glasses. Hell, I can hardly make a call on the thing. I imagined following a dot on a micro-screen for ten days at sea. No, if we could stumble our way into a modern coastal town, I’d dump a wad on another gizmo. That’s what the wallet was for.

In a panic, I did what any desperate man would do. I took the gizmo apart, looked around, tapped and blew on the little antenna thingie, wiggled the wires attached to it, and put it all back together. And it worked. I’m a regular MacGyver.

Other things went wrong that first day, but I cant remember what, because of the GPS thing, so by the end of the day, when we were almost anchored where we might not get fined for anchoring in an active channel, oh yeah, that was one of the other things, oh yeah, and neither bilge pump worked, those were other things, I was pretty much as pleasant a companion as I was at the beginning of the previous trip.

Remembering how I’d behaved then, and remembering how good a time we had after we’d gotten over that first hiccup, I resolved to pull myself together and deal with whatever happened from there on in. I was further incentivized by Deb’s encouragement, which went something like this: listen, if this isn’t going to be any fun for us (read "her"), we might just as well turn around and go home, and I’ll have my nails done and visit with people in a good mood.

I wish I could say that my resolve was rock steady. We did have lots of fun in the ensuing days. But there is something about me that really dislikes it when things go haywire. And by haywire, I mean something as little as hearing a noise coming from near the alternator that maybe has been there for years and I wasn’t paying attention, I just don’t know, but if this alternator craps out right now in the middle of the Sound, it’s going to be one long ignominious tow to someplace that is still a long way from home.

Oh, did I hear you say aren’t you guys in a sailboat with sails on it and everything? Well sure. But let me tell you something about sailing. When you’re actually looking to get somewhere, sailing isn’t the way to do it. GPS will tell you that, which is why I like GPS. It will tell you that if you turn your engine off and enjoy the blissful stillness of the purity of one of man’s earliest discovery/inventions, you will triple your commute time to that anchorage you were planning on hitting one hour before sunset, just in time for sundowners. I have not yet seen any recipes for “sunuppers” yet. I’m thinking the ingredients would call for some cocoa beans and aspirin.

Red sky at night, sailor's fright?

Shysters of the Sea

I know some lawyers. I do. And I actually consider some of them my friends. In my defense, those litigators I’ve chosen to befriend (it is hopefully a reciprocal arrangement) are among the rarified kind, which is to say they own moral compasses.

I apologize to those acquaintances in advance then, for what I’m about to say, for I believe that in a modern society such as ours, lawyers are the cultural equivalent of hired thugs.  They simply forgo hoodies for the tailored suit, their teeth are bleached rather than gilt, their shared gang tag the ubiquitous Esq, writ in Gothic lettering wherever they lurk.

Lawyers threaten not with Berettas but with bankruptcy.  They intimidate with boilerplate. They crush the resolve of law abiders with incessant delay. And they bury their victims not with shovels in the woods but paperwork in the courts. A Glock is a water pistol compared to the lethal force of an “order to show cause.”

Why am I fuming legalese in a boating blog? Because a sailing friend of mine recently fell prey to the assaults of one such shyster, though the crime didn’t begin with the legal firm. It began with yet another scourge of the sea, the certified mechanic.

I think most of us have been victimized by the local expert whose credentials have been passed along by the un-skeptical. Somebody knows the name of the local "Yanmar guy." Or a company like Mack Boring, restricted by its distribution agreement with the aforementioned engine manufacturer, passes on the number of a business in your area since they can’t sell you parts themselves. Welcome to the jungle.

It may be that some of these referrals actually know what they’re doing. They may even be friendly dudes. Here’s the thing: I don’t care if they’ve graduated cum laude from Snap-On U. I don’t care if they sport prosthetic torque wrenches for forearms. It’s all a moot point if they don’t show up for work.

Sadly this happens too often in a small community. A couple guys monopolize a business, saying yes to every job that comes along when they know they can’t satisfy the demand. I carry in my head a list of numbers I will not call again, simply because of the likelihood that neither the call nor the message left will be answered. Entire boating seasons have been scratched while owners await a response to, “Will you please come do the work you said you’d do?” And whole businesses have floated on the deposits of those who believe that a man’s word is his bond. Fat friggin’ chance.

I know my friend, and I know he has a legitimate complaint, and he can prove it with copious documentation. In fact he proved it in our local court system. For the court’s part, it awarded him his money back. The thing is, the mechanic, utilizing his typical modus operandi, didn’t show for the proceedings. What the man who took my friend’s money did instead (after my friend’s exasperated wife turned to the Web with a negative review in the local paper that finally brought our mechanic to life), rather than attend to the work promised, or return the money advanced in good faith, or even address the complaint in his own words, instead this man went and got himself a lawyer.

