Mutually Exclusive Muses

                                            - - random political muse - -

It always seemed likely that it would be the women of the nation that would save us from ourselves. Wasn't it inevitable that, at some point, they would rebel at the assaults on their civil rights, on restricting their access to health care, to discrimination in the areas of equal pay and insurance coverage, and to the constant threats to the health and welfare of their kids? But it is starting to look like it will be the kids themselves who save us from ourselves. Or, more accurately, the kids are moving to save themselves from us while dragging society to a better place, one we should have found a couple of generations ago.

Works for me.

                        - - don’t really care what goes on in the world / boat muse - - 


The last batch of teak is finished. The first batch was the dorade boxes cockpit seats, floor grate, and entryway pad, ten individual bits plus the keyboard of slats that make up the seat at the helm. Slats screwed and sealed directly to the fiberglass…not the best idea anyone ever had. The next batch included the port, starboard, and aft toe rail, just three bits but a lot of area. Another batch was cockpit table, drink holder, and cabin top hand rails. The last batch was the companionway / hatch bits, six that came off the boat plus the one at the top of the companionway, and three more odd bits at the storage shelves and engine panel at the back of the cockpit.


That is a lot of bits. 

Each of those bits was sanded clean of old varnish using 80 grit, repaired as required, and then smoothed in steps of 120, 220, and 320 grit. About half also got the 400 grit wet-sand treatment. Then there was a coat of prime, eight coats of clear with at least one session of 320 or 400 wet-sanding in there somewhere, one last session of 320 or 400 wet-sanding, and a final clear coat to finish it off.

(Note to self - if there is "another boat" in the future, pick one with a little less wood, maybe a lot less. Or maybe no wood at all. One must admit it sure looks pretty but even some rich people can't afford to keep it looking at that way by paying someone else. Hundreds of hours at a hundred dollars - or more - per hour?  Two slips away from Kintala lies one of the biggest and certainly the  prettiest boat in the yard. It is owned by a friend who has oodles of "resources" beyond anything most people can imagine, and he has been working on his teak for several weeks now. The next time a big, teak-glowing-in-the-sunset sailing yacht appears in an anchorage, remember there is a good chance the owner's hands show the callouses of making that happen.)


While doing the companionway, there was a gelcoat repair needed where the hatch slides on the house top. Thirty plus years of sliding back and forth had ground through to raw fiberglass on both hatch and cabin top. It opens much easier now.


The day when the last of the big projects is done and Kintala becomes a cruising boat once again is tantalizingly close. A young friend from the yard went to the top of the mast to fix the topping lift / back stay woogle. As it turned out having the topping lift crossing the back stay wasn’t much of a deal. Apparently there is little motion up there, the topping lift line wasn’t damaged at all. What was an eye opener was that the pin holding the bracket that holds both the back stay and topping lift to the mast head was missing the cotter key that stops the pin from falling out. Nearly five years since the mast went up, thousands of miles covered, with some of those miles in rough, pitching seas that made the rig shudder. It is anyone’s guess as to why that pin stayed put.

A missing pin

There is still reconfiguring the holding tank system to finish. Getting it done requires moving Kintala to a pump out since modifying a full holding tank system is a thought too ugly to consider. There are two options. One is a few miles away at a place called Regatta Point. It is a tight fit for a 42 foot boat. Well, tight for a 42 foot wayward wondering modified full keel boat without a bow thruster and driven by the likes of yours truly. Depending on the tide it is also a bit thin for a five foot draft.

The other option is a day’s sail to the north-north-east away. Then, of course, it is another day’s sail to the south-south-west back. There is a three day window before the next front comes through. Sure enough the wind is going to back half way through, which will put it directly on the bow going both directions; and blowing 20 knots.

It looks like Regatta Point, tight fit an all, will get the nod.

It has been a while since daily tasks included making nice with Mother Earth before attempting something as simple as finding a pump out. It has been a while since the daily life included anticipating when the water would run out, when the batteries might need a little generator support, how much range remained in the fuel tank, and where would be a good place to toss a hook with regard to tide, wind, and incoming weather. All part and parcel of living the life of a boat gypsy.

