More ideas and discussions floating around this post in my other blog, which i had not at first thought to post here on this one. My own mind wants to follow the discussion off on a tangent, one of tallships and communities, and it seems like it ought to ultimately come here, to the Sailor Song.
i’ve served as professional or volunteer crew aboard a number of traditional and classic boats; ketches, yawls, schooners, sloops, all wood, most gaffers. i’ve only ever served aboard one “tallship” per se, a brig, The Lady Washington. i had the good fortune to serve with a generally excellent crew, who more than made up in any slight lack of raw skill or actual sailing proficiency with an almost rabid enthusiasm and dedication. i had been pointed towards the Lady by former crew and captains, and had been looking forward to a top-notch boat and program.
In fact, the boat and program are pretty top-notch, and continue to be so. My problem was in my expectations; i expected to working the boat and sailing her, as i had in previous positions on other boats. Instead, i found wyself in the midst of this wild, rolicking, roving museum/ambassador/training boat, and no matter how much i would have preferred otherwise, the focus was on people, comunication, human relations, and community. As one former crewmate spells it out, ” anyway, for me it’s pretty much 40% scenery/natural environment, 40% community, and 20% the boat. but the boat keeps us alive so of course she often comes first!” For me, i had been expecting 80% boat, 20% people, and never really adjusted.
As far as sailing goes, i will always be a traditionalist. i am a craftsman, a woodworker and shipwright by trade, as much as a sailor. i teach sailing to kids, and strongly believe in the sailtraining model. i have, however, come to see that the typical tallship is more about community, relationships, and education than sailing, at least the sort of sailing i was expecting, and that drew me to tallships in the first place.
My friend Tom (currently Second Mate on the R. Tucker Thompson) was an early “in” of mine to the world of sailing, showed me all these great slides, and regaled me with these great stories of fine boats, sailing across the pond, some tales hilarious, others harrowing. He told me too of the parties, the girlfriends, the copious drink, the wild frivolities; these i had far less interest in. When my turn came, i had a go at all that too, but it left me cold; i would rather have just been sailing, or up tending to the rig.
The sailing i prefer these days is mostly a solitary affair. Sometimes there’s a couple other like-minded folks along for the ride, but our common bond is not the comraderie or community itself, but a shared respect and passion, an awe and joy we find only on the water. The boat is not a setting for our relationships, rather, our relationships are first and foremost with the boat itself, the wind, and the water. So it comes that my usual sailing companions are folks who have logged inumerable single- or short-handed miles, and who are quicker to look to the boat than to any other human interaction. Clearly, i am more comfortable in a small boat or boatshop than i ever was (or even wanted to be!) in a crowded fo’c’sle berth.
i learned alot on the Lady, but many were lessons that took hold a year or more later, and few had much to do with sailing as i have now come to see it. i don’t regret my time aboard that tallship, although i found it somewhat disappinting; my disappointment came from the difference between the experience i has hoping for and the experience i received.
The tallship sailors i know are gregarious, personable, outgoing sorts who thrive in such close-knit communual communities. Most of them, i know, would thrive equally well in any such community, afloat or otherwise. i’ve come to see that for myself, i have little interest in such a community; i prefer a quieter, more solitary existance, much as i enjoyed before i started sailing. In sailing, it’s not the community that draws me; it’s just… the sailing: the boat, the wind, the water.
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a few days back, i got an invite to join myspace.com, ostensibly to participate in a tallship sailors group there. When i got around to replying, i was quick to send off a “thanks but no thanks reply”. If anything, i was a little catty about it. i mean, why would i want to participate in a virtual sailing world when i live in a real one?
i served up a few eyes on the dinghy before it clicked. i had this sudden flashback to a few years ago. i was living in the bus, working odd jobs, but pretty much just being my old complacent self. i spent a lot of time on public-access computers, running my housetrucks group and chatting. i was just getting into the idea of sailing back then, and i was trying to find that etherial sailing community “out there”. i was landlocked (in more ways than one), and although i couldn’t have put my finger on it at the time, i was feeling a growing uneasiness that was infecting my life. i was fiercly interested in communities, online or otherwise. Today in the shop, working away, i had this sudden flash of sitting in the cubicle at Stardate Computers, emailing boat owners, posting in sailing groups, researching crew placements, etc. In fact, those were spiritualy desperate times.
It’s not so much a case of “reality vs. virtuality”. In some ways, it’s a realization that, when i was working on the Lady, i liked the work, but not the people. The work, the boat, and the sailing (what little of the latter we actually did) was the thing; the relationships and interpersonal dynamics were what made the gig ultimately unsatisfactory. In the end, more than any of that, what makes me shy away from the virtual world, the online community, is that it represents and reminds me of a time when all this was but a dream. i’m there now. This is the dream; being paid well to do work i love, living on a tropical island, sailing whenever i please, where most every friend of mine is a sailor too, and the evening conversation comes and goes to boats, wind, and water.
