Category Archives: Living in Beaufort, NC

After a year, I still have a sense of humor

As our one-year anniversary of living in the boatyard neared, I told my friends that we were planning to celebrate the event. Most of them looked at me as though I’d sprouted two heads. “You haven’t been able to launch your boat after working on it for a whole year, and you want to celebrate this fact?”

They rolled their eyes, but they came anyway.

That morning, we had begun installing the first three portlights. “Which side do we do first?” Barry asked. “The port side, of course!” My reasoning? The picnic table and barbecue grill were on the port side, so our guests would be able to admire our shiny bronze ports.

As usual, the work took longer than expected. We were still cleaning up messy black butyl and white polysulfide caulk as the guests began to arrive. We never made it to the showers, and the interior never got cleaned up. We hoped our friends wouldn’t come up on the boat and notice.

Barry installing a port port

But as we fired up the grill and set out the appetizers, the first raindrops began to fall, and there was no place to go but up the ladder into the boat. The scene inside Flutterby was a disaster — there were tools and parts and clothes everywhere, and dishes were piled up from several meals. We quickly passed out drinks, hoping to distract our guests from the boat’s condition. We kept them busy, too: All hands were needed to man buckets and towels under the starboard portlights, which at that point were gaping 5- by 12-inch holes in the side of the cabin.

The storm passed fairly quickly and the party moved back outside, and nobody gave us a hard time about the condition of our interior. Our friends have very low standards, or else they’re very kindhearted. Given the  gifts I received at the party (my birthday had been the day before), I think it’s the latter.

Over the next few days, I took stock of our one-year situation. I have learned and accomplished a lot, including the following things that I didn’t know I needed to experience:

  1. I got stuck in the lazarette (despite #3.2), had a panic attack, and had to be extricated by Barry. Have you ever noticed that the word “extricate” never has a happy connotation?
  2. I sprained my ankle three times, once while stuck in the lazarette having a panic attack.
  3. I broke one toe, lost 13 pounds, and cut off a foot (of hair).
  4. I took one belly dance lesson. I would have taken more, except for #2 and #3.1, above.
  5. I have handled carpenter bees in the ladder, a mud-dauber wasp trying to build a nest under the chart table, and a black widow spider in my water pitcher. These are all potentially harmful insects, and they did not make me scream. On the other hand, every 3-inch palmetto bug that ran across my galley counter made me shriek loudly, to Barry’s discomfort (if he sat further away, I wouldn’t be shrieking in his ear…see #7).
  6. I became on intimate terms with Mr. Dremel, Mr. Orbital Sander, Mr. Makita Drill, and Mr. Jigsaw. I am now on speaking terms with Mr. Angle Grinder, and I’m getting to know Mr. Fein.
  7. I found myself occasionally not on speaking terms with my husband, who is rarely more than 6 feet away from me. He can operate any power tool one-handed while lying on his back with his eyes closed in the coffin-shaped pilot berth, which I find maddening.
    One hand for the tool, one for yourself
  8. I fell in love with my full-face organic vapor respirator but found that it’s impossible to kiss someone or scratch your nose while wearing one.
  9. I figured out that if you don’t protect the zipper of your Tyvek suit with tape, sometimes you drip epoxy on it and can’t get your clothes off.
  10. I have learned to tolerate, but not enjoy, galley faucet roulette. I never know if the water is going to come out in an orderly fashion, as gravity and the universe intended, or if it’s going to explode violently into the cup I am holding, causing lemonade to erupt like Mount Vesuvius all over the front of my shirt. This is why I no longer buy pink lemonade.
  11. I no longer think it’s unusual to wear hearing protection earmuffs while cooking dinner because Barry is operating loud power tools (see #6)  three feet away. It’s easy to burn things when you can’t hear them sizzling in the skillet, which makes the smoke alarm go off, which is OK, because I’m wearing my earmuffs. Barry always wishes he was wearing earmuffs when a palmetto bug runs across the counter (see #5).
  12. I learned that when the  Sriracha chili sauce gets clogged, one should not simply squeeze the bottle harder. When I did, the lid exploded off, and I let out a loud, four-letter expletive. At this point, Barry looked up from his computer and said, alarmed, “Please tell me that’s not your blood!” To him, it looked like an unplanned amputation.
    Sriracha explosion, not an unplanned amputation

Most importantly, I discovered that some of the nicest people in the world are found in boatyards, hardware stores, lumberyards, and vegetable stands. This, coupled with the miraculous fact that we have not had to buy anything at West Marine, explains why I still have a sense of humor after a whole year.

The maiden on the maiden voyage

“Hey, is there going to be a party before you go?” I asked Ivan, when I ran into him in the lounge.

