The Gylfaginning bestows the title of the best Viking ship to Skidbladnir, Frey’s ship. It is said that "Dwarves, sons of Ivaldi, built Skidbladnir and gave it to Frey. That ship is so large that it can accommodate all the Aesir, along with their weapons and their war gear, and a good wind blows whenever the sail is raised, no matter where it is headed. The ship is made of so many different pieces and with so much cunning that, when it is not being used to travel on the sea, it can be folded up like a piece of cloth and placed in a pouch.” (Snorri Sturluson, THE PROSE EDDA, Penguin Classics.)
No one at the boat yard can be in any doubt that this is, in fact, a joke.
Endless trouble is boat ownership. The unwieldy beast demands all kinds of things.
I just took a trip to New York, and, in my haste to deal with details, left the tarp to my vessel unfastened. On the airplane I remembered, and felt sheer dread for the outcome.
When I got back, the tarp was not just a little fluffed, it was, in fact, almost entirely on the ground. I spent some time crawlling around on the deck putting it back in place.
She doesn’t look that bad. I had taped over the worst of the leaky places.
Speaking of “so many different pieces,” there are two crates of weird parts that have been with this boat for at least twenty years. I can’t part with them, but I can’t use them, either.
There is a gun for shooting flares up in case of a mishap at sea. The gun is rusted shut, and this particular type of flare hasn’t been on the market in ages.
Fuses to electrical boxes that lie in the landfill.
Endless clamps. Boat are very much about clamps. I’ll keep those. They are still new in the box.
Nowadays sailors use electronic horns to alert of one’s presence in the fog. This vessel comes with an old brass bell. It is gorgeous.
And as for folding her up in a pouch, that boat is in a fairy tale called Harry Potter, owned by the wizard Hermione Granger.
While in New York, I stayed in my old stomping ground of Bayonne, just blocks from the haunted yacht club that forms of the basis of a novel I have a hundred pages written on and am getting around to as soon as I get a day off.
There are far fewer boats on the hard than there were ten years ago. I chatted with a fellow who was winterizing his motor yacht. The New York sailing season is from May to early October. Then the entire Atlantic ocean shuts down!
He said the Kill Van Cull Channel has silted up so badly only the biggest motor yachts can get in and out of the club.
I smell a rat.
That waterfront property is probably worth millions to potential developers. The older sailing set are mostly gone, and I bet New Jersey has conveniently forgotten to maintain the river at that bend. There is a new marina six blocks away, a state-of-the-art facility with all the bells and whistles.
We should be concerned about the future of the Robbins Reef Yacht Club.