Of course, i still blog, but that’s more my space to “rant and roar”, and express myself for the benefit of my largely non-sailing familiy and friends who can’t be here with me. Like Bill said to me in Vancouver, “That’s it. You’ve done it. You’re living the dream.”. Well, this isn’t all of it, but it’s a great place to be, and a place from which i can both look forward with joy, and look back knowing that i have set aside many of those impediments with which i once held myself back.
Oh happiness… The woodwork on the dinghy is done. All installed, planed, sanded, and liberally oiled. The two last small bits got completed yesterday. Now, i’ve been concentrating on the rigging. The forestay and jibstay are 90% done; 1/8″ 7×19 wire, with softeyes spliced around the mast at the top, and thimbles stuck in at the bottom. i dunked the eyes in boiled linseed oil, and served them with sailtwine, then dunked them again. i used sailtwine instead of marline to suite the scale of the diminutive eyes. Today i’m going to experiment with making up some slush for the wire; something like linseed, jap drier, and black paint.
The most time-consuming bits were the two small pieces that make up the deadeyes for the jibstay and outer bobstay. They’re asymetrical figure-eight wire grommets, served and oiled as the eyes. The larger of the two sides of each figure-eight fits over the end of the bowsprit, while the smaller holds a thimble to take the lanyards. i’d made grommets, both round and figure-eights, from three-strand rope before, but never from 7-strand wire; interesting work! They came together pretty well (that service nicely hides my “learning curve”), and look every bit stronger than everything else they attach to. Completed, they each fit in the palm of my hand, yet each took up a fathom of wire and three fathoms of service!
The only remaining piece of wire rigging is the outer bobstay, but i still need to scrounge up the right length of wire from the shop’s bins. The rest of the standing rigging will be (gasp!) utterly non-traditional; single-braid Vectran. The Vectran is both stronger and lighter than stainless wire (the weight issue is what decided it for me), and dead-simple to eyesplice. i’ll likely serve the Vectran eyes the same as the wire, but leave the lengths un-slushed; the Vectran is a pleasant dark grey in colour anyways, and i don’t know how it will react to painting/slushing.
Today i’m also priming the decks (again!) in hopes of getting that final coat of paint on them this week. i’m trying to source some Easypoxy “Sandtone” instead of “Bristol Beige”, which i feel will look a little better against the oiled wood and dark green hull.
Watching the reports from New Orleans… thinking thoughts, then Kanye West opens his mouth and says, “Bush doesn’t care about black people…”. Great stuff. Yet again, i’m astounded by America. Just floored.
i have a great deal of compassion for those persons struck by this disaster, but certianly no more than i have for the millions of people worldwide who suffer, living under such conditions permanently. Only in America would you build a city below sea-level, between the shore and a large lake, laced with canals, in a known hurricane path, then during an active hurricane season, fail to take all possible precautions. When the worst happens, in the country with the second-largest (but arguably far better equipped) armed forces in the world, it becomes a struggle to bring government forces into play. i can’t help but imagine some Louisianan National Guardsman somewhere in the Middle East right now wondering why he isn’t somewhere in the world where his efforts might make some difference.
As for Bush, well, he’s a rich white Republican southerner. If he sees poor black southerners as anything more than votes, i’d be surprised (not that many of them voted for him anydangways). Now there’s his comment, where he describes the areas affected to be as large as all of Great Britain. Sure, and there’s areas of the world even larger, in even worse poverty and disaster. Okay, i’m aware that a country’s first responsibility is towards it’s own citizens, right? Uh, does that include US states like Afganistan or Iraq?
Globally speaking, the hurricane damage in New Orleans is just one more blip on the radar, yet here it gets all this coverage. That’s bullshit. Trying to raise awareness of poverty and calamity in the third world is still like pulling teeth. Katrina or 9/11 are disasters, yes, but no more so than others that occur all around the world, in less developed areas, every year. No more so than the continuing disasters of poverty, hunger, and disease that never let up.
Clearly, i still firmly believe that America, as the superpower of the world, has a grave responsibility to improve the lives of all people of the world. Where the argument is made that America must look firstly to Americans, then why is there a problem? Why wasn’t government aid brought in sooner? Before disaster struck? Unlike Kanye West’s critics, i believe that this is a political issue. When his comments were later censored, it just goes to show that the media is more than ever in the pockets of the man.
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