“Yes, I think tomorrow,” he said. His accent and careful pronunciation of English words makes him seem more solemn and serious than he is.

“What time?” I asked.

At this point, Val jumped in. He’s been grinding on his boat for over two weeks, a grueling and exhausting job. “Let’s start at noon…two pm…” he said with a grin. I rolled my eyes, knowing full well that boat work comes first, and parties don’t start around here until at least 5 or 6 pm.

So around 6 pm, we headed over to the dock where Kuhelli was moored, her extra-large Swedish flag snapping in the breeze. I’m going to miss that flag — putting it up on the backstay was one of the first things the crew did when they arrived. It’s been windy every day for the month they were here, and the flag danced with an exuberance like that of the crew.

I remember their arrival more vividly than most of our neighbors. It was April first, and we’d been spending the evening wishing Blaine and Suzy farewell. It grew cold and very late as we sat around the picnic table, sharing wine and stories. Past midnight, a car pulled up across the way at a boat that had been stored for some time. Several people got out and got a ladder and climbed on the boat. Even in the dim light, we could see that they were not average cruising-boat owners. Much too young.

Were they thieves? Vandals? Should we confront them?

They showed no signs of taking anything from the boat, so we decided to leave them alone.

For the next few days, half the gossip was about Blaine and Suzy’s departure, and the other half was about the three 20-something Swedish guys who’d come to fix up an older Halberg-Rossy and sail it back to Sweden. Ivan was the owner, with Lowe and Sigfrid as his friends and crew. (It actually took us forever to get their names straight — Ivan is pronounced “Even,” and Lowe sounds like “Loova”).

Anique teased them about their accents. Sigfrid came in one day, asking about jello. Jello is not a normal item in a marine chandlery, so she was completely flabbergasted. It finally turned out he was mispronouncing “yellow!” He need the pigment for his gel-coat repairs.

Like the young 3-man crew on Catania, they had boundless energy, and got more work done than any of us old-timers. Even after working well into the night on the boat, they would get up in the morning and go running. They scampered up and down the ladder like monkeys, taking it two rungs at a time going up and coming down frontwards with no hands. I saw Sigfrid doing push-ups on the dock and Ivan shinnying up the mast without benefit of a bosun’s chair or halyard.

One evening, we sat down and shared a meal, and we learned that they’d never been to the US before. Their impressions were fascinating, since they’d flown into Washington, D.C., driven straight to the boat, and not seen anything but coastal North Carolina since.

With Val and John, we tried to dispel some of their myths about this place we call “America,” going into heavy topics like immigration and politics and economics. Val has lived in Hawaii and Florida, and John has lived all over the US and sports Wyoming plates on his van, so it was a lively conversation about how different the rest of the US is from Beaufort, North Carolina.

One thing they did not like at all: The food. It took them several weeks to realize that Piggly-Wiggly was not the only grocery store, which would give anyone a bad impression of American food. They were amazed by the number of obese people and disturbed by the stuff sold as bread. Even when I brought them the best bread in the area, from the Havelock Swiss bakery, they were polite, but said it was not as good as Swedish bread.

They splashed the boat three weeks after they arrived, making me green with envy. But that was not going to keep me away from the bon voyage party.

Ivan had one more job to do up the mast, and Lowe quickly hauled him up to spreader height. We lounged on the dock, watching Ivan work and waiting for the barbecue to heat up. It was a perfect spring evening on the water, just enough wind to keep bugs at bay without blowing the brownies and salad away.

Sigfrid came back — he’s the most garrulous of the three. “As soon as we eat, we have to go get diesel. You’re all welcome to come along,” he said.

The party on the dock was starting to pick up momentum when Ivan looked at his watch and headed for the boat. Barry and I joined the three guys, and we steamed away from the dock.

Ivan pulls away from the dock Lowe aboard Kuhelli Sigfrid gets his first experience at a wheel Barry enjoys Kuhelli's sunset maiden voyage Meps enjoys a turn at the wheel

It was only a couple of miles up the waterway to Seagate Marina, but we snapped a lot of pictures during that time. It was, after all, Kuhelli’s maiden voyage with her new owner. I was honored to be aboard for the occasion and felt vaguely useful because I knew approximately where the fuel dock was.

When we returned to the dock, the party had grown.

“This is the second time I’ve been on a boat, underway, in a week!” I said to Audrey. She sighed with envy. Desiderata has been here for over three and a half years, and she and her husband have been distracted from their boat work by all kinds of health issues in that time.

The other crew that joined the festivities was from Happy Hour, a boat smaller than ours with two parents and four children aboard. At one time, they had even cruised with their two older siblings aboard, and I was curious to know how they found bunks for eight.

