Category: coastal living

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Beware, Oh, Take Care!

Daily writing prompt
Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.
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Digging around in family history has its pitfalls. Be careful what you wish for; you might get a lot more. About me, well, I was named after an uncle, but as always, once you go down the rabbit hole, things turn strange. Family history can be a little box that contains a treasure, but not always the one you expected.

Family History

DNA testing is a big part of researching family history these days. But things come out. Items can no longer be hidden. And somber truths about ancestors are revealed. Also, you are found by relatives you never knew, and wished had never found you! That idiot tenth cousin of yours who starts emailing you from Estonia wanting to know about common ancestors. The person from Alabama asks if you’d host your 3rd cousins twice removed on their visit to the Boston area. Perhaps one should never have spit into the little vial, after all?


In my family’s case, it cleared up some mysteries by solidifying historical and genealogical research I’d already done. The Carreras family, seamen, jewelers, and merchants from Catalonia; in my specific family, that meant Girona, and the record of Louis’, Nicholas’, and Josep’s ( or Jose) stretched further back than I could research.

Twists and Turns

But most records for my mother’s little Caribbean island were destroyed in a hurricane. Birth, death, marriage, and baptismal records were scarce. Here is where things get interesting. The island tradition has it that all the Robinsons were descended from a first mate on a ship in Morgan’s privateering fleet. On the way to the sack of Panama City, they took over the island as a base. On the way home, Robinson decided to settle and raise a family there.


A little further research came up with the gem that the original colony had been founded by the second ship sent out by the same company that sent the Pilgrims to Cape Cod. But, in this case, they went way south, and those Puritans went bad, rapidly. They become the ne’er-do-wells of the Puritan faith. They actively engaged in piracy and other disreputable affairs. OK, this was not the sort of callow, everyday family I had imagined. My family under the Jolly Roger? It took some getting used to, but after a while, I found that I could slip a credible “Arghhh Matey!” into conversations, and it seemed very natural!

I advocate paying less attention to DNA and more to the dastardly deeds of our ancestors. It’s actually a hell of a lot more interesting. It’s not so much about the names, but how, in the case of my family, they were “captivating.”

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Round About…the prompt

In 2023, these paragraphs are what I led my post on for what I knew about the year I was born…not much. But here they are:

Prelude

“Swallowing the anchor” is the phrase sailors use to describe coming ashore permanently. Consider you give up on the vast horizon, the lift and movement of the ship, the routine of ship work and watches, and watching the celestial movements in an intimate fashion never found ashore.  Another thing you give up coming ashore is language. The overhead becomes the ceiling, the head the bathroom and at sea a holiday can refer to a messy spot left while cleaning. The dining room is, of course, the mess or mess deck, and who would want to eat in a mess? Bluntly, you give up an entire life, and vocabulary.

Funnily, this all has to do with the year I was born. It was the year that my mother convinced my father to swallow the anchor. Note that I did not say coerced; I said convinced. As a result of my father coming ashore, I received a complete maritime education by age nine. His urge to be at sea needed an outlet. I grew up with a good helping of the romance of the sea.

TINS

Now, here is my added stuff this time around! I also grew up as a lover of stories. Sea stories are an entire genre of their own. There is a formula – it’s called “TINS – this is no shit”. Here is an example:

“Now this is no shit. I heard it from my shipmate, and when I landed, the chief mate told me he had seen it too! Off the starboard bow, there was this….”

And so it goes on to a phenomenal ending, which a shipload of nautical storytellers will attest to! See TINS! Famously, we nautical types compare our exalted traditions to mere fairy tales. Pah! Once Upon A Time. OUAT isn’t even a word!

Anyhow, while I know little about the year in which I was born. I know a lot about the traditions from which we Carreras arise.

Now, listen up! This is no shit! All my stories are true…But I have this fond affection for sea stories. So pass the word and take due notice thereof!

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On The Coast

Nights out with my honey are not too frequent. They require forethought, careful planning, and strategy. She is a night shift nurse, and balancing work commitments, time to sleep, and together time can be a dance. Last Sunday was the annual holiday concert of a great chorus we admire. We are usually gifted tickets to one of the performances by a close friend who is a member of the chorus. The concert is terrific, but it is also followed by a get-together at my friend’s house. Wow, a concert, a chance to socialize with friends, Christmas time goodwill, and I’m with my love? Great.

