. . . and for the first
time I have been asked to do something about it. I am supposed to scrape it and sand it and
paint it and get it ready to go in the water where it will live on a mooring in
the Mystic River and be the envy of everyone who sees it, and that is no lie. The envy part.
The rest is something Paul invented, because he is kind and
funny and knew my father and of course knew my Uncle Jack who built it, and knows
I don’t really like living here, even though I grew up down the road in Groton
and have always dreamed of returning to Noank . . . it is kind of sad and true,
that you can’t go home again. I wasn’t
returning home so much as trying to discover what home had been like. My father
tried to keep us in the dark about the world, and life outside our house, and
our relatives, especially the relatives who lived here—my mother’s family; it
was all too painful for him. But the
water, Fishers Island Sound, Race Rock and Little Gull Island and those places
out there, I knew them because he was always out there either with us, his
family, or with his parties—I guess you call them fishing clients, I don’t
know. Maybe they still call them
parties. I left the area to go to college, and didn’t come back to live until
two years ago. Knowing nothing of what I
thought I should know. It’s in my blood,
right? The fishing and the boatbuilding
and all the seaweedy, scaly stuff? And the
not-knowing is a source of shame and sadness.
So the other day, down the road lumbers the big red trailer
driven by Bruce who owns the boatyard, and on the trailer is the first boat my
Uncle Jack ever built: Jeff Brown.
Jack always talked about the Jeff Brown. By the time I
stated spending a lot of time with him, from about 1980 to right before he died
in 1992, the boat had been sold, to make way for the next ones he built in succession. It was at Fishers Island for awhile, and then
somewhere up the Connecticut River I think. But I sensed that Jeff Brown was his favorite. He said it was the fastest. He built it in 1966. He told stories of he
and my aunt Pat and my cousin Charles out on it, just burying the competition,
if there even was any. It was named
after a late 19th century smack sloop which in turn was named after a
prominent Florida politician. I hope the original Jeff Brown was a good guy. It seems like he probably was.
There’s an article called Sailing Craft of the Florida Keys by John Viele that talks about
different fishing and cargo boats of the 1800’s, and it says this about Jeff Brown:
There
were two classes of Keys fishing vessels. The larger ones, used for off-shore
fishing and supplying the Havana market, were called smacks and tended to
follow New Englanddesigns.The61-foot, 43-ton, schooner, City of Havana built in
Key West in 1877, was typical of the larger smacks. She was modeled after smack schooners built at
Noank, Connecticut. The entire amidships section was occupied by a large
live well to hold the catch. The well extended from the keel to the main deck
and from beam to beam. Holes in the bottom of the well allowed sea water to
flow in and out to keep the fish alive until sold. With a flush deck, clipper
lines and a fairly deep draft, she was a fast sailer. The smaller fishing craft, called smackees, were
manned by one or two men and operated in nearby waters catching fish for the
Key West market. Ranging in length from 14 to28feet, the smackees were shallow
draft, sloop-rigged vessels. Smackees also had built-in live wells amidships to
keep the catch alive. The Jeff Brown, a 25-foot, shoal-draft,
skeg-keel sloop with a leg-of-mutton mainsail was representative of the type.
Topside arrangements included a U-shaped cockpit for the helmsman, and a small
cuddy cabin forward of the live well.
So Uncle Jack
got the plans from the Smithsonian and build Jeff Brown, only without the wet well. My cousin John has lots of photos of it under
sail. I do not have copies of these
photos yet but I’ll get them. After all,
John lives right next door now, and he is viewing the return of Jeff Brown to
what is basically his back yard (where it was built) with a mixture of amusement and nostalgia and, I
think, weariness; you never can tell, when the past returns, how the visit will
go. And me-- I’m just starting out on
this journey. I don’t even know the
right name for things. Front, back, bow, stern, rot, crack, hull, terror.
I think I’m
going to have to learn how to be humble—fast.
But here’s this beautiful old thing—just about as old as me, actually,
finally returned home, and many people here love it, because they loved
my uncle and how he built boats for practicality but beauty always won
out. So maybe I can get out of my own
way long enough to help out, and learn something in the process.
I started to
write this because as soon as I saw Jeff
Brown in the cradle last November, and Paul asked me to paint the bottom (my snazzy paint job is shown above; one thing I learned as a kid was how to paint boat bottoms), I
thought, well, here is your chance to do some catching up. There’s a lot about this boat I don’t
know. I’ll find it out, like you find
out about any of your old relatives who come home after a long absence—just
like I did.
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