Blowin' Sugar Sand

    Preparations are underway for our spring beach clean up/camp out on Little St. George Island. In years past the group of folks I go with--co workers of Native Nurseries, went to different venues around the big bend but of late we’ve focused our attention on barrier island camping.     Barrier Islands are special places. They have a character all their own, part low desert and part tropical hammock. It’s a harsh place for animals and plants to make a living, and their struggle for space and water gives the place that kind of severe beauty one will find in western parks and national monuments. Adding that the entire Island is constantly being moved around and stretched by shifting currents, storms and blowing sand the features you encounter reinforce a pervading sense of change. 
   
    Growing up in Miami it never occurred to me that our beaches were not so much sand as they were pulverized shell dredged up to keep the hotels from sliding into the Gulf Stream. On the gulf coast of North Florida its sand, and in particular sugar sand--the very fine grain that gets up and moves around in the wind and makes the squeak squeak squeak when you walk on it; that’s what locals take pride in. This material creates some amazing land features that truthfully I’ve not spent enough time appreciating. We’re all familiar with the successive ridges paralleling the beaches, but on the Big Bend dunes accumulate blowing sand building into huge promontories that offer some great views, as well as large dunes fields I would best describe as moguls. These are some strange features to get out in the middle of, and the battles waging between the plants and shifting sand are remarkable. “You gotta come see this” is often heard when we transect a dune field, probably something to do with a tree mostly drowning in sand or an oddly shaped plant that has self pruned to correspond to dune that’s no longer there.

   I can attest to the mobility of sugar sand. Jody and I camped out on West Pass, the very western point of St. George Island across from St. Vincent Island. It was a gusty night and our tent flapped endlessly. Jody fussed with whatever it was that the wind was picking at, but we couldn’t understand this shower of sand raining down in little puffs. Finally we decided it was the wind blasting the finest particles up the tent side, up under the rain fly, through the fine mesh mosquito net at the peak, to pepper our bags all night. Covering one’s head was the only solution. At least it was cold. The thing about camping in sand....you get tired of sand, although there are some protocols that one can follow to keep the tent and gear clear of it; mainly no shoes in the tent. To enter you sit just inside with your feet sticking out to put on and take off shoes, and keep a brush to sweep the entrance and whatever gear comes in. We discovered the perfect brush for the purpose purely by accident.

    So West Pass....it’s a wild and lovely place. As mentioned it cuts between St. Vincent and Little St. George Island and leads into the western section of Apalachicola Bay, re-known for it’s oyster fishery, which takes place principally on St. Vincent Bar just north of our camping spot on the point of Little St. George. West Pass has given me a couple of hard lessons on boatman ship, which I only seem to internalize experientially, as opposed to book learning. And even if I did have a vast mental library I don’t think I’d have a corresponding retrieval mechanism to quickly call up a piece of boating knowledge that might keep me out of trouble. I need experiences to dig a deep groove of situational know how, and as that groove is still being worn I’m happy to say my boat seems to be holding up pretty well.

Jody doing what he does best-working around a campfire.

   
    Apalachicola Bay is shallow principally, but between the islands where the tide comes in and out it cuts a deep channel. The chart shows 18’ deep off the point of our camp site at West Pass, which is where we anchor our boats. Out in the middle of the channel it goes much deeper. The exact spot we choose is influenced by where it seems most sensible to anchor, which is a tricky question as what looks like a calm safe spot may not be later when the conditions change. We opted for a spot towards the inside of the bay and off loaded our gear. Jody then stripped down to his shorts in a cold wind and demonstrated how one anchors off a beach. He spent considerable time rowing around and setting the anchor making sure he had enough line payed out to maintain proper scope, as a boat bobbing over a taunt anchor line will have the anchor out of the bottom in no time, yet Jody was careful not to let out so much line that the boat ended up on the beach if the wind changed. Performed perfectly the boat is the exact distance so when it swings around it’s just outside the breakers, yet hopefully not so far that you have to swim once you pull the boat over with the shore line. He spent a long time out there setting the boat to rights in preparation for the night, then jumped in with line in hand to be staked off with a long spike deep in the sand. Later as we watched it out there riding at anchor from our cozy camp site Jody mentioned the anchor watch. “It’s not the best night’s sleep. You should check the boat several times a night,” he said. “ You never know what it’s going to do.” After some thought he added  “It’s why nobody beach camps.” “What do they do?” I’m sure I asked, at least it sounds like something I would ask. “They camp on their boats.” was Jody’s natural reply.

