The Wonderful World of Sailing

Sailboat: A hole in the water in which one throws money.

Sailing: An activity likened to standing in a cold shower tearing up hundred dollar bills.

 

It is my misguided and schizophrenic opinion that these are only two places on this earth to reside:

the mountains or the sea; everything else being a truck stop or an airport terminal in between the two.

I believe it has to do with the appalling diversity of these locales. What an amazing world that can house both mountains and sea on the same orb. One compliments and serves to enhance the other. The cold versus the heat, the steep versus the flat. The white and blue of it, the steak and seafood of it, the...well, anyway. But as with many things, familiarity breeds contempt and either place in large dosages tends to grate on one’s nomadic spirit.

So with the prospect of another Crested Butte winter approaching, and the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo, I decided to head on down to the Virgin Islands and kinda help them put the place back together. Not the American Virgin Islands (too many Americans), the British Virgin Islands, or a tiny bit of paradise called Tortola to be exact.

A lush, mountainous, 15-mile-long garden of beaches in the Caribbean, and a large collection of the world’s finest sailing boats, many of which had been smashed up during this devastating storm. It was on these boats I wanted to work; I wanted to get my hands on these marvels of craftsmanship.

I applied to the West End Shipyard and told them I was a skilled finish carpenter...in other words, I lied. I then applied for a British Virgin Island work permit, a slip of paper that requires $1,000 cash, an AIDS test, and two more difficult items, a bank reference and a character report. These were painfully extracted from our own Thom Cox and Rich Largo for one of two reasons: A) they are both good guys, or B) they were misinformed and assumed they’d never see me again.

So with papers in hand, it was down to the sea for me.

First stop, Puerto Rico, a highly-underrated vacation destination. This magnificent island boasts stunning scenery and the friendliest locals in the Caribbean. Old San Juan is one of the most romantic cities in the world. This, however, was not the case two days after Hugo had departed. The place was a mess.

The entire city of San Juan lay under six inches of water. Electrical lines were writhing and sparking on city streets, no longer controlled by traffic lights or signs. The already crazy Puerto Rican driver was now berserk with his new found freedom.

The ride from the airport to town that rainy night was right out of “Terminator.” A city with no lights, a city with streets lined with mangled buildings, cars and boats. Palm trees jutted from hotel windows as dazed survivors stood about burning trash cans, ankle-deep in floating rubble and dog-paddling rats. IT WAS A MESS.

The cheapest hotel in San Juan that night was $100, take it or leave it. The entire place was being run on candles. I was led up a blackened stairwell 10 stories (the elevator being dead), into a soaked and moldy room, the windows being gone and all. It was a damp, foreboding night with the gunfire of looters, and sirens etching from below.

The next afternoon, landing in Tortola, I was equally shocked. Tha once-lush island had been stripped of its leaves and flowers by the 130-m.p.h. winds. It was a barren winter landscape. It had blow so hard on Tortola that even the geckos (lizards) had been borne out to sea. This would later result in a mosquito explosion which would create a dingue fever epidemic. There was roofing tin wrapped about tress like metal sarongs.

But the saddest things left in Hugo’s wake were the boats. Boats sticking out of people’s homes, boats on their sides on main street, boats at the bottom of the bay. Beautiful, 100-year-old works of sea-going art, smashed into tangled piles of wood and metal.

We were a crew of 14 at the West End Shipyard, four white, 10 black, a motley collection of semi-hardworking wannabe shipwrights. Over the next eight months, my dark-skinned cohorts would teach me how to dance, talk and smile all over again. I would teach them...well, nothing, really. We were a family, not really recognizable from the constant barrage of verbal abuse, but in our hearts.

We were restoring two of the finest yachts ever built. Sirroco, built in the early 1900s, had a hull design was and still is one of the sleekest ever conceived. She was owned by Errol Flynn, that swashbuckling, womanizing cad who will always be remembered for saying, “Any man that has $10,000 left when he dies is a failure.”

And we were also working on Royono, a 90-foot masterpiece of woodwork that had belonged to JFK, who, as everybody knows, will always be remembered for saying, “You know the responsibility I’ve got? I’m the only thing standing between Nixon and the White House!”

Both these ships reeked of history and quivered with the ghosts of Marilyn Monroe, Kennedys and countless movie and political moguls.

I moved on to the boss’s own 56-foot yawl, Rob Roy, anchored in the middle of the harbor. Rob Roy had no power, no water and no way to call or reach shore other than a sailing dinghy. I was left there and told to report to work in the morning.