The answer was a forward cabin (two kids), two settees (two kids), an aft cabin (privacy for two parents), and a bunch of cushions on the floor for the remaining two. I wondered if they all had bruises from stepping on each other!

Compared to that, the crew of Kuhelli had luxurious accommodations, with a private aft cabin, a v-berth, and an enormous dinette. Their center cockpit has a hard dodger and a full hard bimini as well, so they’ll be protected from the waves offshore.

That cockpit was big enough for the whole lively party. Listening to the chatter, I thought of how we’d been at a farewell party when Kuhelli’s crew arrived. I looked around, but the boats in the yard were quiet. Just as well, it would be hard to top this.

But not for the crew of Kuhelli. In addition to an offshore passage to Sweden via the Azores and Ireland, they plan a stop in New York City.

Just after dawn, I heard a horn. I stuck my head out the hatch and waved as the boat slipped away. The time they shared with us was just Part One of the adventure — the rest is still to come, and they’re going to enjoy every minute of it.

Kuhelli’s website is in Swedish, but has lots of great photos: http://svenskavinnare.se/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=12 (or you can chuckle your way through the machine-translated English version)

Sigfrid also has a great photo site here: http://picasaweb.google.se/sigfridj (“alantseglingen” are the photos of his trip to the USA)

Schooner or later

Here’s a fun series of questions:

  1. When was the first time you went sailing?
  2. When was the last time you went sailing?
  3. Have you ever sailed on a schooner?

As I write this, I am on a boat, one that is firmly aground, with 7 sturdy jackstands beneath it and an 8-foot wooden ladder between me and the rest of the world. I go to sleep at night in the v-berth, my face just a few feet beneath the forward hatch. Before I close my eyes, I look up and see the stars and moon.

But I miss the motion of a boat. I miss the sound of water against the hull. I’ve gotten used to being on a boat-with-no-motion, but there’s definitely something wrong with it.

In the past year, we’ve visited friends whose boats are in the water, to remember the feeling. Stepping aboard Ocean Gypsy, I love the way the side deck gently dips to accept my weight. When we rode out to Honey Moon in the dinghy in January, I just wanted to throw my head back and holler “Yee haw!” as we zipped across the anchorage. A moving boat is a wonderful thing.

It’s moving. But it’s still not sailing.

In January, we took a day to help our friend Dick motor up to New Bern in his steel schooner, Ula G. It was fun to get out on the water, but Dick picked one of the coldest days of the year. We joked about the cold as we huddled on deck, wearing every scrap of clothing we owned. In our foulies and hoods and gloves and PFDs, Dick could hardly tell us apart, although Barry does have a lower voice and I giggle more. At the time, I thought about how nice it would be when the weather warmed up and we could actually sail.

Yesterday was the day I’d been hoping for. We had originally planned to drive up to New Bern and help Dick take his parents out sailing. That plan fell through when they left a day early, but we decided to go up anyway.

With the help of Dick’s friendly neighbors to cast off the lines (the freeboard on this boat resembles that of a container ship), we headed out the Neuse River.

Back when I learned to sail on a simple catboat with one sail, I had jib-phobia. I was intimidated by the thought of a boat with more than one sail. I was also petrified at the thought of operating a boat bigger than 20 feet.

Now, here I was, aboard a real schooner, almost fifty feet long, with five tanbark (Dick calls them orange) sails to choose from (we used three), and all the attendant lines and strings to play with. I no longer have jib-phobia, having sailed on sloops and ketches and yawls and junk rigs. I’m not afraid of really big boats, either. Seems like all our friends have ‘em.

I laid on the bow with my head hanging over the bulwark, mesmerized by the bow wave as the hull sliced through the sparkling blue water. The sound of the water was like celestial music.

Back at the wheel, I sat astride the helmsman’s seat, and I did throw back my head and let out a hearty “Yee haw!” Dick laughed and teased me about my “shit-eating grin.”

For Dick, it was a whole different experience from taking his 79-year-old parents out the previous day.

“Was this the first time they’d seen your boat?” I asked.

“It was their first time on a sailboat,” he admitted.

That made me pause. The first time they went sailing? Friday. The last time they went sailing? Friday. Their first time on a schooner? Friday.

The funny thing is, only one of my answers is substantially different.

The first time I went sailing? 1982. The last time I went sailing? Saturday. The first time on a traditional schooner? Saturday.

There’s one more question to ask, and I suspect that here, our answers will diverge greatly. How often would you like to go sailing?

I suspect that Dick’s parents are content with the amount of sailing they’ve done in their lives: Once.

But I want to go sailing again. I want to hear water against the hull, want to sit at the wheel and go “Yee haw!” I want to hang my head over the side and watch the water flowing past for hours — every day.

(There’s a related limerick: “News of the Neuse.”)

