Syzygy Sailing

[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.

[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.

Matt, Jon and I couldn’t help noticing the recent NYT  Magazine article, “The Case for Working With Your Hands, about the value of the trades – how they are real, knowledge-based, tactile, lose-yourself-in-the-work, challenging, valuable, and fun; how they bring moments of elation and failure; how they’re high-stakes, with an always present possibility of catastrophe, and how they demand and produce plenty of integrity and responsibility. As one commenter noted, working with your hands brings to mind a certain Danish proverb: “You can do the work of the mind without the hand, but not that of the hand without the mind.”

Of working on old motorcycles, the author writes:

“Imagine you’re trying to figure out why a bike won’t start. The fasteners holding the engine covers on 1970s-era Hondas are Phillips head, and they are almost always rounded out and corroded. Do you really want to check the condition of the starter clutch if each of eight screws will need to be drilled out and extracted, risking damage to the engine case? Such impediments have to be taken into account. The attractiveness of any hypothesis is determined in part by physical circumstances that have no logical connection to the diagnostic problem at hand. The mechanic’s proper response to the situation cannot be anticipated by a set of rules or algorithms.”

It’s the same on boats and bikes! He continues:

“Some diagnostic situations contain a lot of variables. Any given symptom may have several possible causes, and further, these causes may interact with one another and therefore be difficult to isolate. In deciding how to proceed, there often comes a point where you have to step back and get a larger gestalt. Have a cigarette and walk around the lift. The gap between theory and practice stretches out in front of you, and this is where it gets interesting. What you need now is the kind of judgment that arises only from experience; hunches rather than rules. For me, at least, there is more real thinking going on in the bike shop than there was in the think tank.”

I particularly liked the author’s disenchantment behind a desk, pushing paper, representing an organization and its purported mission. I also liked his loathing of a style that demands an image of rationality but not indulging too much in actual reasoning, and his confoundedness of an inner-office ruled by provisional morality and logic, and his recognition of the divide between reality and official ideology.

Get reading!

 

…Boat work!

It’s slow! It’s frustrating! It’s messy! And expensive!

There’s tons to do!

You won’t finish half of what you started, and you won’t start half of what you wanted to!

Small project? It’ll probably grow bigger than you ever feared possible!

Big project? Just be glad you don’t have to deal with it for the next month!

• Unemployed? Come on by!
• Energy to burn? Come on by!
• Unskilled? That’s OK! On-the-job training provided
• Like drinking on the job? So do we!

Why not? Who cares? NOBODY!

For more information, contact Jonny, on Syzygy, at the Emeryville Marina.

I’ve never been much of a prankster. The furthest I ever took an April Fools joke involved telling someone I didn’t like his shirt. Yes: lame. I know. As the day crept up this year my friend Amy regaled me with stories of epic April Fools jokes in her family. They sounded like so much fun. I felt so left out. To hear Amy tell it, April 1st was the only holiday worth celebrating. So I got to thinking about a prank. I started by searching for a victim. An obvious target was Amy, since she so enjoyed such shenanigans. She’s a professional April-Fooler, though, and I figured she’d see right through my meager attempts. What I needed was unsuspecting victims. Someone who trusted me totally. Someone who’s known me for years, and as such, never heard me pull an April Fools caper. Oh, Matt and Jonny: I would pity you if it wasn’t me doing the pranking. The three of us lately have been pushing our fingers into our temples, frowning in thought, throwing fake smiles every once in a while as our minds wandered toward the financial challenge before us. We have little money, a lot more boat parts yet to purchase, and (most importantly) a two year trip to save up for. We’ve tried prioritizing projects, but that only made the monstruous task before us more evident. What we needed was some levity. So I sent them this e-mail: —– From: Jon Haradon Subject: umm….news Date: April 1, 2009 5:52 PM To: Matt Holmes, Jonny Walman So the Superintendent of my district swung by our school today. Apparently she didn’t get the message about me leaving. She said the district was starting a STEM (science technology, engineering and mathematics) charter school in the district and she asked if I would be interested in running it. She basically implied that if I wanted the job it was mine. It would pay a bundle, and as director of the school, I would get to decide exactly how it looks. Couldn’t be be more perfect with where I want to go with my career. I have to admit, I’m strongly thinking about sticking around and taking the job…. I’ll give ya’ll a call to talk about it tonight. —– I let them sweat on it for four hours while I busied myself. I actually forgot about it. Matt and Jonny didn’t. I’m not sure what happened, and they seem unable to recall the events during the time in question, so traumatized were they. I heard hints, though, of emergency meetings, soul-searching conversations, and maybe — OK, definitely — some searing words for me. At 9PM, I called Matt. “Hey what’s up?” I feigned ignorance. After some pleasantries, Matt, slowly started, “So… uh… that was some bomb you dropped on us.” I couldn’t hold the facade any longer — I told you I’m no prankster — and offered “April Fools?” I felt like a little kid lighting a fire-cracker the size of a torpedo, and sprinting away while the fuse quickly burned down. Silence can reveal many emotions. In this long silence, I could hear disbelief and dumb-foundedness, and then relief mixed with incredulity. “You’re shittin’ me….” About all Matt could say after that was that I had better call Jonny. In the background, I heard Karen yell at me. She later flamed me on Facebook. I suppose I deserved it. I called Jonny. He asked if I had talked to Matt. I confirmed, which was about all I was able to do before spilling my beans. “Well I don’t know what he said, but I think I’m going to be a bit more harsh.” I cut him off. Yet again, I lit the fire-cracker and sprinted in the other direction. “April Fools,” I timidly let out. There was less silence this time. Jonny told me I ought to know how much he simultaneously hated me and was glad that we are the kind of people who are pranksters. He also said he’d need a week to get over the shock. I hadn’t thought about what the hoax might prompt as an aftermath; I was just hoping to fool them, and definitely succeeded. It’s strange, but swindling my friends made me feel really good. Not because I lied, but because my friends were truly moved and devastated by the possibility that I might not join them. Yes, love reveals itself in strange ways. In the next few days, Matt and Jonny mentioned that my firecracker actually prompted interesting thinking on their parts, something about soul-searching and opportunities in life and trusting your instincts and taking chances and friendship. For us to have conceived this adventure, have made it through over three years of planning, and be on the verge of leaving, there had to be some intense bonds of trust, respect, and compassion. Some serious man-love. And so while I might have severely severed that bond of trust, (and I currently don’t trust anything they say, because I know they are scheming up some way to way to exact revenge) I think I’ve nudged us all to think about what this journey means to us, together. We’ll need those bonds when confined for a months in a tiny, floating, 40-foot boat with no escape. Unless they prank me by throwing me overboard.