Splashdance.

     "The plan was set, the plan was done..."
                                                 -Steely Dan






   Every year, the boats come out of the water aroundabout Halloween-ish.  Every fall, I think to myself,

    "This winter, it's going to be different.  this winter, I am going to make a list of all the boatprojects that we want to complete, and I will schedule them over the next six months, so that we're not busting ass at the last minute, racing a ticking clock, as we run up against the immovable barrier of our splash date."

   Yeah, I think that.

  The reality is always entirely, frantically, different...

  Five and a half months go by and suddenly the world looks like this:

and I look like this:

                                                                                                                        - image courtesy of reddit

      With a big ol' procrastination -driven project backlog monkey on my back.


   Inevitably. our spring splash punchlist gets prioritized, with projects falling into three categories:

  1. Shit that absolutely has to get done before the boats get dropped in the water,  or they don't happen.  Or the boat sinks.

  2.  Shit that was scheduled to get done before we splashed, but who the hell am I kidding?

  3. Shit that gone done on, or ahead of, schedule, purely by accident, or because, rarely, it is easier and simpler than we thought it was going to be.

   Well, all the 3. stuff has been done, now it's just 1. and 2. fighting to finish.

    We splash Karma May 6.  Ereni will splash at a later date, which buys us some time.
But, the next few nights after work are going to be jam-packed with fun stuff like (in no particular order):

   1. Installing a new/used swim platform (including modifying mounting brackets, reshaping platform, finishing trim to finish platform, cutting backing plates, and actual installation.)

   2. Installing a topping lift.

   3. Installing a 100 w semi-flexible solar panel.
   
   4. Installing a new charge controller, and a new starting battery, wiring both existing batteries into a house bank, and installing a new Xantrex Echo Charger to simplify our charging system.

   

     5.  Raising and stiffening bimini, installing longer frame stringers on rigid solar panel frame to solve top sag problem, install a couple of additional struts to stiffen the frame.

     6.  Cleaning and rebuilding the cabin cushions.
         

 
     7.  Finishing the construction of the first SUMO dinghy.

   

     8.  And, of course, sanding and painting the bottom, and finishing washing and waxing the topsides.


     And, dammit, I love every minute of it.  The next best thing to being on the water is getting the boats ready for the water, stress and all.  The best part of the next best thing is that SWMBO is right alongside, busting hump with me.

     It beats the hell out of winter.

     Six days left.

     We'll be (mostly) ready.

     I think.





     Thanks for stopping by!  Please take the time to "Talk the Dock," and pass the word.












 

The Benefits of Bottom Feeding

  "But I gotta stay paid, gotta stay above water..."
                                              - Three Six Mafia



*Originally published in Ontario Sailor magazine, now published here.  Enjoy.




    I admit, I am hard pressed to find the value in a new boat.
Before anybody goes grabbin' pitchforks and torches, let me disclaim here for a minute:

    There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying a new boat.

  At all.

  Ever.


   Some sailors  like to buy new and trade the uncovered unknowns of an old boat  for the hopefully-warranty-covered unknowns of commissioning, others have scrimped and saved and worked damn hard over the years to trade up and up, with the goal of buying a boat that is not just new-to-them, but brand-spankin' NEW, while other others are just plain filthy rich and wouldn't think of anything BUT buying big, brand new and blinged out.

   Good on 'em, I say!

   If that is what floats your boat and puts a smile on your face, Neptune love ya!

   But I can't do it.

   Or, more correctly, I won't do it, because if I can't justify the value, I definitely can't justify carrying the 25 year note, so "can't" and "won't" are damn near enough interchangeable  in this equation.

    I am a bottom feeder- and I like it down here.

    As my 40th birthday gets ever smaller in the rearview mirror, my gut gets bigger, and 50 looms at damn near the next exit on my life as a highway, a few stone truths have become apparent:

     I was never all that good looking.

     I was never  all that talented.

    Compared to the dreams I had when I was 18, I am a damn failure.

    I never became a rock star, I didn't get a three book deal and a 6 figure advance cheque, and I didn't become a multi-millionaire by 30.  Thus, to 18 year old me, I failed.

     And, I am okay with all of that.

     Because I am a failure, because I am nothing but unrealized potential stuffed into a pair of Dockers, (aka Toughskins for adults) I have learned the life hacks and workarounds necessary to live like I made it.
Which is why sailing is perfect for me.

     There are virtually no seaworthy 40 year old 30 foot powerboats on the market for less than the price of a 2007 Hyundai...