Flowers under Flutterby

Pollen patternI made a comment to Kenny last week about our struggles to paint between spells of wind and rain. “Better hurry,” he said, “pollen’s coming.”

We didn’t finish in time. Amazing amounts of pollen drifted over everything, tinting boats and vehicles and ground yellow. When it rained, there were strange pollen patterns on our hatches, and yellow rings on the ground when the puddles evaporated. We put our painting aside.

The pollen is just another sign of North Carolina spring, along with a tiny white flower blooming under our boat. At night, we hear the sound of peeping frogs, and the birdsong at dusk is like an orchestra. There have even been a few early mosquitoes, no-see-ums, and dolphins.

Flutterby with flower underneathThere’s another sign of spring, up on the high bridge that soars over the boatyard. We are so used to the sound of bridge traffic, we hardly notice cars and trucks as they pass by. But a motorcycle makes a different sound — and when I heard several of them crossing the bridge, I looked up. They just kept coming, and I counted 26 in all, out to enjoy the beautiful weather.

Last week, we had our first northbound cruising boat, Lady Simcoe. Gordon and Susan had been out cruising the Bahamas for the winter, and now it was time to lay the boat up and go back to work in Canada. They invited us aboard, and we sat in their cockpit, drinking Fire in de Hole Erotic Rum and hearing their stories. Barry hadn’t seen the label, and he asked me, “Don’t you mean exotic?” But there is nothing exotic about rum in the Bahamas — and the dancing lady on the label is definitely erotic.

Gordon and Susan told us one disquieting thing about cruising in the Bahamas. In order to get crucial weather information, all the cruisers listen to a daily radio “net.” The net’s at the ungodly hour of 6:30 am, which keeps the cruisers on an early-morning schedule. “Parties would break up at 8 o’clock, and we’d all be in bed by 9.” They laughed, but it doesn’t sound like much fun to this pair of night-owls.

Soon, we’ll be seeing more tanned northbound cruisers like them on the waterway. Which ones will stop for a haulout? We can only wait and see, and look forward to meeting them.

Closeup of Flutterby flowerThere is one thing I’m not looking forward to. A couple of our cruising friends left their vehicles here while they are in the Caribbean. Any day now, they’ll be back, and I’m a little embarrassed that we’re not gone yet. “What? Are you still here?” Then they’ll tell us about their cruising adventures, and we’ll tell them about epoxy-squirting disasters and paint jobs with stigmata and tiny white flowers growing under our boat.

And then we’ll all laugh and go out to dinner. I’m looking forward to that.

Tiny town

It’s a tiny town, you can hang around with me
It’s a tiny town, and ev’rybody knows what you been doin’

(with apologies to David Byrne)

We’d put away the tools, cleaned the sanding dust, and moved a few things to storage to make the boat presentable. Dinner was cooking, and we had the makings for sangria. But as I looked around the boat, I worried about the next few days.

Would Dad be comfortable here with us? He has more room in his walk-in closet than we have in our combined living room, kitchen, dining room, and office. Would he like Beaufort? It’s a tiny little town, and we don’t know anybody here.

A friendly honk interrupted my survey, and I scampered down the ladder for a hug. Dad had driven from Florida to Myrtle Beach for a conference and get-together with journalist friends. A few more hours of driving brought him to Beaufort, where he planned to spend five days with us.

First, though, he had to master the ladder. Although Flutterby‘s centerboard makes her much lower than most of the sailboats in the yard, it’s still a daunting 8 feet to the cockpit. Then about 4 feet down the companionway to the interior.

Barry and I do it dozens of times a day, in the daylight and in the dark, with arms full of tools and groceries and boat parts. We’ve had occasional slips — at least three bruising incidents on the companionway. I also took some priceless video of Barry going down the big ladder facing forward. About halfway down, he lost his footing and slid plink-plink-plink down the rungs, making a sound like a xylophone and landing in a heap at the bottom. Only his dignity was hurt, which is why he grabbed the camera and deleted the video.

Dad and Flutterby

Dad navigates the ladder onto Flutterby

Anyway, Dad made it up fine with us hovering anxiously, and was soon ensconced in our salon. Over the course of the week, we spent lots of time there, talking, listening to music, and spreading out newspapers, books, laptops, notecards, food, and beverages. My fears were groundless — the only spatial challenge was vertical. At 6’2″, Dad’s head brushes the ceiling, and going into the head is like climbing into a hobbit-hole.

I had planned short daily expeditions to see local sights, like the Maritime Museum and Fort Macon, and I’d checked with our boatyard expert, Larry, for restaurant recommendations.

