Farewell To A Dream – Part 2

Part 2 – Farewell To A Dream: A pirate. An ex-Nazi. A hot dog cook. A dead dreamer. A grieving brother. We navigated a lot of characters 24 years ago before finding The Boat to take us around the world.[su_button url=”https://terrywinckler.com/subscribe” target=”self” style=”default” background=”#2D89EF” color=”#FFFFFF” size=”3″ wide=”no” center=”no” radius=”auto” icon=”” icon_color=”#FFFFFF” text_shadow=”none” desc=”” onclick=”” rel=”” title=”” id=”” class=””]Subscribe[/su_button]

The Boat

(A 4-part blog series. Read Part 1)

“I have a boat.”

It was the way Dixie said…boat.

Like I was in a singles bar instead of a hot dog shack.

And how she looked at me when she said it. With eyes from the other side of the dock. The side I yearned to be on. The boat owner’s side.

“It’s a greyhound made for the open sea. It lives over there,” she said, fluttering her fingers toward a nearby marina. I cut work to visit it.

 The old wooden boat gave off aching sounds as it rolled at dock in a passing ferry wake. Never again would it hold a bone in its teeth as it raced to the far horizon.

The Husband

As I turned away, Dixie’s husband walked up.

“Wait,” he said. “There’s another boat.”

This time it was man to man.

“Made to go around the world.”

Ah.

“Big enough for a family.”

Ahh.

“At a good price.”

Ahhh.

“A Westsail.”

Trance broken. Heart, too.

Too Poor

“Ah, you see, we once knew a Westsail…,” I said with a sigh, describing one we fell in love with that was beyond our means. “We can afford hot dogs, not Westsails.”

“You can afford this one. The owner died. His brother is desperate to sell it.”

The owner had slaved at an engineer’s desk job his entire life, pushing a slide rule and putting off vacations to save money for his great dream of sailing the world. No kids. No wife. No one knew that in this quiet little man burned the heart of Magellan. All he needed was just the right boat – the stout kind that could pass the test of an engineer’s critical gaze. In 1973, those eyes gazed upon a Time Magazine article about how a new kind of boat, called Westsail, had opened the world’s oceans to travelers like him. He saved for 6 years before buying the grand-sized version, a 42-foot kit boat you could sail, but it had no interior. He sailed it alone from the manufacturer in Costa Mesa to San Francisco Bay.

He was 69 when he bought it, and spent the next 12 years at dock, building the interior.

One day, he died.

Ready To Unleash

“And there she sits, almost finished, tugging at the dock lines, yearning to be set free upon the oceans in the hands of a young man like you.”

Two pairs of eyes bored into mine as the husband’s deep voice finished the story. He was a stout man with a firm grip on my heart’s tiller.

“When…can…I…see…The Boat?”

Not so fast, he said.

First, I had to pass muster with the dead man’s brother. But before then I had to pass muster with the brother’s agent. If they deemed me worthy, only then could I see The Boat. The brother is still grieving and wary of being taken advantage of in his sorrowful state, he said.

“Surely you understand.”

“Of course.” A beloved brother. Beloved boat. One must be respectful.

The Agent

At 5 p.m. the next day, back among the dogs, I met the agent – a scrawny fellow with thinning hair greased back upon his skull of a head. One dark eye bulged out and the other sunk in so far it seemed not to exist. Any sane person would have seen a pirate. I saw a man of mystery. One who hissed between thin lips when he refused to say where the boat was other than in San Leandro.

“The owner no longer trusts anyone,’ the agent said, describing a parade of advantage-seekers who had tried to screw the brother in his time of sorrow. When the boat was hauled for inspection and sat dripping water like tears, a would-be buyer demanded a slash in price. What a robber! An emotional thief.

“He ran that bastard off the dock! And he’ll run you off, too, if you try any tricks.”

God, no, not me. Not Laura. No truer hearts beat than ours. But how can we convince these people? I spun the story of us and our quest and our yearning to take on the mantle of the dead man’s dream – pure oratory.

Bottom Line

The agent cut me off.

“Look…if you buy the boat, I want $500 for my commission.”

“And $500 for my finder’s fee,” said the husband.

“Only fair.”

“I’ll speak to the owner,” the agent said, and slunk off.

I spoke to Laura that night. She seemed unreasonably skeptical.

“Terry! We need to see that boat before this goes any further.”

Only one place in San Leandro could hold such a vessel – the municipal marina. We arrived there after sunset hoping to con someone into unlocking the gate, but it was as dead as it was dark, so we prowled the marina perimeter, squinting from afar at many boat noses. One fine snout bedecked with stainless steel jutted proudly above all others. Now there’s a BOAT, we told each other. A fine and royal thing of beauty. Imagine…

The Warning

Good news, the agent said the next morning. We had passed the first test. The owner would meet us – at The Boat in San Leandro Marina on the next day, a Saturday. But take heed!