I have to figure one of two things. Either this lawyer was taken in by the mechanic's song and dance, which would make him one remarkably credulous lawyer, or he determined that the mechanic was giving him a song and dance, and didn’t care. He may indeed have coached his client on the finer points of the soft shoe, so as to defeat a system put in place to protect the citizenry from cheap Vaudevillian acts.

It does however beg the question - Why would a lawyer take on the case of a man perjuring himself in small claims court for the kind of chump change high-rolling types use as straws for doing blow?

We the people submit the following as evidence: said lawyer owns a boat.

Ah! So our briny barrister now has a 24/7 mechanic in his “employ,” and honest boaters looking for any kind of engine work in our harbor will either have to take a number higher than Johnny Cochran's, or pull out the service manual and socket wrenches. 

Taking Back The Holiday

A view from the travelift

I visited my sailing blog recently because I was bored, and because visiting my blog registers a visit, an important consideration if ever I am to reach Internet critical mass. Presently I’m the only one visiting me, but sooner or later you will too because Google's algorithms, impressed by my overly frequent visits, will recommend that you give me a try.

That's why it’s important to remain relevant. So it’s with a certain skewed sense of pride that I announce we are finally back in the water just in time to have attended the 2013 edition of the fireworks display in Hempstead Harbor, one year to the day after we’d discovered we were sinking.

It was on the previous 4^th of July, with our niece and a group of her high school friends aboard, that a distressing amount of water was discovered in the bilge after we’d returned to our mooring. After pumping the water out that night, I’d checked again early the next morning to discover it had opted to return.

I’m going to skip over most of the details since they were covered in my last post (which you should also read along with all the other posts), though I'd like you to know that Emily is now graduated from high school and onto new adventures. So the lessons to be learned herein are: 1) study hard, grasshopper, and 2) if you have a boat, you will be working on her a lot whether she’s brand new, or say forty-something years old. Our boat happens not to be new.

I’ve poked a lot of fun in the past at boaters who seem to have more interest in working on their rides than sailing them. There is an honorable aspect to the tinkerer, who will always find something more to do on his project before he’s prepared to declare it finished. And I must say I’m thankful to our yard that they allow us to do our own damage to our investments with minimal interference. Yards like ours are going the way of the local seaside dives, which are being pushed out by what are charmingly referred to as developers. Development is what happens to an otherwise vital community when people with excessive amounts of ill-begotten money interfere.

While I worked away these last few months, sanding and grinding and sweating and swearing, abutting my stern was the skeleton of a condo development rising from its seaside foundation. Those nascent parapets will doubtlessly soon house a gallery of blue-hairs, staring with pinched looks of disapproval (just wait till they get an ear-load of the sound of flailing winter halyards) at the eyesore that has been servicing sailors since long before they were soiling their cloth diapers. And there will have gone the neighborhood.

But that will be then. During the last few months I found myself spending a lot of time amid the subculture of owner/fixers, an elite group of mostly guys with bottomless to do lists. Even amid this rarified clique there are distinct subsets. There are, I imagine, more guys like me, who wish the first item on their lists was “burn this list,” (and perhaps wonder if a buyer could be found in this anemic economy), guys who religiously maintain their boats for racing purposes (shysters of the sea, I'll call them), guys like my pal Ron, who lapse into depression if there is nothing to fix at all, and perhaps the most intriguing, guys like Zoltan, who claim to despise every blood-soaked second of the work, yet perversely insist on rebuilding every square inch of their boats to Stradivariun specs.

My punch list consisted of rebuilding our stern tube, which required the demolition of my aborted attempt to 5200 back into place the old failed tube. Guys had warned me never to use 5200 if ever I intended to undo the repair. They were right. Also on the list: refit the new driveshaft and associated components, repair the blisters revealed by a thorough hull sanding (never thoroughly sand your bottom, as it will reveal what you are truly made of), as well as grind, fill and fair a disturbing symmetrical gelcoat crack running the entire length of the keel.

Also on the list would be the cosmetic improvements I could give a rat’s ass about, but which make my mate happy. And you really need to keep your mate happy, because in truth she is what makes the boat go. So it was one more go-round of brightwork “varnishing” (Cetol this time - you fetishists can squeal all you want) and hull polishing, to spiffy up the sad state of affairs brought on by lack of attention.

George, our yard manager, gave us the call to ask, "Ready to see if she'll float or not?" and I wont deny to a plague of butterflies as he drove the travelift down the tracks to lower us into the ocean. While our Laura Lynn’s tush dangled in the water, George let me scamper aboard and check my work. Inexplicably, the repair was holding.

So there we were one 4^th of July later, watching the fireworks on the kind of night that'll make a man say out loud to anyone who'll listen, “This is why you buy a boat.” After we'd made it back to our mooring around midnight, I threw the switch on the bilge pump to hear the satisfying gurgle you get with your last slurp of soda through a straw. Sweet.