Sloop

At Spinney’s Yard

Spinney’s yard was no different than lots of yards on the mid-coast, and in most ways, Spinney was not too different than the run of yard owners. He worried about the big Tahiti Ketch that had sat in the yard for years while the estate tried to sell it. It took up the space of three other boats. Spinney worried about the old 1929 REO tractor he used for hauling boats out of the water.

But most of all, Spinney worried about boat owners stealing supplies and electricity from him. He used a phrase picked up from a client: “Son, in this business, you live or die on the margins, on the margins!”

As a result, Spinney often wandered around the yard grumbling that so and so had paid for space, but used up as much electricity as he could connive…”. “Not to mention all that crud he’s not picking up, if the dammed EPA comes down here I’m gonna be closed down because of his crud. Bob! Don’t lend that jerk any extension cords. Let him bring his own.”

Of Project Boats and Captains

Spinney’s yard was home to a bunch 0f old project boats. A pretty sorry batch altogether. The only one with any promise was the Old Gem. With a 1910 build date, it looked like a Morse-built Friendship sloop. All the original detail and shape were there. But they were buried under a dozen layers of paint. The last owner may have been a Navy bosun who believed that paint not only hid a multitude of sins but kept one busy enough that there would be no time to sin.

Despite the neglect, Old Gem retained her hull lines and was more worthy of restoration than most of the yard’s inhabitants. The frame, the boat’s skeleton, and planking were sound. The owner, Cap’n Preston, was doing all the work himself. To Spinney, a boat owner doing all the work himself was equivalent to theft of livelihood.

The way he said “Cap’n” while referring to the Preston also let you know a lot about the situation. I may miss some of the emphasis that can be placed on this single term, being from “Away.” But not when it’s so broadly put about. Cap’n can be a term of great respect, humor, or ridicule. When you referred to my father-in-law as Cap’n, it was with real respect: he was an authentic master mariner and a handy sailor, in or out of soundings.
So the way Cap’n was said to Preston let me know that he was a Cap’n by courtesy alone.

Conniving Thievery

The next day I saw Preston and his wife stripping the tarps off Old Gem and unloading a springtime supply of sandpaper, paint, varnish, and all tools and goodies. Spinney could be seen in his second-floor office, peering out on the doings. Old Gem’s new owner was well known at Spinney’s Yard. Leave a hose around, and it would wind up at Preston’s boat. Lose some sandpaper? Check Preston’s out first.

Now let me say this on behalf of Spinney. His reputation for fairness, generosity, and general Christian sensibilities is almost legendary. But his confrontations with owners, who’ve borrowed ladders, or supplies without permission, are widely recollected.

Of Cats and Kittes

Most yards have an assortment of riff-raff cats that keep rodents under control. Not so at Spinney’s; every cat was plump, healthy, and well-tended. All under the gaze of Spinney’s number one cat. Boo, as she was commonly called, was really Bubastis – cat goddess of all she surveyed, and that was everything in Spinney’s yard. Even the boatyard dog, a shepherd collie named Curly, checked in every morning: “Good morning, mam, you’d like what done today?”

Boo’s perch was the windowsill directly in front of Spinney’s desk. From this vantage, she could oversee the comings and goings all felines and humans in the yard. Boo’s many litters had squatters’ rights in the yard. The cat seemed to take pride in finding ever more inaccessible locations to have her kittens, and every time she disappeared, Spinney became a ball of anxieties, promising to come unraveled.

Boo had been behaving oddly for a week and then gone missing a day or two ago. “Have you guys seen Boo?” “Naw, Cap can’t say that I have. She’s been lookin’ a bit plump though…” This was enough to make Spinney recall the last time he had chased off that damn black tom from the lobster co-op. Smuts had gotten his Bubastis in the family way. Now the word was passed: “Figaro, Tom, Wes, Bubba keep your eyes open for Boo’s new hiding place.”
We didn’t find it. Marion Preston did.

A Fight

Mrs. Preston was a woman who loved the world. But, such a character may be a failing in a woman who puts up with Cap’n Preston’s string of dry rotted boats, poor pilotage and ability to snag fishermen’s nets. Despite her dedication to the family pug, Mrs. Preston was well regarded by every cat in Spinney’s yard. Maybe that’s what got all the trouble going because the next morning, the whole waterfront came awake with the shouts coming from Old Gem.

Cap’n Preston and Spinney circled each other the deck of the Old Gem. Preston had grabbed a boat hook to counter the jack handle wielded by Spinney.
There was a holler followed by a frantic Marion Preston leaping between the men. The box clutched to her bosom was full of kittens. A loud yowl rose as Boo declared herself an injured party in the dispute.

“You leave that cat and kittens alone, you Bog Irish bastard !” yelled Spinney,
“You get your cat and her filthy litter off my boat, you mackerel snapper.”
The box clutched by Marion obviously held the kittens.
“Won’t both of you just quiet down.” “Mwoor!” “You cat thief!”, “Watch who you call a thief.” At this point, Preston bent over and neatly dumped Bubastis, cat goddess of all she surveyed, over the side. Landing neatly on all fours, without having lost either dignity or anger.
The entire manpower of the waterfront as a body drifted in the direction of the noise. Realizing that she had won the fray, Boo retreated far under the hull of Old Gem. The arrival of the local police ended the excitement.

Once More with Feeling

It was two weeks later that I went down to Spinney’s yard with a freshly varnished mahogany transom banner, all ready for installation on someone’s project boat. Old Gem seemed to be in precisely the same state of disrepair as two weeks before.

