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| The Boatyard, oil painting by Jean-Charles Cazin, c. 1875, Cleveland Museum of Art |
The words floated past his ears barely registering the meaning, having spent too many hours pouring over long laundry lists of parts, gadgets, and gizmos owners use to try to nickel and dime the greatest price out of a boat. Snapping temporarily back to the present, the parched man interrupted, “I’m sorry, what was that last one?”
“My, you haven’t been on the water in some time, have you? That’s EPIRBs. It’s your emergency position indicating radio beacon. It’s a backup distress GPS in case you end up in the water, but you won’t have to worry about that with this fine boat. Not with her 50 gallon stainless steel fuel tank the previous owner had installed. Why, that’s more than twice the size of most of these other boats, and with that, you’ll have plenty of range to go just about anywhere...” the yard owner continued with his sales pitch, not that Doug Quincy was particularly paying that much attention.
Doug had spent too much time looking into the matter of all things sea-related to be fooled by the mere features list. He knew that the seaworthiness of a boat wasn’t in the extras. He thought they’d be nice to have, some even necessary, but a radar is only as good as the wiring that connects it to the batteries, and you can never know how much life they have in them without a thorough inspection. He was more interested in seeing the hull itself, checking for cracks in the clear coat, looking for signs of distress and damage, than he was knowing about how much money the previous owner sank into not having to learn the traditional art of sailing. Besides, the on board washing machine was no more likely to influence the price as the several thousand dollar air conditioning unit. If the hull wasn’t sound, and the rigging wasn’t bright, no perks were going to make the boat worth the time, let alone the money.
Of course, deep down Doug knew he was just putting on a bulldog front in an effort to not seem overly eager. Even with the calm of his mind, his heart was awash with excitement. Romanticism tends to drag people toward their heart’s desire like a siren song drags sailors to the rocks. Though he thought he had lashed his emotions to the mast, he feared his heart would burst through the lines at any moment. Luckily, over-eager sales pitches tipped his balances toward skepticism and doubt; anything that must be advertised is a thing you don’t need. Nonetheless, his need for the ocean locked horns with the need to continue feeding his belly, like two colossal rams intent on sending the other down a rocky slope. They say that cruisers are the cheapest people on the face of the planet. Perhaps he was already one, that is, if his heart wouldn’t betray him.
“… And there she is,” the yard owner said rounding the bow of an old yawl. He stopped nearly mid-stride and gazed at what ought to have been the glistening black hull. The owner started to shake his head, but stopped quickly, lest he scare Doug off. The haze of time spent neglected dulled the brilliance of the topcoat of wax, clouding it to a chalky, patchy gray. Two rectangular portlights tinted nearly black broke up the grayish line just their own height below the gunwale. The ax-shaped hull extended aft from the blade-like bow, flaring as it retreated. The shallow curve viewed from a narrow angle from the front made it difficult to tell just how long the boat was, without a little guesstimation from the spacing of the four stands on each side holding the winged keel off the ground. Even with the additional perspective aids, Doug’s eyes strained to compensate from the even spacing of the stands on the ground to the foreshortened perspective of the hull; it in one instance seemed to stretch back slightly longer than its neighbors, perhaps 40 feet? In the next moment, scanning his eyes up to the bow and following the red waterline, turned dusty pink, backwards to what he believed to be the aft, the length of the boat collapsed in his head to scarcely larger than a dingy. The old marketing brochures were very careful to never show the boat from this angle, a fact he had found curious until this very moment.
“Is that it?” Doug’s disbelief spilled into his voice. “I mean… Really, um, how long did you say she was?”
“Thirty eight feet plus the bow pulpit. She’s just a hair wider than thirteen feet amidship, her mast,” he said pointing at the overgrown grass below the ship where it lay, “when rigged, is 50 feet tall, and she’s got a draft of five feet four inches. She’s quite a classic beauty, isn’t she.” The old salt recited with a glimmer of nostalgia that quickly faded as his eyes showed him the ship as it actually was.
“Well, it could be with a good cleaning, a little bottom paint, and some elbow grease to shine her all up,” he continued looking back to his hopeful mark. Studying Doug’s bemused expression, he realized the source of the confusion. “Oh, yeah. You’ve got yourself standing with the sun in your eyes,” knowing damn well that was not the case. “You can’t appreciate the lines on this here quality, not standing there. It’s just no good. Move down aft, while I get a ladder, and we can go aboard.”
