Tag: nautical

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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. I was going on about how the piratical equivalent of the fence was really the most essential part of the operation. There wasn’t much “yo ho ho and a bottle of rum” without the cash to pay for the booze and fast women. Spinney allowed that this was true. He took a sip of his beer. Then, looking out over the bay, he went silent for a moment. Finally, he said: “it’s not just about a good fence; it’s also about a good place to hold the goods until the fence can move them, or until the fence agrees to a price.” I did a fast take on Spinney, “What?” This was Spinney speaking, deacon of his church, most ethical boatyard owner on this stretch of the coast.

Spinney said, “My family has been around this stretch of the coast since before the first Census. Even before the Revolution. Some families claim to have been here before the Pilgrims landed. Not a few of us moved goods that the Crown saw as against the “Navigation Acts.” My father was known to move goods from offshore and Canada during Prohibition. Not my family, but others made a racket some years ago, breaking into summer people’s homes and emptying them out. An excellent place to stow goods is essential. You can’t exactly keep two hundred cases of Canadian Whiskey in your garage. Well, you could, but that’d be the first place they’d look, Likewise with stowing four rooms of antique furniture.

I bit. “OK, where would you put it”? Spinney looked towards the bay, pointed out to Boomkin Island, then a bit further to the ledges known as the Spires. “Out there, here and there.” The summer cottage break-ins were solved because the police chief was a Grey. He knew the spots that old Alden Grey used in the Thirties. Unfortunately, Alden’s grandson was no Alden. He had no clue that other family members knew those spots. Todd was not too bright, and the Chief didn’t like a family member dragging the Grey name in the mud. So one morning, they rounded up the furniture and soon rounded up Todd. That was the last I can recall of the old spots being used. There were a few attempts to use sites on Old Ram, but those were outsiders.

“So Spinney, are there still goods out there? Could you show me a spot or two?”
Spinney quickly changed the subject to sports, a topic he knew I knew nothing about and liked less. Soon afterward, the sun went down, and we each went our own ways.

Next week Spinney showed up in his battered green pickup truck. I offered him a cold beer, but he said: “no time for that now if we’re going to get to the Little Widows before dark.” I didn’t bother questioning but assumed this was the inevitable continuation of our last conversation. Spinney was going to show me one of the spots. “Now I know that you anthropologists make a point of confidentiality. So understand that what I’m going to show you is in the way of being a family trade secret.” I glibly agreed never to reveal the secret … not that I could ever pilot a boat out to the nubs of rock and spruce we were about to visit.
“Anyhow, one of the Widows has been a family spot since before the Revolution. There are lots of Spinneys in the state. But, particularly my family to this one town. So my spots are only known to close family.” As Spinney laid out the family history, we were going recklessly, or so it seemed to me, through narrow passages from the inner bay to the outer. I had once been out with Spinney in a thick fog that he had navigated through solely by the benefit of the rare sounding, dead reckoning, and wave sounds from adjacent shores.

The sun was almost gone when we reached the tiny islet he assured me was the location of a Spinney spot. Searching around in the tide, Spinney eventually found a rusted chain with a shackle. To this, he secured the boat. Walking into the thicket of stunted oak and spruce, Spinney suddenly reached out and stopped me. He reached down and grabbed the edge of a ratty tarp. Shaking off several years of storm wrack, leaves, and jetsam, Spinney revealed a rusted metal hatch plate. “Grab the other side. I haven’t been out this way for years, and the last time I was still young enough to handle this myself.”
Lifting up the hatch almost pulled my arms out of their sockets. In his 80’s, Spinney was as lean and spare as they come. He was known as a compact powerhouse around his yard. Straining not to drop my end of the hatch, I awkwardly crab-walked back the few yards while Spinney effortlessly walked off with his side. “Ok, put this down easily now.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a flashlight, and careful not to shine the light about, he illuminated the contents of the stash. “We have to be careful about the light. Don’t want anyone ashore getting curious”. Inside were stacks of wooden cases, brandy, Scots Whiskey, rye, Canadian, liquors, sherry, and more. I felt a terrible thirst building. It had been a dry ride out, and the night was cooling. Spinney must have read my mind because I next heard the clink of two shot glasses being pulled out of his jacket. “What shall it be?” asks Spinney, as politely as the bartender at the Anchor Bar over in the harbor. “Well, Spinney, it’s your stash, so it’s your choice.”

