Dwelling On an Afternoon Sail

     The reason I started this blog, well a couple reasons. One, I don’t get out as much I’d like, so it’s a way to be on the water without being on the water. I believe I'm not alone in that. It’s possible to have something you hold dear in mind and how best to put it? There’s dwelling on something you care about, but with sailing and many other pursuits, you can dwell in it. Another reason; I thought if I linked the two interests; art and sailing, the two might augment each other. To that end, I’m trying to improve my use of water colors to a level where I can be free, have fun and have it resemble what I want it to look like. Anyway, thinking about what landscapes and water-scapes can be, my mind goes to those amazing Nineteenth Century artists. Consider Winslow Homer’s Gulf Stream...I remember gazing at that piece for long stretches. A small reproduction must have hung in a classroom I was stuck in way back when. It is such a mesmerizing image; atmospheric, highly narrative, strongly mythical; and...what a painting. It must have astonished the first gallery patrons to see it. Granted, there’s only one Turner or Winslow Homer, but one can aspire.

     But, returning to reality. I'm beginning to like my treatment of light on water, and my skies are coming along. That’s half the battle right there, maybe more than half. The boats are hit and miss, as are the sails, but I'll keep at it. I've just switched to some lovely super thick water color paper so I hope that will be the end of all that pigment guttering in the troughs of buckling paper.

This simple water color sketch I love love love!  Hopefully more will be on the way of similar style.

     Before last weekend it had been two months since we were last out, and around here that’s too long to leave a boat out in a barn unchecked, even with three tarps over it. The tarps were necessary as our hens liked to rummage through the dry pine-straw under the boat kicking up a ton of dust. I walked by the boat day after day on my way to collect eggs, failing to notice the spreading moisture stain in the plastic weave of the tarp. It wasn’t until our cat Maya took to sitting on the bow pawing at the area that I connected the dots. Situational awareness is a very important facet of seamanship and I’m not happy to be out-shown by my cat, but where it pertains to rat perception she does have an advantage. Removing the first layer revealed a nest, thankfully devoid of pinkies, but littered with......rat litter.  Disgusting. Luckily it had the courtesy to nest below the tarp but above my inner layer of plastic, instead of say, in one of my stern lockers. Hopefully Maya will keep a sharp eye out because the rodent did get away, and that makes me nervous. I’ve already replaced a wiring harness in my truck due to varmits, and from now on when I park in the pole barn the hood stays open.

     I tried that approach with the sailboat; that is, leaving the tarp folded open on the stern so Maya could sneak in and chase off the vermin, but I neglected to consider the hens, who love nothing more than to find a place away from their colleagues to lay eggs in privacy. When one of the hens went missing, it never occurred to me to check the boat, and when I finally pulled back the tarp, my what a lovely surprise that was. There was no simply cleaning the boat. I had to strip the paint in the cockpit and hit it with a couple new layers of enamel in the area where she expired. My sympathy for the hen’s plight was roughly equaled by my disgust and indignation, especially as her ordeal was over and mine had just begun. The damn hens were always so busy. Poor thing, she could find her way in well enough, too bad she didn’t lift the same flap with her head to escape.

     Anyway, all the hens are gone now. We grew weary of them wrecking the vegetable garden and pilfering birdseed, but now that I have solved that problem it has indirectly pointed to another. The presence of a hen house brought scavengers. Not raccoons or foxes, our dogs keep them away, but a helpful presence in the form of a rat snake. They don’t call them rat snakes for nothing I assume. Sure, more than a few eggs went down the snake’s gullet, but when I surprised him one day neatly tucked into a fold in the boat’s tarp, it didn’t bother me a bit. “You can stay right there buddy,” I told my little friend. “Have all the eggs you want, but please live up to your name and wriggle a perimeter around boat once in a while.”

I wasn't convinced there was a problem till I poked a bump in the tarp under Maya's watchful eye, then the bump started moving with Maya in pursuit.