The concert was incredible, and the after-concert party was very nice. It was marked, though, by a curious conversation.

Coastal Chat

My friend is a boat builder, and I’ve worked in his boatbuilding shop, and I am, in Coastal English, the “Yaad Cavhah” there ( I get called to do all the carving work). The after concert party always has a selection of members of the chorus, “Boaty” types, family friends, and just interesting persons. Conversations can be interesting.

I walked in, and someone I did not know was talking about crabs in lobster pots. Now my mind is kind of funny, I exclaimed, “Jimmies”! To which he replied “right”! This sparked a discussion of crabs( sometimes called Jimmies), Lobstermen, New England fisheries history, and “bycatch” ( stuff that winds up in your traps or nets that shouldn’t be there).

What sort of esoterica is going on here? Well, when I was living in coastal Maine during the sixties and for a while in the seventies. Crabs were just starting to show up in local lobstermen’s traps ( lobster pots). In what may have been an early indication of climate change, the blue crab was migrating into New England waters.

The lobsterman I was working for as a “stern man” at that time was just throwing them back in the water as trash. I explained to him that in the Chesapeake Bay area, they were called Blue Jimmies, and you could pay good money for them. Looking at me like I might be a mad bomber, he cautiously asked me for what? Eating, I replied. He considered this briefly, then finished tossing the crab over the side with a comment that the “Coop ovah to the habaah won’t buy them, so it’s trash!”

Bycatch Cuisine

Our conversation continued with several folks chiming in that things had indeed changed with this tasty bit of bycatch now included in local cuisine. Then the conversation shifted to other types of bycatch. Tasty cod. Cod sometimes winds up in the traps, too. We then spent time discussing how you could cook a tasty cod on the muffler pipe of your lobster boat. One friend of mine used aluminum foil, butter, and chopped veggies to cook a delicious treat while we were pulling pots. Someone else chimed in that a friend of theirs had a smoker on the boat for that purpose.

Heading Home

My wife had been looking at me in a curious fashion during this conversation. She knows about my times on the coast. But doesn’t frequently run into me in full “coastal boy mode”. On the way home, she noted that during the conversation, my accent had shifted, and I was using many words she didn’t know.

I had a good time, and it’s fun to occasionally surprise my love of over forty years with things she didn’t know about me.

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BPOE

A Fandango’s Fashback Friday presentation from December 2020

Small nuggets of fact often are below mountains of folklore. Getting to the nugget is usually impossible. So it is with most sea stories. But this story is true and was told to me by an Admiral I knew back in my Navy days. My first father-in-law, the Cap’n, confirmed it.
Navigation and pilotage are difficult. The texts would have you believe that we have a science before us. It is, in truth, an art. Like many art forms and crafts, there are bits of received knowledge that point the way.

Most mariners can recite verbatim even the most obscure “Rules of the Road” – a set of international rules and regulations for preventing collisions at sea and inland waterways. Beneath those codes are even older traditional sayings and acronyms used to remember basic things – like BPOE- Black Port On Entry. BPOE meant, in my day, that on entry into a harbor, you left the black can buoys to your port side while entering. The black can buoys marked the channel.

Another Sea Story?

And that’s where the old sea story comes in.

It seems there was an admiral of great repute and skill who every morning arose, had his coffee, and went into his day cabin, opened his safe, and read from a note. That accomplished, he put the note back in the safe, locked it, and proceeded with his day. None of his staff knew what was on the paper. After he died, they opened the safe and found this note: “ Port-Left, Starboard-Right.” None of the aids will do any good if you can’t tell Port from Starboard – left from right.

The admiral swore to me on a copy of Bowditch’s American Practical Navigator that he had been among the crew who’d opened the safe. The Cap’n claimed that it was he on board the Liberty Ship Charles Owen that had opened the safe. Even though the ships were thousands of nautical miles apart in space and at least a decade separated in time, I believe the story.

If you spend enough time at sea or even sailing in coastal waters, you learn that human perceptions and memory are frail items. That’s why we have all the rules, aids, and techniques, and still, things go wrong. Ask any sailor. Life on the water is dangerous.