True to the event, that's me out there trying to re-attach my rudder when I missed the lower gudgeon with the peg or 'pintil'. Meanwhile the boat was swirling around dangerously in gusty winds while the current was whisking her away. A terrible place to try and learn basic sailing. Jody snapped the photo I used for reference.

    So at this point I had only sailed the boat maybe three or four times, and never soloed. After five years of planning and construction and an addition couple months after her first launch I was dying to sail her needless to say. That morning the weather had not improved, it was drizzling and cold and the wind was variable and gusting. But sail I did, and as a first solo it was not an auspicious start. I was so green that I needed to have demonstrated to me the fact that tides and currents have a very important effect on a sailboat! That despite years of enjoying Patrick O’Brian stories where fleets of trading vessels are bottled up in harbors waiting for winds and tides to change, I was amazed to find I could not even hold my position relative to the campsite, and ended up walking her back up to the camp in the shallows. Writing that amazes me to this day but it’s true. I somehow became so entranced by the narrative of this sailboat design and focused on her construction, I hadn’t come to grips with what would happen when she interacted with the wind and currents-namely her function. No doubt someone who had a sailed a lick would never experience this dissonance. 
    
     As for the anchoring, I bungled it. The boat played around out there the whole rest of the day with no troubles, but the next morning we awoke to her listing on the beach awash with seawater and gallons of sand. An ugly sight. All the work Jody put into the anchoring on the front end I had to put in on the back times ten. It took forever to bail out the water and pitch the sand, not mention another anchoring episode, which at least was only temporary as we were leaving that day. It took lots of digging to free the rudder which should have been removed during the anchoring, something I never fail to do now. I was lucky it wasn’t damaged or torn off the stern altogether.

    At least Jody had some coffee on when I returned to our tent shivering and cold. (I actually got a cold from all exertion and exposure on this trip.) The weather cleared as we made our way North East towards the bridge at Apalachicola, and the wind clocked around to the North perfectly posted to make our passage back a long and arduous row. People who live on the water and on their boats watch the traffic come and go out of the city docks and a few came over to visit with us once we made the ramp. “We watched you guys out there forever, why don’t you come over to the dark side and getcha a little kicker?” One man asked. I did just that a month or so later when we made the trip again, this time with two boats and a larger crew. I borrowed a friend’s 4 hp outboard which sounds small but not on my boat. It brought the opposite comment from someone else at the same ramp. “You’ll be throwin’ up a rooster tail with that thing.” He growled. He was right. Two trips to West Pass in as many months was unusual, but we did it because we had some folks who missed the first trip, and things just lined up that way. Of course that led to a new and even harder lesson, but that’ll have to wait till the next post.

This campsite is nothing if not exposed. We set up against the dunes to create some measure of protection against the elements.

    But hold on there, I wanted to say something else.....
Florida’s not so much a sailing culture (although you see a sailboat in any sign or poster dealing with the ocean). It’s more a center console fishing boat culture, but there are a enthusiasts of small sailboats in Apalachicola. There’s even the Apalachicola Maritime Museum which features a 58’Herreshoff-designed ketch named Quark and various other craft. If you join with a family membership you can go out on day trips in the Quark. Apalachicola is a lovely little town and still supports a real fishing industry including a small fleet of active shrimp boats, some still made of wood. It’s small gem on the northern gulf and worth a visit if you’re in the area.

So that’s it. From the rail, I say thanks for stopping by and here’s to you!

Considering Aluminum Tape, and Shorebirds.

    It’s amazing how friends can inform your perspective on particular matters, especially when their insights and opinions come from their vocations. Driving around Ft. Lauderdale with my friend Kent some years ago my eyes were opened to the many commercial sites that contained contaminated soils in need of remediation. Kent worked for the State of Florida coordinating emergency responses to spills and their subsequent clean ups, and as we drove along he pointed to lot after lot of fenced in polluted properties. One had soil piled up under tarps, and another was a more serious toxic brownfield site awaiting federal aid for clean up. I remember it startled me a bit, and I remember Kent being very animated as he freaked me out, not unlike a small town resident discovering how many historic murder scenes their little seemingly innocent little berg had tallied up. As with all the other motorists whizzing by I would have had no clue if not for the kind of work Kent was in.