As I watched the sun sink behind St. Thomas 10 miles away, I wondered how exactly I was going to pull this off. I was a pathetic carpenter at best, by no stretch of the imagination a shipwright, and I knew absolutely nothing about boats or sailing.

The fact of the matter, the real crux of the biscuit was, I didn’t even know how I was going to get to shore.

The first couple of days might prove a bit... well, turbulent.

 

-To be continued

 

The wonderful world of sailing: Part 2

by Steve Church

 

One hundred thousand lemmings can’t be wrong.

— Graffito

 

I can’t die until the government finds a safe place to bury my liver.

— Texas Kenny

 

We had on our crew at The West End Shipyard, Tortola, a leprechaun of a black man by the name Mojo. Born on Tortola 60 years prior, Mojo had never been off the Island. Mojo had never even owned a pair of shoes. He would point to his callused foot and say “De permenent shoe!”

It so happened Mojo had sired a daughter who had moved to New York City years earlier. Mojo hadn’t seen her in 15 years and now found himself invited to her wedding. Somewhat set in his ways by now, Mojo was reluctant to go...to say the least, however we fellow shipyard mates were just as adamant that he should attend.

Adamant to the point of pooling our money and buying Mojo a plane ticket, a cheap suit, and his first pair of shoes.

We then personally escorted him to the airport and literally carried him to the plane. Last seen, Mojo still had his shiny shoes in his hand, refusing to wear them. We returned to work glowing in that sense of doing the right thing for our little buddy.

Mojo was back on the job the next morning, looking visibly shaken and seriously blanched. It seems the plane flight itself, (Mojo’s first), had totally unnerved the man, then compounded with a 20-minute taxi ride to the center of Manhattan, Mojo had become quite unglued. He snapped, refused to leave the cab and insisted on being returned to the airport whereupon he flew directly back to Tortola, without so much as laying eyes on his daughter.

It was weeks before Mojo quit shaking from this horrifying experience.

My best buddy in that den of pirates was a maniac by the name of Texas Kenny. Kenny lived on his beautiful ketch, Estrella, next to me in westend harbor. He had come upon Estrella under unusual circumstances. Seems the previous owner of the boat had repeatedly refused to sell Estrella to Kenny, he had refused offers of up to $150,000 in fact. Then a hurricane hit Houston and Estrella had mysteriously become detached from most of her anchors and was dragging across the harbor destined for sure destruction. Kenny placed a call to the owner and offered him $10,000 for the boat that second. The owner accepted, whereupon Kenny leaped aboard a huge mysteriously previously-hired ocean-going tug and tore after Estrella. The seas being too rough to approach the heaving sailboat, Texas Kenny leapt into the 20 foot waves and with a line in his teeth swam from tug to sailboat.

He thus saved his beloved Estrella and for the next 10 years became quite famous on every island from Turks to Tobbaggo. Texas Kenny was well-known for his sailing skill, his bar room escapades and one other thing. Seems Texas Kenny was born, as the say, rather well endowed, and he was proud of it. Kenny sailed his Estrella for 10 years and 200,000 miles buck naked. He wore a pair of python cowboy boots fitted with topsider souls and nothing else. And Kenny didn’t give a hoot who saw him. He was a wild guy, Kenny.

It came to pass that a certain world-renowned rock band, whose name shan’t be mentioned here, threw a party on their yacht, then anchored in Antigua. Kenny was invited and sailed south from Tortola to attend. That was the last we

saw him.

Texas Kenny did in fact have ‘too much fun’ at that party. His heart and it was a good one, seized tighter than a frog’s behind. And Texas Kenny was dead.

The rock band, not needing this kind of exposure in a conservative foreign country, had Kenny’s body quietly returned to Estrella, then they weighed anchor and slipped away from Antigua.

He was not discovered in that sweltering cabin for a couple more days and consequently had to be dealt with hastily. A quick funeral was called together. People came from everywhere, hundreds of sailors and islanders came to wish Kenny goodbye. We buried him at sea, he was a good, good man.

Three months ago, on the coast of Costa Rica I ran into a sailor that had been at that funeral for Kenny. An Englishman.

“Well mate would be hearing what happened after we buried the poor bloak?”

“He sank, that was it,” I said.

“Sure he sank, mate but two months later hundreds of miles away Texas Kenny washed up on shore in St. Barts...in front of his favorite bar... naked! He’s still out there making the rounds!!”

