Everyone at my school — students, fellow teachers, and administration — has known about this sailing adventure for a couple of years now. So it shouldn’t have come as a shock six weeks ago when Sarah, the principal (and my boss), emailed me this note:
Jon, could you please get me your resignation letter as soon as you have a chance? I want to start the search [for a new teacher] as soon as possible. (Unless, of course, you’ve changed your mind : )
Thanks,
Sarah
But it did. It shocked me. The note made me pause, blink, blink again, and contemplate the magnitude of the choice laid bare in the e-mail — quit my job or not — and how it all began with seemingly innocuous choices four years ago.
I’m about to quit my job, a job I’ve had for eight years. For Jonny, the purchase of the boat was the terrifyingly committing step. For me, this step is the extraordinarily committing one. I think I know why. If things ever went sour or didn’t work out, I could simply shrug off buying the boat as a poor financial decision, like the decision I made to leave money in the stock market for the last six months. I wouldn’t be the first boat owner not to go sailing. But quitting my job is more undoable. I’ve got the job security of a teacher, and the comfort I derive from that snuck up on me, without me realizing it. Why in my right mind would I let go of that? I know plenty of other people who have asked me as much.
Four years ago, when the idea for our trip was first hatched, it wasn’t so committing. Matt and I had just taken our first sailing course, and the idea seemed more fanciful than anything else. It was distant and intangible. As a first step, we committed to saving some money. No big deal. In fact, we treated the money-saving as a competition, and spontaneously e-mailed each other screenshots of our savings account just to rub in our positions. It was playful, like keeping track of who has done more weekly push-ups. Jump forward four years, and it doesn’t seem like a game anymore. I’m walking away from a career.
I should have been able to fire off a resignation letter that same day in response. All it required was typing a few sentences, and after all, I’d already made the decision to resign four years ago. The decision to buy a boat took me down a path, and I’ve gotten so far along it that now much of what I do feels pre-ordained. My choices have become necessities of the circumstances I’ve put myself in, and I’m feeling swept along… and I don’t have any control.
To try and take back a little control, I spent six weeks chewing on the decision to formalize my departure from my job. What ended up happening was it chewed on me. One little person on my shoulder would try and call me crazy. If acted out on TV, that would be a caricature of my mom. Another romanticized the possibilities. That little person whispering in my ear would be some amalgamation of Tom Robbins’ fictional characters.
I finally wrote the letter. I had to and felt that out-of control-feeling as I wrote it. I hedged, however and asked for a leave of absence instead, which makes it easier for me to come back. I also apologized to my principal for taking so long. And even if I feel a loss of control in this particular decision, I kept coming back to the excitement I feel about what lies ahead. About the learning that will happen, the experiences that will unfold. Friendships created and deepened. Now I’m impatient to get started, and scared about the scope and breadth of preparations we have yet to make. I’m ready for the next chapter of my life. And it’s coming quickly!
In the cosmic scheme of things, a sailor could lose at sea an object of far more value than a rubber bumper. But let’s be honest: we’re not at sea, and our pride is at stake, and we can’t afford to drop anything overboard — even a $20 bumper.
So when one of them (we have 6) ended up in the Bay last weekend, I wasn’t about to abandon it. Instead, I took it as an opportunity to practice Man Overboard (MOB) drills.
The MOB drill is a short series of steps designed to return the boat as rapidly as possible to the dropped object (or overboard crewmember). The idea is simple: you fall off, tack, aim slightly downwind of the object, head up, and hopefully come to a stop right at whatever (or whoever) fell overboard. It is a basic skill; every safe sailing crew should be drilled and practiced in its execution. If someone falls overboard in the Bay, you have about 15 minutes to pull him out of the cold (53 degree) water before he’s in serious trouble. If he’s a poor swimmer, and goes overboard in jeans and a hoodie, without any flotation device, you might only have twenty seconds.
Over the summer, Jonny and I had practiced MOB drills ad nauseum on much smaller, nimbler sailboats, J-22’s, up in Berkeley. Jonny would toss an old soda can into the water, and yell CAN OVERBOARD! as if some dreadful emergency were unfolding, and we’d sail over to it prontospeed. Perhaps because it was summer, and we were having so much fun, we felt that we’d developed at least moderate MOB skills.
This afternoon, I was sailing with Karen, Jeff, and Kristi, and a storm was moving in from the Northwest. We were approaching the short, dredged, channel that leads through otherwise shallow water into the marina. And this time, our MOB drill to retrieve the bumper was sobering. The number of steps was not short, our return to the bumper was not rapid, and we were definitely not at a standstill when we got to it. We sailed right past it each time. We spent a frustrating half hour trying to retrieve it; meanwhile, the wind and chop picked up as the sun proceeded to set.
The only consolation is that we were able to consistently sail right up next to the bumper. If it had been a conscious person, he’d have been able to grab a line or a hand on the first pass. Not so with the inanimate bumper: it was a pain in the ass. Every time we came up on it, our wake pushed it just out of reach. I hated that bumper.
On the 7th attempt, Jeff finally snagged it, and we turned back for the channel — and just in time, as it started to rain. As we approached the entrance, another bumper went into the water. (Whether it came untied or was dropped I am not sure.) This time I decided to douse the sails, fire up the engine, and drive over to retrieve it. As I began to motor around, the boat failed to respond. It was at this point that I noticed how low the tide was, recognized that we were in a shallow area, and realized that we were running aground. I gunned the engine in an effort to plow our way through the silt, and back to the deep channel. At the same time, Kristi trimmed in the mainsail, to help us heel over (thereby reducing our draft and freeing the keel from the muck). It worked, and we made it into the deeper water without getting stuck.
But pursuing the bumper a second time was out of the question — especially since the bumper was headed straight for a sandbar like it was on a mission from god. I motored us home, dejected as ever on account of our cruddy MOB skills, our lost bumper, and our near grounding. Then, just as we were entering the marina — because what would insult be without injury — the engine began to overheat. I thought we’d resolved that issue. Well, put it back on the list.
Back in slip B-19, it poured on us while we folded the sail, coiled the lines, and stowed everything. Everyone was drenched and shivering, too miserable to hang out for drinks. Kristi later came down with a cold. Karen and I went out for pizza, and on the way back home, just for kicks, took the local road along the shore, to see if we could spot our blue bumper in the dark. Ludicrous, I know.
We pulled off the road in a spot where the water came within 20 feet of the road. I got out of the car and walked over to the rocks to have a look. Would you believe it? I spotted a piece of blue and walked a couple feet down the rocks and found our bumper. I even found a Nalgene right next to it, so I ended up coming out ahead for the day. Well, ahead by one measure.