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Pizza

This is a lightly edited post that I originally posted in November of 2020:

When I reentered the marine marketplace in 1992, after about 15 years of absence from things maritime, I thought my business would be eagles, quarterboards, and transom banners. To some extent, I was correct. I’ve done many transoms, quarter boards, some eagles, and a smattering of other carving projects. But fully one-third of all my sales came from small carved table items. At any boat show, there are many overwhelmed wanderers. They are following a partner, parent, or spouse who is nautically obsessed. They hope to find something that might spark their interest. Responding to this, I began offering spoons, spatulas, cutting boards, small carved boxes, and a wide range of small carved items. It was surprising how Sales improved.

As a result of the newfound sales, I sometimes had a fair bit of cash in my pocket at the shows. But having a family with you at a three or four-day event offers opportunities to get separated from the money, fast.

The Bottomless Pit


My oldest son earned the nickname “Bottomless Pit.” Yeah, I know, you had one too. But here’s how he did it.


At one particular show in Maine, an entire group of us went to dinner together. My friend, Ralph, generously offered to pay for the Carreras clan – myself, my wife, the two girls, and the two boys. Wanting to maintain the friendship, I protested. He insisted. Ralph assumed, I think, that the kids couldn’t do too much damage at the Rockport House of Pizza. He had not calculated the sheer ability of said Bottomless Pit to pack it away.

My friends have never had children. They had only heard stories of how adolescents can consume vast amounts and then fill up with more. The Bottomless Pit saw the disbelief in their eyes as he devoured pizza and decided to play to a rapt audience. He reached for an entire fresh pizza, rolled it up, and proceeded to swallow it much as a sword swallower consumed a sword. OK, you ask, what was my wife doing? Trying to get her renegade son under control.

What was I doing – watching the disbelief on my friend’s faces as the Bottomless Pit consumed the pizza in one go. He belched softly and asked for more. About that time, the check arrived, and I saw my friend blanch. I took the check and paid for the family, about $200.00, most of which had been consumed by the Pit. I saw lots of my pocket cash disappear in one meal.

Years passed, but at boat shows, the Legend of the Bottomless Pit lived on. Not wanting to let go of a good story, we staged the photo above just a few years ago to email my friend. An assurance that, yes, the legend continued.

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Man of Mystery

Daily writing prompt
What’s the first impression you want to give people?
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Yes. Indeed, today I may not shave. I also am likely to dress in the same sort of long-sleeved T-shirt that I always do. My ratty dock pants might have once been khaki. But my hair is combed, my teeth brushed, and I am alert and with it. Add the bulky sweater, red LL Bean chamois jacket. First impression? The Way Back Machine has dragged forward a refugee “ole’ timer” from Down East Maine in the 1960s. The boundaries of time have been broken. And a scruffy old soul has wandered our way along with the early snowflakes.

I am not too displeased with this image. It is derived from crusty old Downeasters I knew, as they put it, in my “Salad Days”. Sailing around off the coast. Hanging out in the boatyards or doing casual work, they were people I learned much from. The first thing on their agenda was to dress practically and comfortably for the day. Me too.

Of course, that first impression is ruined. As soon as I speak out tumbles a diatribe that’s fifty percent New York City and fifty percent New England Yankee.

Is it the first impression I want to give people? Or is it the I don’t give a hoot Yankee I seem to channel inwardly? Well, in true New York style I point out that what you see is what you get.

So there.

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Sweet Home

Some of my earliest adventures out of New York occurred in New England. I fell in love with the diversity of environment and society to be found in its comfortably sized environs. In 1965, when I launched from NYC, there was still an enormous amount of diversity in local language, mainly in pronunciation. Different areas within an hour’s drive had different takes on the pronunciation of common words. And then there were the uncommon ones not known outside a limited area. But most of my adventures occurred in only two of the region’s five states: Massachusetts and Maine. And even in those two states I found myself gravitating towards two areas.

Boston

It was Boston that I chose as my base of operation. I soon discovered that many of my friends were not proper Bostonians. They could easily detect the Rhode Islanders from the denizens of Southy (South Boston). Easty ( East Boston) was also distinctive. And that Cambridge was just plain different, being across the river. The arguments over community superiority could grow raucous and rowdy.