    That’s one example, but now come to think of it, neither of my other two are very uplifting. My friend Ali’s nonchalant accounts of keeping aircraft in the air with rolls of aluminum tape was enough to make you swallow, as was the question whether the guys who signed off on those maintenance work orders could actually read english. At least my old roommate Nick had a fun perspective. Nick worked for years on a building crew, and he enjoyed pointing out shoddy workmanship as we drove the winding streets of Tallahassee. Nick amazed me. His trained eye could catch construction crimes like crappy framing and poor sheathing not to mention wood rot from behind the wheel rolling along at 45 mph. I recall a large swanky apartment complex that had been finished a few seasons prior with tell tale signs of black mold and rotten wood in a superfluous cupola tower three stories up at least. I could’ve walked in and out of there a thousand times and never noticed it as I’m sure most of the occupants didn’t, however with Nick’s perspective I enjoyed a sense of smug superiority.

    Then there’s the insights that comes from the interests and passions of our friends. I never cared too much about cars, but I have a friend from Eastern Europe with such deep convictions and opinions on car and engine design that it’s impossible not to let his appreciations rub off on you. On our way to a camping trip we were driving behind Jody pulling his sturdy British made Drascombe Dabbler--a classic small North Sea sailboat. The idea of hanging an outboard off a sailboat stern like we do in America is an anathema to British sensibilities, so they create a well for the shaft of the motor to drop through. It looks a bit odd out of water but it is seaworthy. Laslo’s reaction was swift, visceral, and steeped in car culture. “$#@(*&^% British make engines that leak oil and their wiring sucks and they make boats with %$@%$# holes in them”.  That all came out in one torrid, heavily accented tirade.

     I tried to explain the boat had a water tight partition, but Laslo wasn’t having it. To Laslo, British made=Bad (maybe Mini Cooper excepted). German made=Good but over-rated? American made=Fine if you’re driving fast in a straight line. Italian made=what is there to say? A Ferrari is a Ferrari. Japanese made=excellent and he’s using an older Civic to win Auto-cross races. Laslo is confident his criteria is serviceable enough to cover nautical matters, and to be fair, the Japanese do make great outboards. But the point is I don’t, and can’t...see cars the same way after knowing this man. When a nice Audi or BMW slips by on I-10; where before I had no thought on it, I now smile and appreciate the design, and to some extent, maybe my friend Laslo as well. So, as a guest of this blog, I put in to be that guy to you, on a different subject of course.

                                                                  Shorebirds!

    No really. I’ll explain with an example. Maybe six, seven years ago,  I was watching two bored kids, one a toddler, in a inter-coastal waterway park in Ft. Lauderdale while Tracey was at a conference. Moral was low; bad night in a hotel as was the custom at the time. As we were milling about, our attention was drawn by a exquisitely lovely shore bird making it’s way towards us on the water’s edge. The bird had long orange legs and a sharp pointed bill. It’s coloring was a stunning pattern of black and white that looks absurdly like it was designed in a studio somewhere. It didn’t care about us, but worked it’s way up and down with it’s focus on the shallows. This bird, a Black Necked Stilt, was unfortunately named by a lazy person. Perhaps at the time these birds were everywhere, and deserved no particular notice. But this was now 2007, and I had never seen one before, and honestly, I can’t remember when I’ve seen one since.

     That’s the thing about shorebirds (I’m lumping in gulls, herons, terns, etc.). They’re wild beautiful creatures that may range over many thousands of miles, breeding and/or migrating from places we can barely fathom, and they pass through our landscape, and stroll right in front of us at the beach or near the dock at some waterside restaurant.  Depending on their adaptions to their environments and resources, they display a amazing array of shapes and colors, then just like that, they go on about their way, and we may not see them again for twenty years, if not ever! A experienced birder who spends a ton of time in the field may say, “Nah, a stilt’s pretty common”---to him maybe, but not to me, and not to someone who doesn’t get out as much as they’d like.