Matt was driving north over the Bay Bridge. I was gazing out the passenger window, feeling pensive. This was two weeks ago. We’d spent the afternoon buying parts, and were eager to get back to the boat. Four tankers sat at anchor in the bay far below, in line with the current. I said it was neat how even in this modern world, boats and planes must understand and obey tides and currents and winds, etc — and how crazy it was that only cars don’t really have to make way for nature, unless it snows, or gets really windy, as it is prone to do on sections of I-80 in Wyoming. I asked Matt if he’d ever buy a diesel car, and he said that next time he’d like to, if they made a diesel something-or-other like an X-terra. He said it’d be cool to be able to work on it, and I didn’t dissuade him of the notion.
We got to talking about the differences between diesel and unleaded engines — how the power from an unleaded engine is like the power required to ride a bike with sneakers, pounding only on the downstrokes, while the power from a diesel engine is like the power required to ride a bike with clipless pedals, a nice smooth round even stroke. We were pretty proud of that metaphor. We talked about how an unleaded engine can propel a car from 0 to 60 in 5 seconds, while a diesel engine can eventually propel a car to 60 while pulling 100,000 pounds; and how unleaded fuel in a diesel engine destroys it by exploding way too early in the cylinder, pushing the piston down too soon; and how diesel fuel in an unleaded engine just won’t explode no matter how big a spark you throw at it. We were grappling with the big picture, so that the little details of our engine would make more sense when we tinkered with it later. Thinking about it all, I marveled at how not-understood the distinction between diesel and unleaded engines probably is — akin, perhaps, to asking Americans to name the 3rd president or the capital of Nigeria.
It was nearly sundown by the time we began installing the oil transfer pump. Matt in particular had been excited about the project for months, ever since he first changed the oil in the engine. That task — changing the oil — had been a bear. A total bitch. Because the drain plug was nearly inaccessible, and, at any rate, a drain pan wouldn’t fit under the engine, changing the oil the standard way wasn’t possible. Instead, it required pumping out the old oil via a long, narrow hose snaked in through the dip-stick tube, and then pumping in the new. It was such a laborious, lengthy, messy – -and apparently ineffective — solution that none of us wanted to change the oil, which is not a good thing. Hence the transfer pump. We planned to remove the drain plug, attach a valve, and connect a hose from it to the pump — so that from then on, changing the oil would require only the flip of a switch and the push of a button. it would be glorious.
But first: how do I know the pumping-through-a-hose-snaked-in-through-the-dipstick-tube method was ineffective? Two ways. First: Our engine takes 4 quarts of oil; it says so in the engine manual. So an oil change should entail removing 4 quarts of nasty black oil, and putting 4 quarts of clean oil back in. But notes in the engine logbook, kept by the meticulous previous owners, reveal oil changes of less than 4 quarts. Since 1993, the numbers look like this: 3.75 qts, 3.5 qts, 3.5 qts, 3.75 qts, 3 qts, 3 qts, 3 qts. Given how inordinately difficult it is to manually pump the oil out of the dipstick tube a little bit at a time, these numbers aren’t so surprising. But what’s the point of changing the oil if you’re not going to change all of it? It’s like only flushing the toilet partway. Second: having changed the oil on cars, I am familiar with nasty, black used oil. The nasty, black, used oil in the bottom of our engine was something else. It was sludge. Big surprise, considering how hard it was to pump the gook out through a tiny hose.
So: we screwed five bronze fittings (a 90-degree bend, a connector, a valve, another connector, and a hose fitting) together, put some bomber glue (3M’s 5200) on the threads just to be extra safe, and connected them to the spot where the drain plug had been. For what it’s worth, this was beneath the most inaccessible underside part of the engine, and required creative squirming just to get your arm in there, let alone use a wrench. After that, we mounted the pump on the bulkhead just above the engine, and connected the hoses. Then Matt wired it up. Finally, around midnight, we changed the oil by flipping a switch.
The pump hummed, and the oil level in the 4-quart container began to fall. No mess was made. Nasty, sludge-like oil did not leak anywhere, or stain any clothes. The operation took only about five minutes. When the 4-qt oil jug was empty, we turned off the pump, closed the valve, and checked the oil level with the dipstick, just to make sure everything was OK. At first, the oil level seemed low, so we wiped the dipstick clean, put it back in, pulled it back out, and inspected it again. Matt grew serious. “Oh shit,” he said, “it looks like there’s water in the oil.” I corrected him: the new oil was so clean and transparent, and we were so accustomed to looking at black, oily sludge, that the new oil, thin and golden, looked watery. But it wasn’t. And we had the perfect amount, right between the MIN and MAX lines.
I expect that our engine will be very happy with its new treatment.
Step 3: Line up the new window, drill18 holes, spread silicone all over the edge (not shown), and install it. Stand back, and take delight. Only 3 more windows to go!
Matt and I spent the last few days installing 4 new portlights (windows) in our boat. Eventually, we will also replace the small, old, brittle, cracked, (and probably-leaking) portlights too.
Step 1: Cut a 6″ x 16″ hole in boat. Begin delicately, then proceed to use larger power tools
Jonny and I managed to get the stanchions reinstalled, and the water pump replaced, in time to sail for the weekend. It was a beautiful day and we had a large turnout, but no wind. After having to bleed the engine again (three times in three days–there’s an air leak somewhere, you think!) we motored out beyond the last channel markers, tried to sail, gave up in zero wind, and floated around in a lake of nearly still water. It was a balmy San Francisco winter day, and I didn’t hear a single person complaining about the lack of wind. After an extended period of non-sailing due to constant boat work, it felt really good to have Syzygy in sailing shape again. And maybe next time we’ll actually have to use our sails (they’re just up for show in the picture–or to be honest just because we were too lazy to put it away).
Matt gets to take apart and fix the engine. Jonny gets to work with the outboard. Matt enjoys the satisfaction of fixing our heater. Jonny enjoys meandering around the marina in Cabron, our dinghy, and saving other sailboats that have run aground. Jonny and Matt are currently enjoying what they described as ‘near tropical weather’ and are planning on going sailing Saturday. I sit at home while it’s 20 degrees and miserable out. It’s approximately 148 days, 10 hours and 30 minutes until I leave Denver behind for good and join them in San Francisco. In the meantime, I’ve been trying to keep my not-so-astounding handiness skills (and here. and uh.. here) from getting too rusty. So I’ve been looking for various things with which to tinker. Along comes my dishwasher.
