The adventure has begun
Feb 26 2010
Jan 18 2010
I’m afraid to imagine what Matt will do with other sail scraps when he runs out of underwear in the South Pacific….
Aug 31 2009
Over the last five hundred years or so, if a sailor did something stupid like neglect his duties or disobey orders or insult his captain, or strike an officer, or desert the ship, or display rank incompetence or drunkenness or insubordination, or steal a dram of rum, or spit on the deck, or fail to stow his things properly or to clean his clothes adequately, there were any number of punishments that could be meted out: the sailor could be flogged, or whipped, or pickled, or cobbed, or made to run the gauntlet or to clean the head or to carry a 30-pound cannonball around the deck all day or to station himself at the top of the mast for a few hours or just to stand still until told otherwise. He could be lashed on board every ship in the fleet, or he could be tied to the mast for a week, or keel-hauled, or he could have had his feet bound and covered in salt and presented to goats for licking, which quickly went from ticklish to agonizing, because the goats don’t stop licking before the sailor’s feet have become bloody stumps. Or, if the sailor had mutinied or murdered, he could be hanged, shot, or have his head cut off, boiled, and then shoved onto a spike above decks, and left there for a week or so, to serve as an example to the remaining and hopefully far more loyal crew. Magellan preferred this latter technique. If the sailor had buggered (aka sodomized) another sailor, that, too could earn him the severest punishments. The sea was not San Francisco, man. But, if the sailor, while meeting the locals on some tropical island far away from home, knocked up a local woman, or a bunch of local women: nothing. Getting a girl knocked up was what sailors did when they weren’t sailing, like Genghis Khan, or Mulai Ismail, the last Sharifian emperor of Morocco, who had something like 1400 sons and daughters before he died. Most sailors probably never knew how many women they knocked up on their voyages.
How far we’ve come since those days. I can neglect my duties all I want; I can make fun of Matt’s mom and call Jon a cabron and not get punched in the face; I can run off to Yosemite for a couple of weeks; I can trim the sails poorly and sail us home by some unimaginably indirect course; we can get so drunk that we decide to clean up our spilled wine with spilled beer; I can drink all of Matt’s beer and Jon’s expensive whiskey; I can spit on the deck or anywhere else on the boat I feel like it; and I’m not sure if I’ve ever stowed my things or washed my clothes properly. The boat is my oyster. If I were so inclined, I could invite over all the gay guys in the bay area with one simple Craiglist post; instead, I have tried my hand at luring girls here, all the while wondering what girl would really find this sailboat alluring. Remember: according to Google, Syzygy is a janky piece of shit, and based on the information in this paragraph (swearing, drinking, spitting, dirtying), I’m no example of fine manners, either. Finally, the biggest change of all: getting girls knocked up is decidedly not what sailors do. This is the 21st century, man, even if it is San Francisco.
So I’m 31, and dating, and it’s always a mystery when and how to tell girls about the boat. They always have a ton of questions. Is it small? It’s like a New York City apartment, you know, a 400-square-foot studio. Is there a fridge, and a stove? Yup. Is there any headroom? I can’t jump up and down, but I don’t have to squat. Is there a bathroom? Yup, but I prefer to piss in the bay. Is it noisy? Seagulls squawk in the morning, and sometimes the wind howls in the afternoons, and sometimes the docklines creak as they stretch taut. I try to make it sound romantic. Does it rock back and forth? The boat moves a little bit when tied up, but nothing crazy. And get this: the boat is so burly that if it gets knocked over 90-degrees it still pops right back up. In fact, if it gets knocked over 120-degrees, it still pops right back up. Do you get seasick? Not in the marina, but at sea, sure. Most sailors do occasionally. Is it cold? Not really, and I have a diesel heater. Sometimes I feel like a caveman, proving that I exist in modern times: yes, I have electricity and laundry and cell-phone service and an internet connection. Yes, a sailboat. Really, it’s not a big deal. It’s got a certain allure, I know it, but somehow I end up on the defensive.