    And even if you do see a group or individual for a while, their patterns can change, and then you’ll be left saying to someone, “Remember when we used to see those lovely birds down by the docks?” Case in point, I grew up in Miami Springs, a small tree filled suburb near the international airport. Growing up we got excited if we saw anything besides a dove or a mockingbird or grackle. My friend Ali still lives there with his wife Azita, and a few years back he called and said “we have these amazing small finches with all these colors.” It turns out they were painted buntings! Now they frequent his feeders daily, and to Ali they’re as normal now as the neighbors, but their feeding patterns could change.

    So to wrap it up, as you move around; keep an eye out, because you never know what you’ll see, and even if it’s just the same flock of Ibis or gulls, keep your other eye out, because there’s a lot of inter-species hanging out, and often there’s something cool and different mixed in with them. That’s when it’s time to get out a bird guide, and when you open the book and start flipping through the pages, you get an sense how amazing and rich the varieties of birds there are. Some you see in the pages may be fairly infrequent visitors, or even fairly common, but it may be a special moment for you the first time you see it in the flesh. A special reward for paying attention. So there it is, my ‘shorebirds are cool’ pitch, all birds of course, and wildlife in general, as is seen in there area where you live. The things you see and become interested in can become part of your narrative, and that’s interesting as what you have there may not be what we have here, and incidentally you can see some amazing shorebird species even deep into the interior of the country.     

    I can’t say good bye from the weather rail every time, right now the boat is wrapped up under a tarp in the barn, and by the way, the ‘weather’ rail is the side of the boat from which the wind is blowing. When you see a bunch of guys hanging way out on the side of a sailboat, trying to keep it from capsizing, they’re on the weather rail. See, I brought it back to boats, and oops, it's time for another cup, so here’s to you!

On Naming Boats, Pisa, and Spraypaint

   

   I know two things about boat names. One, sailors don’t name their boats things like ‘Reel Magic’ or ‘Playin’ Hooky’ and the like. We use classic names like ‘Melissa’, or ‘Orion.’ Bird names will do, other animals, and even figures out of history or mythology are painted on a stern. Secondly, unlike powerboats the name goes on the stern. My rudder post cuts the name in half and still I wouldn’t put it on the side. The only sail boats that can flaunt that rule are double enders, as they have no stern; Catamarans and canoes being two examples.
   
   My sailboat is a 19’ flat bottomed plywood skiff named ‘Tramontana.’ That moniker is a bit above her station, her being of a workboat lineage. Tramontana is the name of a breeze in the Mediterranean. I pulled it from the Patrick O’Brian novel Master and Commander, and no matter what other alternatives I came up with I kept circling back around to Tramontana. I recently found the passage that must have caught my eye, but it didn’t reveal much. I think I simply liked the name, and ending in an A, it’s of the female gender and ripe for boat naming.  
  
   I bring this topic up as it relates to a couple close friends of mine in Charlotte, Jim and Paolo. Jim I look forward to sailing with some day. Paolo stated flatly that he’s never getting in my boat, and that was before I had some close shaves. Anyway Paolo is one of the people I was talking about in my intro (those friends who prefer to stay on dry land). He actually told me a story of watching his uncles’ small boat being destroyed by a storm and strewn along a beach in Italy where Paolo is from. Perhaps that left an impression. 
  
   Jim and Paolo always endured my talk of boat building with a benevolent patience, but when I shared the name I had in mind I threw Paolo for a loop. “Tramontana? That’s the name of my neighborhood in Pisa!” Paolo said with amazement. I was amused to hear that, but I didn’t realize the connection it had for him till he filled me in. In prepping for this post I recently asked Paolo a few questions, and he sat down and wrote the following. I include it because it’s a cool piece of culture and history which has nothing to do with sailboats.


   The word tramontana (Tra = Between or In-between, Montana = Mountainous ) has historically used to indicate a cold, northern wind that enters Tuscany from the gaps created by the Alps; hence the word "in between the mountains". It is a Mediterranean wind that was well known by sailors, and before them  even by the ancient Romans. In fact the term tramontana derives from the Latin "Intra Montes or Trans Montes, which translated into English would sound "in between the mountains, or beyond the mountains".