Boston was entirely different from East Cambridge, a short walk over the causeway. And the North Shore was geographically and historically distinct form the areas south of Boston.

Within the state of Massachusetts you did not have to travel far to enjoy large cultural and geographic changes.

Maine

Maine immediately drew me in. Not only was the accent different, but the variety of new words was amazing. In the community on the coast, where I ultimately settled for a while, I was described as “being from away.” That term was a lot more complimentary than being described as a “summer complaint.” A summer complaint had originally been summer flu. But came to mean summer residents who were pains.

Eventually, I was introduced to sailing and lobstering. And on the coast to the narrow embayments of the Kennebec and Androskoggin. Offshore, I learned to navigate and pilot by lights, buoys, and tides.

Homeward Bound

It was to Boston and Coastal Maine that I returned from expeditions elsewhere. Eventually, I found myself telling people when I was leaving that I was going home. Then I case my guitar, pack my pack, and hit the road heading back to Boston, Portland, or some similar location. Eventually, I just stayed, went to university, took jobs, and admitted that this was where I belonged.

I’ve settled in central Massachusetts, but given a second chance, I’d scurry with the family back to the coast. It is an adjustment of only sixty miles, but a huge distance in culture, geography, and history. As I said, that’s been the pleasure of the region, you don’t have to go far to get away.

But it is to the coast that I’d scramble. There, I can get really fresh seafood in a seafood restaurant, and the “flats” have their distinctive low-tide scent. You can predict the change in weather with the changes in the tide and wind shifts, and there is a real nautical twilight. Oh, yeah…I know which boatyards occasionally need a marine carver, and which boatbuilding friend can be inveigled out of lofting a boat for a long lunch at our favorite hole in the wall restaurant near Plum Island.

Home, there is nothing like it.

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Chopping Out

If there is one time in carving when you think about it as a big mess, this is it. I call it chopping out. You are essentially removing the waste wood, mainly the background. It’s messy, time-consuming, and necessary. You need to do this before you establish the shapes, masses, and perspectives of the work. It’s messy.

In the case of the current ship portrait, there is a lot of wood to be removed. The panel is eighteen inches by thirty plus. And a lot of that is background needing to be reduced. In this photo, most of the background has been removed, and I am taking out the background around and between the masses of the sails.

I took a long time sketching the lines for the vessel because I remained unsure of how much perspective and volume the carving would take. Better to procrastinate at that stage than when you’ve already removed a large volume of wood.

Somewhere after you’ve finished the chopping in, you begin to refine the shapes, and give a feeling of depth perception. There will be much more depth in this portrait than in most of my works. The ship is heeled over in the wind. As you look at it, the deck will be slanted in your direction, and the sails will be heavily filled and tilted in your direction.

After this ground removal work is done, the deck and bulwarks of the vessel can be defined and the sails shaped. All within less than a half inch in depth. Fun!

Here are a few of my other portraits showing how the process works out when done”

A carved wooden panel featuring a three-masted ship against a textured blue ocean background, with an inspirational quote by Horatio Nelson beneath the ship.
A carved ship portrait featuring a three-masted sailing vessel on waves, with a colorful, layered background.
Ada Bailey
A carved wooden panel depicting a sailing ship with billowing sails, set against a background of blue water. The panel is framed in black and showcases intricate details of the vessel.
Steam Yacht Zaida
Catboat on a chest
Lobster Boat
Two mast hoop portraits
SS Servia
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Decline & Fall – Ships Carving

A Golden Age

The gilt-edged age for the ship carver had to have been the 17th and 18th centuries. The figureheads were the least of it. There were gilded coats of arms, allegorical figures, swags, and elaborately carved moldings everywhere.
Set sail, wind up in a storm, get into a dust-up with the Dread Pirate Roberts or meet up with a French corsair, and when you came back into port, watch the carvers bill rachet skyward. Those cherubs on the starboard Quarter gallery? Somebody’s cannon blew away? They need replacing.