My dishwasher was broken. Not broken in the sense that it didn’t work, like our solar panels which do not currently work, but the door would no longer stay open at any angle of heel. The door would also would come crashing down if only partly open and then left to its own devices. The door used to stay open at any angle of heel The door used to not come crashing down. Thus, the dishwasher was broken. I was loath to do anything about it, however, since a) it didn’t affect actual functionality, and b) the last time I fucked around with major kitchen appliances, I broke a coolant tube in my refrigerator, necessitating a new refrigerator purchase, a minor $700 setback. This I did not want to repeat. However, the small annoyances of a broken dishwasher door got the better of me, and I began to poke around and see what was wrong. I originally imagined hydraulic arms were somehow at work and had stopped functioning; similar to the hydraulic arms that held up the hood of my now long deceased 1987 Buick Delta ’88; the car I rolled in throughout high school and was pimpin’ with in college. But it was an ancient car of dubiously questionable quality, not a young sprout like my dishwasher and not at all like the seasoned rock-solid champion of a sailboat we have in our Valiant. Lying down on the kitchen floor to look at my dishwasher, I immediately noticed a problem, not the problem, but a problem. My floor, surprise to all, was filthy. Not so coincidentally, like the floor of the boat when I was there all last summer. After a cleaning, I was back down to look and see this on the left side of the bottom. The white bracket is the key piece, as I noticed it hanging aimlessly on the right side, the starboard side, but here, on the left side, the port side, it is connected to a string, one could say line if it were on a sailboat, which runs over two pulleys, let’s be real: turning blocks, back to a large spring. This string and spring were not visible on the starboard side. Perhaps I conjectured, the string had channeled our old reef hook and broken, causing the spring and remaining string to go flying into the empty recesses in the corner of my cabinetry disappearing perhaps never to be seen again, a-la screwdriver that Matt dropped behind the water tanks. With this success of the discovery of the bracket-string-turning block-pulley disparity, I felt compelled to continue and attempt to fix the problem. Two screws held a black plate across the bottom. Quickly removed, it was obvious they did nothing, similar to many many sailing parts, but did hide a myriad of electrical and plumbing work, and there was an electrical wiring diagram attached to the back of this plate. Matt may have stopped here for a couple of hours distracted with electrical niceties, but I only saw the warning where it recommended unplugging the dishwasher before moving it. I didn’t even know how to do this, but saw things from under the dishwasher running into the cabinetry to the port, under the sink. Look at that! A plug and a drain. Amazing. Moving forward, further examination revealed two screws that did hold in the dishwasher. After quickly removing them, I began to tug on the dishwasher and soon it was out. I felt committed. It might as well have been a water tank sitting in the salon staring at you expectantly. After pulling the dishwasher aside, I looked back into the wasted space underneath the corner of the counter… and there it was! The spring! Lying there like a furtive chipmunk, hoping no one would see it!. . . Back to figuring out how to use that spring, this is what the port side looked like: . The spring was under some tension, but not considerably and so I disassembled the port side to get a better look at that plastic arm above the turning blocks. On the side that worked, the string went through the arm and then was frayed above the arm. It was impossible to pull through, which was a good thing, since quite a bit of force was exerted by the spring when the door was down. Force like wind. Gale force wind. However, it seemed inconceivable that the mere frayed end was keeping it from getting pulled through. There was no knot above the arm, nothing that would indicate to me some stopping type device. Perhaps it was an alien rope clutch which mere humans cannot open. I was baffled. Consequently, there was no way I was reassembling the broken side and getting the string back through the hole in the arm. The hole looked to be 1/2 as big as the string. The best I could come up with is the plastic arm was actually molded around the string, but that really doesn’t make any sense. I still don’t understand. I also don’t understand our sailboat electrical system, or the diagram Matt drew for it, communication devices, refrigeration, water maker, solar panels, the tow generator, celestial navigation, and women. But I make do. Luckily the arm had another attachment point that I could tie a NEW string to. Whip out some line, and tie a knot around the arm. Yep, that’s a double constrictor knot, something I picked up while tying stuff together on the boat. Sweetness. Now, to attach the other end of the line to the spring. Yes, your eyes do not deceive you! That, my friends, is a bowline! Yet another handy knot picked up during this whole sailing business. I reassembled the port side, measured the initial spring tension, and then marked that on the starboard side, the side I was aiming to fix. I put together the broken side with my knots and line. With everything assembled, it was time for the first test….. Failed! When the knots tightened down under the force of the spring, there was too much slack in the line, and therefore not enough force from the spring on the door. Or maybe I measured wrong, which has been known to happen. Luckily, I had tied a bowline, which we all know is easy to untie even after extreme loading. I shortened up the line, estimating this time a proper compensation for knot tightening. Second test… Success!!! The door remained open at all angles of heel! And all angles of deflection. Reassembly was easy. But this story, like all good sailboat maintenance stories, wouldn’t be complete without at least one more snag. After putting it all back together, the drawer next to the dishwasher wouldn’t open. So I had to take those two screws out again, push the dishwasher back a tad, and then close it all up again. Here, on the port, is the drawer hitting the dishwasher, and on the starboard, clearing the dishwasher by a fraction of an inch. Here’s the dishwasher all put back together and with all the tools I used at various stages of this three hour long project. Also note the shameless product placement. Are you reading this Huy Fong Foods, makers of Sriracha, the finest hot sauce known to man? editors note: No bananas were hurt, bruised, consumed, used to tease monkeys, or held-up-to-an-ear-like-a-phone during the completion of this project.
I’m on roll, I don’t have any work until feb 16 and I’m working on the boat, and I’m on a roll, because there’s stuff, so much stuff, to do. I dropped karen off at the train station for work every day before sunrise this week, and arrived at the boat before dawn, very cold, and worked all day, short or even no lunch, many espressos. Sleeping well. There is a lot to do.
We need to save money for our trip, so being out of work feels discouraging, so I feel the need to be extremely productive on the boat, because there’s stuff that needs to get done on the boat no matter what, and if I’m using my time to fix up the boat then it’s okay that I don’t have any work. Right?
It has been cold and rainy all week, and leaking depressingly into the boat. I worked like a dog and slept like a baby every night. I don’t know that I have that much work to show for my efforts. I have no standard by which to judge, and no one to look over my shoulder and pat me on the back. Most jobs spawned unforeseen baby jobs. I hate those baby jobs.
I know that I am making progress, I know that I have been enjoying the work.
Though I have been enjoying myself, tomorrow I may rest.
In the course of the last few months, Matt and I have regularly taken pride in removing janky parts from the boat. You could say that’s how we’ve prioritized our refitting projects: by endeavoring to eliminate jankiness. Whenever we discovered a severely corroded wire or a screw that had rusted into a pile of dust, we’d throw the offending part onto the cabin floor, and yell, “Jank removed!” We took immense pride in casting off such crap from our boat. But really, like many people, we were using the term generically, and incorrectly.
Another example: Over the holidays, I heard a friend ask for a janky beer. I asked her to clarify. “You know, like Bud Light, or PBR,” she said. What she meant by janky was: thin or weak. This, too, is an incorrect usage of the term janky.
Matt and Jon and I mistakenly used the term janky to describe corroded or rusty parts — but corrosion and rust are just wear and tear, the type of decay that you expect on any boat. Truly janky stuff is a step above (or below, depending how you look at it) — parts or repairs that were improperly concieved and poorly installed — and our boat was (and still is) laden with such things.
Some recent highlights:
*Unlabeled wiring that ran from the engine, 20 feet forward to the cabin, and right back to where it came from — with corroding terminals covered in layers of soggy electrical tape rather than heat-shrink. Who calls that a fix?
*A tiny (12 gauge) corroding wire with a huge (300 amp) fuse on it. Can you say not safe?