Mika’s grandfather had been a shipwright, and now Mika, in a world where only a few shipwrights still exist, had followed his family’s trade. He was the finest woodworker I have ever met, and although he was only 30 years old, Mika had one miserable contankerous attitude.

“ALLRIGHT YOU WORTHLESS BILGE RATS, YOU BOTTOM FEEDERS START OFF SLOW THEN TAPER OFF, YOU CALL YOURSELF CARPENTERS?? YOU WOULDN’T MAKE A PIMPLE ON A CARPENTERS BUTT!!” and

so on...all day. No one ever talked back to Mika though for one small reason.. He was huge. ..he made Arnold Schartzenager look like Mother Teresa. Mika built masts. Wooden masts, for wooden boats, a trade that died 50 years ago. Here’s how Mika built his masts. First he’d fly to Alaska or Nova Scotia to find the perfect Sitka spruce. He’d have it milled into planks three inches by 12 by 30 feet and ship it to Tortolla. Then in his ‘mast shed’, a building six feet wide 120 feet long he would reassemble the tree. You cannot use a tree as a mast because of the weight. A mast is hollow, to be 90 feet high and not capsize the boat it must be light.

He would then take one plank and slice the end to another by a four-foot finger joint, gluing and clamping it tightly The plank was now 60 feet long. He’d repeat the process, the plank was 90 feet long. Mika would then make three more 90 foot by three inches thick by 12 inches wide planks. With the help of about 10 of us we’d glue the planks on edge to one another, so now there was a square box 90 feet long. He would then rip the corners with a skill saw at 45 percent. So now it was a 8 sided square, Right? He then ripped all those eight sides at 45 percent. It was now had 16 sides right?

He continued until that 90 foot long box had 32 sides. This process had taken six weeks so far. Mika then organized a half dozen of us to sand those 32 sides smooth. This would take another six weeks. We sang and sanded as the trade winds swayed the palms, and slowly that mast took shape. Finally, as smooth as a baby’s bum, the thing was varnished 10 times. Now it came time to run the wires for lights and radar through this 90-foot pole. A large lizard was captured, and a string tied to its tail. We stuffed him in one end of that mast and sealed it up. Two days later that lizard came crawling out the far end dragging the string behind him. Thus we were able to pull the wires through.

The cost of a 90-foot mast? $50,000. There were two in Royono.

When it came time to step the mast a party was held, and 45 men recruited to carry it to the ship. We were spaced every two feet down that 90 foot pole and under Mika’s commands that piece of art was lifted and carried out of the shed and down to the crowds on the shoulders of 45 men. We were a 90-foot centiped to the cheering crowds of half of Tortola. The mast was then plucked from our shouldres by a sea going crane and deftly lifted into the waiting Royono. The crowd went nuts, it was a fine day.

We made the rounds till the wee hours, accompanied by Mika, and a massive Rotwieller, Bluto. In one local watering hole, two elderly local gentlemen eyed Bluto suspiciously.

“Dat dog bite?” asked one.

“Naw, he doesn’t bite,” said Mika.

 

Wonderful World of Sailing, part3

by Steve Church

 

Hard work never killed anybody, but why take the chance?

—Charlie McCarth’

 

Somebody left the cork out of my lunch!

— W.C. Field

 

It can be a sad misconception that owning a sailboat is the height of success. It is often too late before the disheartened owner realizes he’s being sucked dry by a 65-foot remora. Often-time, a boat’s name will greatly reflect the owner’s feelings toward said craft. Names like “MONEY HOLE” or “FLOTSAM” or “TILTON HILTON” pretty well describe. Other people seem proud to reveal the source of acquisition. The Dupont families boat “MEOWN,” or the Texas divorcee who painted the family yacht bright pink, has an all-girl topless crew, and sails about the Caribbean with “WAS HIS” on the transom.

There is “FINAL DRAW,” “ACES OVER SPADES,” “DADDY’S MONEY,” and “DONE REACHED.” There are boats that perhaps describe small quirks of the owner, as “WET DREAM” and “AQUAHOLIC.” There are many boats named after one’s true love, some after lost loves such as the 45 sloop called “ANNA BETH MARY SHELLY.”

There are humorous attempts such as the two scuba dive boats called “TANKS A LOT” and “MANY TANKS.” But my favorite had to have been that 55-foot Scarrab or cigarette boat. It was shiny black, low slung, throbbing with four 450-hp V8s, driven by two huge, bearded, sunglassed Latinos. Modern day pirates, it was a fearsome package. On the stern was written “WE’VE COME FOR YOUR DAUGHTERS.”