     ... But, there are a crapload of perfectly acceptable sailboats out there for four figures.

 The best part?  I can sail the bejeezus out of a $5000 boat for four or five seasons and likely sell it for....
....$5000.


and if I can't?
    Hell, even if I have to give it away five seasons down the road, my loss is only $1000/year.
   Less than $3 a day.

   A draft beer a day.

   Domestic draft.

     When was the last time a draft beer gave us this much fun, this many grins, this much excitement and life?

     Yes, I hear you, Yeahbutniks:  "Yeah, but, there are repairs and maintenance and upgrades and dockage and ..."

    ...and all of that is cheaper down here on the bottom as well.  When you buy an expensive boat, the idea of buying used gear is, to some, a little unseemly, and rightly so.  Used gear on a newish boat devalues the boat and raises suspicions of the next buyer.
On the bottom, used gear looks LESS out of place and LESS suspicious than NEW gear.

   It is also a lot less nerve-wracking to drill new holes in an old deck than it is to drill new holes in a new deck.


   As Gunny Highway said, "You improvise, you adapt, you overcome."

    Oh yeah, back to that nerve-wracking thing- with less invested, there is less risk in attempting new skills and new (at least to you) ideas to refit or upgrade your ride.

    A generation ago, a 30 foot cruising boat was what you traded up TO, and you kept her for 20 years, because you'd made it- you had space and luxury, and comfort to cruise or weekend comfortably- it was the boat you never felt you would outgrow...and most didn't.

    Today, a 30 foot boat is marketed as an "entry level" cruising boat, a boat to start with, and trade out of as quickly as possible.

   Thankfully.

       Because the more often a boat is traded, the faster it depreciates, and the sooner it hits the bottom of it's depreciation curve, which means there is a whole new batch of boats at the bottom of their depreciation curve sooner,  hopefully for new generations of adventuresome failures to discover.

   And the price of admission is only a draft beer a day.


 

    If you're a bottom feeder, keep on keeping on. And take a newbie for a sail every once in a while.  We need more greenhorns sailing.

After all, we need someone to sell our boats to.

Thanks for stopping by.  Please, feel free to "Talk the Dock!" Pass the word!

Good Enough.

"There must be something else..."
                                  -Lifehouse






   

     A fleet of beveraged sailors congregating to celebrate sundown (and we had some great ones last season:

),

inevitably leads to discussion deep into the dark hours.  One such confab  meandered through the usual "Cruising versus Racing", "Tiller versus Wheel", "Power versus Sail", "Rum versus Rye", "Dock 6 versus Dock 5" debates to a topic which we discovered is a lot more nuanced:

"Correct versus Incorrect Gear and Installation."

or, "When is Good Enough, Good Enough?"

  One thing all in attendance agreed on:

  The answer, as it so often is, is...

..."It depends."

  Except when it doesn't.

   Electrical/electronical stuff is kinda fussy about how it is connected, for example.  Get yer positives and yer negatives backversed and all the smoke comes out of the wires and you're left pondering how to lie on the warranty claim for your new, but now dead, chartsounderhaildar thingy.

  Same thing with wrapping jibsheets around the winch- it only works one way, clockwise, dumbass!

   On BOTH sides of the boat!

  (At least 8 of you out there just air-wrapped an invisible winch to see if I was right... after you first pointed your finger in front of you like a pistol and then rotated it in the air, lefty-loosey and then righty-tighty, to remind yourself what "clockwise" meant.)


  (( You KNOW you did.  Don't even try.))

   Restringing  6:1 mainsheet tackle takes at least two tries because nobody ever gets the sheave order right the first time and nobody bothers to take "before"  pictures before unstringing the old sheet from the blocks... and, of course, it only works one way.


   Adjusting  the valve clearance on your engine,  and flushing the head are other examples of "one way only" systems, gear and procedures.

  Most of the other stuff on your boat?

  Not so much.

  Which is kinda reassuring.

  When I am not sailing, and boatbuilding and boatpart building and wordsmithing, I am a gearhead.

   But not as gearheady as I used to be.

    Back in the day, BB (the era Before Boats),  I was a die-hard 24/7 VW freak.  Since I was 16, I owned 'em, fixed 'em, bought 'em, built 'em, sold 'em, lived 'em, and, sometimes, in 'em.  At last count I had owned 47.3 of them.

 The .3 is still in the backyard of Stately Jones Manor.

  (NOT the backyard of SJM, but at times, it was close.)

 I've laid hands on some of the rarest of the rare,

    ...and rubbed elbows with some of the coolest of the cool.

