The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/audio-sailing-back-in-time.mp3[/podcast]audio — sailing back in time

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Over 20 years ago I built myself a little sailboat, one I hoped would be seaworthy enough to sail into the Scylla and Charybdis of the San Juans, stout enough to withstand riptides and whirlpools, big enough to haul camping gear and coolers.  Took me most of a spring and half of summer and when I was finished I rigged it for fishing as well as sailing.  It was, at least for a boy who had never built much of anything, a thing of unbridled beauty.

Cedar planking hid my plywood hull, the rudder was mahogany, the gunwales were white oak, the big oversized tiller handle was yew.  Exotic woods comprised the artsy fartsy ornamentation and a brass bell hung up near the mast.  It had a bobinga bowsprit and handles made of padauk, a bright red wood from Africa.  I had an old 2 inch diameter rope that was the bumper, fastened with copper fittings.  I christened it the S.S. Pterodactyl because the mainsail and the jib were black, huge pirate wings, the scourge of the  South End Seas.

For that summer and most of the next, I sailed every day practically.  Folks would mosey up while I was rigging for launch at the state park and remark what a fine old boat I had.  It kind of annoyed me they thought it was old —- after all, I just built the damn thing.

Course, now it IS old.  Just like the Popeye who built her.  I pulled her out of her drydock this year — it’s been awhile since I’ve sailed her — and sent the rats packing.  Cleaned her up, repaired some torn sails and replaced some lines.  If folks thought she looked old new, believe me, she looks like the Ancient Mariner’s tug now.  And you can guess what I look like.  Naw, not the albatross….

I got to thinking this year that the Pterodactyl was a symbol of my more adventurous years.  I went on to build my house, stud by stud, stick by stick, mostly on the confidence that little boat gave me.  You hate like hell to think those years are receding faster than a minus tide while you watch from an armchair, living intravenously on memories.  So I pulled out the old girl this week and went back out.  I’m not looking for some vestigial glory days.  I just wanted to set the sails into a Puget wind and feel the pull of wood and rope and sail fighting the outgoing current.  Time will come, I guess, to ease her bow downwind and carry us both to a far shore.  But not yet.  We just LOOK old….

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/audio-u-store.mp3[/podcast]audio —- u-store

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