Category: nautical

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Gurry

I have never been overly fond of lobster.

Everyone has their limits. For me, filling the bait bags was it. Lobsters are not fussy eaters, so the stuff in the bait bag does not have to be high-class vittles.
I was not squeamish. You don’t last in an operating room if you can’t put a bung in your roiling guts during a septic case when the odor is powerful. But the job of filling bait bags was disgusting.
The long gloves I was issued for the job reeked on their own and seemed to make the odor persist on my hands and arms long after I had washed with the Fels Naptha soap.

The Cap’n who had secured this “plum” job maintained that I had too delicate a disposition. He made this statement while tucking into his second lobster over Sunday dinner. Lobster that I had obtained at a reduced price for the family. Let’s see… my wife, Grace, Cora, The Capn’, brother-in-law Franklin, nephew Douglas, and Franklin’s wife, Maryanne. Counting in myself and a couple of spares, that was nine prime lobsters – not the sort you’d get from the supermarket. The Capn’ hauling over one of the spares smiled at me and said, “Wes, this is the best job you’ve had!”
I looked down at my hands which I’d swear still smelled of gurry (liquified fish guts). But then, I asked myself. ” are these the hands of a famous anthropologist? Will I dine out on my tales of filling bait bags in coastal Maine?”Somehow I do not think so.
” Spinney says he’ll put me on at this boat yard four days a week.”

Silence at the table. Then Cora asked, “you’d rather paint and varnish than become a lobsterman?” The Cap’n opined,” more like scrape barnacles and put on bottom paint!” Everyone else at the table had the sense to stay out of this. The goal was to convince Wes that life on the coast was superior to fieldwork as an anthropologist in Spain or the Philippines. And incredibly more authentic than teaching bored undergraduates and engaging in bitter academic feuds. Of course, I now know they were correct, but back then, it was a matter of self-determination. I had a hunger for the life they were putting down and had a right to choose my path.

If it turned out that anthropology didn’t work, there were worse things than being a carver or working in a boatyard…like sitting in the lobsterman’s shanty all winter knitting netting for the lobster pots or discussing the cost of the oak stock needed to repair or make the pots. Of course, now I know that not all lobstermen were like the one I worked with, but then I was working with what I experienced. I worked at the boatyard, and the bottom paint is pretty awful. In fall I returned to school.

Many years later, the anthropology jobs played out, and interestingly I wound up back at a boatyard for a while scraping, painting, and varnishing. I took up the carving tools again and remastered the art of carving an eagle.

I am still not too fond of lobster, and I swear I smell gurry when I pick one up.

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Zaida “sits” for her portrait

Although the steam yacht Zaida sits within the frame on the wall, it is not quite complete. More steel wool rubbing is needed on the oil-varnish finish, and the sails’ detailing needs recutting where final sanding is removed it. I also may gold leaf the filigree at the bow. But I needed a break from work and wanted to see how it looked hung the wall.

This is my second run at the Steam Yacht Zaida. I’ve used different techniques and am more satisfied with the outcome.
To be clear, I do not do scale models. This is neither flat art nor scale modeling. It’s very much in line with the 19th century Dioramas that sailors made of the vessels they served on.

Zaida was built in 1910 at the J.S. White yard In Cowes, England. I’ve shown her here as she appears in the builders drawing. The drawing suggested a seriously overrigged arrangement which included a square yard forward and the possibility of a large staysail amidships. I doubt she ever flew that much canvas since she is described as a twin-screw auxiliary schooner.
For this portrait, I’ve reduced the sail plan to something more modest for the deck division to handle. However, at 149 feet in length, she must have had a relatively large crew.

In 1916 Zaida became an auxiliary Patrol vessel in the Royal Navy, armed with six-pound guns. Unfortunately, she was sunk while on patrol near Alexandria that August.