    At the top of my "I Shit You Not" Stories list, I helped a bunch of local Canadian high school kids build a race car that ran in the 2005 Baja 1000:

 As the old NASCAR joke goes, I wasn't involved, I was committed.  (Look it up.)


Occasionally my wheeled obsession met my keeled obsession.  Little known fact: my first dinghy , Chirp , built back in 2009, was sized to fit inside my VW Vanagon Syncro.

     Confession: I haven't wrenched on a VW in 5 years.

   What happened?

    I  discovered the "good enough" freedom of boats, and realized the math worked.

     See here's the deal:

     Old VWs  are not just collectible, they are appreciating.  Like crazy.  Like, a -$5000 -price -tag -on- a- rusty- dented -non-running- project- bus- that- needs -everything -is -a -steal kind of crazy.

   The shit got serious.    And when the shit gets serious, you gotta get serious about the shit- an incorrect part, an ill-fitting aftermarket panel, a wheel with the wrong date stamp, is a step backward.  A perfectly serviceable, but incorrect, $100 aftermarket muffler might cut the value of your pride and joy by $150.  

   And there are plenty of enthusiasts who will happily let you know, at every show and swap meet you attend with your incorrect ride.

   As the value of the vehicles rose, the price of original and good aftermarket parts rose accordingly,  stretching my always tight fun budget.

   Meanwhile, in Old Boat World, or at least the part of it I discovered and happily reside in, nobody gives a shit about whether there are period correct bolts holding the stanchions to decks that are covered with unscuffed original non-skid.  Having peeling decals on the air filter will not hurt the value of my boat at all.

    Owning a floating summer home that will likely not appreciate in value, but will just as likely not depreciate much either, is kinda liberating.

    I was spending more time messing around with boats, and less time in the garage.  Finally, I had to face the fiscal reality:

  My fun budget can support messing around with boats, or messing around with cars. Not both.

   For now.

So, back to the original question. What was the consensus that our confab reached that night?

  When is good enough, good enough?

   We came up with the  "Good Enough" rule of thumb:  Every part, part replacement and modification on-board must answer  "Yes" to three questions-
1. Does it work?
2. Is it safe?
3. Is it durable?

   That's a standard I can meet.



Thanks for stopping by.  Feel free to "Talk the Dock" and pass the word.



 

A Winter's Ponderings

"You'd be well on your way, if you could only set sail..."
                             -Kenny Loggins

Long nights, short days, water too hard to sail in, and an off-season maintenance punchlist with an emphasis on sanding, sanding, more sanding and refinishing leaves me with lots of time to think.

    (I’m not entirely sure this is a good thing- ed.)

     As I sand cockpit grates, cockpit tables and companionway doors preparatory to their semi-annual renewal coat of varnish, and consider new projects that will turn big pieces of wood into smaller pieces of wood and large piles of sawdust,  I find myself pondering: 

    Why do I do this, this varnishing thing? 

    Why don’t I use that newfangled synthetic, fast-drying, easy to apply, orangey-looking stuff that so many sailors swear by, that requires only two coats, and a lot less sanding?   It would take so much less time, and it works almost as well, and it looks almost the same and… 

…and it ain’t right.

    As I was laying down the finish coat, watching the varnish bring the grain to life, I realized that there is something zen about varnish.  The smell, the feel , the magic as it goes on, the connection to dozens of generations of boatkeepers who have gone before ,  doing the same off-season refinishing job, and likely asking themselves “Why?”

  Varnish is about keeping the fire.

  To me, that is a big part of the appeal of sailing:

  We're keeping the fire.

   But that fire grows a little dimmer, every year.

    Here’s what I mean:

    For millennia, sailing vessels were constructed of wood, with sails and lines of natural fibre, caulked and sealed with vile tarrish concoctions boiled over a fire from ingredients fit for neither man nor beast.  Legend says that any brew too thin to seal wooden boats was re-marketed to the pub trade under the brand name Guinness, and any goop too thick to caulk a hull was jarred and sold as Marmite.

(Hey, watch it! I like Marmite! – ed.)

    For centuries the traditions were handed down, from wright to wright and boatswain to boatswain, and while there was advancement in design, materials and construction methods stayed pretty much the same.    A 15^th century boatbuilder would have gotten along pretty well in an early 20^th century boatyard, since the tools and techniques hadn’t changed much. 

    Aboard, the same pattern held true.  Lanterns and lamps dimly lit the way for centuries, flags were the only option for communication beyond range of voice and navigation was an arcane art of sun shots and celestial scrutiny.

