I can do this!

I Can Do This

Michael S. Roberts

Halyard, windlass, jib line, spring line…Christ, I’m never gonna figure all this out! Buying this boat was a big mistake. Too damn late to back out, though. I’m gonna have to shell out a fortune for lessons from a pro, three hundred bucks a damn day. Minimum!

At least it was a decent day, weather-wise. High sixties, a steady 12 knot breeze, no clouds.

“Mike! Get ready to hoist the main!” That was Will. Good guy, crazy Boston Irish, taking me out on his own boat for my first day sailing. Didn’t even ask for a six-pack in return. We’d become friends my first day at the dock. Turned out he likes Coronas, too.

“Which one’s the main?” I saw two big windlasses and more lines than I could track. Not a label anywhere.

Will pointed at the base of the mast. “Bottom one.” I wrapped the line around and heaved. Nothing. I’d wrapped it backwards. Slapped myself on the forehead, rewrapped it, tried again. And…the main sail began to climb up the mast! I was doing it! I ran the massive thing all the way up, cranked it tight, and secured it to a cleat with the simple tie-off I’d learned just a few days before. It hung there, limp, flapping a bit at the trailing edge. Proud of myself, I threw Will a grin and thumbs-up.

He gave me a wink from the helm. “That was the easy one, man. Now the jib.”

The jib? What the…okay, time to figure this one out, too. I knew the jib was the sail on the front, at least. “Okay, where’s the line for that?”

***

Just thinking back to how I got here, since I had no idea where that jib line was anyway. We’d made the decision, my wife and I, to buy a sailboat and cruise the world. Great dream, right? The reality was, this was an endless barrage of information and problems.

We’d found a real deal after a lot of searching, a 1968 sloop, designed and built by Bill Soverel, 33 feet long, sitting up on metal stands at a boatyard. Well, we thought it was a real deal. Turned out to be more of a fixer-upper than we’d thought when we inspected the thing. We knew all the good stuff, that it had new standing rigging—we knew what that was, at least—and a freshly rebuilt engine. We knew it had new paint, including the special bottom paint. And we learned later that it was overbuilt, like a floating armored personnel carrier, because back in 1968 engineers didn’t believe fiberglass was as strong as it was…so they used a lot of it. We found out later our boat weighs about half again as much as a newer boat its size. All that extra fiberglass, right? And a heavier keel to keep the thing from leaning over too easily.

Thing is, we didn’t really know all that right off the bat. We just kind of jumped at the boat as soon as we saw it. Spent about two hours looking all through it and grinning at each other, while the man selling it told us all the good stuff. It was our dream boat. We bought it the day we saw it.

Fixing it up was a nightmare, and a hell of a learning curve to boot. Okay, listener, imagine you’ve just inherited a beautiful old mansion way out in the Louisiana swamp. It’s gorgeous…from a distance. Up close, there’s moss and mold and mildew and mice. Oh, and there’s a sleek 1962 Jag in the garage…that hasn’t been driven in 30 years. You have nowhere to live but that house, and nothing to drive but that car, and you’re dumped out there in the swamp with nothing useful like even a Seven-Eleven within walking distance, much less a good hardware-and-parts store. That was our first boating experience. The boat had issues. No, scratch that, it had a subscription.

***

“Jib line’s here in the cockpit, Mike,” Will yelled. “Just help me pull out the sail!”

“Like how?” I started knuckle-walking back toward the cockpit—didn’t want to risk standing all the way up and getting pitched over the side. Where’s the lifejacket…oh, yeah, safe and dry in the sail locker. Nice.

“No, man, just help me heave the line there! Stay where you are, lend me some muscle!” He started heaving on one of the two big lines that run along the sides of the boat, one per side. Hey, jib lines! I knew what they were now. I gripped the one he was pulling, started heaving in time with him. The big foresail came rolling off of the furler and flapping like a pennant.

“Now what?” I swiped at the sweat in my eyes. Wear a hat next time, smart guy.

“Now we kill the engine and catch some wind, man.” Will pulled the kill switch, the engine starved itself out, and the boat got quiet, starting to slow now that the prop wasn’t spinning anymore. He threw me an upside-down wave, motioning me back to the cockpit. “Okay, grab the wheel, right? You’re going to turn us away from the wind before we lose momentum.”

“Dude, you want me to steer? I race cars. I might lay this thing over.”

“Told you, man, you’re learning to sail today. We got about five hours of daylight, so grab the wheel, right?”

So I did. I stood behind the big city-bus-sized steering wheel, Will pointed off to the right, I spun the wheel right—starboard, think starboard!—and the sails started to curve and fill with air and…

***

“Crap! Damn wiring. I think this boat was owned by three generations of idiots who all inbred with each other. And learned electrics from a cereal box.” Talking to myself helps sometimes. The wiring, that was one of the biggest issues, no doubt. A hundred different wires, none labeled, some of them obviously clipped from extension cords or made out of scavenged speaker wire or stolen from some Pharaoh’s tomb. At least a third of them went nowhere. Didn’t help that it was twenty-odd degrees out, my fingers were clumsy-numb and hypersensitive at the same time, and the wires in the boat were braided together by a macramé artist with attention deficit disorder.

Diagnosing the electrical issues was only a part of the repair process. As I said, the boat had more than a few issues. Just removing the stove had taken a full day. Yes, the stove! That evil thing, another throwback to the glorious pre-OSHA days. Big, rusty, and alcohol-burning, it squatted in the galley like a malignant poisonous toad, daring me to challenge it. “I’ll bite you,” it said, or so I imagined. “I’ll bite you and give you lockjaw if you try to dig me out of here, and I’ll blow up like a daisy-cutter if you leave me on board. Your choice, pal. You gotta deal with me.” I prepared to do battle. Heavy gloves in lieu of gauntlets, denim jacket making do instead of chainmail, and a rubber mallet as a mace. The stove…I’ll give it credit, it didn’t die easy. Four huge rusty bolts clearly designed to keep a rocket from leaving its launchpad, a Byzantine tangle of hard metal tubing to feed the rusty toad its precious alcohol, and the carcass itself weighed as much as a box of encyclopedias. But I’d beaten its challenge. Sweat-soaked, lacerated, bruised, and triumphant, I gave it a respectful ceremonial burial in the dumpster.