And here’s how I can tell my dating life isn’t going so well: I’m sleeping with Bob Seifert. Not “sleeping with” in the euphemistic sense, but literally, as in sleeping beside the book he wrote, called “Offshore Sailing: 200 essential passagemaking tips.” I have a hardcover copy of it in my bed, and I cuddle up to it every night like it’s some titillating classic or a book of translated swooning poems. Page 27 describes one of my favorite projects: boom preventers. As if I need those. There’s no other way to put it: it’s my boat porn, full of seacocks and cockpits and blowers and interfacing electronics and deep-cycle batteries and coupling nuts and prop shafts and large tools and lubricants and docking equipment and proper bedding techniques. Talk about a change. I should be punished for my behavior.
Jul 02 2009
[Reposted from my Outside blog]
A couple of days ago, I helped my friend Liz move out of her fancy apartment. She’s lived in San Francisco for five years, and, as landlubbers tend to do, acquired nice furniture, a bunch of art, and a few acres of books, as well as all those little gewgaws that sit atop shelves and coffee tables. I was enlisted to help move the “heavy things” and “very heavy things” down three flights of stairs, so that she could transport them and store them elsewhere, until further notice. My help, unsolicited as it was, began immediately, over the phone. “Sell it all!” I said. “Put it on Craigslist. Put it on the street. Just get rid of it!” I tend to treat unwanted objects like jank.
Liz, who fancies her possessions, likes her lot of things, was not amused. And her initial experience with Craigslist — some scam artist claiming he was hearing-impaired, hence the unusual shipping and payment arrangement — was not encouraging. She rationalized her situation. If she couldn’t sell her unwanted furniture right away, she’d put it in storage, and sell it in a few weeks. This was even worse: this was like being a slave to your possessions. “Just get rid of it!” I said again. “It’s not worth the trouble!” Liz’s uncle, a sailor, who was also there to help, agreed with me. While Liz crammed things into cardboard boxes, I offered to throw some stuff out her 3rd floor window. He said he’s already suggested that. We laughed: a laugh, perhaps, that only sailors can share. Liz didn’t laugh. She ran around packaging things up, making her life difficult, chained, apparently, to her stuff.
I’ve always been a minimalist, but living on a boat makes you an austere minimalist. You don’t fret over things, or lament their loss. When deciding whether or not jettison possessions, the default becomes Get Rid of It. I’m sure the habit will come back to bite me in the ass later in life, but for now, I’m proud of it. I am the Jank Remover, and when the question is “To take or not to take,” I have my answer in 3 milliseconds. Beat that processing speed, Google.
So after I carried Liz’s sofa bed, bookshelf, carpet, coffee table, and huge TV down the stairs, and had a couple of beers, I recalled a certain relevant literary anecdote. It’s a tongue-in-cheek story of three overworked, partied-out, permanently-hungover English lads — George, Harris, and Jerome (and their dog) – who decide to rejuvenate themselves by taking a week-long boat trip up the Thames River. It’s called, fittingly enough, “Three Men in a Boat,” and it’s hilarious. The story is classic — it’s #33 on the Guardian’s list of “The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time” and #2 on Esquire’s list of “50 Funniest Books Ever.” It was written in 1889, and has never been out of print, and is freely available online, courtesy of the Gutenburg Project.
The part that I thought of, and later sent to Liz, is from the planning stage of their voyage. Here’s an extended excerpt:
George said: “You know we are on a wrong track altogether. We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can’t do without.”
George comes out really quite sensible at times. You’d be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life, generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.
How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha’pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with – oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! – the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal’s iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!
It is lumber, man – all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment’s freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment’s rest for dreamy laziness – no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o’er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the blue forget-me-nots.
Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain merchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as well as to work. Time to drink in life’s sunshine – time to listen to the Aeolian music that the wind of God draws from the human heart-strings around us – time to… Well, we left the list to George, and he began it.
Jun 26 2009
[reposted from my outside blog ]
A year ago, back when Syzygy was named Sunshine, and her port of call was listed as Portland, OR, I set to scraping off the old name and cleaning up the paint in preparation for applying the new vinyl letters.
