Who would have thought . . . ?

. . . that after 4 months, 10 tons of epoxy, 3 dutchmen and a million mistakes, Jeff Brown would be in the water and sailing?  But thanks to Paul we did it, and I confess that now I want to go out all the time.  Which I know I can't.  Other people will sail Jeffie.  But in a way he will always be a little bit mine.

tick-tick-tick

It's getting a little ridiculous.
Paul and Don and I put the sails on two weeks ago,

then Paul fixed the shims on the tiller, then . . . then . . .
Paul has no time during the week to go out with me.  Too busy, he says.
Probably just doesn't want to be embarrassed by my nautical stupidity.


Napping on the boat yesterday, I hear a  groan and a creak, and woke to find the Amistad lumbering up the river to the Seaport for its winter maintenance.

As my cousin Jen says of those on shore, "They watch."

And I'm just the fixer.  I don't know nothin' 'bout sailing these big monsters alone.  So Jeff sits patiently on Paul's mooring, probably permanently for this year anyway, waiting for me to get in at least one sail before the summer is over.  And what great weather for it lately!

Lots of people have told me (and the Historical Society) how much they love seeing Jeff Brown in the harbor again.  So now we get lots of photos by fantastic photographers.

But I go out every day to make sure the solar pumps are working, and just read the Times and nap.  It's quite soothing.  I still feel a bit maternal.  Actually, I think Jeff is the one who feels maternal now, and I am just an infant in the cradle rocking . . .

The mast is on!

So now is tomorrow (even though I posted both of these posts today) and Paul and I and his two friends did it!  (with Paul talking us through every step of the way, of course) And look how pretty!!!

In a couple of days we’ll put Jeff on his proper mooring and put the sails on.  This weekend are the wooden boat races but I guess Jeff will be sitting them out.  Sadly. Be nice to see if the boathangs together first, I guess.

And can you believe that this came out of Paul’s basement to be Jeff’s dinghy?  This is going to be the envy of every waterfront creature in the area.

Still leaking . . . but ready to leap on his mooring

So do not think I have been idle these past two weeks.  Jeff is hanging out at Bruce’s marina, sans spars, swelling up as fast as he can, and I have been charging the battery and pumping out those teeny compartments in the stern where crud gets into the coat-hanger-size hole that allows the water to flow to the section where the pump is.  Three days ago Paul put in another pump to see how long it took to fill up to above the floorboards—3 hours.  Not great.  But since then, things have gotten better and we have switched to a solar pump for today’s trip out to “the barge,” a mysterious floating object on the other side of the train trestle where  we will bring the bowsprit and attach it.  

     Which, as you can see here, we did.

Tomorrow is mast-stepping day; for some reason we cannot do it today, probably because it takes a while and  Paul could only get out there this afternoon—also, Jeffie could only get out there this afternoon because the tide’s too high before 3-ish today. And then the day is shot, apparently.  So tomorrow will be the big day but today is equally exciting.  It’s especially cool because about a week ago I went over to the shop where the spars were and saw that 2 were missing—and I immediately thought that Paul had gone and started to do this himself, or with his waterfront pals, and I was relegated, as usual, to the person who did not count.  How could I count, anyway?  I’m new here, even though my family has been here a million years; I don’t know diddly about sailing or boats; I’m not a guy so the hail-fellow-well-met card can’t be played . . . all I was good for was taking care of Jeff Brown until more competent, more deserving people came along.  And this made me so sad on so many levels. Because once again, I realized I did not matter.

But no, that was not the way it was at all.  If I had stopped feeling sorry for myself for 10 seconds I would have seen that Paul had moved two spars to the side of the shop because he needed to use the sawhorses.  And apropos of nothing the other day he said, “Don’t worry; I won’t do it without you.”  And when I looked at him funny he said “You were thinking, ‘that sonofabitch went and did this without me and I don’t count’” and he’s smiling as he says this and I think, “How does he know this about me?  Am I that transparent, that needy?

I have got to get a grip.

I just hate the not knowing, the not having had the experience or the credentials or the time served to belong to the club.  And there are so many clubs where I am outside looking in.  Feeling sorry for myself.  Because I do that really well.

What, after all, did I do but what a hundred other relatives and residents have done for the past 50 years—paint and sand and varnish and caulk and love this old boat?  I have no cause to feel possessive.  Yet when I look out in my yard and there is this big empty space, I feel . . . bereft.  Jeff Brown will be on his mooring but now he slips back into the public domain, far away from me or any claim I have, especially any expertise I have regarding What Comes Next; our relationship is no loner intimate, or no more intimate that the relationship he’s had with all those others who’ve actually sailed him and known what they were doing.

My cousin’s husband said to me the other day, regarding one of my uncle’s other boats, “I can’t sail.  I’m too old to learn.  I can’t.  Okay?” and the way he said it, I heard that hard edge, and I felt a kinship with him somehow—we who grew up on the water and around boats and because of family prohibitions or insistences on making your living off the water and not just lounging around on it, we were denied this. It would have been different if we grew up In Nebraska.  It was all around us, and we couldn’t touch it.

And now that we can—or at least I can, it seems as out of reach as it did 25 years ago: I am starting too late, I am foolish to think I can be good at this, I am a rank amateur in a world of professionals and time is not on my side . . .

But today, at 3pm, I get to be a tiny part of things again.  And again tomorrow.  And I guess that’s good enough.  At least Jeff is happy.