As the yards-man ran off to “borrow” a ladder from a nearby powerboat, Doug stepped into the shadow of the once-black beast. As he did so, the trick of her lines suddenly became apparent. Two thirds of the way back aft the shape of the hull flattened out into nearly a straight line. Looking bow on, the apparent length seemed to shrink into a fraction of the actual size. What had looked to be a continuous wedge was actually a hull shaped almost identically to a Chesapeake skiff, save the strong rise of the bow. Where the skiffs needed a bow several feet above the lowest line of the transom to skip over the waves, pushing them below the flat bottom, this ship’s hull bulged slightly, almost imperceptibly downward at the keel, and rounded softly upwards at the chine, producing a perfectly vertical topside that came together at the bow’s knife edge. At nearly seven tons, Doug reasoned, this ship wasn’t ever likely to get up onto a plane or have many waves drop out from under the stem post, or whatever it was called on a fiberglass sailboat.
For a moment there he couldn’t help but to compare the shape to the carbon fiber hulls of the great racing superyachts of the grand regattas. Having the correct perspective, it seemed clear the original designers had taken their inspiration from the races, and did what they could to make this ship resemble those that out-classed it several times over. It wouldn’t rise out of the water and skim the surface, but properly heeled over in a good stiff breeze, the smaller surface area of the slightly rounded hull outboard of the keel would allow her to fly, her bladed bow slicing the froth. As a cruiser, he wouldn’t expect world-class speeds, riding far too low in the water with too wide a hull, but he could imagine her winning many a local regatta.
A riptide of wind swept under the rows of boats, heavy with the scent of fresh varnish somewhere nearby, drying in the sun. Curling and licking at the underbellies of the ships, it rushed through the undergrowth, parting the grass enough to catch sight of a large coil of wire resting upon ashen wooden blocks pitted by black poxes, and highlights of the grain greened through grass stain and the slow growth of moss just taking root. The heavy coil of steel wire had the dullness of a deeply antiqued rope of orangish brown. The grayed ship had been demasted for some time. A want of care had wasted the rigging. It would have to be replaced, Doug noted carefully in his mind while trying to conjure the appropriate discount from his potential offer.
The rhythmic clank of an aluminum ladder and the sloshing of slightly muddy steps announced the return of the yard owner. His short pudgy legs appeared at the bow of the far side of the boat, muddy soles masked by the unintended meadow growing under the hull. He struggled to keep the foot of the ladder from skipping across the ground. Doug, standing starboard amidships, reached his hand out to touch the softly grayed hull, recoiling slightly at the gravelly textures of the topcoat. It felt like sandpaper, albeit a very fine grit, but rough nonetheless. He closed the distance to more closely inspect the fiberglass for signs of stress, cracks, chips, gouges, or holes. Keeping a slightly slower pace than the yard owner, he made his way aft, weaving around the stands. Not seeing anything immediately wrong with the skin of the ship that couldn’t be sanded or buffed out, he wondered what possibly could be wrong with it that the yard owner wanted it gone.
“Here we go,” the yard owner huffed as he set the ladder down with a clank. Firmly planting the feet in the grass, he lowered the upper portion of the ladder against the side of the ship just before the stanchion with the open gatehook clipped back onto the lifelines. As the owner situated the ladder, Doug rounded the aft, and as he passed he looked up at the flush transom with closed fold-down platform. A small bit of plastic wedged into the lifelines fluttered, catching his eye momentarily.
The pair ambled up the ladder, and without missing a beat, the owner resumed his sales pitch, starting with all of the features at hand in the cockpit. As Doug walked around peering more closely at the line clutches and then the instruments at the twin-wheeled helm, the yard owner expertly tailored his spiel to segue between his previous topic and whatever seemed to interest Doug. They walked in semicircles around one another, Doug bounding past before the shorter owner swooped in from behind to the opposite side to make another seemingly salient point about how that exact thing was not only essential to sailing the vessel, but how in all of his years of running a yard, he’d never seen a boat so well equipped, at least not for the price. The relatively tight confines of the cockpit made this dance ridiculously close, like a samba of sales in the meltingly sticky humidity of a Florida sun.