What’s involved in making one of these portraits? First, research, then selective compression of what you will include, and then carving. Research may be as easy as using a builders illustration to figure out the lines for a small sailboat like a small sloop or catboat. But on a larger vessel, especially an older one, research may never yield the sort of completion you wish. For every ship for which a plan exists in a research library or online database, thousands exist only in grainy photos and magazine articles. Sometimes these are the most interesting.

background being leveled
The carving with some of the research material
carving mostly complete
final stages

After research, you must create a plan for the hull, sail, stacks, and other parts. Sometimes commercial parts exist, but other times it all must be fabricated. Then you can start carving, and in many ways, that is the easy part. The total number of hours? For Zaida, about five hours of research, five of design, and fourteen for carving. Finishing is about four hours. So Zaida required about twenty-eight to thirty hours total. Of course, all this varies depending upon the size, research required, and amount of carving and finishing.

A small sloop is relatively quick to do. And small sloops, catboats, and schooners make up most of the portraits. Something like Zaida is for stretching your skills.

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Talk Like A Sailor

In some circles, I have been known as a master of the vernacular; past and future tense.
Being a sailor, a marine carver, descendent of salty ones, and child of the complex nuptial of the get of Poseidon and Tethys, I have been known to create a delicate blend of sophisticated argots into blindingly obtuse slander.

I can toss completely clean verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and, yes, even nouns into an amazingly passionate, occasionally verbose soup of obscenity.

I admit not all are gifted. Just watch my response to “Hello, Sailor!”

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Psyche

Bring back this post from June 2019 as a flashback, and yes I am still looking for her!

The last time I saw her was in August of ’75. She wore Oregon Buff and Bikini Blue, and was swinging casually at her mooring in the Townsend Gut.
Last night I dreamed that I was entering her cabin from aft in the galley, and just before the main accommodation hung the two hand-carved portraits of her sailing wing on wing before a wood grained wind.
I was reasonably new to carving then, and that degree of mastery was beyond me. Somehow whenever my memory finds my way back to those portraits, I find my way back to Psyche. The portraits were the inspiration that led me to boat and ship portraiture as my principle carving interest.
If anyone knows where she is, please let me know. I left a chunk of my heart with her: Thirty-four-foot wooden ketch with a drop keel, sweet lines, and beautiful sheer; has a bit of a weather helm…but, nobody’s perfect.

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Kendrick’s Gold

It was the barest glimmer of gold. Barely a speck. I took the empty cup and dug into the coarse sand, trying to recapture that gleam.
When I found it, it was surprisingly large, more the size of a half dollar, and gleaming brightly in the setting sun. I held it up to show Georgia. “Oh, Wes, that will look good on a chain around my neck.” But, feeling more than a bit possessive, I told her, “only if I find its mate so we can both have one.” We used empty cups to filter the coarse sand but found no mates to the doubloon. With a sharp eye, the Cap’n told us that it was that.
“Best to throw it back.” We had no intention of throwing it back. “Some of Kendrick’s gold, I expect. It’s best to throw it back now rather than curse it and throw it back later.
Over the next hour, the story came out. The pirate Kendrick’s had lost the sloop Belle Isle offshore on the Widows, he and the crew had gotten off, but the Belle Isle was lost with all the proceeds from raiding along the coast that season. A week of salvaging had brought almost no results, and Kendrick cursed the wreck and whoever salvaged her cargo.

“So better to toss it back now than later; it’s done nobody good in the past. Others have found it, and none have kept it. Sooner or later, it winds up back here being sifted in the sands near the Widows. They had a doubloon up to the town Historical Society when I was a boy. They had a program on Kendrick and his gold, and then the building burned to the ground. The doubloon was there in the middle of the wreckage, unmelted. They were smart and tossed it back here where it belongs.”

There was no way either Georgia or I would toss it back into the tide. Over the next two days, we spent every spare moment sifting sand, looking for a matching piece. I held onto the original. Georgia looked at it with envy, and every time I allowed her to hold it, I felt a bit bereft for not having its solid weight in my palm.

