beguiled

It was not the first time that I had fallen for gentle curves, but never had I fallen so hard.  With the tattered relationship now at end I can only look back and wonder how I let myself be deceived for so many years.

 If the sails had any flaws I could not have seen them - I was blinded by the brilliance of a reflected sun.  I was young, naïve and thrilled to have a set of sails cut just for me.  Main, mizzen and jib, they were made for me and only me.  And I was made for them.

But it was whispers amongst friends – and this is how you know who your real friends are – that told me that something was not right.  Questions about details and measurements, doubts about sail cut and shape.  These whispers I did not want to hear.  Stuart talked of misgivings.  Seth said there were better sails out there to be had.  And Barry, he was already urging me to move on. 

“HOW COULD YOU THINK THE SAILS ARE WRONG?” I raged.  “Haven’t I told you how we danced together along the edge of the rich green marsh, caressed white sandy beaches and shared the rhythm of the bow rippling through calm waters?”  It was all so right.  How could anybody – especially people who call themselves friends – find something wrong with that?

Stuart pushed back with questions about the leech and luff, grommets and goosenecks.   He wanted the details.  “I DON’T KNOW,” I shouted, turning away to hide my shame.  “I just don’t know.”  In anger I picked up the sails and threw them at him.  “Take them” I said, “tell me what you find.”

The intervention was done with clinical precision, like a passionless doctor calmly saying the condition was terminal.  The sails, the ones I had trusted so completely for so many years, were wrong for me.  I was in a state of disbelief until Stuart grabbed some pencils and sketched out the ugly truth.  The main, the one I had fastened to the boom and gaff many years ago on a clear cool spring day before Spartina’s hull ever touched the water, was shy of luff and short of leech.  The gaff angle was too narrow, the diagonal too long.  The roach was not deep enough and the reefs were all wrong.  Simply put, these sails were imposters.  Beautiful, beguiling imposters.

This was what I got for being too trusting.  Looking at the sail plans, looking at the numbers, I felt betrayed.  I thought of us - sailor and sails - as being one for those many years on the water.  Riding out the storms, ghosting in the calms – life felt so good I never bothered to ask the hard questions.  Ignorance is bliss, and this was a beautiful bliss.  Yet confronted with the evidence I knew I must move on. 

Barry, both counseling and consoling, said a new relationship was the best thing to make me forget the last one (saying that with a wistful look as if he was speaking from experience).  I knew he was right, but I also knew that it could be weeks, maybe months before forging that next bond.  It will be a long, cold and dark winter.

Years from now I hope I will be able to look back and forget the bitterness and anger over the deception.  We did have some good times together.  The sails did have their flaws, as I had mine.  Maybe that’s what brought us together.  After years of sailing, we found, the stresses took their toll.  The relationship began to fray and the romance unravelled like the stitching on the main.  Then one day, unsuspecting, we were done.

Across bays and down rivers, offshore of the beaches and through quiet peaceful marshes, we did have some special moments together.  And that’s what I want to remember.

steve

christmas shopping

Paid a visit to Uncle Chuck's this morning for Christmas dinner.

The menu is not quite finalized but will probably include grilled lobster (maybe stuffed with shrimp), steamed clams and oysters on the half shell with sweet potatoes wrapped in proscuitto and grilled asparagus for veggies.

I'll let the girls handle dessert.

steve

degrees

Wind, snow and thirty two degrees outside, one degree inside.

steve

Pomp and Circumstance

mountains, winter, snow

What am I doing here???

fishing forecast

The weather alternates between a cold clear wind out of the north and warm muggy air from the south. The seasons are changing, winter is in sight.  Time to start watching the fishing forecast.

This year we have chartered the boat "Virginian" out of Rudee Inlet, by far the nicest boat we have ever booked.  Funny thing is that you can charter the biggest, nicest boat or the smallest boat in the fleet, the price is still the same.  So we went for the biggest, nicest this time around.  At a boat length one inch shy of 59 feet we're talking climate controlled salon and state rooms, microwave, freezer, and full entertainment center.  Catching fish or not, we'll at least be comfortable.

There is a decent class of striper starting to show up off the Virginia Beach oceanfront.  Not a lot of fish yet, but some up in the 40 to 50 pound range.  That cold north wind should be blowing more fish our way, bringing them down from Delaware, New Jersey and New York waters.  

We've lost track of how many years we've been making this winter striper trip, this one being scheduled for early January.  Sometimes we catch fish, sometimes we don't.  We always have fun.

steve

roll me another one

Painted Spartina's deck today, my first time ever of using a roller to paint.  Now I wonder why I had ever bothered with a brush.  The rolling the paint on was much faster, more efficient with the paint and just all around easier to do.

I had heard and read that high density foam rollers were the way to go.  I looked at the rollers at West Marine and I looked at the rollers at the hardware store.  The only different I could see was the color green.  Green for the color at WM, as opposed to the white at the hardware store.  And green for the additional money that rollers cost at WM.  I went with the white, cheaper hardware store version.  They seemed to work fine.

At the hardware store I did spend a couple of extra bucks on the green masking tape you see on the port side below.  It supposedly sticks better, gives a crisper edge to the paint.  It did not stick very well at all, so I switched back to an old roll of blue masking tape which seemed to grip the rub rails a little better.