The boat was up on stilts, then, at a workyard in Berkeley, so I had to climb a ladder to get aboard. I dragged the ladder back a few feet, closer to the stern, and climbed up five or six steps and from there began scraping off the letters. The letters were white vinyl, about eight inches tall, on blue paint, and it was just luck that I started on the left side, and not the right, so that after a little bit of work SUNSHINE became UNSHINE. I giggled at first, then thought about the irony, or the truth, as it were, in the new name. I sorta wished we hadn’t sent off our paperwork to the US Coast Guard with the name Syzygy, because UNSHINE was so perfect. It was our style. It was unique. And it was so easy — I’d barely started, and the job was already done. Voila, name removal and reapplication complete! If only other boat projects could be like that.
But Syzygy (which was my grandfather’s favorite word) it was, so on with the work I went. Maybe it was an omen, this little taste of completion well before it was deserved. Or maybe it was an omen that before things would be completed, they would lack a certain luster. Or maybe it was an omen that painting (or preparing to paint) is a bitch. Or maybe the omen was this: there will be jank. Lots and lots of jank.
Now, it has recently come to my attention that my sailboat is the 5th thing that pops up if you Google the phrase “janky piece of shit.” If you don’t use the quotes in your query, my sailboat pops up 8th on the list. Given how much there is to be proud of onboard Syzygy, the amount of satisfaction I gain from this little internet phenomenon is perhaps disproportionate to its actual value. I’m not concerned though; you take from life what joys it provides, and if those joys come wrapped in a package with a return address from Janky and Co., in Gary, Indiana, you don’t return the package to its sender and ask for a refund. You open it up, and enjoy the contents, even if the contents are pieces of crap, as janky as janky gets. So that’s how it is, an that’s why I now officially want my boat be at the top of the online janky list. When people around the world look up “janky piece of shit,” I want THE answer to be Syzygy.
This is no unsubstantiated desire, as Matt, Jon, and I derive great (dare I say intense?) pleasure from removing janky parts from the boat. Lately, I’ve discovered a new twist on the jank removal: if I’m good, I can double the fun by selling the janky stuff that we don’t want. This being America, eBay and Craigslist being only a few clicks away, perhaps this should have occurred to me earlier. I would never claim to have overlooked this option because I’m such a nice guy. No, I overlooked this option because the sheer removal of janky pieces of shit overwhelmed my senses to such a degree that rational thought was unavailable to me for the next half hour, and by then it was too late, because by then the janky piece of shit was in the middle of the dumpster.
So I’m not sure how this realization came to me; I blame poverty. And for the poverty, I blame the boat. Take warning, would-be-boat-owners! A sailboat will do that to you. It will eat your money, and force you to sell your trash, and trick you into thinking you are some kind of entrepreneurial genius for having thought of (aka resorted to) it. Take it from me!
Nevertheless, I sold the old metal radar arch for $300. I sold the old fiberglass propane locker for $150. I sold the old 15-gallon water heater for $100. To think: people want to pay me for the crap I don’t want! Amazing! What a world! Gooooooo capitalism!
Some jank, though, is so janky it’s hard to get rid of. I tried to sell a few cans of freon refrigerant from 1989, but my listing was removed from Ebay, because I’m not licensed by the EPA to sell that stuff. So what am I supposed to do with it? It’s janky, it’s toxic, and it eats holes in the Ozone layer — and some poor sailor out there is still using a refrigeration compressor older than I am, and probably could use it to keep his lemonade nice and chilly. I’m sure it’s illegal to ship the stuff, too. A conundrum, no? All I want to do is get rid of this jank, but the law won’t let me. Curses! I sure would like to barter it for something… ehem ehem.
So here’s one more effect of boat ownership: me and janky pieces of shit are now best buddies. In fact, I’m thinking of pointing jankypieceofshit.com to syzygysailing.com. Not bad, huh? That’s probably because I don’t own any more, because I’ve weeded them all out. It’s also probably because my last name isn’t Janky.