On day three, the car broke down, and we walked to the little shingle and sand beach. Unfortunately, Georgia fell and sprained her ankle hopping from stone to stone on day four. However, the Cap’n maintained that it was not mere misfortune. Day five was marred by food poisoning. It was Sunday, and I ate what everyone else ate; lobster. But only I got sick. My dreams were marred by Kendricks visiting me and demanding his gold back.

On Monday, I woke from food poisoning to find the gold gone. Georgia had taken it to a jeweler for fitting into a necklace. That evening we had the worst fight ever, and I almost struck her. With an insane fervor, I raged at how stupid she was to leave the gold with a complete stranger. I immediately drove over town and retrieved the coin from a bewildered jeweler.

When I returned, I found the Captain and Georgia talking to a reporter from the local paper about how we had found the coin. I refused to speak or allow the coin to be photographed. Later the Cap’n found me down by the float replacing a worn line. “Give it up now, Wes; this is how it starts. It’s just small stuff, and then it builds until something fatal happens, or it gets returned to the tides.”

I stood up and made to hop aboard the ketch. I slipped and, in catching myself, wrenched my arm and fell between the float and the boat. A swell first moved the ketch away and then crushed me against the float. I saw nothing for a long while.

When I woke, I was in the emergency room. I reached for my pants on the chair but found the pocket empty. I began yelling. The Cap’n was the first to appear. ” you can quit hollering. It’s gone. I deep-sixed it in the tide not long after bringing you in.”
Something about the term deep-six brought back memories of my father talking to me about Davy Jones and how lost sailors and possessions gone overboard all belonged to Davy. Sometimes, the tides tossed up Davy Jones’s Locker items, but they were on loan only. So sooner or later, they would find their way back to the sea.
Speaking to the Cap’n, I found that agreement on this was a rare time my Marine Engineer father and Master Mariner father-in-law were in agreement: cursed items belonged to Davy, and it was best to leave them where found. Or return them ASAP.

After that, Georgia and I stayed away from the little shingle and sand beach. It took me several weeks to recover from my mishap, and after that, I have been careful regarding what I remove from the sea.

Last month there was an article in a glossy New England-themed magazine. They now think that they’ve located the Belle Isle and her cargo using exceptional underwater imaging technology. So I took a chance and wrote to the head of the expedition, explaining my experience. I received a thank you note and an invitation to the exhibition opening.

I instead think that I won’t go.

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A Sailor’s Prayer

 

Long ago I was a Sailor.
I have put this up before, but it might even be you?
So here it is again. It’s who I am.
Long ago I was a Sailor.
I sailed the Ocean blue.
I knew the bars in Singapore…
The coastline of Peru.
I knew well the sting of salt spray,
The taste of Spanish wine,
The beauty of the Orient…
Yes, all these things were mine.
But I wear a different hat now,
Jeans & T-shirts too.
My sailing days were long ago…
With that life, I am through.
But somewhere deep inside of me…
The sailor lives there still.
He longs to go to sea again,
But knows he never will.
My love, my life, is here at home,
And I will leave here never.
Though mind and body stay ashore…
My heart’s at sea forever

Memorial Day is obsessed with the Military.

Merchant Marine losses during the Second World War exceeded the individual losses of the Army, Navy or Marine Corp. Over four percent of the serving sailors lost their lives. That’s just in US service. I am not sure about the losses of our Allies like the British Merchant Navy.

Despite this heavy sacrifice little is said on Memorial Day about the dead and missing Merchant Mariners. My own father survived two ships sunk by torpedo.

While you are thinking tomorrow of the sacrifice in war time take a moment to think about the Merchant sailors who gave their lives to supply the war effort.

There are many Sailors Prayers and poems about the sailor coming home from the sea. Someone named L. Hutton wrote this one, and it describes to a T my father; who I’ll be thinking about on Memorial Day.

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Smallest YT in the Navy?

As you may know I like to carve portraits of ships and boats. So I studiously snap photos of anything I find on the water that’s of interest.