By Tuesday, the rain had cleared, and we were at the Backstreet pub, listening to a lively Irish band and eating corned beef and cabbage. We were having a blast when along came our neighbor, John. Then we struck up a lively conversation with a couple from the University of Tennessee, and the two professors found lots to talk about. John left, and along came our Burning Man friend, Jeff. All this, in a town where we don’t know anybody.

Dad and Margaret at the Backstreet

On Wednesday, I suggested we check out the live music advertised at the Sandbar. So we parked at Town Creek marina, and I noticed our friend Ted sitting in the cockpit of Ocean Gypsy with a friend.

I called down from the parking lot. “Hi! We thought we’d come over and check out the Sandbar this evening.”

Ted told us, “You’d better come have a drink with us instead.”

Ted and his neighbor, Ron, said the Sandbar was a great little bar and restaurant. But the couple who ran the place weren’t getting along, and the woman left. She took the liquor license with her! This resulted in the police coming out on Saturday and shutting the bar down.

As a result, we sat in Ted’s spacious cockpit and swapped stories about book-publishing and sailing and life until it was almost dark. Dad got to see what a properly-outfitted Freedom 33 looks like, and we got to know Ron, who’s recently published a book, Sailing With Carol. All this, in a town where we don’t know anybody.

On Thursday, we took a ferry ride to Oriental, which considers itself the “sailboat capitol of the world.” We stopped at a waterfront park on the way and ran into a couple who’d been on the ferry with us. Dad ended up in conversation with the husband, and Barry and I started chatting with the wife…were we standing there in the sunshine talking for 30 minutes, or 45?

On Friday, we went into Beaufort and strolled Front Street, stopping into a few shops. We were browsing in Rocking Chair Books when Ted came in to see the owner, Kelli. After he introduced us, we were chatting with Kelli, and in walked our neighbor, Oscar. All this, in a town where we don’t know anybody.

The funny thing is, Dad has an even older friend here in the area, but he told me they’d been out of touch for a while. When he looked up his friend in the phone book and called him, I could tell something was amiss.

Dad had asked for Woody Price. Unfortunately, Woody had died eight years before, and his 94-year-old widow never, ever called her husband “Woody” — only “Woodrow.” Once they straightened that out, they had a nice chat.

When Dad finally got off the phone, I asked him how long he’d been out of touch with the Price’s. “I got Christmas cards from them for years, with a painting of their little saltbox house,” he reminisced. Then he told me he’d last run into Woody by chance during a trip to the Outer Banks. His wife hadn’t been with him on that trip, though.

Later, I checked the family photos on my computer. Dad’s last trip to the Outer Banks had been in 1971. He hadn’t seen Woody for 38 years, and hadn’t seen Mary for over 40. With his incredible memory for details, he made it sound like it was yesterday.

So many friends, new and old, in a tiny town where we don’t know anybody.

Worth 1000 words

We’ve been taking advantage of the beautiful, warm spring weather to get lots done. Combined with some graphic design and writing projects I’ve taken on, that means not a lot of time to write for the blog.

But I need to answer a recurring complaint that we haven’t posted any photos of the boat or the boatyard lately. I just got this picture from Nancy Bock, who’s compiling material for the website we’re doing. It was taken by her son, Alex, from the top of the Highway 101 bridge.

The photo shows less than half of Bock Marine. But as you can see, there are plenty of interesting people around Flutterby, and we have the best location in the yard — right on the water.

Flutterby at Bock Marine, annotated

Squidley to the rescue

A few days ago, we drove the Squid Wagon back into the boatyard from Florida, dog-tired from a two-day drive. “Hey! There’s someone on Honey Moon!” exclaimed Barry. Our circumnavigating friends Don and Aggie were back from Australia, having stored their boat for six months. They spent a week finishing their projects and launched the boat on the windiest day we’d seen yet.

The problem was an external deadline. When their plane landed in Los Angeles, the US Customs agent had only given them 28-day visas, barely enough time to fly across the US, paint the bottom, provision the boat, see their friends, and get out of the country.

We were sorry to see them go, and a little worried as the wind picked up even more that evening. Boats were shaking on their jackstands, large items were flying through the air, and the wind sounded like a freight train. They were probably fine; they’d sailed half the world to get here.

The next morning, I was in the office, chatting with a cruiser from Switzerland. Having a Swiss flag is kind of like having a boat with a home port in Nebraska or Wyoming. There’s no coastline, so the boat can never actually go to its home port.

Anique was behind the desk, answering the phone as Patricia and I talked. “Good morning, thank you for calling Bock Marine,” she said. Then I heard, “Margaret is right here…” and she handed me the phone.

This was a complete surprise, as I have never received a call on the office phone. I go into the office for about 5 minutes a day, always at a different time — how would someone know I was there?