*Dozens of unlabeled wires behind the old electrical panel all connected to the same terminal with one tiny rusted screw — such that repairing one circuit (say, the lights in the cabin) requires removing everything else just to begin. Matt got a headache just looking at it.
*Cracked hoses of the wrong size glued on to fittings without hose clamps. Was someone aspiring toward a leaking vessel or a chance to test the (formerly non-functioning) bilge pumps?
*The old engine exhaust hose, which was not only at the water line, but was glued on to an poorly attached through-hull. Was someone eager to suffocate, drown, and sink all at the same time?
*Wood screws in the deck where machine screws with nuts and washers and/or backing plates were called for. This one’s obvious, and common.
*A bilge pump screwed onto a flimsy piece of untreated plywood, mounted on two tiny wooden strips of untreated molding with two tiny woodscrews. How’s that supposed to survive — let alone work — in a wet environment?
These are the small battlefields in the search-and-destroy mission against jankiness.
Before we leave, we endeavor to have a boat in which:
**every single thing that goes through the deck (stanchions, hardware, chainplates, etc.) will go through a hole that’s been cored and filled with epoxy.
**all hoses are properly sized, fitted and hose-clamped, such that they don’t leak.
**all wiring is fused, properly sized, sealed with heat-shrink, led to its own circuit, and labeled.
In our mechanical, electrical, and plumbing-dependent world, these will be major victories.
Our windvane is a purely mechanical and exceedingly elegant piece of equipment that can be set up to automatically steer the boat for us. I was eager to put it into action one day this past fall so I stepped off the stern onto a support to get it ready–and a piece of steel tubing promptly broke off, nearly dumping me in the bay. A minor setback, I reasoned, until the very next piece I touched also disintegrated in my hands. Clearly it would need detailed attention (par for the course).
Over thanksgiving Jon and I removed it from the stern of the boat and took the entire thing apart piece by piece on the foredeck, under a tarp in the pouring rain. Every single bolt and washer came out–often unwillingly and sometimes in a few pieces. It was fun and gratifying to bring all of our skills to bear on the stubborn bolts and seized pieces. When victory was ours, we compiled a list of parts that we needed.
Our windvane is a Monitor brand, made by a company called Scanmar, and fortunately for us Scanmar happens to be in Richmond just 10 minutes away. I put the disassembled pieces of our monitor in the back of my car one morning and drove over to Scanmar to pick up the parts we needed. When I brought our 1991 vintage monitor in the front door, I was greeted by the three guys that have been making and repairing Monitors for the past few decades. A russian machinist with little english, another jovial guy also with a thick russian accent, and a british motorcycle aficionado complete with long braided ponytail and leather bicycle garb. They were an eclectic group, but they clearly shared an enthusiasm for their windvanes. It was as if I was Santa delivering an early christmas gift to three young boys. I was bombarded with advice and questions and answers as all three of them dug through the bin of pieces checking out our old windvane. They were unanimously excited and unanimously supportive of our do-it-yourself style. In taking apart our windvane, we had thought that we achieved an intimacy with the workings of the windvane, but these guys were at a whole different level. Between the three of them they could have had that thing back together in perfect condition in less than an hour–but they shared our philosophy and supported our style: we were going to do the work ourselves to save a few hundred dollars, even it took 10 times as long (which it most certainly will). I left the shop after an hour of continual conversation feeling happy and excited. It was like visiting old friends and sharing familiar conversation–with three strangers I had just met.
I am repeatedly surprised by how easy it is to instantly bond with other sailboat owners. As sailboat owners we share a common experience: the perpetual challenge and frustration of boat work. We all seem to experience the same breakdowns and problems–we all end up learning the hard way, making all the same mistakes and getting in all the same ridiculous predicaments. We all laugh at the follies of the learning process, and we are all proud of the hard-earned skills and wisdom that came from the effort (and expense). For whatever reason, the frustration of spending 5 hours trying to remove a single bolt is the type of experience that is not easily forgotten–and every sailboat owner has hundreds of these stories. In boat work, most of the victories are private ones–no one is around when you finally figure out just the right way to hold the vice grips with the index finger of your right hand and the ring finger of your left hand in order to finally reach that one nut that you accidentally dropped into the depths of the bilge. And who can you tell that story to who would understand how good it felt just to retrieve a silly dropped nut? Then the next week you end up talking to someone down the dock, who just happened to drop a nut down into the bilge, in the same place, while working on the same part of the same project, and would you believe he ended up holding the vice grips in just this precise way to get it out with his fingers just so. . .
We talk for hours about the minutiae of projects, because we feel so fortunate–and astounded–to find that someone else has gone through nearly the identical trials and tribulations. And it never ceases to surprise. Every time it seems unbelievable that you would be able one day tell the story to someone who was actually excited to hear it. Such is the nature of boat people, and one of the treasured aspects of the society we have joined by pouring our heart and soul and worldly resources into our sailboat.
I feel extremely fortunate to be a part of such a welcoming crowd; thank you to the people at Scanmar, thank you to the people in our marina, and thank you to everyone who has been so welcoming to us in the sailing community.
A few heavy metal pieces of the Monitor windvane needed some welding (for strengthening and repair), so the holidays came just in time–I packed them up in my checked luggage and flew home with them.
My dad isn’t a professional welder, but as a farmer he welds frequently. Stainless steel is finicky so it usually requires a TIG welder; my dad has a MIG setup on the farm and the stainless wire he picked up was too thick besides, so it was a challenge. The welds didn’t turn out very pretty, but it works, it’s strong, and the price was right. Thanks to dad for helping us out, and props to him for making it work even with difficult conditions.
Below is a few seconds of footage of me grinding back the welds in the shop. I wish I had some footage of the welding, but I forgot to grab the video camera.
I grew up on a farm, and all my life my father has been bashing gasoline engines and lauding diesels. He wouldn’t buy any vehicle that wasn’t a diesel, and we had two 1,500 gallon diesel tanks around by the barns–one for on-road vehicles and one for the tractors. As a result, I grew up plugging the diesel suburban into an extension cord in the winter, and waiting to start the car until the glowplugs–whatever the hell they were–warmed up the engine. Meanwhile, in their gasoline vehicles, my friends could fill up at any gas station and accelerate from 0-60 in something significantly less than the 30 seconds it took in the suburban. I wrote off my father’s opinion as old-fashioned, ultra-conservative, non-progressive, and wrote off our diesel vehicles as too loud, too much work, and too slow.
I’m home now, back around my dad, and back into the diesel debate.
Never in a million years would I have guessed that one day I would know how to sail (?), that I would own a sailboat (!?) and that the sailboat happens to CONTAIN A DIESEL ENGINE (!?!). And never ever ever would I have guessed that one day I would agree with my father about the benefits of diesel engines. Don’t be mistaken: I have done my own research and come to my very own, independent conclusions. They just happen to be the same conclusions as my dad’s.