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     We finally got in a nice sail last weekend. This has been one of those summers so far with nice thunderstorm formation over land in the afternoons, which translates to a decent sea breeze at the coast as the air updrafts twenty miles or so inland. This was a two boat sail and as often happens we cast around for willing participants for an outing. The prospect of sitting in a motionless shallow with the mid-day Florida sun beating down dissuades a few friends who might otherwise participate, since there’s no guarantee there will be a sail-able sea breeze at the exact spot where we are, but Sunday worked out nicely. The wind was steady, the water a gentle chop, with temperatures perfect for a swim.

     We made our way out of the canal at the St. Marks Lighthouse and with favorable winds from the South-east we set our course for a wide shallow sandy area a couple miles to the south. My chart shows this as a large random shape with the word ‘sand’ off to the side. It’s shallow enough at low tide to be inaccessible to boat traffic, so folks will often anchor out there over-night with their hulls resting on the bottom.

Lunch over the 'Sand.'

     Tramontana is a long skinny two-masted sharpie. It can be soloed, but I haven’t had lots of practice doing it, as I get out so seldom and it’s usually a nice way to spend time with friends and family. It’s recently occurred to me that the boat I have, is not the boat I thought I was building when I came under the spell of Reuel Parker. I say spell with no reservation. I ruined the bindings of two copies of The Sharpie Book simply by having them open in hand for too long during the time that “the desire to build a boat filled my sky and I could think of nothing else.”

     Parker states that the Ohio sharpie is good for carrying 1000 pounds of camping gear. I can attest to that, since we load beyond that every camping trip by a few hundred pounds. But then he mentions his Ohio Sharpie carried “seven or eight people comfortably and still performed well.” Possibly the folks in the Keys back in the 1970’s were a skinny lot, so I won’t quibble with him on that point, but I’m struggling with what to do with even a few passengers in my boat. Tramontana is a 20 footer, so it’s not like we’re trying to cram 6 guys in a ’65 Fiat 500, but when I gaze over at Jody sailing with guests in the Swan; a 12 foot day-sailer with amble beam and tidy bench seats, I marvel at how design variations make up for pronounced differences in size.

    His crew sits sideways on bench seats facing inward, they’re in a comfortable place to man the  main sheet or simply idle for a bit, but either way they don’t interfere with sailing operations. My guests usually sit across thwarts that stretch the narrow beam of the boat, or they can perch on the coamings. Jody can sail by himself easily, but with two masts I presently require help sailing this sharpie, or I need people out of the way so I can do it. Problem is, there’s no ‘out of the way’ with this design, and with two separate masts and two sheets controlling the sails, plus the tiller, why not involve your passengers? It’s a wonderful moment for folks who have never sailed, to feel the thrust of the wind on the sail and the gurgle of the water down her side as she picks up speed. But on a day where the wind builds in the afternoon, things can get a little dicey.  No one better be sitting on ropes, and folks may need to jump out of the way or be ready to flash from one side to the other when we tack, and it helps if they don’t mind me using their heads as a railing when I jump to the bow to brail up the fore sail. So far no one has caught a knee in the back or had fingers stepped on, so I’d like to see this situation in the right way before that happens. I would include “before we experience a capsize,” but it’s already too late for that.
   
   All this means it’s best to have folks on board who know how to sail, or at least don’t mind all the bustle involved. I’ve been reluctant to bark orders at my passengers, because why should anyone who comes along at my invitation put up with that?  So I believe I’ll build two low narrow Adirondike style chairs that go along either side of the centerboard trunk to get lubbers low and out of the way of the sails and sheets. And, I should say, I'm willing to entertain the possibility that the space inside the boat is not as much the problem as the space between my ears. But whatever it is, more time on the water will settle this question I'm sure.

      I included these two sketches from my files for comparison. The top is Tramontana, clearly a longer boat, lots of room for gear, but on the bottom Swan holds her own for sensible comfort and simplicity.

     Hmmmm..... eight people. I think those must have been salty, fun loving free spirits. Actually I can see it; Buffett’s A1A coming out of an 8-track, maybe the bow bumping up against a square grouper, oh...and Captain Parker having a really good handle on things. So to him I raise my coffee mug. It’s 8:30 on a Sunday morning in late June. A storm is slowly making it’s way over the Big Bend, and it’s time to walk up to get the paper with an umbrella and Maya. She likes to go on walks perched on my shoulder....so from the Rail.....enjoy your Summer people!

Brian