“The owner is very short and has a complex about it. You are very tall. So be forewarned – never put yourself in a position where you stand taller than him. He will feel threatened. Always take a low position. OK?”

Of course. Makes perfect sense to me. I’ve often been accused of lording it over the rest of the world from my exalted height.

The agent met me at the marina gate. Laura stayed home as we didn’t want to create double-team anxiety for the fragile owner – who awaited onboard, the agent said, again warning me to stay small.

We walked a long way, getting ever closer to where Laura and I had swooned in the dark over the royal nose. And there, as you already know, is where we finally stopped.

God, could it be true?

Staying Low

A short man – Robert, the owner – stood atop the boat steps. He looked down upon me. I was introduced with an awkward uphill handshake, and invited to step aboard. The owner clambered to the highest place above the cockpit.

“Step down into the cockpit,” hissed the agent in my ear.

And the pas de deux began.

I crept along the side decks. Robert strode the cabin top.

I knelt to feel the anchor chain. He stood upon the staysail boom.

Around the deck we spun, me in a crouch he upon tiptoes, back to the cockpit and the companionway opening to the interior.

“Step down.”

Into The Depths

I did, deep into the dark bowels of a vast boat interior. I started prowling as Robert cast his shadow from the opening 6-feet above. The floor was rough plywood. The overhead and hull sides were raw, green fiberglass. Plywood covered all the window cutouts. There was a galley sink and sternly constructed cabinetry sprinkled about. The doors were fastened by brass catches and fell into my arms when opened. A remarkable-sized toilet with a 3-foot pumping arm hid behind a bulkhead on a pedestal. A little man’s legs would dangle as he sat astride it. I imagined them kicking.

“You can pump an overcoat down that toilet and not clog it,” the agent hollered.

But the most remarkable element was the port-side berth, built so high that its late owner had a kickstand step so he could get up to it. A large, lighted compass was mounted just above it, facing down. It puzzled me until Robert, in a soft voice verging on tears, explained.

“My dear brother had dementia at the end and spent his final days lying on his back, staring up at the compass.”

Around The World

Something clicked in me. I looked anew at the berth – at the thin blanket left wrinkled upon it – and imagined the brother stretched below the compass while its needle spun and spun and spun him around the world upon this worthy vessel. Hawaii. Tahiti. Japan. The Horn. Until I – he -never came back.

I crept up the steps, looked Robert in the eye and smiled, and left.

How do you explain love?

I didn’t try to when Laura pestered me with questions. Instead, I told her what the surveyor told me when he took me back through the boat.

“Surveyor?”

I had accidentally bumped into a man named Harry Braun on my way out the marina gate, knocking a clipboard out of his hands. Somehow, The Boat subject came up as we mutually apologized. He warned me to get an experienced surveyor to walk through it. Turns out Harry was such a surveyor with time on his hands.

“What kind of experience does Harry have, Terry?”

“He sailed U-boats for Hitler during World War II.”

Laura fell silent as I explained.

A Solid Sense

I followed Harry back to The Boat and had a good feeling as l watched him walk. A real solid guy. Steady. At ease among the boats. He patted some as we passed by.

“Permission to come aboard?” Harry asked, but didn’t wait for it. He nipped up the steps past Robert and the agent and took a quick tour of the decks. Then he hopped through the companionway, gesturing at me to follow.

Harry and his flashlight took me deep into The Boat, where he pointed out its bones – the cleave where it all came together at the curving bow, a bilge you could hide in (“Dry, that’s good.”), a muscular engine, a full keel deep enough and heavy enough to keep the boat standing in a gale. He uprooted every floorboard and cubbyhole until we ran out of boat at its ample stern (“She has such a big, beautiful rump,” he cooed, patting its fat cheeks.).

Five minutes into the inspection, he asked how much they wanted. I told him (it was twice our budget). He gripped my arm:

His Advice

“Buy this boat.”

It became a mantra. He rapped on the thick, solid glass hull:

“Buy this boat.”

From the bilge, atop the fuel tanks, in the engine room:

“Buy this boat.”

Harry checked off a lengthy list of approvals, writing with a flourish at the end: “Highly recommend that you buy this boat.”

I showed Laura his report, and then I pulled out something else Harry had written: his autobiography, “Of Islands and Ships,” inscribed with his signature.

“Harry gave me the book with some parting words.”

“Buy this boat?”

“No. He said that after the war, he brought his wonderful wife Elly to the United States where they raised a family in Alameda and rebuilt a sailboat that he and his son sailed across the seas and back.

“ ‘It was a good boat,’ he said, ‘like this one.’ ”

Laura and I spent hours pawing through Harry’s remarkable tales of a young couple caught up like so many in the magnetic madness of Hitler, and of their escape to start a new life. We feasted on the chapters about building and sailing their dream.

We bought The Boat.

(Next Week – Dream Part 3: “Oh, My God!” Subscribe to my blog)