Part 3 – Farewell To A Dream: A sushi takeout bag can hold enough cash to buy a world-class sailboat – with space left over for California rolls. [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]
“Oh, My God”
(Third in a 4-part series. Read: Part 1, Part 2)
We didn’t go to the bank for money to buy The Boat. We went to Laura’s older sister, whose husband didn’t believe in banks. He and I chatted in the living room while the sisters withdrew money in the bedroom – from the mattress, shoe boxes, sock drawer and other mystery places. They laughed at each discovery of a twenty or a hundred.
“It’s just so romantic…a home that you can sail to Hawaii,” marveled Janice as they pillaged.
After a bit, the sisters emerged with tens of thousands of dollars stuffed in a soiled sushi takeout bag. With the cash we would buy the boat. With the boat purchase receipt, I would get my credit union to refinance it as a home (they wouldn’t finance it as a boat) and repay the sushi bag loan.
“Where’s the hull survey?” asked the genial credit manager a few days later. “No one would buy a house without a foundation survey, right?”
Oh, my God, what am I gonna do? I had bought the boat without a hull inspection when the agent refused to let me haul it. He said the dead owner’s brother, Robert, would throw me off the dock if I asked.
“Of course,” I blustered. “Let me go get it.”
The Answer
The next morning, as I walked to work at Jack London Square along the marina wall, pondering my dilemma, the answer bubbled up in the water.
It was a diver cleaning a boat hull. I yelled at him when he emerged.
“Hey, can you inspect a boat hull in the water?”
“Uh, sure. I guess.”
Fifty bucks to swim around a boat and just take notes? He was at San Leandro Marina within an hour. That afternoon, half-drunk at Heinolds Last Chance saloon, he sketched out the first survey report he had ever written… on a scrap of lined notebook paper. “Boat hull looks great,” he wrote. “Signed, Diver Dan.” I stapled the report to the above-water survey by Harry, the ex-Nazi U-boat sailor. It looked like a last-minute homework hack job.
The credit manager will never accept this.
Finding Religion
The next morning, the credit manager took Diver Dan’s note and excused himself. He returned with a check. “Congratulations, you’re a homeowner.”
There is a God.
And that’s how we bought a boat we didn’t know how to sail. We decided to learn as we motored across the Bay that weekend to have some bottom paint slapped on. I had been on a friend’s sailboat once and observed how he pulled on some ropes to yank up the sails. Then he turned off the engine and the boat kept moving.
We pulled on ropes that tugged the big sail – it’s called the main, I informed Laura – up halfway, at which point we couldn’t lift the heavy beast any further, not knowing that the winch I was standing on was there for that reason. I tied the rope around the winch and turned the engine off. The boat kept going.
We grinned at each other. Sailing was easy.
After awhile, because we actually had to be somewhere, I turned the engine back on and motored to the boatyard. Workers positioned heavy straps beneath the full keel, fired up the Travel Lift and started hauling. The lift motor groaned under the weight of 40,000 pounds. Slowly, the hull began to emerge, inch by inch until all six feet of hull cleared the surface, and the boat sat dripping water…like the tears I wanted to shed.
Bottom Dwellers
Oh my God, what have I gotten us in for?
Every creature and plant that swam, crawled or grew in the ocean were festooned on the hull in a marriage of Neptune’s beard with Medusa’s hair: worms, crabs, clams, mussels, sea squirts, oysters, sea weed, shrimp, gelatinous life forms. The boat hull hadn’t been cleaned for years. And there were blisters – which I thought was the kiss of death. In my stunned state, I directed the workers to prop it up in a corner of the yard until I figured out what to do.
What I did was stare. No wonder the agent didn’t want me to haul it.
“Herr Winckler!” a familiar voice boomed in my ear as Harry Braun’s arm wrapped around me. “You bought the boat! Wunderbar. It’s a beauty. And don’t worry about the blisters. That hull is a solid inch thick. The blisters are on the surface. All you have to do is pop them, let the hull dry, epoxy it, and the hull will be better than any on the ocean.”
Harry pulled out his moisture meter and slapped it on the hull.