   The northern side of the Tuscan city of Pisa, which is literally split in two by the Arno river, is known as "Tramontana" because of its geographical location, which is north of the Arno river. The southern side of the city of Pisa, located south of the Arno river, is known as "Mezzogiorno", which translated into English would sound "Midday". Mezzogiorno or Midday is a term that has been historically used by Italians to refer to the direction "South".

   So the name of your sharpie - Tramontana - is densely meaningful: it is refers to the wind that propels her at times, it refers to the fast, razor sharp northern wind , and it refers to the northern side of the City of Pisa, to which I emotionally and physically belong. Also, it refers the party of "Tramontana", which is one of the two antithetical parties (Tramontana, and Mezzogiorno) of the historical game known as "Il Gioco Del Ponte" or "The Game of The Bridge", played in Pisa once a year since the 1100's.

   Since the Middle Ages, the two sides of the city of Pisa (Tramontana, and Mezzogiorno) would engage in a war-like game as a way to practice combat skills. Each of the two sides would try and conquer the other side. More recently the "fight" would culminate right on the "Ponte di Mezzo" (Bridge In the Middle), which was the central gateway over the Arno river. The fight would involve militia and special weapon called targone or mazza-scudo (mace-shield), which was a narrow wooden shield that could also be used as a mace to push, swing, and ricochet blows. Written documentation from 1407 describes this game, so that tells you how old the tradition is.
   Until the year 2008, the Game of the Bridge took place on the last Sunday of June, every year. From 2009, it takes place on the last Saturday of June, every year at 8:00PM. Each side of the City of Pisa is subdivided into 6 magistracies representing city districts for a total of 12.  Saint Mary, Saint Francis, Saint Michael, The Satyrs, and Calci under Tramontana. Saint Anthony, Saint Martin, Saint Marc, The Lions, The Dragons, and the Dolphins under Mezzogiorno.

   During WWII, the original Ponte di Mezzo (Bridge in the Middle) was bombed and destroyed. The game was interrupted until the new Ponte di Mezzo was built. A "tamed" version of the war-like fight was introduced. The physical fight of two armies over the Bridge in the Middle was replaced with a tug-war involving a monumental carriage that requires a total of 40 men (20 on each side). The 12 magistracies fight of over the bridge with a fierce tug-war, which can last a few minutes. The historical record is 22 minutes and 25 seconds in 1992 when San Michael and the Dolphins fought each other; St. Michael won that particularly fierce fight.

   Awesome no? These guys went at each other with cricket bats just for the pure fun of it! (The targone looks like a cricket bat). I’m sure there was lots of gambling as well. To put it in context one could compare it to the melee’ competition folks are familiar with in medieval jousting tournaments. The classic Ivanhoe comes to mind.  The modern version of the fight, the pushing of the carriage, is another one of those amazing European events like the Palio of Senia or the Running of the Bulls in Spain. I couldn’t find any good images of the spectacle but here’s a link if you want to see it.

http://gioco.amicidelgiocodelponte.it/pisa-battle-on-the-bridge.php

   The carriage slides on rails, and twenty men on each side endeavor to shove the thing to the other side and knock over a flag. It was fun to hear Paolo tell stories of the rival’s attempts to give themselves an edge as the competition has developed; people discreetly using bars as levers, and magnets on the rail to encumber the other side!

   Paolo sent home for a Tramontana flag and here you can see the targoni crossed behind a helmet. 

Blue, black and white I believe are the colors of Paolo’s neighborhood, and these colors fly in the parades that precede the competition. Kent Reetz and I flew this flag on a sail at Cape San Blas, but it was really too large for my mizzen mast and not being made of heavy canvas it would've been whipped to shreds. Paolo sent me a link with different flags of the Pisan neighborhoods, but I was unclear at the time just who went with what flag. Some of the images were very strange, and the true Tramontana crest, the helmet being central, seemed to not fit quite right with this area. I was attracted to the sun image particularly; sun=Florida, and the half cross indicates Pisa, which I thought looked good together. I settled on that.

    So, it should have seemed obvious I was picking as my pennant the flag of the opposing neighborhood- being a sun and all. Mezzogiorno=midday, but I was too far along when I learned this to stop, and Paolo was magnanimous about it, plus no one at the boat ramp in Wakulla county has pointed out the incongruity either, so now the lovely (at a distance) hand sew pennant flies on the leech of my mizzen sail.