Spinney cast the light over the stash and waved his hand over a few of the closest cases while he contemplated his selection. Then, reaching down seemingly randomly, he pulled up a Napoleon brandy. “This will take off the chill.” Opening the bottle with a bit of flair, Spinney pours us both a shot that we knock back fast, making room for refills. We lingered over the refills. I’m sitting on a speck of an island, drinking from a stash of booze that’s been sitting there since Prohibition. I am in on one of the biggest secrets on the coast. I’m also thinking about how hard it would be to confirm documentation from other families about similar spots and traditions. I am thinking about an article in American Anthropologist (Traditions and Family in Illicit Coastal Trades: Stashes and Spots along the Mid Maine Coast). It could help me get a tenure track after I finish my dissertation.
Spinney has been my confidant for years. He has questioned me closely about anthropology and academia as I have asked him about life in a coastal community. In the jargon of my trade, Spinney is a “key informant.” In short, Spinney knows what is running through my head. But then, quietly, he refills our glasses and says, “No, you’ll never be able to write it up, except maybe when you’re my age. But, it’ll be a nice story to tell when you’re out for drinks.”
I looked at Spinney and said: “Yeah, especially when I add that I sat here drinking booze hidden from the time of Prohibition.”

Spinney sat there quiet for a few minutes. “Uh. Wes?” “Yeah?” “This stuff is old, but it’s not from Prohibition. About twenty years ago, I closed the roadhouse we used to run on Route 29. The rest of the family are straight-out teetotalers, and I couldn’t stow this stuff in the barn, so I stashed it out here”.
“Oh.”

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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.
At one of my regular annual shows, I was approached by a boat owner who’d haunted my booth at this and other shows without doing much other than “rudder kicking” – looking, but not buying. That Friday however, Mr. Kicker seemed ready to do business. He needed a billet head and trailboards to dress up his newly restored sloop. We talked cost and design and agreed that I’d do both. That was when I failed to observe my first “Shipscarver’s Principle of Doing Business”; I failed to ask for and receive a down payment on the work. Sometimes failing to do things in the proper order dooms you to a downward spiral, and that’s pretty much what happened here.
I so wanted to do some impressive work for my portfolio that I was well into the design for the billet head that it wasn’t until then that I asked. His budget was overextended, but he’d get it for me soon. Soon.

The billet head was not a typical design with a concentric spiral wreathed with acanthus leaves, star or some other design elements near the center. It was very simple but of a design type more familiar to the Chesapeake Bay area. The spiral curves around an eccentric center and is off the vertical axis. The trailboards were also to be Chesapeake Bay style in design with cannons, cannon balls, and other decorations from that area. An interesting job.
Soon the little billet head was done and mounted. The design issues with the trailboards mounted, and the requests for money went unanswered. I began to hoard my design drawings; fearing that if I sent them to the client, they’d soon wind up in the hands of another carver. The client responded that without seeing the design updates, he couldn’t send a down payment.
That was when sanity prevailed. The billet head was gone; the design time on the boards was gone. But, it is evident that if I gave the design to Mr. Kicker, or worse carved the boards, I’d be out much more time and money. I stopped responding to emails and calls other than to state bluntly that without payment, work would not proceed.

Eventually, I became tied up in other projects. Mr. Kicker became a background irritation that I gradually ignored. Then one day at a large in the water boat show I stopped dead and stared at a sloop tied up to the wharf. My friend asked what’s wrong. “That’s my billet head on that damn boat.” “Are you sure?” “This father knows his own children” was my reply. Because, almost every carver has a style, cuts, tool marks, design quirks, something that marks his work as their own. And there before me was my billet head. But, some six or seven years on still no boards.
We stood there while I told him the whole sordid story, and I included the fact that some years ago, I had sealed the mess shut as a lesson in how not to do business. My friend looked at me and said, ” He just put in a big order for hoops and blocks.”

“Well, make sure that you get all your money upfront. ‘He who sups with the Devil should do so with a long spoon’.”

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Rooted

I entered my shop this morning to smell linseed oil, varnish, and wood shavings. I was transported to my friend’s boat shop in Newbury, the WoodenBoat School in Brookline, Maine, the shipyard I worked in one summer, and the shops of mentors and friends from over the past fifty years. A woodworker’s aromatherapy.

It’s hard to explain the languor that overcomes you as you share the unity of experience across the years and distances. It’s like you could step back twenty years or five hundred miles. One place and a single time stand-in for the others. The chips and shavings on the floor tell a story. Put them all together and have a negative shape echoing the garboard or eagle crafted from the plank.