Jun 18 2009
[Reposted from my Outside blog]
In late November I flew to the East Coast to visit my family for Thanksgiving. It was the first time I’d spent 10 days away from the boat in six months. They gave me an earful, my family.
On a walk in the woods with my mom, she asked if I was “prepared to weather a downturn in the economy.” I hemmed and hawed, and admitted all my savings were sunk into the sailboat. Then I tried to explain that cruising is really cheap — you load up on rice and beans, and just take off and go, like a climbing road trip. She seemed unconvinced, and rightly so.
My cousin Myles asked if I was done fixing up the boat; I told him it was complicated, that the boat was sorta like his house — a huge, ornate 1880’s Victorian, perpetually mid-repair, in a historic town. He grasped the situation immediately, and said, “So you’ll never be finished.” I smiled. “Exactly.”
My cousin Joel told me to read “Adrift” — Steve Callahan’s terrifying story of shipwreck and survival — and I told him I had, and that if he thought that story was good, he should read “Survive the savage sea,” by Dougal Robertson.
This got them — my whole extended family, now — riled up, and the comments began to pour forth. Myles, reasoning that piracy was more of a threat than sinking, suggested that I acquire cannons. My dad chimed in: torpedos! Myles: machine guns! My cousin Jim: Missiles!
I opened another beer, and tried not to get defensive. Maybe I should bring their phone numbers, so that I could have the would-be-pirates call them directly to negotiate the ransom?
While home, I also added a few more names to the list of People Who Wish They Could Come Sailing With Us:
-My mother’s boss
-At least one of my folks’ neighbors
-Half of my friends, including one who’s just finishing grad school and afraid to look for a job
-At least one former coworker
Heckling and eager stowaways aside, it felt good to get away from the boat and gain some some perspective. Onboard Syzygy, it’s easy to get so involved, so focused, so lost within a project that it’s impossible to decompress or relax. At the same time, being away from the boat was also disorienting. Soon enough, withdrawn from the boat, I found myself getting antsy. I chalked it up as an urge to tinker. The urge to repair and build was so physical — like I needed to hold tools in my hands lest they curl up and wither — that I had to wonder if the sailboat thing hadn’t changed me.
I climbed up onto the roof of my folks’ house and did some caulking. I put down some new roof with my dad. I cleaned the gutters. I tried to go with the urge, but this was just regular maintenance. I still yearned to build something, and the opportunity that presented itself came, courtesy of my mother, in the shape of… a squirrel-proof bird feeder. It was no sailboat, but it was a challenge: could I use a little ingenuity to outwit mother nature? (The answer, sadly, was no. Squirrels are tenacious little things.) As I dug through the garage looking for parts, I wondered: do I enjoy asking for trouble? Do I tend to invite problems my way? In another sense, I was looking for an opportunity to solve a problem. Such opportunities are often compelling. Can I get up that rock? Can I get up that mountain? Can I get down that canyon? Can I run those 26 miles? Or how about: Can I fix up an old sailboat and sail it around the world?
I spent last week away from the Syzygy, too, visiting my family again. The urge to tinker was still there — I climbed up the Chestnut tree in the backyard and hacked off some dead branches, and sanded and painted the rusting wrought iron railings on the front steps — but even more evident was the urge to nestle in, stay put, have some coffee and just relax. After all this fixing-up-a-sailboat work, I needed a break. I needed to, as they say in the South, “set a spell.” So I sat. And that’s when I noticed the coolest thing: I’ve changed. I’m way more patient than I used to be (though still no saint). I’m way more eager to immerse myself fully in a task. And I’m more comfortable without distractions, just me and my thoughts.
This last realization occurred near the end of a six-hour, coast-to-coast flight, when I noticed the passengers near me getting fidgety, almost childishly so. I sat, knees bent, safety belt buckled, neck squished against one of those godawful airplane headrests that comes standard on those godawful airplane seats, and thought: this is nothing. This aint no sailboat, and this aint no ocean.