Sewing the pennant was a learning experience, considering I chose possibly the hardest possible design to try to hand sew using really thin but stiff material (it was a mix of sun resistant stuff and an old tent rain fly). I brought it everywhere and poked away at it for a year. I now know why flags of the Civil War often looked so heinous. They used what materials they had at hand, and nobody in camp could sew. Plus the enemy was continuously shooting holes in them I suppose. I also had help with it from several people who took it for a time. Otherwise I’d probably still be poking at it.

   Spray paint....that is in my heading. But this has gone on long enough, so painting the name on the stern will have to wait for another post. That’s the boat building part of the blog I look forward to.

   As a postscript I want to share a few things about my friend from Italy. Paolo Batoni is an research engineer who attended the University of North Carolina. He currently develops Deep Ultraviolet (UV-C) technology, and has had a part in bringing to market the world’s first UV-C LED water disinfection system that can be used in labs and applications where mercury needs to be avoided. He is also continuing to develop hand held battery or solar power operated water disinfection systems utilizing UV-C LEDs that in the short term can be used in underdeveloped countries and scenarios where in line voltage is not available. 

    If you do a quick search of his name on Wikipedia, you’ll see not Paolo, but his direct descendant Pompeii Girolamoi Batoni, an 18th Century portrait painter whose work hangs in galleries around the world. Hannah and I found a Batoni at the National Gallery in DC, as well as a couple at the Met in New York. Paolo and Jim have also found them at the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh, and at the Getty Museum in L.A. Oh, Cleveland too! I happen to have found a photo I snapped, so enjoy!

                      .....and from the weather rail.....(I’m holding up my coffee cup) Here’s to you!

St. Marks on a cold windy day.

                                                         December 28, 2012

    A nice aspect of living in Tallahassee is the close proximity of the beautiful St. Marks Wildlife Refuge. St. Marks lies along the coast from the Aucilla River west to the Ochlockonee River, over thirty miles of coastal marsh and inland habitats. The road to the historic lighthouse winds between freshwater and brackish ponds on both sides which are managed for overwintering waterfowl and thus it’s common to see clusters of birders gathered in the cooler months spotting for shorebirds and ducks, hoping to see something special, a bird species out of it’s normal range especially.
   This winter the buzz is all about Razorbills and Scoters. These are two species our family saw on a trip to Novia Scotia two years ago on an outing to see Puffins. These are high latitude ocean going birds that nest in rock outcroppings and resemble penguins, except for the flight ready wings. What explains their presence in Florida? Food resource patterns, Hurricane Sandy? Who knows.
   On arrival it pays to check the wildlife viewing log located at the visitor center looking for entires by Don Morrow and Jim Cox specifically, two accomplished area birders that visit the refuge often, and there by Don’s name the two birds were listed. Rick, Mom and I stopped by the Mounds pool and were treated to the site of hundreds of Redheads (ducks) and Lesser Scaups. A few folk were banging away with enormous telephoto lenses aimed mostly at the Gators nearby on the bank, but one family with a son around the age of eight or nine was watching the reeds close by with binocs and an open birding book.

Sora

   I was watching them too while flipping through our bird book trying to identify a smallish shorebird with long legs and a short raised tail which it flicked from time to time. “It’s a Sora!” The boy cried, so I searched the guide and there it was. Here was a birding prodigy in the making. I watched the boy move up and down the lake side book in hand with great enthusiasm calling out species while the parents quietly took photos with a small pocket camera. Another bird we couldn’t decide on he helped us with as well, an American Bittern. These are two species while perhaps unremarkable in other parts of the country are notable to see here.  Both birds we would have miss attributed had it not been for that boy. I wonder if they brought him to St. Marks as a treat, being from Cairo Ga., which is about two hours form the coast considering traffic. Finally whatever order governs large groups of ducks must have asserted itself because at some point the multitude gathered and formed a T with the foot setting off towards the far bank in a perfect line while those at the top waited in the queue!

    The razor bills turned out to be a miss. People were meandering around and I could hear folks asking after them but the consensus seemed to be they’d moved off. Still, the Lighthouse Pool was stuffed with waterfowl, mostly American Coot, but mixed in there were Buffleheads and an American Widgeon. Good fun page turning in a field guide for folks who only get to see these winter vacationers once or twice a year.