***

Flap-flap-flap-FWAP! Both sails suddenly ballooned out, tight and full of air, and made a beautiful sound like snapping a bedsheet on laundry day. The sailboat was sailing, and I was making it go where I wanted!

“Okay, see that green house way over on the Battery there?” Will pointed. “Just keep the boat going that way, more or less, right?”

“Right!” I kept a knee pressed against the wheel to steady it, using both hands to nudge it left and right. The boat wouldn’t quite stay in a straight line. I worriedly pointed this out.

“No problem, Mike, this isn’t a racing sloop, it’s a cruiser. It’s gonna wander.” Will didn’t seem worried, so why should I be? Then he grinned, Irish-crazy. “We’re gonna tack! Get ready to swing her!”

Oh crap.

***

Finally putting the boat in the water was as exciting and confusing and nerve-wracking as making love for the first time. Except it took a lot longer, and it involved a lot more people, and it cost a lot more money.

The wiring was functional. Messy, but functional. The demonic stove was gone. The paint was dry. The sails were onboard, folded neatly away. There was no excuse for the boat being on land anymore. The boat wanted to be on the ocean and so did we.

Over the course of an hour—like I said, way longer than a teenager’s first time—the big boatyard carry-all lifted our precious dream boat, trundled it across a hundred yards of gravel, and set it in the water, a bride on her marriage bed. Yeah, I wax poetic, but it was a stirring sight. There she was, floating, bobbing gently in the river swells…home.

***

“Tacking! Swing us left! Hard port!” Will shouted as he loosened the main boom so it could swing and knock somebody over the side. I leaned back to avoid the roundhouse slugger while Will ducked under it. I spun the wheel, the boat turned left, the sails fluttered and went limp…then filled with air again from the opposite direction. FWAP! “Straighten her up! Aim for the Coast Guard station for a while!”

Took a little practice, but I was getting the hang of keeping it in a straight line, more or less. Like Will said, it wandered a bit. But I’d made my first tack, letting the sails shift from one side to the other, getting them to bite into the wind again.

I realized I hadn’t thought, “Can I do this? What the hell am I doing?” for several minutes, at least.

Then I noticed, “Hey Will, we’re getting’ kind of close to the Coasties. You want some nice fifty-cal holes in your boat or what?”

“Yeah, go ahead and tack, right?” He loosened the main boom line. “Do the wheel and the jib line this time, okay?”

“Ummm…okay. You know the Coast Guard is totally gonna board us when I flub this up.”

“No problem.” He pointed at the left-side—port side!—jib line. “You’re gonna spin the wheel hard right and haul that line fast as you can. Soon’s the sail catches the wind, secure the line and straighten the wheel.”

Okay, I thought to myself, sounds doable. And it was. “Tacking!” I yelled. Spun the wheel, hauled the line, listed and watched for the...FWAP! Another successful turn. I felt like I was actually getting the hang of this.

“Yo, Mike, check it out.” Will was pointing at the water near the boat, just aft of midship on the port side. I was just pleased to have been able to identify where he was pointing and describe it later. “Good luck, right? Dolphins.”

Sure enough, there they were, four of them. Breaching close aboard, puffing air and then diving back down. They dove shallow and slipped right under the boat, still visible on the starboard side. Didn’t breach again, but there were four flashes of grey-bronze less than a fathom down.

I knew the superstition: Dolphins are good luck, simple as that. And I saw them my first day sailing, about as close as you can get and stay dry. Probably they were just playing, or chasing a school of mackerel, but I like to think they were welcoming me to their turf…and keeping an eye on me.

I can do this. I turned the boat toward home.

Little Miracles

At our darkest hour, several miracles occurred. We received two gifts from relatives. Our slip rent is paid for the month and we have propane to cook our food. Thank you. I don't think you will ever know how amazing and wonderful your gifts were to us.
Mike was talking to Tom about our DC problem. Tom asked what size fuses we were using? We said that there was 2 amp fuses. Turns out, we should have been using 20 amp fuses. We still haven't figured out what is wrong with the two overhead lights but the other lights and fan are working now. We still need to rewire the entire boat but that can wait for a little while.
The engine still doesn't work. We've added a new fuel pump, sea strainer, hoses, and fuel filters. It might be delamination of the old fuel tank. It is the original fiberglass tank from 1968 and is integral to the boat. We may try a portable diesel tank and see if that makes a difference.
Mike put in the missing cotter pins so that our mast won't fall off.
The garage AC unit is now in our main entry way. Yes - cool air is flowing through our boat. The bad news is it totally blocks the entry. The cats don't like it a bit. They haven't figured out how to get over to the outside. Pequat is sulking.
Last week Mike worked hard labor sanding and waxing mega yachts and sports fishers. I cleaned interiors and mildew off of canvas coverings. We will do any work as long as it is legal. It doesn't pay well but will keep us in cat food, kitty litter, and coffee.
Adventures aren't always easy and I suppose the best memories come from making it through hard times. If we didn't do this as a team, we wouldn't be able to do this at all.
Did we make the right decision? I still say yes. I finally saw an otter swimming yesterday morning. I was walking to the bath house at 6:30 a.m. and there was a smallish one swimming from dock to dock. Next time I'll bring my camera.