Syzygy Sailing

I’m here! After months and months of anticipation, I’m at the boat, eager and excited, a teenager at prom. It’s especially exciting, because for months I’d been listening to Matt and Jonny talk about everything they were doing with the boat, and I felt so left out, missing great adventures and stories, and wanting so desperately to be there. It was agony; but no more. The first night in Emeryville, Matt filled me in on some projects that I could get started on. We needed to create lifelines, he said, by lashing skinny lines around thicker lines. We needed to remove the ineffective and messy sound insulation in the engine room, probably by using a putty knife. Also, the old resin in the bottom of the bilge needed to be chipped smooth; for this Matt recommended a wood chisel. Easy enough, I thought: lashing, putty knife, wood chisel. No problem.

The next morning, I sprung awake at 7:30, earlier than I get up when working during the school year. I went looking through the tool bin for the various equipment Matt mentioned. Lashing: check. Putty knife: check. Wood chisel… huh. I found about 5 chisels but none of them was a wood chisel. So I put that off, and busied myself taking off the sound insulation. I finished that by 11:00, had lunch, and then wrapped up my last little bit of schoolwork, and submitted my stundents’ final grades. I met Matt back at the boat that evening and he asked what I had managed to accomplish. “I took off all the sound insulation, and started looking at the lashings, but I couldn’t find any wood chisels.” Matt seemed confused, and glanced down at our array of tools. “What are you talking about,” he said, while picking up a chisel and showing it to me, “there’s four of them right here.” I grabbed the tool from his hand and inspected the chisel more closely. “This is made of metal!” I sputtered. “You said a wood chisel!” Matt just laughed and laughed, and I’ve laughed at myself quite frequently since. Oh well, I suppose someone has to do stupid goofs like this.