You're building a sailboat?

 Welcome to Coffee on the Rail, a place to talk a little sailing, boat building, and celebrate the beauty and nature of Florida’s Big Bend coastal waters with folks who like that kind of thing, as well close friends and a fairly significant other who prefer to stay on dry land.

“You’re building a sailboat?”

   Tracey exhibited a general surprise when I started this boat building affair; surprise, wariness....a vague disapproval. My response was to remind her that since our earliest courtship I’d asked for C-clamps at every gift occasion; C-clamps for a boat. That’s why those gift baskets weighed so much. I knew nothing about boat building but I had a sense from the very beginning that it required clamps, many many clamps.
   Since our windblown days canoeing on the bays and inlets of Everglades National Park fighting the wind or often letting it flow past us un-utilized I’d longed to throw out a scrap of something to help move us along ( I never fit the profile a power-boater). Once I even fashioned our rainfly into a V with two tent poles for Tracey to hold, but alas, the front blew itself out the next day, thus surely sparing my tent poles the fate of becoming a bundle of graphite fibers. In another creative exploration I salvaged the top of a ocean going sail and lashed it to a mast on our canoe. It worked after much labor and thought, but it never looked defensible.
   When finally the time came to look at sail boat designs a path was well paved by my friend and boss Jody Walthall. Which brings me to my main point of rumination. Insanity isn’t the right word....slow burning obsession doesn’t hit it either, this is more cerebral....it’s what happens to the brain as it circles a boat design. I saw this quote in Wooden Boat Magazine:

“The desire to build a boat develops like a cloud on your horizon, then it grows and grows, till it fills the entire sky, and you can think of nothing else.”

   Jody went through his version of this a decade or so ago. One day my co-worker Drew caught my attention and gestured toward Jody who was discussing landscaping with a customer. “Check it out. He’s thinking about sailboats.” We both watched him for a moment, and yes, somehow, while in a conversation regarding plant placement, there was a boat in there somewhere...whether it was being sailed or worked on I can’t say, but Drew posited this possible internal dialog between Jody and his brain which I’ll paraphrase:
                                    
                                     Brain: Is this woman a boat?
                                     Jody: No, it’s a woman.
                                     Brain: Are you discussing boats with her?
                                     Jody: No..... just her landscape.
                                     Brain: Fine, knock yourself out.
                                     I’’m gonna go stand over here and mess with this downhaul rig.

   Of course I have great respect for Jody and normally I wouldn’t presume what’s going on in his or anyone else’s head, and further I’m not suggesting that Jody wasn’t present for occupation and family. I’m sure his thoughts were proper and present, I just think those thoughts were shaped like a boat.
Boat Brain I don’t like so much, I’ll go with Boat Shaped Thoughts, or BST.
My own BST took on a very virulent form, as I’m already prone to flights of romanticism, and having no other craft to jump in and mess around with as a release valve didn’t help.  My only boat was a half built skeleton on a table in our garage. I had four fears of construction to gouge a deep groove of this mental condition, and it became wrapped up in the narrative surrounding by boat’s design and lineage, which I’ll explore in later non sequential posts.

   Anyway, I launched my boat named Tramontana five years ago, and in that time my BST has changed and deepened in ways while mercifully lessening in others. Events have their effect. So as to not make a big deal about how to end this first blog post I think I should just welcome you Coffee on the Rail, and wrap it up. My writing is about as good as my carpentry, it’s okay at a distance, hidden by epoxy and paint. Hope you enjoy the water colors, I’m using my old kit my parents bought me in high school, yes....new tubes of paint. I also discovered colored inks, which move around and lay a little differently than water colors, they’re a bit more opaque and solid. I hope my paper art keeps pace with my sailing arts, as I’m on my own with the former. In regard to the latter I have helpful voices over the radio happy to explain that the reason I’m not going as fast as I could go is because of the particular set of my sails, and if I was able to set them to the correct angle I might find my progress aided considerably. 
And not only that.......oh yeah, I meant to wrap this up.

So from the Weather rail, here’s to you! Oh and, Happy New Year!