It was Aggie, from Honey Moon. They’d left their boat key behind, and were wondering if we could bring it if we came into town. “Sure, I said, “how were things last night?”

“Absolutely awful!” said Aggie. It was an understatement.

It was their first night at anchor in six months, and it was a night to remember. In a 60-knot gust, they dragged anchor. Pulling it up, they found a giant muddy fishing net wrapped all around the anchor and chain. They had to back in circles to keep from fouling the prop while they struggled to cut it off. The deck knife was too dull, so Aggie went below for a sharper kitchen knife. She crawled to the foredeck, where the wind was picking Don up and bouncing him against the stays.

Sometime around then, the headsail partly unfurled. The wind caught the loose edge and began to shred it. At around 10 pm, Aggie hauled Don up the mast to wrap a spinnaker halyard around the flogging headsail.

The anchor was cleared and reset, the sail was secured, but this was no time to go below and sleep. They maintained an anchor watch all night, meaning one person had to be awake to make sure the boat didn’t drag anchor.

After a night like that, the least we could do (besides delivering their errant key) was drive them and their sail out to the sailmaker for repairs. Afterwards, they invited us to come out to the boat for a cup of tea. I looked at Barry, “Well, we were going to do some shopping, but…” “You’re not going to Wal-Mart, are you?” asked Aggie.

This was followed by some discussion about what each of us needed from Wal-Mart. They needed to put more minutes on an expired cell phone. We needed a new space heater. “We have a space heater we need to get rid of,” said Don. “You can have it.”

Now we didn’t need to go shopping, so the four of us got into their dinghy and headed for the boat. We made it about ten feet from the dock when the engine died. Don yanked and yanked the starter cord as Barry and Aggie held us off a piling. Then he said, brightly, “Here’s the problem!” The fuel hose had gotten brittle and broken off.

We let the wind push us to a nearby bulkhead, and Don rowed the dinghy back to the transient dock.

“Good old Squidley,” I said, as the four of us piled back into the van. “We really like your van!” said Aggie.

This time, we went to the marine parts store and then to Wal-Mart and Staples. It was evening when we returned, so they invited us aboard for dinner. This time, the dinghy made it without incident.

After dinner, we were sitting in the cabin when there was a noise outside. “You’d better go have a look around,” said Aggie. She calls herself the “noise police.” Don was warm and cozy, and he shook his head. “Nah, I’m sure it’s nothing.” “That’s what you said last night!” said Aggie. Laughing, he got up and stuck his head out the companionway.

“Oh, this is interesting. You’d better come up and see for yourself,” he called down.

The three of us piled into the cockpit to see. It took me a second to realize that giant white wall was a huge yacht that we’d bumped into as the current spun all the boats in the anchorage around. Oops.

After adjusting the chain to pull us away from the neighbor, we went back below. “You haven’t been cruising in a while,” I said. “You’ve gotten a bit rusty!”

When it was time for us to leave, Don got into the dinghy and started the motor. The fuel was old, and it conked out and had to be restarted. Barry and I climbed in, and Don revved the engine to keep it going. We said our goodbyes to Aggie, and she tossed down the painter.

Don put the engine in gear quickly, so it wouldn’t stall, and we zoomed away from the boat. We made it about ten feet. BOING! We were jerked to a sudden stop, like a dog that has reached the end of its leash and looks like its eyes are popping out. If a camera had been running, it would have been a candidate for “America’s Funniest Boat Videos.”

Aggie and Don are conscientious and careful cruisers. That means they secure the dinghy with not one, but two painters. Unfortunately, when we took off, neither of them remembered this fact!

I couldn’t stop laughing, all the way back to the dock. Not because of the mistake, but because of the looks on our faces. I’ll file the two-painter idea away as a smart cruising tip. I’ll file the leave-one-attached idea away, too: Under practical jokes.

Escape from Hell’s kitchen

The conversations went like this: “You hungry?” “Yeah, I could chew my own leg off.” “Peanut butter OK?” “Absolutely!” And dinner would be peanut butter on tortillas on our laps. Again.

For two months, since our return from Burning Man, we’d been camping out. We slept in the back of the van and set up an outdoor kitchen under the boat. Our days, and evenings when we weren’t too tired to hold up our heads, were spent working.

Over the summer, we had removed every piece of hardware from the deck and temporarily sealed over 100 holes. By September, it was time to grind the rotted core around those holes, removing fiberglass and balsa and making horrible clouds of dust. The work required full protective gear, all the time — Tyvek suits, gloves, and respirators.

Flutterby’s galley disaster

We emptied the boat of everything but tools. Our rented storage locker was crammed to the ceiling, and the boat was surrounded by plastic tote bins. The van was a total disaster, heaps of clothing divided into categories like “boatyard-skanky” and “going-to-town.” I nearly died of embarrassment when I thought I was going to a drive-thru with a friend, and we ended up at a pizza place instead. I was wearing boatyard-skanky instead of going-to-town clothes.