There is a connection also, across the generations, to the mentors and masters who taught the trade to us. They sit on chairs near the woodstove during the winter, drinking coffee, smoking pipes, talking about the weather, and telling tales of launchings so long ago that the keel timbers are dust. Occasionally one will stand by our shoulder, whispering a suggestion.

I’ve been in the large industrial spaces some people call workshops, and I think they lack the sort of connectedness of the more familiar locations I am talking about. Instead, they perform a robbery of the spirit.

Maybe it’s the lack of patterns hanging from the joists, remnants of projects completed fifty years ago. The faint pencil marks tell a history of later revision as the project was modified for another client. Somewhere in the shop, you can find everything you’d ever need, every bolt, screw, or grade of sandpaper. All you have to do is find it.

So this morning, I entered my shop to smell linseed oil, varnish, and wood shavings. I was transported to my friend’s boat shop in Newbury, the WoodenBoat School in Brookline, Maine, the shipyard I worked in one summer, and the shops of mentors and friends from over the past fifty years. It’s nice to be rooted.

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Fish

I had zero reasons for resenting the bird that stole my fish. In truth, I hate cleaning fish. I hate fish guts. That derives from filling bait bags for lobster traps one summer when my in-laws thought it would be a great idea for me to work as a stern man for a lobsterman. That didn’t last. I had zero aptitudes for even simple things like using the gauge correctly.

In fact, I’d prefer, well, almost, applying bottom paint to a boat than filling bait bags. So when the bird stole the fish. I felt little pain. Dinner would be fish and chips at the local restaurant, and I was happier for it.

So I quickly zipped up my bag, walked into town, and had a great dinner looking out on the harbor. When asked what luck I’d had, I said, “ Zip, Zero, Zilch.” Some days are better than others.

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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.” 

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Bilge Rat

The King James Version of the bible says that “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest.” However, at sea, things are different: 

“Six days thou shalt labor and do all thou art able, and on the seventh, holystone the decks and scrape the cable.” – Dana’s Philadelphia Catechism. 

My father quoted me this as we’d head off to perform some extra job he had on a Sunday, and I was not surprised when my father-in-law mentioned it to me years later. While my father had been engine room, and my father in law bridge working the ship and doing ships work, all were twenty-four a day, seven days a week priorities. I came to understand this when I went to sea. I realized but did not appreciate it.

I had the reasonable expectation of having escaped this never-ending cycle of toil on becoming both a civilian and having swallowed the anchor.

The first hint that life wouldn’t be late Sunday mornings in the rack came on my first long weekend at my new wife’s family home. Located on Maine’s mid-coast, it was a speck of a town that boasted all of 490 year-round residents.

I first heard my wife say: “Wes, Daddy could use a little help on the boat….” I saw it as a once in awhile bonding ritual. Daddy was the Cap’n, a retired master Merchant Mariner uneasy ashore.

The little bonding rituals started taking up free time every time we came up from Boston and entire months when we were in “residence.” At first, it was little things, “Wes, Daddy needs you to go to the lumberyard with him.” 

Then it escalated. The Cap’n needed me to scrape the hull and put on the bottom paint. The Cap’n had a repair job and needed help. At last, the Cap’n had an old dragger that he was fixing up, and its hull needed to be chipped. But, without a doubt, the worst proved to be: “Wes, can you help Daddy clean out the bilges on the boat?” It turned out that Daddy didn’t need help; he assigned the job to me.

Like you, I have limited my time in bilges to the bare minimum. By way of reek, their reputation proceeds them. But that’s only on your average boat. There were forty or so years of accumulated oil, assorted gunk, probably fish guts, and who knew what else on this beast.

Having never cleansed a bilge, I sought advice: First, hose it down with detergent; make sure the drain cocks are open. After the first time hose it out again. 

Now make sure all the limber holes were cleaned out. Hose it out again. A limber hole is an opening in a ship’s frame to allow all the gunk, junk, and scum to flow through. The filth sits between the frames if they are blocked instead of getting flushed out. After all this, the Cap’n determined that the bilge was much improved. But, it was not up to his standards. I better steam clean it. 

I had used a steam cleaner in Boot Camp on punishment duty. So, I was set to clean the galley’s garbage cans with a steam cleaner. Whatever infraction you may have done, you’ll never do it again after doing that. It was mid-winter in Great Lakes Training Station. There were no hazmat suits; you steamed the smelly cans out in your work uniform and peacoat. Afterward, you were not welcome in the barracks because the odor clung to you like a fog of cess.