I doubt that carvers grew wealthy. But, there was steady work. Think of it as a handy 17th and 18th-century body shop for ships. “Here’s the estimate- we can try to save that Neptunas Rex on the transom, but it’s cheaper to replace.”
Sometime in the Napoleonic Wars, the British Admiralty began to budget the purse into which captains could dip for replacement swag. Just so much for a frigate, this for a fifth-rate, that for a third and so on. I’ve suspected that the Admiralty knew that some skippers and bosuns were in on a deal with with the carvers – ” I’ve got some cherubs this week buy them from me rather than Smithwick, and I’ll kickback 5%.” The fine art of naval chicanery in practice.
Thus began the inexorable decline and fall of the honorable trade of ships carver.

Things Change

Over on this side of the Atlantic, there were no royal purses to fund tons of gilded frippery. During the glory days of American sail, journalists would visit the docks and write a commentary on which newly arrived vessels were most tastefully attired. Many Maritime Museums display the fine figureheads that once graced the bows of the clippers.

Collection of the Peabody Essex Museum

Then along came the Quakers. They caused crews to mutiny by taking figureheads off vessels and replacing them with sober billet heads. Sail without our Jeremey Bentham figurehead? Never. Figureheads continued to have their day for a while. But, gradually, more modest accouterments became the rule. The cost was part of the reason; fancy carvings were expensive to maintain.
The following photos are from the U.S.S. Constitution Museum (for a detailed article on the Constitutions bow candy dip into this Article: https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/2017/03/03/bow-decor/)

USS Constitution

The first photo came off the Constitution, and the second came from H.M.S. Cyane. Both are good representations of early 19th naval billet heads, spare and none too fancy. But, great representations of the carver’s art.

Two -headed equestrian figurehead from a Royal Navy vessel ( Peabody Essex Museum)

The Final Era

Compared to the two-headed equestrian figurehead ( circa 1750, in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum), the billet heads appear downright dowdy. The final billet heads are from the Penobscot Bay Maritime Museums collection. They have the distinction of being in mint condition Carved by either Thomas or W.L. Seavy of Bangor, Maine. They never were mounted on a ship and represent the end of billet heads for commercial shipping.


Here is a shot of more recent work on a contemporary sailboat.

Lastly, here is a ridiculous bit of plastic on an otherwise pretty boat.

These days a Ships Carver may get a commission for a small billet head like the ones I carved. As shown in this photo:

Three carved wooden figureheads displayed on a table, featuring an eagle head, a stylized figure, and a detailed bird head, with a blue and white patterned tablecloth in the background.

But the bulk of the work is in quarterboards, transom banners and number boards. After I stopped doing boat shows I covered the walls of the porch with the samples I’d display. It gives a fair ide of the variety of wwork people would request.

Wooden plaques with names 'PEARL', 'NAUTILUS', 'CALTHOPE', and 'MANDALAY', along with carved decorative elements on a white wall.
a gallery wall

sic transit gloria mundi

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Going Over Town

Daily writing prompt
What was your favorite subject in school?
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During my undergraduate years, I had the same issues that all students have with course distribution. You have your major, but you need to have a balancing series of courses beyond the major for a distribution that introduces you to a broader education. In my case, as an anthropologist, I needed classes in the sciences. I had plenty of English and Foreign language courses, but I required the sciences. I opted for courses in Geography and Computer Science. My advisor agreed with me that they might be helpful and complement my anthropology major nicely.

Economically the Computer Science classes paid off enormously. I made money in grad school running to the computer center for proffesors who wanted to do statisitcal analysis, but lacked computer skills.

But my love was the geography courses.

I lucked out with a professor of Geography whose special area was cultural geography, which meshed well with my anthropology. But my general geography course was an absolute dream. I could slip away into the world of landmasses, river systems, tectonic plates, and other mysteries that had fascinated me as a child. In my imagination, I could picture ages of erosion, deposition, uplift, and “mass wasting.” It could be a bit transcendent.

I had chosen wisely. Doing research in Coastal Maine, I was happy to find that the post-pleistocene (post-glacial) geography of the coast had huge ramifications for travel, the economy, and town development. The geography background helped clue me in to the things that the maps explained.

The geography even included influences on language. Instead of going to town, you went over town or over to town. This was because you didn’t travel by land but by water. So you got into a boat and traveled across the water to town.

All my geographic courses paid huge bonuses, and I tend not to have a lot of sympathy for those who complain about having to take classes outside their major.

We all have to choose, but maybe they did not choose wisely ( I love to get my Indiana Jones quote in!!!)