This being the holidays, time for family reconciliation, good will, etc etc, I am hereby rising above my stubborn mindset for the past three decades to admit that my father was right: diesel engines are more efficient and longer lasting than gasoline engines.
Most people don’t understand the difference between diesel and gas–that was my problem. As a result of this ignorance, nearly all americans drive less efficient, less reliable, shorter-lived vehicles while all of the countries in the rest of the world drive way more diesel vehicles than us.
These are the facts: diesel fuel has more energy per gallon than gasoline, and diesel engine are more efficient at extracting that energy than gasoline engines. As a result, diesel engines get 20-40% better fuel economy and emit 10-20% less greenhouse gas than gasoline engines1. Moreover, the nature of burning diesel requires diesel engines to be more robust than gasoline, and as a result they last much longer on average than gasoline engines.
I’ll lay some details of the mechanics: the difference between the engines is in how the fuel is ignited. In a gas engine, a spark plug actually lights the gas on fire at a particular point of the compression. In a diesel engine, just the force and heat of the compression of the piston ignites the diesel; a diesel engine doesn’t need/use spark plugs.
In the engine cylinder, diesel fuel burns whereas gasoline explodes. Diesel fuel burns steadily as it expands in the cylinder and turns the drive shaft; gasoline explodes for a short duration as it gives the drive shaft a jerk. As a result, gasoline engines have rapid acceleration, but low torque. With the slow burn, diesel engines pull like a horse, but they won’t leap out of the starting gate.
In order to ignite the diesel via sheer compression, the engine must have a higher compression pressure than a gas engine. Consequently, the engine itself must be stronger and more durable than a gas engine. It is because of this beefier construction, and the fact that the diesel burns steadily rather than explosively, that diesel engines last so long.
Diesel engines have come a long, long way technologically in the past few decades, particularly in one area: cleanliness. Environmentalists could not advocate the diesels of 30 years ago because the exhaust was too dirty. Even though they emit less carbon dioxide than gasoline engines (always have), they used to be so dirty that it offset the carbon dioxide advantage. Modern diesel engines use an array of technology to be more clean, and in the process became even more fuel efficient.
Today’s diesel engines represent an immediate, proven way to reduce america’s wastefulness and impact on the environment. A number of studies, including from the DOE, testify to the environmental benefit of adopting diesels. They win awards, and get lots of attention. Which is one reason why we will be seeing so many diesel offerings from car makers in the next few years . . .
Enough of the proselytizing–I’m sounding like my father. How does this relate to our engine situation?
I regret to admit that our engine is very certainly old technology: 30 years old, to be precise. The old technology is both good and bad for us. It is less efficient than modern engines, and much dirtier. On the other hand, it is as simple as a diesel engine can be, which means that novices like us actually have a snowball’s chance in hell of understanding and working on it. Modern diesels are computer controlled, and have high-tech add on components, none of which I understand.
Our engine emits white smoke, which means that it isn’t burning the fuel efficiently. It needs to be addressed, which may mean a relatively simple tune-up but likely means a whole lot of work and unforeseen expense. With the help of a great diesel friend and regular phone calls to my dad, we will be tackling the engine in the upcoming months. Stay tuned for more diesel details.
It’s amazing how little time must pass before you can look back in hindsight and reflect on the way things used to be. Why, just 10 days ago Syzygy was in great shape, clean and spiffy, and getting spiffier every time we took on a project. Over Thanksgiving, Matt and Jon had fixed the engine coolant leak (the cause of our overheating problems), started rebuilding the Monitor wind vane, installed a fuel gauge on our electrical panel, and finished painting the wooden rub rails (which had begun to rot in places). Before that, I’d re-bedded old chimney flu, and finished installing a stainless steel dinghy cradle.
And just like that, a small repair job turned evolved into damage control and then evolved into crisis management, and now there’s a giant yellow patch on the port side of the deck, and no tracks with which to fly the jib…
Remember when I admitted that opening up 62 holes in the deck was a can of worms if there ever was one? Wasn’t that the truth. It was a friggin’ barrel of worms.
Here’s how the scene unfolded:
As I mentioned, after Liz and I spent a day removing the 43 of the 62 bolts fastening the jib car tracks to the deck, I removed the ceiling panels in the quarter berth, so that I could access the remaining 19 nuts. The nuts were hidden behind a thin panel of styorofoam – and upon removing those, I discovered two distinct piles of corrosion, as if mice had been depositing turds there for a couple of years. This was an omen.
I also discovered that the aluminum backing strip (the same size and shape as the track) was corroded through in 3 spots. Another omen.
Once I removed the bolts, and pulled off the port track, I examined the deck and realized the corrosion on the deck was worse than I had imagined. Another omen.
I did a little test: I gently tapped all over the deck with a hammer, listening to the tone of the thuds. What I heard — a hollow, deep, thud, like that of a drum — did not make me happy. The deck was definitely rotten. This was, officially, Very Bad News.
Lest my next move seem rash, I’ll point out that Jon and Matt agreed that such a move was the right thing to do. It needed to be done. By it, I mean an amputation. A rotten deck amputation.
Deck repair is not the prettiest surgery, nor the tools used for it the most precise. With the grinder and cutoff blade — the same trusty blade we used to dismantle our old metal water tanks — I dug in to the deck, cutting out a 4-by-1 foot rectangle (of only the upper layer of fiberglass). Cutting into the deck brought a strange combination of satisfaction and fear, of pleasure and pain. There is beyond doubt a masochistic element to cutting a giant hole in the deck of your boat. Of course, as Matt, Jon, and I like to joke, cutting holes in our boat is apparently what we do best.
Once the hole was cut though the upper layer of the deck, I peeled it back, and revealed…. a patch of rotten, soaked wood — dark, squishy stuff. More surgery was needed. I enlarged the hole one foot forward and back.. and examined the wood below — still rotten and wet. I grabbed the grinder yet again, and cut away a 10-by-1 foot rectangle — and finally got to dry wood. Phew! (The surgery was as tough on the surgeon as it was on the patient).
Once Liz and I pulled up all of the rotten wood, I examined the bottom layer of fiberglass. In 3 distinct areas (probably the spots that had leaked), the fiberglass was warped into a little cone around every hole — disfiguration that certainly compromised the strength of the deck. The track probably hadn’t been too far from ripping out. So I ground down the little volcano-shapes, and put two layers of thick fiberglass (25 oz. Knytex) over the areas. We also used syringes to squirt thin penetrating epoxy into the exposed wood, just to be safe. I didn’t want a rain shower or a heavy dew to ruin all of my work.
After that, I used a sanding disc on the grinder to bevel the edges of the 10-by-1 foot rectangle, so that I’d have some exposed clean fiberglass to stick the new fiberglass onto. This process involved 1) ear plugs, 2) a full face mask and 3) a huge amount of fine dust, which was a pain to sweep given the light wind.
