This is how she looked in her former life as Teal.
At some point, there was a refurbishing project that altered the cabin, a refit that was no doubt necessary, but changed the the line of the boat in a way that made it simultaneously longer and no doubt drier, but also less a work of Midcentury Modern.
David’s first comment was that the old windows were parallelograms instead of the current factory acrylic boat windows that are so scratched they can’t be seen through.
“That could be redone,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
I am not convinced we should drop more money on this old hull before she enters her life as an office, pied-a-térre, frequent flyer at the local women’s sailing club, and all-around “we can do this” boat while we figure out if we actually like her.
I actually like her. She is my boat. I don’t have it in me to not like her. And there are many things that I can do with the refurbishing I am capable of, and that is sewing. Once we get the holes plugged, it will be a question of insulation; that can be done with fiber art, and not badly. Why not have an art boat? I will have the funky if it comes to that. She has done her time. She can be covered in pink.
This is probably something David knows from building. People get attached to buildings, even buildings they should let go of. A rational mind would say, just let go and get something wonderful for the money. Better things are out there. In a way.
Building is not entirely rational, so we are going to find out how Friothusibu needs to be.
Brooks Wilcox didn’t really have that connection to her. He had already done his “piece of history” when he refitted an O’Day 23 and sailed it single-handed up the Long Island Sound to Nantucket, a feat no doubt undertaken in youth. That’s a young guy thing.
I lived by the Long Island Sound. It is a rich man’s playground but also a place for sailors. I wanted to sail it but couldn’t stay away from the Pacific Northwest.
When Brooks was in the process of buying this boat — a process that included two full days of investigation with the owner and a bit of coffee — coffee is always involved in boat buying, I have noticed -- he showed me a picture of something he really wanted, and that was a trimaran, a slick weird boat that who knows what to do with, and he probably should have, but he went with the lower budget option and ended up relinquishing her in the end.
She is not the same, and she wasn’t his.
A wise old salt has said of this vessel, "You’ll have a new one in three years.”
That is how people are with boats. They try them out and move on. There is a never-ending stream of boatness. You step in the stream and once you are there for a while, you are never out. What boat am I on now? They are all part of me, and all part of everyone who has ever owned them or owned one. There is even the one that got away, as well as the next one, the perfect and eventual boat, perhaps even now on the horizon. We should all have seven or eight boats. We don’t ever sell. We just keep them in the yard.
I wasn’t finished with her, but I don’t have it in me to be finished with a building project I couldn’t really begin, while David is an old hand at building projects. He is probably lost without one. I tried to warn him, and he said, I am the one who is warning you. This can go on forever, and we will not have sailing. We will just have scraping.
