I lived on the coast most of my life. My memories of places, people and events frame these stories. I always start with something true…but, I sometimes wander off a bit.
Better With Age
The concept of being wet takes in a bit of territory. On the coast, you can be “wet from birth,” meaning you grew up on the water
Fall Arrives
With September absconding with the warmth of August, I should have been back in Boston. But there I was helping the Cap’n prepare Pysche for the winter layup.
Golden
The Golden One was a large motor sailor with exquisite appointments. The fixtures in the master cabins bath were gold or at least perfect gold plate. It seemed nothing was too good for the master of the Golden One.
Cribbage, Lights List and Coastal Pilot
The broken cribbage board and the Coast Pilot Take me back to the days when I learned to “Hand, Reef, and Steer” aboard the 34-foot ketch Psyche.
Chow
A lobsterman I knew back in the day was a chef on board his floating diner, his lobster boat.
The Muffler
My first wife’s favorite color was purple, and the Grey Menace’s Favorite thing to lie upon was her long purple woolen muffler. He’d wait until she had placed it on a chair after coming out of the winter weather. Then, once he was sure she was not looking, he’d start dragging it away to his lair
Anchor
Sailors can fill idle hours with stories about the sea’s mysteries. And
popular literature is full of tales about the Kraken, mermaids, the sirens, and other ancient inhabitants of the deep. It’s easier for the land-based to accept fantastic myths than cope with a deck of foaming green sea threatening to wash you away despite lifelines.
Not So Little Mermaid
So…yes, this isn’t carved, but as this fiberglass concoction hangs, so also hangs a tale of carving.
What You See
One of the forms of torture the US Navy inflicted on recruits was a series of swimming tests. So, of course, you’d expect the Navy to want minimum floatation abilities, right? The final test, you could not graduate from Basic Training without passing it, was a challenging one for me.
A Small Eagle – A flashback Friday presentation from 2018
This eagle is barely eleven inches wide, not my smallest, but diminutive none the less. It’s a good miniature project for a woodcarver. Pine is great wood, but fine detail in small sizes are not its strong suit. Would this pop out at you in cherry, plum or box? Sure, but my objective was to do what was possible with a butt end from a #3 common plank. A piece of kindling in other words. Why, just because it was the middle of summer and I needed something to do while larger projects developed.
Dissonance
The other day I had a strange experience. Someone had posted a video of the fourth of July celebration in the community where I used to live on the Maine Coast.
Stash
I was talking to Spinney. It was a late August Sunday evening, and we watched the sun sink into the bay. A conversation about the green flash had evolved into a discussion of the Golden Age of Piracy.
Dining with the Devil- a flashback Friday presentation from 2018
When I restarted my business in the 1990s, I was eager to work and eager to do work that would build my portfolio. I was doing mostly boat portraits, transom banners, quarter boards, and that beautiful booth fee payer spoons, spatulas and cutting boards.
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