A few years ago I visited a friend in Boston, and stopped to visit the USS Constitution. Alongside I found this. I’m not sure if I should refer to it as a mini tug or a mini tender. In any case It’s duly marked as Navy. Hmmmmmm…. an ensign’s command? Crew of one?

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Foundations

One of the foundation myths for my mother’s family was that they are descended from a first mate on one of Henry Morgan’s ships. On the way home from the Sack of Panama, they stopped off in a small island paradise, and he jumped ship. Being a Gentleman of Fortune, a Privateer ( I’ll use my bloody cutlass on any that say the word pirate…that clear mate?) He was probably athirst for a tot of Kill Devil rum and a nice spot to watch the ebb and flow of the tide. While some might see his having swallowed the anchor as being demoted from first mate, I’ll bet he saw it as a chance to steer away from those endless Captain’s Conferences – “So where shall we pillage next? Barbados? Naw, been there, done that! What! Round the horn to the Spice Islands? Please! Foods too spicey!”

This is my favorite foundation story in the family. On my father’s side, they were all law-abiding mariners – boring!

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Character

The little boat did kind of look like a terrapin. It was a bit beamy and of a design almost guaranteed not to capsize. It was a perfect small tender for a larger boat. And a safe one for a couple of adventurous teens to explore the Harbor. I had enjoyed my time with the kids as they “helped” design the transom banner I’d carve for them.

What I hadn’t enjoyed was my negotiation with their smarmy parents. They thought my asking price could be negotiated – rather haggled down. So instead, I reversed my usual fifty percent upfront and the balance on receipt and told them to pay it all in advance. It was that time of year when everybody wanted their boat in the water, trim and ready for summer. I had plenty of work and had a rare event: a queue of people wanting my services. So pay up; they did.

I found a short of mahogany for the transom banner from the shorts bin at Spinney’s boatyard. A short is leftover when a long plank is cut to needed size. The remainder is too long to be scrap and too small for most other jobs. But it’s just perfect for small carving jobs. Neither boat yards nor carvers make money on waste. I went into the office to pay for the wood and noticed that Terrapins “master” was in the office arguing with Spinney over storage costs for the previous winter. As he left, Spinney and I exchanged looks. As soon as he was out of hearing range, Spinney mentioned that the client might not find room for storage at Spinney’s next winter.

I delivered the banner on time and spent little time thinking about Terrapin, her owners, or their motor sailing Yacht called Queenie. But around the end of August, Queenie’s owners came asking me to carve quarterboards for Queennie. Hoping the payment issues were settled, I quoted a fair price for carved and gilded letters in teak. But once again, there was an eternal haggle over the cost of stock, gold leaf, and my labor. I eventually told them to go to a painter for lettering because I was too busy to take their work.

Not more than a month later, Events hit a pinnacle when Queenie needed to be hauled out for storage. Spinney told them flat out that he was downsizing his storage capacity, and they should move their storage cradle and find a new location for the winter storage. More than a few disputes had dotted the season over the use of utilities, mooring, and repairs. Every cost was disputed, slow paid, and full of anger.

Queenie was finally relocated to Grays on the other side of the Harbor for more expensive storage prices – old man Gray had seen the smoke coming from Spinney’s ears and decided to charge a premium for his last spot. The sign painter heard my complaints at the diner over breakfast one morning. The ships’ chandlery ceased offering credit for Quennies supplies, and the sailmaker was reluctant to take their business, and they wound up doing business with someone over to Boothbay.

We were sitting in Spinney’s office on a windy October morning, drinking coffee by the woodstove, when the topic of Queenie and her owners came up. They had spent an entire year creating bad feelings wherever they went. Spinney mentioned that the Harbor was a small place, and rumor traveled far and wide with great speed. Eventually, it caught up with them.

Spinney sipped his coffee, stroked his cat’s head, and opined that “It was best to remember Tom Paine’s advice that “Character is much easier kept than recovered.”