But the real storage challenge was the camp kitchen, located under the bow of the boat. The problem was, I just couldn’t stay ahead of the conditions.

When we first moved out of the boat, I fretted about the sun melting my chocolate. We rigged a tarp over the table, and within 24 hours, high winds had ripped it to shreds. So now I had to worry about hot sun and high winds.

The camp kitchen under Flutterby

I began the daily shade-shuffle: Moving my food bins from place to place several times a day, just to keep them cool.

After sun and high winds came the bugs, tiny, insidious flies that climbed into my bins and tried to get into my food. Now, in addition to working on the boat and shuffling my bins around, I had to clean the bins and repackage the food.

The days got shorter, so cooking had to be done in the dark with flashlights. I really hated those little bugs. They were completely invisible on a black skillet at dusk. Good thing I’m not a vegetarian. Good thing it was daylight when the black widow spider crawled into the Britta pitcher.

Then came the rains. I had put my canned goods in a big old cooler (no ice), and guess what? The cooler leaked! Now I had a nice collection of rusty cans. But there was some consolation — the bugs drowned, and I didn’t have to worry about keeping food in the shade — there was no sun.

The winds came back, and without a tarp over the stove, we couldn’t cook. Now things were looking a bit grim. We spent hours sitting in the van, knees against knees, watching the rain blowing sideways and fighting over the computer. Peanut butter tortillas began to appear more frequently on the menu.

The final straw was the cold. The van was warm, with a tiny space heater keeping us comfortable when the temperatures dropped into the low 20’s. But what about the kitchen? Grumbling, I bundled up and went outside, with a flashlight, to pack insulating items like flour and rice around glass bottles of vinegar and rose water.

When it was over — we moved back aboard the day before Thanksgiving — I realized that the camp kitchen had thrown challenge after challenge, but nothing insurmountable. There were no bears, no raccoons, and no food went bad. We didn’t starve or suffer vitamin deficiencies, and we only had to order pizza twice in two months.

Besides, the location was awesome. Our borrowed picnic table sat right on the water, so we could watch the parade of boats on the ICW. When dolphins came, especially at night, we heard them before we saw them. We were even far enough from most other people to give us a little privacy.

Dolphins near Bock Marine

With the exception of no HVAC, poor cabinetry, a too-small refrigerator, and a leaky roof, we actually had an ideal kitchen. It had plenty of counter space — thanks to Val and Gigi. It had a great propane stove — thanks to Kris. It had a double sink (two dishpans) and running water — a half-gallon plant sprayer someone had abandoned at Burning Man. What more could you ask?

The next time I catch myself complaining about conditions, feel free to stop me. There are many people out there who don’t have peanut butter or rusty cans of artichoke hearts, or chocolate. We should all be so lucky.

You know you’re living in the South when…

You know you’re living in the South when…

YKYLITSW…someone uses the term “corned pigtails” in casual conversation.

I was chatting with Anique the other day about the big traditional Thanksgiving dinner she had planned. She was going to do a big ol’ stuffed turkey, using her Mom’s recipe for the stuffing, and a corned ham glazed with pineapple sauce.

“So what vegetables do you serve?” I asked, wondering what was considered traditional here in coastal North Carolina. She mentioned potatoes and sweet potatoes, and “collards cooked the way my Grandma used to make them, with corned pigtails.”

Huh? I didn’t want to sound like an idiot, but were the corned pigtails a separate dish, or part of the collards?

So I went to the Piggly Wiggly. Next to the collards was a big refrigerated case of things I don’t normally eat. Lard, and fatback (which looked like more lard), and something called “streak of lean” (that also looked like more lard). At the end of the table: A big heap of salted pigtails. But not corned ones.

I went back to Anique once again. “They only had salted pigtails.” She laughed at my inexperience with strange pig parts. “Corned, salted — it’s the same thing.”

YKYLITSW…a black widow spider crawls into your Britta pitcher.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to a heavy frost. Ice on the water bucket told me it had been super-cold overnight. I went out to get coffee from our outdoor kitchen and glanced at the Britta pitcher, which I figured had also frozen.

Our Britta is missing its lid, and there was something black in the top. A big, bulbous spider, curled up, apparently dead from the cold. I stared in surprise at the red hourglass on its — her — abdomen. I’d never seen a black widow before, but I recognized it immediately.

I used a stick to poke her and turn her over. Then I left her there, thinking “Barry has to see this!”

The sun came out, the world warmed, and Barry went over to see my dead spider. When he came back, he asked me, “Was she wiggling when you found her? She’s wiggling now.”