When I saw Spinney, I knew better than to mention the current yard eyesore, but he saw me looking in that direction anyway. Handing me my fee for the banner, he said: “I told Preston to move her or float her by July first, and not to come back.”

Moved, perhaps more by the comfortable feeling of commission money in my pocket, than by common sense, I asked Spinney why he and old Preston got on so poorly. Rather than biting my head off Spinney, looked at me and said, “Wes, did you ever wish you could just sit down with an old friend you hadn’t been able to talk to with for ages, but couldn’t because of bad blood? Well, that’s how it is with Preston and I. He was a true friend in school.” With that, Spinney left the office hollering at Figaro to be careful where he piled the blocks they used with the jacks.

Time Does Not Heal All Wounds

Now I was even more curious about what was going on between Spinney and Preston. My father-in-law, the Cap’n, gave me the lowdown. “It’s an old a story around here that most people forgot it. After coming back from the war, Preston tried his hand as a boat broker. One of his first customers was Spinney. Right then, he was just starting up a shoestring operation.

Spinney, based on friendship, bought an old boat from Preston without having a surveyor look it over first. He figured that Preston wouldn’t sell him something too awful. But that boat had been in storage all during the war, and years before. It was dried out something fierce and sank at the dock when she was put back in because she was so dried out.

The planks were so dry you’d see daylight through the seams! They hauled her out and did a proper survey. They declared it a total loss. Spinney looked like a fool, and Preston looked like the conniving dealer he’s been known as ever since. When preston was asked by Spinney for his money back. Preston told him to go fly a kite it was his boat now.Perhaps it was made worse by the fact that Spinney served in the Pacific for the entire war, while Preston wrote press releases and news articles from the Fargo building in Boston. Spinney wound up a petty officer, and Preston wound up a Lieutenant Commander.”

I could tell there was more than was being said, but the Cap’n was through speaking. But if the tale was accurate, why had Spinney put up with Preston all those years? The answer came during the Second Battle of Old Gem two days later.

The Second Battle

A whole lot of staging, ladders and extension cords had found their way to Old Gem during the past Sunday. Sunday is the only day Spinney isn’t in the yard. Monday everyone was looking for, what had been leaning on their current project on Friday or Saturday. Preston had been working on his hull and fully enveloped it in all the staging and ladders he could gather. A lone electric sander whined in the morning air, not the chorus of sanders, drills, and saws usually heard.

A delegation of owners and yard workers converged on the office, and soon Spinney was seen getting up steam and setting a course towards the Old Gem. Within minutes the two men were circling with milling arms, and the first punches in a new fight were being thrown.

Then a clear soprano called out: “You Maynard, and you, Carl! A pair of foul, noisy old men. Old dried up sticks! You’ve been at each other for years over an old rotted hulk, and never the sense to either have it out or forgive.” “That boat’s sunk almost forty years and you two children haven’t forgotten. Maynard, your check for that damn boat bounced, and you Carl sold your best friend the worst hulk in the county.” Then more quietly added, “…and I don’t know what I ever saw in either of you when we were courting.”

Most of us hadn’t even known that Spinney and Preston had first names, much less that Marion had dated them both. The old men glared at each other, then pointedly looked away from each other, spat on the ground, hitched their baggy pants up around their skinny hips, and stalked away.

The Icepick

A week later, I was back, between jobs, and just nosing around. I was hoping to find out what had happened since, but didn’t quite dare ask. Gladly, I didn’t have to. Marion Preston walked over from Old Gem, and asked Maynard if he would please give Carl the benefit of his superior knowledge…said just like that.

Spinney strolled over. The two warily exchanged mumbled greetings. “Got a problem, Cap’n?” Spinney asked. “Just scraping away at this paint on the transom, and found this patch. What do you think it is?”
Spinneypulled out a long ice pick. Perhaps because he had been so thoroughly burnt in his virgin outing, he had become a skillful marine surveyor: valued by potential buyers, and feared by sellers. His tool of choice for judging the soundness of a hull was this ice pick.

Up the ladder went Spinney. He pulled his pick and shoved it in handily and dug into the offending spot with relish. Out came chunks of rot. I, not too smartly, mentioned that this appeared to be something missed on the survey. Preston looked at me with a sick look on his face and said that he hadn’t had a proper survey done; he knew he was going to buy the sloop regardless.

Spinney’s Survey

Spinney excitedly called down from his perch “I love digging out the rot, it’s like being a dentist.” The excavated pocket soon was almost enough to swallow Spinney’s large hand. Grinning, he cheerfully pointed out that this was an old problem never adequately dealt with, as was evidenced by a short piece of plank let in on the port side of the transom. “Look here! See that flat spot? That’s where they let in a new piece of wood in an earlier repair…never really fixed the underlying problem.”

Years of water, salt, and fresh had seeped in beneath an inadequately designed and bedded rail. Spinney was pointing out a hollowing in the transom near the short plank and below the rot pocket, and saying “…you always need to watch for this sort of thing.” He hopped down from his perch and dusted off his hands. A white-faced Preston thought about the size of the problem that had just opened up. “Well,” he said, “you know I want a quick fix. I just want to sail her. Can I just put a patch on and cover it over with fiberglass for some short money?” “Well,” said Spinney, a broad grin fixed in place as he strolled away,” sure… it is your boat.”

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