       The fire was kept, the torch passed, from one generation to the next.

      Then, in a span of less than five decades, the world of small boats saw more technological advancement than had been seen in the entirety of the past five millennia.

   Within the last half of the 20^th century, fiberglass had virtually replaced wood as the material of choice for production boat building.  Aluminum had virtually replaced wood for construction of spars, electric lighting had virtually replaced lanterns and lamps, radio had virtually replaced signal flags and Loran, and then chartplotters, virtually replaced the sextant and dead reckoning.

    The  great naval architect L. Francis Herreshoff might have denigrated fiberglass as “frozen snot,” …but it turned out to be very successful snot indeed.

    Thanks to snot, boats could be built faster, with less skilled labour, requiring less maintenance.

    The upside was that sailing became a more accessible option for the everyman. 

    The downside was that the fire dimmed.

    Skills that had been passed down for generations, from sailor to sailor, became, first, quaint,…

   … and then forgotten.

    Quick, how many of us carry a full complement of signal flags aboard?  How many of us have caulking irons and mallets in our tool bags?

     How many of us know what caulking irons are?

     Now, don’t get me wrong- I love the reduced maintenance and longer lifespan of fiberglass hulls and alloy spars and synthetic sails, and I think my radio and chartplotter are wonderful tools to have aboard.  I appreciate that I DON’T have to keep caulking irons and mallets in my toolbag…

     … however, I draw the line at slathering the wood on my craft with some synthetic that is cheaper, and easier, and faster and almost the same, if you squint.

          See, I figure there is magic in boat work, a purity of process, an adventure of design and construction that envelopes the senses- the sound of the saw, the sight of brightwork glistening, the smell of varnish... it is poetry.

       Or maybe it’s just fumes.

       Whatever it is, it ain’t much, but I’m keeping the flame, as best I can.



"Talk the Dock!"

Down on the Dock with the Great Big C

 "What would I do with it?"
                  -Tim Mcgraw


    *Warning- profanity follows.  Deal with it*

     Gutcheck time:

     I have met some tough bastards this season.
   
     I have known some of them for a long time, but never knew what kind of tough sonsabitches they were.

     I am not sure I could be as strong, as full of grace and quiet good humour, as these gentle men around me have been.

 
    Cancer came to play this season.

     Those on the field for the showdown didn't step aside.
 
     They stepped up.

     It hasn't gone easy, but Cancer is, so far, getting it's ass kicked.

     Fuck Cancer.

 

     My dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer early this year.  He was lucky, if "lucky" can describe anyone tapped on the shoulder by the Big C-  A biopsy, surgery, infection, surgery, medication, too many checkups and consults and too much time spent in doctor's offices, he and his oncologist are cautiously optimistic.
    The coast is clear.
    For now.

   My dad has golfed for most of his life.  On October 3rd, 2013, after almost 6 decades of chasing a little white ball, and months of cancer treatment...

.... my father scored his first hole-in-one.

    Hey, Cancer?

    Fuck you.



      Closer to the Dock, we were all floored when, at the start of the season, in his quiet unassuming way, Jack slipped into a cockpit conversation that he was undergoing chemo.

      ...

      And, as he does every season, he sailed his ass off.  No holds barred, no concessions, other than to make sure the CVC in his arm stays dry.

      Think you're tough?

      Throughout months of chemo, Jack has not taken any time off work, and has sailed his Tempest at least once a week.

      THAT'S tough.

      Hey, Cancer?

      Fuck you.

      For those of you new to the Dock, Jack is second from the right, beside his daughter, Melanie.

      The guy on the far left is John,  the greenhorn.

      Cancer brought John to the Dock.

      Last winter John was diagnosed with throat cancer.  Off work from his job in Hamilton, he'd spend time walking the docks, drinking coffee, and looking at boats.  One night in May, he walked past and we got talking.

   He had never sailed before.

   He loved the idea, though.

   We get a lot of that down here.  Lots of dreaming, not a whole lot of doing.

    Lots of folks walk the docks and ask questions and get enthused, and....

   We never see them again.

    Life gets in the way.

    John bucked the trend.

    He backed his own play:  A couple of weeks after our first conversation, John comes strutting down the Dock, beer in hand, and announces, "I've got a slip."

    Now he just needs a boat.

   A week later he owned a Sirius 22.
 
   Which he proceeded to sail.
 
    A lot.

   

   He even started racing.

   Yeah, he's all in.

   His doctors say he is looking good.

   Hey, Cancer?

   Fuck you.

   Get off my Dock.