A life that doesn’t really care about what goes on on land.

Strange kind of day

Work on Kintala continues. The cockpit is looking good with teak gleaming.  The bottom of the hull is also looking good, the last coat of black going on today. The bottom took a bit longer because, when it comes to being a customer rather than an employee, I can  be a real pain. The first coat of red was done and my friend doing the bottom paint started opening up the rest can of black. I asked, “How much red is left in the can?”

“About half a gallon.”

“Half a gallon? I live on the boat. Where IN the boat am I going to put a half gallon of paint, and what do you think I’m going to do with it? I’ve already paid for it, put it ON the boat where it will do me some good. I don’t want to take this thing out of the water again for at least two years.”

He laughed, put the black away, and started to spread the left over red on the keel and waterline. The same will happen with the black. It is likely to cost a bit more but, as usual, this job lurched out of control a couple of weeks ago. There is no use worrying about digging out of a hole until you know how deep the hole is going to be.

But that isn’t what made it a strange kind of day. While the bottom paint was going on I was sanding on the board we use to secure jugs at the rail. It takes a real beating hanging out on the edge of the deck as it does. Not only was it looking bad, there were some cracks and small chunks missing that needed attention. As I was sanding away on the first coats of primer another friend, who was working on the boat on the hard next to us, walked over to see what I was doing.

Apropos to nothing, the boat he is working on is a one of those go fast powerboats with a forward leaning arch over the cockpit. Though that arch is only a couple of feet taller than someone sitting at the helm, the owner/driver still managed to smack a bridge with it…at some kind of serious speed no less. He didn’t manage to tear the thing completely off, but the damage was pretty extensive. The name of the boat? “Sudden Impact.” It just doesn’t pay to tempt fate.

Anyway, when he asked how it was going, I told him I was just sanding down the primer coat. He will be doing the same on a gel coat repair soon so he smiled and went back to work. Just then, out of nowhere, a memory from more than 50 years ago overwhelmed my workbench and nearly took my breath away. It was of my Grandfather. We were down in the wood shop in the basement of his house in Rockford where he was showing me how to run a sander and explaining that it wasn’t unusual to sand most of the first coat of primer off of a project. “Take your time” he told me. “Do it right, because the finished work can’t look any better than the base coat.

It was my first schooling in the art of finishing wood, floating up from the distant past. I think my Grandfather would find the work being done on Ye Ol Tartan acceptable, though I have no doubt that, in his day, he would have gotten it done both better and faster. When we were not working in his shop or garden, he had a classic wooden power boat that we would use to go fishing. It was pretty much my only exposure to boats when I was young. I suspect he would be surprised to know that I live on a boat now, as I doubt a liveaboard lifestyle was one that ever occurred to him. Rockford, IL is a long, long way from big salt water and I can’t say for sure that my Grandfather ever got further away from that town than Pittsburgh, when he traveled to visit us.

My grandfather, grandmother, and four of the five of us kids
in front of their house in Rockford, IL

From that memory flowed another, that of attending my Grandmother’s funeral now many decades ago. I don’t remember just how old I was then, late teens maybe early twenties. Nor do I remember many of the details. What I do remember is thinking that I had never seen a man as deeply hurt as was my Grandfather that day. He clung to my Dad like a person completely lost, and he never recovered. It was barely a year later when his broken heart gave up trying to heal. Up to then I had never suspected how deep love could go.

Oddly, right up until today I never thought about how important I might have been in his life. I can’t say for sure that I was. I can’t say for sure that I wasn’t. He lived a long way away and we didn’t see each other more than a few days a year. But I have my own grand kids now, ones that I only see a few times a year, Not a day goes by that I don’t think of each of them, wonder what they are doing, how well they are growing up. Was it the same for him?

An echo from his life has been hanging around all day. It is a good echo, even tinged as it is with a bit of sadness that the memories are so few and faded.

Maybe he would have liked big water after all.