Next up, Liz and I taped together 12 pages of the New Yorker, and used markers to trace the shape of the hole in the deck onto the paper. We cut out our paper stencil, then used it to trace the shape onto half-inch marine-grade plywood (leftover from the water tank project.) Fifteen minutes with the jigsaw took care of the cutting — and the wood fit perfectly. The stencil had been an improvisational stroke of genius.
The next morning, all amped up to fix the damn hole in the deck, I realized I didn’t have enough epoxy to do the job. I got a ride over to Svendsen’s with the Big Wise Mainer (see earlier posts) and spent $150. I should have seen that coming. When i got back, I mixed up a bucket of epoxy, and stirred in enough thickener to make it the consistency of peanut butter. I spread this peanut-butter epoxy all over the bottom layer of fiberglass, and stuck the wood to it. I mixed up more epoxy and filled in the gap around the edge of the wood, so that the wood wouldn’t budge, and so that there wasn’t any air space left in the middle of the deck.
And then I realized, yet again, that I didn’t have enough epoxy to do the rest of the job. I couldn’t believe it. I remembered when I’d bought my first can of epoxy, a year before, in Mexico — a measly 1 liter can, which seemed like it cost a fortune. Since then, we’d smartened up and started buying the one-gallon cans — a better value. Now, it seemed, we should have gone with the five-gallon buckets. Oh, the money we’ve spent on epoxy….
Liz stopped by again (eager to finish the job) the next day, and after putting on two layers of fiberglass, and painting it with the last little bit of epoxy I had left, we rode over to TAP plastics to resupply. Two hours, ten miles, and $200 later we returned, our heavy bags digging into our shoulders. By now it was dark, as yet again a boat project dragged on… and on… and on. We used the paper stencil to trace the shape of the hole onto the fiberglass, and cut out three pieces, (each slightly larger than the last) which fit perfectly. We put on one layer and made some food. We put on another layer and opened a bottle of wine. Finally, around 1 AM we put on the last (5th) layer of fiberglass, and finished the wine. I took a deep breath. The deck was a deck again.
I’m confident that the patch is bomber, but then again, it damn well better be, considering I spent a week on it. Of course, all I did was fix the giant-hole-in-the-deck problem. I have yet to a) get new tracks ($100 each from Garhauer) and backing strips (who knows?) and bolts and b) install them.
At least the deck isn’t rotting — or leaking — anymore. Gasp.
It’s a trick question, of course, requiring a bit of a story…
For the last couple of months I’ve been on a mechanical crusade to make sure everything screwed through the deck of our boat is screwed through the deck properly. By properly, I mean in a very particular way, which I’ll get to. But first: the deck is sandwich-like, in that it’s made of two pieces of fiberglass with a layer of balsa wood in between. It’s like a sandwhich made of matzoh and cream cheese. This design has its ups and downs. One down is that if you apply a lot of force, it’s not too hard to squish the sandwich, which weakens it. Another down is that if you drill through the sandwich and don’t seal the hole just right, water that leaks in ends up rotting the balsa wood (further reducing its strength) before it leaks all the way into the boat. It’s strange, but if you have a leak, you want it to actually leak.
So the proper way to drill a hole through our deck is to drill a much bigger hole than you need, and then to scoop out a bunch of the balsa wood around the hole. Then you put a piece of tape on the bottom of the hole, and pour in a big glob of thickened epoxy, which is about as thick as peanut butter and about as strong as, well, modern plastics. Then, once the epoxy hardens, you drill a hole through the middle of it. This accomplishes two things: it provides some support (like the little plastic thingy that keeps the pizza box from collapsing all over the top of the pizza), and it protects the soft, wooden core of the deck from rotting if it ends up leaking. As you probably guessed, there are lots of things screwed through the deck: a dozen stanchions (aka fence-posts around the edge); a 6″ disc covering a 5″ hole for a chimney flu; hardware for flying the spinnaker; the liferaft cradle; the dingy cradle; the fairleads (pulleys) that keep our lines in order; our new rope clutches; 9 chainplates that keep the rigging tight; and two 10-foot tracks that the jib cars slide along. Most of the items on the list are held in place by a few screws, presenting minor challenges — and so far we’ve fixed everything but the stanchions and… the jib car tracks.
I’ve been dreading the task of re-bedding the jib car tracks because they’re a little more committing. Each track is 10 feet long, and is held in place by 31 screws — one every 4 inches. Why so many? Because the jib car (aka pulley) that slides along the track has to be able to withstand the huge forces — thousands of pounds in normal sailing conditions – generated by the jib. To keep the track from ripping out of the deck, those 31 screws are bolted to a similarly shaped 10-foot backing plate beneath the deck. I was dreading the project for two other reasons. First: because it was an all-or-nothing job. To fix the leaks, I’d have to get the whole track off (without breaking or damaging it), and to get the whole track off, I’d have to get all 31 screws out. There could be no stopping half way. It would require commitment. Secondly, it was a bold move — I’d be opening up 62 holes in the deck — a can of worms if there ever was one — and hoping that it wouldn’t rain in the middle of my efforts. I’ll be the first to admit the project made me nervous.
Here’s the fun part: remember the leak Matt found in the engine room (over the batteries and his new wiring), and that other leak I found in the quarter berth? It turns out those leaks are coming from the jib car tracks — through more than a few of the 62 holes that were drilled straight through that matzoh sandwich. You can tell just by looking at the deck, which is obviously warped where the screws go through it. There are at least a dozen divots in starboard deck, and at least two dozen in the port deck, and, early in the morning, when there’s dew all over the boat, you can tell something’s wrong by the little puddles that form in them.
After many cups of coffee, my friend Liz agreed to come over to the East Bay and help me work on the boat. I was optimistic, since working with someone else is so much more fun than working alone. I grabbed the 1/2″ socket, and removed seven nuts on the bottom of the port track. Then I grabbed the largest slotted screwdriver on the boat, and the largest wrench, and kneeled down at the front of the port track. As I pushed the screwdriver down on the first screw, Liz used the wrench to get as much rotational toque as she could. It didn’t budge. I ran back in, and grabbed the chisel, which was slightly larger than the screwdriver. Still no luck. Actually, it chipped the chisel. Hmm. It was time to get a bigger screwdriver.
Liz and I hopped on our bikes and rode over to Home Depot, which is about 2 miles away. On the way, I told her about the 5 steps of screw removal, which, depending on the severity of corrosion, range from quick-and-easy to laborious-and-achingly-slow.
step 1: try a screwdriver, using wrench for extra torque
step 2: apply PB Blaster or Liquid Wrench or some other chemical to dissolve corrosion, then repeat step 1
step 3: apply heat using a handheld propane torch (a la creme brulee), then repeat step 1.
step 4: drill a small hole and use an extractor bit to remove the screw
step 5: with a cobalt bit, drill out the screw until head pops off.
I told Liz that I desperately hoped we would not need to run through all of these steps, as I had in the process of rebuilding the furler. (Four of the tiny stainless steel set screws holding the aluminum extrusions wouldn’t budge, so after drilling them out I ended up tapping new threads and installing slightly larger set screws. It took way too long.)