A classic wooden sailboat, say 60 feet long, can cost $1,000.00 per foot per year to maintain. Then a major $100,000.00 refit every 15 years.

For this and other reasons, many wanna-be skippers chose to rent.

This is a good idea; rental boats as with rental cars can perform under amazing stress and torture you wouldn’t consider putting your own car-boat through. In the two seasons I spent in the Virgin Islands, I witnessed rental yachts doing some amazing feats.

A wonderful example of rental boat abuse was demonstrated in the tiny bay of Cooper Island one sultry afternoon to myself and Captain Mike Masters of the infamous “Dark Horse.”

There is one bar on Cooper it faces the bay. Criticizing other boat handling is the entertainment. Captain Mike and I were on our 5th Bahama Mama when two huge charter boats sailed in. Obvious friends, they dropped anchor together, backed out the anchor lines together, and furled the sails together...and didn’t tie the furled sails...together.

Then the two nautically-clad families boarded their dinghys and joined the rest of us on terra firma. We, of coarse, applauded their fine seamanship... having learned to sail in Kansas and all...

Five minutes later a breeze kicked up, an occurrence not uncommon in the Caribbean. The unsecured mainsail on one yacht shot up the mast and filled with air, and darned if that rental boat didn’t take off sailing full tilt on a southern reach... till the slack in the anchor line took up. WHAM!! With a tremendous shudder the bow went down, the stern came around, and that unmanned $200,000.00 ship was sailing north full speed. The bar got deathly quiet as this gleaming peace of craftsmanship plowed into its sistership. This in turn knocked the other boat sideways, it caught the wind and off it went. So now there were two 60-foot yachts sailing to the end of their tethers, turning and running back toward one another, with a horrifying collision resulting upon the meeting. They would then come about, sail off and return to repeat the carnage. Within minutes both boats were wrecked and sinking. I have yet to witness a more expensive floor show.

Oftentimes, best friends will charter a yacht together.

Bad idea.

Well, if your best friend’s at home, why not 10 days on a boat together?

A. Too small... you’re staring at each other day and night for 10 days.

B. Someone gets to be the captain... someone else does not.

C. The captain will eventually screw up, envoking great mirth from the non-captains. This will greatly perturb the captain.

D.Someone will get drunk.

C.Someone will get naked.

E.Someone will get drunk and naked and make a pass at their best friend’s wife.

One of the best spots to witness this deterioration of water-logged relationships was West End Tortola itself. The conditions were perfect. Pusser’s Landing, an outdoor waterfront restaurant, attracted these charters like flypaper. They anchored off the place and prepared for dinner.

A slight but consistent on-shore breeze carried every word that was said on those boats directly to the eager ears of every patron in that restaurant.

For example, best friends Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice have just dropped the hook and are preparing for a night ashore.

Bob: “What a great day, huh?”

Everyone else: “Wonderful, perfect, really great!!”... Silence...

Bob: “Hey, Ted, why don’t you and Alice take the dinghy on in and save us a table, we’ll be right along!”

Ted: “Great idea, Bob, perfect, wonderful.., you’re all right.”

Bob: “You guys are great, this is so much fun!!”

Ted and Alice row to shore and choose a table by the water. We boys at the bar turn in our stools and face them. We know what’s coming.

“BUTTHEAD” wafts across the darkened harbor.

“That Ted is a good example of why some animals eat their young!”

“Good one!” We boys at the bar agree, and nod to Ted that he in fact is the subject drifting on the wind and yes, we all know it.

“I mean is that a beard he wears or is he eating a muskrat?”

“Oh lovely!!” The boys at the bar agree.

Ted’s hand goes to his beard.

Now Carol’s voice floats to the restaurant, “And that Alice!! Lord, the woman has the personality of a soap dish, the charisma of a speed bump...”

“Ohhh,” from the boys at the bar.

“Why, if she didn’t have boobs, nobody would even talk to her.”

“Ahhh,” the boys at the bar.

‘AND THEY’RE NOT EVEN REAL!!” echoes across the harbor.

“BRAVO BRAVO!!” scream the boys at the bar, as everyone in the place is staring at Alice’s chest.

“Well, I guess we better go join those dweebs, Godallmighty, dinner with the Munsters... AGAIN!!” Bob’s voice booms across the waterfront.

Bob and Carol bring the other dinghy, tie up, spot Ted and Alice.

“Hey, guys! Great spot you found... you guys are great!!”

The boys at the bar gagging on peanuts and blowing beer through their noses turn back to their business...waiting for the next boat.

 

warning: may be continued...