Photographs do lie, I have heard, and the finish is not as nice as it looks in the photograph above.  But it stays with my boat building motif - well, the motif for my life really - of rough around the edges. I'll take that and be happy with it.

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I stood in line for the self service stand at the post office this morning.  Everyone else had christmas packages for family and friends to drop in the box.  I had two boxes - the main in one and mizzen and jib in the other - to send off to Stuart at Dabbler Sails.  

I've been having an interesting, enjoyable and, for me, educational email discussion with Stuart about the new sails.  I'm getting a level of service I never expected, and very much appreciate it.

steve

single pot meals for the single handed sailor

I tried out my new JetBoil GCS (group cooking system) today.  A cup of water was the only item on the menu, it took about two and one-half minutes for it to boil.

I've have heard for years about JetBoil Flash cooking systems, but mostly for boiling for coffee or tea, or maybe even soups.  I just recently noticed the GCS which includes a 1.5 liter pot and a stand to stabilize the unit.  Everything nests inside of the pot, so it doesn't take up much room.

On single handed sailing trips I've been going more and more to single pot meals.  Cooking everything in one pot is quicker, simpler and easier to clean up afterwards.  But even then I still had to deal with my Coleman stove - getting it out of its bag, setting it up, cooking, then breaking it down and putting it all away.  This should make the single pot meal even simpler.

While it is called a "Group" cooking system I don't see how it could feed much of a group.  I doubt that Bruce and I could get a "filling" dinner out of the small pot.  But for one person it seems just right.  We'll still use the Coleman on Spartina when Bruce is along - dinners tend to be a little more elaborate when Bruce is along.  But when going solo I'll leave the bigger stove, griddle, and all that stuff at home.

I did worry about the stability of the vertical cooking system in a small boat, but Webb Chiles (who uses a JetBoil to heat water) tells me that he used to sail Chidiock Tichborne, his 18 foot open yawl, while steadying a gas camp stove with one hand and holding the pot with the other hand.  And that was while sailing on the open ocean.  If he can do that, I suppose I can do alright with the JetBoil in a quiet cove off of Pamlico Sound.

The stove, I should point out, is an early Xmas gift from my Mom.  A great cook herself - she always makes sure I get a good meal one way or the other.  Thanks Mom!

steve

the last time

I stripped the sails, main and mizzen, off their booms this afternoon.  It was only then that I realized that I had probably caught the wind for the last time with these sails, the ones that carried Spartina across the water on her launch day over six years ago.  

I do not want to be melancholy about this but those sails - now worn, stretched and a bit dirty - have carried Spartina many miles over the years, through calm and storm, under hot sun and through cold that chills to the bone.  Mostly they have carried me on beautiful days where I've left the world behind and found place of my own out on the water.  I've heard the water hissing under the bow as the wind pushed these sails across Pamlico Sound, the Chesapeake Bay and on the edge of the ocean.  Spartina has ghosted along marshes, pounded through steep chop and heeled under a steady breeze, all under the power of these wings.  I cannot describe the joy in my heart as I have looked up at the bleached white sails pulled taught in the wind.

I had intended to leave the sails on the spars through spring, not knowing exactly when the new set of sails will be ready.  Maybe there would be some early season sails for this first set.  But Stuart of Dabbler Sails and I have had a running email conversation about the new sails -modifications, options, etc.  When I said said on this blog that Stuart pays attention to detail I was talking about the hand stitching and craftsmanship of his work.  Now I'm realizing that his attention to detail is much broader than just the craftsmanship - he looks at the boat, the rigging, the sail design with a goal of sewing the sails to suit the boat.  As such, we both agreed that it would be best if he had a look at the current sails.  Off they came this afternoon.  I'll ship them up to his loft in the next day or two.

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I flew over Hatteras Island this morning, a beautiful day with clear skies and a north wind.  We took off out of Manteo on Roanoke Island and headed south over Oregon Inlet, following the narrow ribbon of sand down to Cape Point.  Below is Mirlo Beach, with the north wind once again pushing the ocean waters up over NC 12, the island's highway.  It has been about six weeks since wind and waves from Hurricane Sandy washed away the dunes and destroyed a section of the road.

And below is Cape Point, where the cool waters of the Labrador current coming from the north meet the warm waters of the Gulf Stream out of the south.  I have visited Cape Point before.  It is a magical place to visit and a spectacular place to see from above.

Warm weather is forecast for the weekend.  More epoxy work and maybe some painting on the schedule.

steve

a dog's life

Put the clear coat of epoxy on the rub rails, bow sprit, boomkin and tiller with football on the radio and the dog basking in the sunshine on a surprisingly warm December day.  The hardner for the epoxy kit, which is now over six years old, has a red tint from oxidation.  The resulting epoxy, which has all of its original strength and hardness, now has a nice rich glow to it.  I like the way it looks on the douglas fir and mahogany.

The winter maintenance list keeps expanding, the effort now being more of a refit than just maintenance.  I've decided to strip and repaint the white deck and also the top plank which is also white.  A forecast I'm hearing of a slightly warmer than usual winter should make the painting possible and still be ready for a late February or early March launch.

I do want Spartina to look good to match her new sails.

steve