I had reason to see my sailmaker, Stuart Hopkins, last weekend. It was a fun drive up through tidewater Virginia, across the York and Rappahanock Rivers, over the beautiful winding Piankatank and through the little towns of what is known as Northern Neck. Though I had emailed with Stuart many times over the last few years, I had not talked to him in person since picking up my finely crafted set of sails.
Because of a post I had done a few day earlier (that's my photograph below of a sloop near Port-au-Prince), Stuart and I talked about each of our experiences relating to Haiti. Stuart brought out a work of art - though it wasn't originally meant to be art - a wooden mainsheet cleat, worn by a taut line, the sun and the salt water, that he recovered from a sunken Haitian sloop at Staniel Cay in the Bahama Islands. Stuart told me he made repeated dives to loosen the cleat from the sloop while Dee, his wife, sat in the cockpit of their ketch SEA WIND and made a sketch of the sloop, which you see above.
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SPARTINA'S sails are now five years old. They have seen a lot of wear and tear during that time, including quite literally a tear between the bolt rope and sail cloth on the mizzen, something that happened when I hooked the sail on a line cleat a few years ago. Stuart will repair the small tear for me and offered to check over the stitching on the sails, which is very kind of him.
While looking over the sails I lamented to Stuart about my failed plans for SPARTINA. I told him I built the boat so I could go sailing and get away from people. Instead, I went sailing and met some very creative and interesting people who have become my best and truest friends. Stuart, who sometimes reads this blog, nodded and smiled, telling me he was well aware of my "extended family." I had never thought of it that way, but yes, an extended family. I went sailing and found my extended family - which of course includes Stuart and Dee.
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Webb has completed his sail from Marathon in the Florida Keys to Hilton Head, South Carolina. It was a much shorter sail, if you go by mileage, than Webb's typical sail. And it was an even shorter sail by time if you go by Webb's expectations. You can read his passage log here. Below you will find part of the log which makes me smile, most likely because it reminds of my kind of sailing.
"Coming into Skull Creek for the first time was beautiful. A sunny sky. Wind light. Mansions along the shore. A flock of birds standing on a sand spit off the Pickney Island Nature Reserve to the north. A dolphin broke the surface and came and swam companionably beside GANNET. A pelican glided past."
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