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.\u00a0 Took me most of a spring and half of summer and when I was finished I rigged it for fishing as well as sailing.\u00a0 It was, at least for a boy who had never built much of anything, a thing of unbridled beauty.<\/p>\n
Cedar planking hid my plywood hull, the rudder was mahogany, the gunwales were white oak, the big oversized tiller handle was yew.\u00a0 Exotic woods comprised the artsy fartsy ornamentation and a brass bell hung up near the mast.\u00a0 It had a bobinga bowsprit and handles made of padauk, a bright red wood from Africa.\u00a0 I had an old 2 inch diameter rope that was the bumper, fastened with copper fittings.\u00a0 I christened it the S.S. Pterodactyl because the mainsail and the jib were black, huge pirate wings, the scourge of the\u00a0 South End Seas.<\/p>\n
For that summer and most of the next, I sailed every day practically.\u00a0 Folks would mosey up while I was rigging for launch at the state park and remark what a fine old boat I had.\u00a0 It kind of annoyed me they thought it was old —- after all, I just built the damn thing.<\/p>\n
Course, now it IS old.\u00a0 Just like the Popeye who built her.\u00a0 I pulled her out of her drydock this year — it\u2019s been awhile since I\u2019ve sailed her — and sent the rats packing.\u00a0 Cleaned her up, repaired some torn sails and replaced some lines.\u00a0 If folks thought she looked old new, believe me, she looks like the Ancient Mariner\u2019s tug now.\u00a0 And you can guess what I look like.\u00a0 Naw, not the albatross\u2026.<\/p>\n
I got to thinking this year that the Pterodactyl was a symbol of my more adventurous years.\u00a0 I went on to build my house, stud by stud, stick by stick, mostly on the confidence that little boat gave me.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So I pulled out the old girl this week and went back out.\u00a0 I\u2019m not looking for some vestigial glory days.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Time will come, I guess, to ease her bow downwind and carry us both to a far shore.\u00a0 But not yet.\u00a0 We just LOOK old\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.\u00a0 Took me most of a spring and half of summer and when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2523"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2527,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523\/revisions\/2527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}