At Home Depot, we headed for the eft side of the tool corral, where we bumped into an employee in one of those orange aprons. This conversation transpired:
me: (Holding up a 3/8″ slotted screwdriver) Is this the largest screwdriver you have? (I really wanted a 7/16″)
HD: Yeah. Nobody makes screws bigger than that.
me: I beg to differ. Got any other bright ideas for getting screws out?
HD: Well, you could try an extractor…
me: (Recoiling at the thought.) I could, except that I have 62 screws to remove.
HD: Ah, yes, i see your point.
me: Well, thanks for your help.
So I bought the 3/8″ screwdriver, and prayed a little bit. I sorta felt like I was returning empty handed.
Back at boat, we sprayed Liquid Wrench on all of the screws, and tried loosening one. No luck. We tried another. No luck. We were very dismayed. Such a simple task! Remove a screw! And yet we were failing. For some reason, we tried one more — and it worked. It was teamwork, and it was glorious.
Liz sprayed Liquid Wrench on the bolts again, and we spent the next five hours removing the screws — reveling at each one. I crawled into the tool locker, the wet locker, the engine room, and and cockpit locker to remove the nuts on the back. At one point, I lay down on a cutting board on the stove, and reached into the galley cabinet with a headlamp in one hand and a socket wrench in the other. When that didn’t work, I used a pair of vice grips.
In a couple of hours, I removed all 31 nuts from the starboard side, and 12 from the port side. I couldn’t find the motivation to remove the ceiling panels in the quarter berth, which I’d need to do to get at the final 19 bolts.
One-at-a-time, while I pushed down on screwdriver and Liz torqued it with the wrench we removed the bolts on the starboard side. At one point, Liz leaned over and got a little puddle of Liquid Wrench — which pretty much smells like a gas station — in her hair. As we neared the last few, beers were raised, cheers were exclaimed, and music was turned up. It was late at night by the time we finished, and it was one of the sweetest victories I’ve known yet in all of the work on the boat. Afterwards, many cups of tea and cookies were consumed before we called it a night.
The next morning, after removing the ceiling panels in the quarter berth, and removing the 19 nuts, I attacked the 19 remaining screws in the port track. I got all but 4, and felt like a genius. But the last four wouldn’t budge, so I went and sought help.
I went straight for the big Mainer on the steel boat — the guy who’d dispensed so much wisdom before. I found him about to leave for lunch, and begged 2 minutes of his time. Together, we loosened two of bolts — leaving only two. I was so close!
Then the Maine Guy offered more wisdom.
“You need an impact driver,” he said. “You know what that is, right?”
“Of course,” I said. “Um, no, maybe not. What is it?”
He told me it was shaped sorta like a screwdriver, and that you hit it with a hammer to loosen screws that are stuck. He told me to go get one at an auto supply store — and that for about $10, I would not regret my purchase. I knew I could count on him.
Before heading out, I texted Matt: “two screws left but they won’t budge.”
Matt texted me back: “hammer from below?”
I responded: “already tried that.” But I tried again, just for fun. No luck.
I hopped on my bike and rode to Berkeley, in search of 62 new bolts (5/16″, philips, 2 1/4″, stainless) and nylock nuts, and an impact driver. My first stop was an auto parts store didn’t have one. My second stop was Bowlin, the screw distributor that ranks among my favorite stores ever. They didn’t have the screws I wanted in stock, but ordered them for Monday. After that, I swung by a big hardware store (OSH), and they didn’t have an impact driver either (though one of the employees said a lot of people had come in asking for one lately.) From there, I rode two blocks, to a tool supply company (Grainger) that also didn’t have an impact driver — not even in their phonebook-thick catalog. An employee there recommended another hardware store (Truitt and White, back near where I’d started), and called them, and they didn’t have an impact driver either. I told him about my quest, and how nobody — not Home Depot, not the auto parts store, not Grainger, not OSH, not Truitt and White — had an impact driver. He recommended a place 25 miles south, in San Mateo, called (and I’m not making this up) K119. “That place has all sorts of stuff nobody else has,” the guy swore, as he wrote the K119 on a yellow sticky note. Alas, I wasn’t eager to go 25 miles for a $10 tool. Not quite willing to give up, I rode across the street to Ashby lumber/hardware, where, yet again, I didn’t find an impact driver. Only 2 bolts left and totally stymied! Somehow, though, one of the guys behind the counter heard me say the words “I’m looking for an impact driver,” and told me, matter-of-factly, “they have ’em up at Pastime, in El Cerrito.” My thought then was: Where, where? (By now, as I’ve said before, I thought I was familiar with every hardware store within 20 miles.) So the guy called Pastime, and handed the phone to me, and lo and behold, I confirmed that the tool existed there. I was so close!
Pastime, apparently, is the oldest hardware store around. It’s 75 years old, and on the site of the old blacksmith shop started by Wilhelm Rust, a German immigrant who landed in a small town north of Berkeley that became the home to many fleeing San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. The blacksmith shop grew into a hardware store, and by 1917 the little town was named after Wilhem, and incorporated as Rust, California. (It was later changed, perhaps more appealingly, to El Cerrito, in reference to the steep little hill in the middle of town.) At any rate, I’m a big fan of old hardware stores, with real tools and parts instead of kitchen items and birdfeeders and other gimcrackery, so I headed up there even though I was tired of this hunt-for-an-impact-driver game.
Pastime had aisles and aisles of stuff, much of it in glass cases, museum-like. I wasn’t really sure what an impact driver looked like, or where it’d be, so I asked for help. The cashier suggested aisle 6. There was no such thing there. A customer service guy tried aisle 5. There was no such thing there either. By now I was getting kind of annoyed, because the guy on phone had assured me it was there — had, in fact, been in his hands — and that it cost $12.99. So I walked into the office, and asked the assn’t manager. He knew exactly where. Lo and behold, across from aisle 4, on the bottom shelf, sat an impact driver, in a black plastic case, about the size of a walkie-talkie. It cost me $12.99. Brilliant.
By now the afternoon had worn on, and the sun was just above the horizon. I pushed the pedals a little harder, and got back to Syzygy just a the sun had gone down, while the sky was still glowing. I opened up that impact driver like it was the best present ever given on any Christmas, and went to work on those last two bolts. It worked, sorta. I loosened them enough that I was able to go back to step 1 — screwdriver + wrench, with the help of Gregory, another neighbor at the marina — and voila, I had the track removed. I took a deep breath, did a little dance, and grabbed a beer. I felt I’d earned it.
So, how many people does it take to unscrew 62 bolts? Four, provided they have access to 6 hardware stores, 2 new tools, and 1 amazing chemical.
A while back I designed a mast step for us, we had a sailor/machinist friend advise us and then make them up for us, and Jonny installed them. We love them, and it turns out that others do, too. We had enough requests that we decided to start making and selling them on a small scale, and see if it goes anywhere.
