Tag: adventures in coastal living

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Lazy Bones

Bubba Gray was having a meltdown. His wife and the business manager wanted him to accept a contract to restore an old rum runner, and Bubba was saying there was no way on earth that the cursed thing was coming into his yard. Lazy Bones had famously killed its owner, his lover, and two mobsters in the thirties when it brought Canadian whiskey into Maine harbors. It had spent thirty years in a shed, and according to Bubba, it was there the damned boat remained. His wife quietly argued that he either accepted the contract or found another way to extract the yard from eminent bankruptcy.

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At The Fair

They were buff, blonde and buxom. They studied Aquadynamics at one of those sunbelt universities in Florida, the Virgins, or Hawaii. The details were vague, and the group surrounding them was not particular about the details. We were too stunned, indeed engulfed, by their beauty. They could have rattled off the contents of a Chiltons' auto repair manual, and they would have smiled and nodded their idiot heads.

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The Great Sail Contest

The Mermaid Inn was not the best in town. However, it had the distinction of surviving an insurance fire staged by New York owners and abandonment in the Great Depression. Having survived hardship, The Inn had acquired the crusty "knock me down, and I'll get back up" reputation that locals admired because they saw it as among their best traits.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Chow

A lobsterman I knew back in the day was a chef on board his floating diner, his lobster boat.

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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

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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.

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Weather

Tide charts, the sun rising and setting. These are on my shop door.