I sought out the yard sup, and he provided a steam cleaner on a cart, set it up, and got it going. His one bit of advice: “Wes, just watch out for blowback.” Not wanting to appear to be a rank newbie, I knowingly smiled and started my job. A few minutes into the job, I poked the tip of the cleaner into a recess and let it flow. I instantly learned what he meant by blowback when a fog of forty-year-old bilge cess covered me from head to toe. It was primarily oily residue with high notes of fish gurry mixed with lower tones from a leaky marine toilet and a heady scent of the fragrance from the detergent I had used in my earlier cleaning. I immediately bent over and lost my lunch. I now had more to clean up. 

Hearing me retch the yard sup, and the Cap’n came to inspect my job. They said nothing.  

I finished the job with much higher caution and remembered to close drain cocks.

It was good that I had ridden over to the yard on my bicycle. No one would have allowed me in their car. When I got home, my wife summarily handed me a change of clothes, a fresh Fels Naptha soap bar, and a bucket. I made my way to the hose and repeatedly soaped up.

Recently, many public personalities have had their careers checked as photos of them emerged wearing black or brown faces. Nobody thought to snap a shot of me in my streaky, blotchy face. Not that I have a public profile worth ruining. It was days before I was clean. I could not blame anyone on the first night I spent on a porch; I was up half the night with my odor.

I’ve since learned that my experience was not unique. If I had asked the sup what was meant by the blowback, I could have avoided most of my mess. So maybe it’s true what’s said about men not liking to ask for directions. 

It is advised that you clean your bilge regularly. Rather than letting things go to extremes. These days, many safe products will help you do it. Hazmat suits help, and please do not call on me to assist.

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Getting Wisdom

Spinney let me accompany him one afternoon while he did a marine survey of a sloop one of his regular customers was interested in buying. The sloop was on the hard, so Spinney first walked around, taking in the general lines and appearances of the boat. Next, he noted and mentioned to me items the general upkeep and condition of the boat.
“Many people think a coat of paint will hide disrepair, but you’re not only looking at the superficial, but you’re also looking at the deeper fitness of the vessel, and paint can only hide so much.”
Walking to the transom, he got up on a ladder, closed his eyes, and ran his hands along the wood. Then, smiling, he hopped down and brushed his hands off. ” Transom is overdue for work. If the owner ignored the transom that badly, the next spot I’ll check is the garboard planks.” The garboard planks are the wide planks closest to the keel. Spinney pulled out a long icepick and gave me a playful look, then he stabbed the garboard, and the ice pick slid in easily.
“Well, I’ll finish the survey, but I’d never advise Johnson to buy this sloop; too much work deferred too long and not enough maintenance. So forgo the basics this year, and in the next, you’ll have double the work to do on a wooden hull.”
On our way to Spinney’s boatyard, I opined that he must have a lot of experience in surveying to know what to look for when doing a survey. He gave me a narrow-eyed squinty look, shook his head, and reminded me that experience isn’t wisdom.
“Wisdom is acquired by understanding the lessons of experience. Most people go crazy gaining experience but take no time to examine its lessons. It’s all a rush to add something to a resume. Years go by, and they haven’t gained a single shard of wisdom from all that experience.”

This getting of wisdom is still something I work on bit by bit. It sounds so easy, but it’s so difficult.

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A Seaman’s Primer

In my opinion life at sea is no place to learn some basics you should have learned while still ashore. You are likely to learn all your sailorly knowledge at the hands of more experienced sailors, but conduct on liberty is not something you’ll find in the Blue Jacket’s Manual or a book on navigation. Correct conduct can save you from some fearsome experiences. So, pipe down, and listen up. Here are the basic nine things you need to know:

My maritime education began at about age nine as I assisted my father on jobs aboard the large party fishing boats in New York’s Sheepshead Bay. As an engineer in the Merchant Marine, my Dad had been on several world cruises, numerous passages to China and Japan, and had survived two torpedo sinkings. He was eminently qualified to pass along a Seaman’s Primer:

  • 1.) Keep your wallet in your front pocket so it can’t be stolen. Seeing a sailor running down the street in a liberty port pursued by a pimp who had cut his wallet out of his back pocket confirmed my father’s take on this.
  • 2.) Be careful what articles and agreements you sign. Fairly obvious, but for a sailor, this one can be deadly. On my father’s first passage, the mutiny of all the crew except the engine room ingrained that in him and subsequently in me.
  • 3. The police use tattoos to identify you, and many people have the same artwork. My father had the usual eagle with fouled anchors that thousands of mariners had, so he knew.
  • 4.) Sooner or later, every sailor winds up under the tutelage of some deck ape bosun (known “affectionally” as Boats) who wants you to chip paint. So my Dad’s advice was to learn how to create a map; it looks like you are keeping busy. My father’s favorite was a map of Ireland. From personal experience, I can tell you that this does not work when deployed against older mariners who also know the trick.
  • 5.) In a bar, stay close to the exits, stick with your shipmates, don’t get into card games in the backroom, and oversee the barkeep as he pours your drink. As soon as someone gets shoved and things get loud – get out.
  • 6.) Always look like you know where you are going. Don’t dawdle. Walk with confidence.
  • 7.) Can the arrogance. Treat people politely. Most fights start because people swagger around, acting like jerks.
  • 8.) Always find out how good the cook is on any ship you think about shipping out on. On a long voyage, food is essential.
  • 9.) Different ships, different long slices. You may know that the way things got done on your last ship was the best, but crowing about it on your new ship will not make you any friends.

Well, there you have your Primer. Don’t bet forgetful of these basics, and as another old mariner of my acquaintance was fond of saying. “go ye forth, and sin no more”

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Exotic

My introduction to the world of exotic woods began early. I had to stack and sort through piles of different woods at my mentor’s studio. Of course, Warburton would never be my master, and I’d never become his apprentice. But he took mentorship seriously while treating me a bit like an apprentice. So when I was in Baltimore, I’d go off to his studio and work as directed.
Sometimes this meant moving and stacking woods that he used, that I never imagined existed. Afrormosia, Agba. Iroko, Lacewood, Genipapo, and Satinwood. Some made me itch, others made me sneeze, and a few gave me a rash where they rubbed on my arm. Warburton’s generosity turned this into a lesson on wood toxicity that I’ve never forgotten. Trees deposit materials into their wood to stabilize structures, resist rot, fire, and insects.

We admire these woods because the added compounds affect the look and feel of the wood. But many of these are toxic to us, to one degree or another. For example, Pink Ivory wood can be very poisonous. A barrier coat of varnish is needed to seal it. Mahogany and teak woods commonly used in furniture have irritating qualities when sanded.

Finishing can be tricky as well. Varnishing teak successfully requires some prep work. It’s an oily wood, and the oils make it hard for finishes to adhere to the surface of the wood. The trick to avoiding a botched job is to wipe the surface off first, with alcohol or acetone. This technique only takes a minute but differentiates between finishes that endure or fail.

Most of my current work is in native North American species that are not commonly known for irritating toxicity: cherry, pine, ash, and maple. The added benefit of these is that most are sustainably harvested and available locally. So, for example, much of my cherry comes to me covered in bark and moss directly from the local woods.

However, just because they are generally accepted as safe doesn’t mean I get a free pass. Dust from cutting and sanding is an inhalation hazard in the woodshop, no matter how non-toxic the material is.

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Horizon

Perhaps the only advantage of standing a morning watch was the sunrise over the horizon. Possibly saltier sailors than I could contradict me, but there seemed both an infinite sameness and a similar degree of variability. I’d gladly get up for the morning watch for this reason rather than stand the monotony of the mid-watch – midnight until four AM. My more philosophical friends delighted in referring to my fascination with sunrise and horizon lines at sea as proof that I was not as vulgar as I sometimes seemed to them. To them, it was proof that I could see the extraordinary in the ordinary. I just smiled and said something vulgar.

While I was being vulgar, I took advantage of their inability to make light of anything or enjoy things without analyzing them. Some of their taciturn pronouncements on the profound nature of existence just rubbed me the wrong way. Going to Boston’s Museum of Fine Art was a dangerous proposition. Their ability to talk at great length about almost nothing – to bloviate – was prodigious. After a while, I’d start hectoring them, asking for definitions of words or terms; behavior that they termed vulgar.

Eventually, I wander off to find a nice seascape and wonder how Winslow Homer had nailed it so accurately. The horizon at sea sunrise, sunset, heavy weather, or light air is so changing, but always the same.

Sometimes you just need to be in the moment and not run your damned mouth