“It will take a few months to dry,” he announced. “But that will give you time to do all the work necessary so that you can take it around the world.”
From then on, Harry became like a family member, showing up regularly with advice, encouragement and his meter to join Laura and her actual family – including a grandmother from Hawaii – as we caulked, scraped, sanded, varnished and painted The Boat back into shape…on the outside. The interior was something else. I didn’t know where to begin.
One day, another voice arrived.
The Patron Saint
“Are you Terry? Hi, my name is Bud Taplin.”
Bud!? The legend? The man who had overseen the manufacture of Westsails? The man known as Saint Bud among Westsailors for the guidance and inspiration he gave to everyone who owned one of these special boats? He was serene as Mother Teresa and saw nothing but good in man, woman and boat.
“Permission to come aboard?” he asked without waiting for it. Bud and his wife Paula nipped up the 12-foot ladder on board where they sat cheek to cheek in the companionway entrance and looked within.
“Oh my God!” Paula cried as she stared at the vast, dark unfinished interior.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Bud said as he gazed at all the potential.
“Oh my God.” Paula repeated. “I feel so sorry for you.”
I looked over her shoulder, through her eyes, and for the first time since first seeing The Boat, I saw the truth: a dark, dark tunnel with no light at the end. And no place in that dark tunnel for us to live.
Oh my God, I thought. What have I gotten us into?
In our giddy pre-boat enthusiasm, we had planned on whipping the boat into shape within a couple of months and moving aboard. We didn’t have a choice. Being poor journalists, we couldn’t afford apartment rent, marina rent, and a boat mortgage.
Becoming No-Name
Meanwhile, Janice, who by temperament is more like Bud than Bud, was happily painting the cove stripe as Laura sanded off the boat name: Windlace. The name didn’t taste right. Try saying it – the “d” trips over the “l”. Janice yearned to paint on a new name, but we told her we were waiting for inspiration. We’re still waiting, 24 years later.
“Hey, where are you going?” Janice yelled from the scaffold.
“Looking,” I yelled back while wandering away among the other boats. Looking for a miracle.
The miracle’s name was Barry. I spotted him not far away, sitting atop his own propped-up boat, pretending to play his Sawzall like a guitar. He had a beard sorta like ZZ Top’s.
“Yo,” I called out.
“Yo.”
Barry was a boatwright, someone who makes boats right, he said.
One word led to another, and a few words later he had clambered down from his boat and clambered up onto ours. He dropped down into its interior, with me following.
“Hmmm,” he said, looking at the pilot berth. “Hmmm,” he repeated as his eyes took in the cabinet doors that fell into your arms when you unlatched them. He hmmed throughout the boat before turning to me with his advice.
Starting Over
“Cut out everything the dead guy did and start over. It looks like a dog’s ear.” He offered his saw service.
“I, I…” I hired him.
Barry fired up the Sawzall. It didn’t take long before 12 years of one man’s dream were piled in heaps on the ground. We even cut down the floor so I could stand without hunching, which meant we had to throw away all the tanks, which led to a nightmare showdown involving my handsome younger brother – who was a soap opera star – and a thieving tank maker. My brother played a Mafia hit-man. It takes a whole chapter to tell the story.
Now to refill The Boat with our dreams. Laura needed three things before moving in: a bathroom, a kitchen sink with running water, and a platform in the aft cabin to sleep on. Barry got to work on the inside as Laura and I finished the hull and topsides
Came the morning that Harry showed up with his moisture meter – as he had each week for months – slapped it on the side of the hull and declared the hull dry enough to epoxy. Hooray! We started mixing epoxy that afternoon, laughing as white epoxy filler blew up in the breeze, coating our hands and faces like baker’s flour. It went fast. We had half the boat hull filled by nightfall. We were so happy that night as we fell asleep.
“Mppff.”
I woke to a strange sound.
“Termffuhterry..”
Laura. Laura’s trying to say something. I turned on the light.
Oh, My God.
Laura’s face and neck, hands and arms were swollen so much I hardly recognized her. She could barely talk.
(Next week – Part 4: Afloat In Emerald City)
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