All I could say was, “Eek! Good thing I didn’t poke her with my finger.”

The next time I walked over, she was walking around in the top of the pitcher. The thought of her escaping and running around in my outdoor kitchen was disturbing, so I put a glass jar over her. A few hours later, she seemed dead again, and I capped the jar.

I told my friends I had saved the dead black widow, thinking to send it to someone. They howled with laughter. “Someone you don’t like a lot? How many enemies have you got?” “No, no,” I protested, “maybe a youngster with an insect collection, or…oh, never mind!”

YKYLITSW…signs have appeared in your neighborhood advertising “Flight-Trained Bobwhites.”

I have no idea what these are. Barry says I should call the phone number on the sign, just to find out. I wonder if they’re related to corned pigtails?

The accidental road trip

Most of the boats in the yard stand mutely on their jackstands, leaving us to wonder, “What’s the story here?” Our only clues are the boat’s position, her condition, home port, and the detritus on the ground underneath. That, plus a little watching, snooping, and gossiping.

At 27 tons, the ketch Wind Lore towered over us on her jackstands. I’d once parked the Squid Wagon in her shadow to do an oil change, and wondered about the varnished teak and homeport of Shelburne, Nova Scotia. She was in excellent condition, and there was nothing stored underneath to give us clues.
Wind Lore transom
Then, one Sunday morning, our watching yielded some information. In a flurry of activity, a white PT Cruiser pulled up and a family piled out. They stood looking up at the boat, taking pictures. Then they drove away.

“Hmmm…maybe that boat’s for sale?” I wondered out loud.

A few hours later, a beige Toyota Camry arrived with what looked like a rocket launcher on top. Three more people got out, this time climbing onto the boat via a very tall ladder.

Now I had two pieces of information, and I said, confidently. “Those must be the owners, getting it ready for the sale.”

I was absolutely and completely wrong.

That day, we met Rick and Mary Jane, Wind Lore’s owners, and Frank, Mary Jane’s father. They had about a week of projects on their list, and then they planned to launch the boat and cruise down to New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

But what about the people in the PT Cruiser? Like us, Rick and Mary Jane were mystified. Barry and I still marvel at the coincidence, having boatyard strangers take such an interest in that particular boat just hours before Rick and Mary Jane arrived.

The next day, we received a coveted invitation to climb the sky-scraping ladder for a visit aboard the boat. Sitting in the salon with a glass of wine, the companionway seemed very familiar — Rick pointed out that it was a Formosa, the model of boat featured in the cult sailing film Captain Ron. We all laughed about the fact that the crazy engine room in the movie wasn’t authentic, it was a set. And the infamous shower scene wasn’t filmed on the boat, either. Dang.

In the next few days, among conversations about projects and people and boats and places, I asked an innocent question. “Will you leave your car here when you go to Florida?”

“We’ll have to come up and get it, I guess,” said Rick. “You want to take a road trip?”

“Oh, yes!” I sang out. Barry was looking askance at me, but he knows that I won’t miss any opportunity to visit my Dad in Florida.

After Wind Lore slipped her lines and headed south, a massive cold front came through, making their trip down the ICW a chilly one. Back on Flutterby, our progress was slowed — our Awlfair wouldn’t “kick,” and it was no use applying paint in these temperatures. Not to mention how miserable we were, personally, huddling in the van with a tiny space heater.

Finally, the cold eased, but then came torrential rains, three inches in one night. When we awoke on Election Day, our boat sat between the Intracoastal Waterway and something I call “Lake Bock.” In the past, I’ve jokingly called our location “puddlefront.” We took off our socks and wore sandals, wading through ankle-deep water as we packed the car.

Then we got into the Camry with the rocket launcher (actually a rooftop gear carrier) on the top and headed for I-95. When we arrived at New Smyrna Beach and Wind Lore, 11 hours later, Mary Jane had dinner for us, and our Canadian friends were patient with us as we watched the election returns.

At some point in the evening, Mary Jane turned to me and asked, “Did you know we just had an election?” I was embarrassed. “Er, not really.” Less than a month ago, the Canadians held a Federal election, just as important to them as ours is to us. Turnout was the lowest in Canadian election history, perhaps because of all the noisy campaigning going on just to the south.
Wind Lore port side Mary Jane and Frank
The following morning, I awoke refreshed after a night on their glamorous boat. I looked around at the hand-carved teak doors, the sunshine pouring into the spacious salon, and the palm trees ashore. I could hardly believe my luck as I put my jeans and raincoat away and changed into shorts.

Rick and Mary Jane thanked us profusely for saving them a trip back to North Carolina for their car, but that seemed unnecessary to me. The pleasure, actually, is ours.