So there’s this boat in my yard . . .

 . . . 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.