They are sweet steps, as far as mast steps go. They’re small, so lines don’t catch on them, they’re easy to install, and they’re cheap. The only reason we made our own is because we weren’t happy with any of the other options available–the others are either to big (the fixed stirrup-style), too unwieldy (the folding ones), or too expensive (all of them).
They work so well that we’ve been running up the mast regularly while we are out in the bay under full sail. It makes for good group pictures during our social sails, to do them from the top of the mast looking down with the sails flying and our wake spreading out behind us.
Jon flew out from denver last week to spend the holiday on his boat, and his parents flew in to join us (and get a look at the boat). We went out the day after thanksgiving, got a late start (1pm or so), and made incredible time out to and past the gate. On turning around to head for home, we discovered the cause for our great speed: a 4.5 knot ebb, reaching its peak just as we were trying to get back under the bridge. We spent a fair amount of time crossing back and forth trying to make headway against the river of current trying to push us out to sea. We discovered that the best place to be for a favorable current was right up against the shoreline, as close as we were willing to get–the catch-22 is that the wind fell off close to the shore, as we got in under the lee of the marin headlands. We spread some more canvas (the staysail) and that gave us a little bit of a boost. Once we reached the water along chrissy field (north shore of san francisco) we were home free–we were even helped along at that point by a couple knots of flood. We motored into the marina well after dark, ending another fantastic day on the bay. Here’s our funny looking track, although honestly I expected it to look a lot more ridiculously convoluted than it does:
A few days into my 10-day Thanksgiving vacation a strange feeling arose. It was an urge to tinker. A force within wanted me to repair, fix, build. Of course, I’ve always been the restless type, never a fan of lazy vacations or Sunday movie marathons. But this urge 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.
So I went with the urge. I climbed up onto the roof of my folks’ house and did some caulking. I fixed a part of the roof with my dad. I cleaned the gutters. But this was just regular maintenance. I still yearned to build something, and the opportunity that presented itself came in the shape of… a bird feeder.
Squirrels had been getting into the bird feeder for most of a year, and my mom wasn’t so keen on giving away all of her bird food to squirrels. She’d seen a “squirrel-proof” bird feeder for sale (for $180, you get a bird feeder with pressure-sensitive rails that spin under weight — yes, it’s an over-engineered, over-priced, battery-powered bird feeder) at the hardware store, and had a suspicion a similar contraption could be built for much less. But she was so busy. Could I help her?
I jumped at the opportunity. As a kid I’d build birdhouses and sold them throughout the neighborhood, and put up a bunch of bird feeders in that same backyard. I’d strung up a suet feeder on the old cherry tree, and watched downy, red-headed, red-bellied, and even pilieated woodpeckers pick away at it. Nuthatches, upside-down and murmuring, used to check it out. On the chestnut tree, I’d hung a couple types of bird feeders — one with thistle for goldfinches, and one with sunflower seeds for chickadees, titmice, juncos (they’d only eat the scraps off the ground), and any other curious birds.
Squirrels had been getting into the current bird feeder because it was too close to the trunk of the tree, and they were easily able to jump over to it for a full-on assault. So the first thing I did was climb 15-feet up the tree, reach as far out one limb as I could, and tie some twine on there. I took an old metal lid from a bucket in the basement, punched a hole in the center, and passed the twine through it. Then, using hangar wire (I thought squirrels might have a hard time clinging to metal wire), I hung the bird feeder from the twine.
It was late afternoon by the time I was done, and for some reason, I told my dad and sister to come check out my work — and just in time. We stood together in the den, peering through a pair of glass doors as the first squirrel came to investigate the new contraption.
This squirrel was nothing if not determined, and we were nothing if not amused by his determination. He spent half-an-hour trying to bypass my security system, to no avail. First, he climbed the tree and peered down the twine. Then he scampered down the tree, and over to the table and chairs on the patio, about 10-feet from the tree. He hopped around from chair to chair — up on his two hind legs — obviously contemplating a committing horizontal leap onto the bird feeder. But the distance was too great, so back he scampered up the tree, this time only half-way up. Perhaps a sideways, falling jump was in order? This, too, the squirrel rejected, and back down he came. This time, he scuttled onto the ground directly beneath the bird feeder, and stood up on his hind legs again as he peered up. Could he jump six feet — higher than many human high-jumpers — from a standing start? Surely not. Like I said, though, he was determined, so back he went to the chairs, and the branch, and the trunk, and the ground — as if further rodent-brain insights could be gained upon re-examination. During the squirrel’s investigation, my dad, sister, and I were cracking up — encouraging and taunting and insulting the squirrel much as a Red Sox fan would treat a Yankees pitcher.
I hate to be over-dramatic, but the tension of this tiny natural struggle made me think of a David Attenborough documentary, in which a wolf sneaks up on some cute, innocent hare, and you can’t help but be mesmerized by the battle of instincts about to unfold. In this case, I was rooting for the bird feeder, my dad (ever the contrarian) was rooting for the squirrel, and my sister was mostly laughing at us. That afternoon, at least, the bird feeder won. (A day later, presumably the same squirrel made a kamikazee leap onto the bird feeder, and snapped the twine that had held it up.)
At any rate, the project satisfied more than just the tinkerer in me. Designing a squirrel-proof bird feeder was a challenge: could I use a little ingenuity to outwit mother nature? In one sense, I was asking for trouble, inviting a problem 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?
A friend in Wyoming called me a couple of weeks ago and related a harrowing near-tragic sailing story…
Her boyfriend and two buddies were out sailing the First Lady on Jenny lake. It was late October, and snow had already begun to fall in the mountains. Most boats had been pulled out of the lake already.
After a day of sailing they headed back to the dock. It was dusk. Three quarters of a mile from shore, a gust of wind knocked the boat over. The First Lady, a Catalina 27 — is not exactly burly.
At first, when the sails hit the water, the captain thought the boat would right itself… alas, the retractable “keel” (more like centerboard) decided to retract — and the boat continued to roll. Very quickly, it ended up in full turtle position — 180 degrees upside down.
The three guys — all healthy and strong — scampered out off the boat, into the 55-degree water, and up onto the hull, where they clung, hoping the whole rig wouldn’t sink. (San Francisco Bay is about the same temperature year-round.)
And then the fun part: they spent the next hour, cold and shivering, yelling for help, hoping someone at Signal Mountain Lodge (about a mile away) would hear them. Luckily, someone heard, and sent help….
The next day, four guys in wetsuits returned to the boat, and spent eight grueling hours, with the assistance of a couple of tows, righting the boat. The First Lady was more stable capsized, apparently, then upright.
The scary part: only one person knew the three guys had gone sailing, and since the three guys were all bachelors living alone, if they hadn’t come back that night, nobody would have sent out the troops. Yikes.
Just another reminder of how committing it is to go out on the water — even with an 8,000-lb keel, even in a sailboat that rights itself from 120 degrees — someplace wet and cold and far away from everything, where you could yell all you want and nobody would hear.