Turning to the bow, partly out of an interest to see the forward fittings, and partly to escape unwanted intimacy, Doug retreated forward, stepping up onto the deck. The lack of a mast and rigging gave him nothing to hold on to as he walked forward, making him favor the inboard, for fear of testing the lifelines. The deck was in a state of half-repair. A shredded blue tarp had once covered a section of missing nonskid, sanded smooth, but left with no topcoat covering the exposed fiberglass. Doug paused for a moment there, producing a small black meter from his pocket, a cheep internet knockoff of much better, more accurate brands, but practically disposable for his purposes. He set it against the exposed glass and watched as the needle quickly rose. He couldn’t be sure until his surveyor used his far more expensive and accurate one, but this was enough for him to make another mental note of a reason to lower his offer.
“The deck is wet,” he said with a hint of disgust. “There’s moisture in the fiberglass.”
“Oh, the old owner was mid-project when…” his voice trailed off. “Don’t worry about that. A few weeks on the hard under a new tarp, and that’ll dry right out. That small section there won’t take more than a day or two to get that all finished up nice.”
“But, it looks like this is where he had started, the rest of the boat will take a bit longer, don’t you think?”
“Well, if you really want it done. Personally, I think this deck’s got at least another two or three seasons before it really needs to be refinished. The old owner had more money than sense, if you ask me. Installed that over sized fuel tank, and had an order in to replace the teak interior with custom mahogany panels—we still have those panels up at the office, by they way. I’ll even include them with the boat, but you’ll have to install them yourself, unless you want the yard to do it—we can work that out later. But, no, he really had a bunch of unnecessary work done, spent thousands of extra dollars, but hey, his folly is your gain! I mean, outside of stepping the mast, and getting that section finished up, she’s completely seaworthy.”
As soon as the words had crossed his lips, he thought better of them, but it was his standard sales pitch to the bargain hunters he’d get just before the season would really get underway. Breaking from his well-practiced rhythm, the yard owner half-confessed, “you’ll need to clean out the cabin before anything else...”
Taking a short breath, he continued, “but that’s all part of buying a boat.”
The turning of the winds swept with it the sounds of gulls fighting for a find of tasty fish flesh at the beach. Doug hadn’t considered fully that he’d be buying everything inside the boat as well. He wasn’t sure what to expect. He didn’t even know if the previous owner was merely a day-sailor or a liveaboard. Thinking he better go below to have a look at what he’d be dealing with, he stood and pivoted. As he did, the little scrap of plastic caught on a stanchion demanded his attention once more. Walking aft, he started to recognize it, but it seemed out of context. It was a slightly elongated section of yellow caution tape, like what you’d string up between barricades you didn’t want pedestrians walking between, but after some asshole decided it didn’t apply to them. The stanchions seemed secure, and the lifelines were still up. The after section that connected the lines to the stern pulpit looked fine. Why would there be a small scrap hanging there now?
As he approached the cockpit, the yard owner opened one of the bench lockers and pulled out two respirators. Holding one out to Doug, he couldn’t help but a let his face betray his apprehension.
“You’ll want to put this on.”
“Why? What’s that for?”
“Trust me, you’ll want this.”
Doug glanced around the deck, his eyes darting from fitting to fitting, porthole to porthole, when it finally registered.
“Why are all the portholes taped shut?” Doug demanded. It clicked, that wasn’t mere caution tape, that was a police line that had been ripped away from the rest of the boat. If there had been some down on the ground, it was easier to clean up, and the tall grass would have concealed any wayward fragments from his casual glance. That scrap had been trapped on the line by someone pulling it down from below. He came to see a boat, not a crime scene!
“Seriously,” the owner said with a deep sigh. “you’ll want to be wearing this before I open the companionway.”
As he approached the cockpit, the yard owner opened one of the bench lockers and pulled out two respirators. Holding one out to Doug, he couldn’t help but a let his face betray his apprehension.
“You’ll want to put this on.”
“Why? What’s that for?”
“Trust me, you’ll want this.”
Doug glanced around the deck, his eyes darting from fitting to fitting, porthole to porthole, when it finally registered.
“Why are all the portholes taped shut?” Doug demanded. It clicked, that wasn’t mere caution tape, that was a police line that had been ripped away from the rest of the boat. If there had been some down on the ground, it was easier to clean up, and the tall grass would have concealed any wayward fragments from his casual glance. That scrap had been trapped on the line by someone pulling it down from below. He came to see a boat, not a crime scene!
“Seriously,” the owner said with a deep sigh. “you’ll want to be wearing this before I open the companionway.”
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