Down to the sea in ships
A couple good friends of mine who own boats are putting them up for the winter now, the cost of operation for what would be left of the season not worth it.
One has an old wood sailboat, I can’t tell you if it’s a sloop or a ketch but it’s sleek and pretty, and I’ve been on it a few times. He has to unship the mast to get it to it’s winter storage area, or else wait in line for the drawbridges to open to let him in. I have helped him socket the mast and he puts a british gold sovereign under it. I assume this is some sailing tradition. Another has a sweet Lyman lapstrake that is as sound and sweet as the day it was made, years before my birth.
I love boats. I love to look at boats. I love to see them, would love to build one, would love to work on them, especially old wood ones. But keep me the fuck out of them.
I’m not particularly fond of any body of water that doesn’t have a filtration pump and a plug. I tend not to swim in anything over my chest, and never anywhere that doesn’t have a clean, sandy bottom. I once rode out onto the middle of Georgian Bay on a family friend’s little aluminum fishing boat, and though I have fallen from great height, stood on 4″ wide beams some distance in the air, crawled undermillions of tons of rock in passages barely large enough to accomodate me, been up close and personal to animals that could easily have killed me, held deadly poisonous snakes in my hands, been shot, knifed, and beaten to within inches of my life, the only thing that ever really terrified me was being on that little damned aluminum boat out in the middle of the bay.
My brotherinlaw, who was also aboard, later was surprised to find I hadn’t enjoyed the trip. “You seemed to be having a good time” he said.
Well, what the hell was I going to do? Jump out? freak out?
I have been on enough boats to understand this is an illogical and unreasoning fear, but that’s what a phoboa is, is unreasoning.
beats being afraid of something else stupid, I guess. At least this fear is easily avoidable.
13 comments Og | Uncategorized
As long as my bilge pump moves water out faster than it comes in, I’m good.
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The coin in the step of the main mast is a tradition going back into the mists of time. It’s purpose is to pay for the passage of dead seamen of the ship across the River Styx into the underworld. I would not feel at all comfortable aboard a sailing vessel that didn’t have a coin under the mainmast. A related tradition is sailors wearing a gold ear ring. It’s purpose is to assure the cost of a decent Christian burial should the need arise. I feel very comfortable aboard most boats, but panicky and deathly afraid in confined spaces.
Phobias are strange things, considering humans are born with only two genetic fears. Loud noises and falling. All others must be learned. I thank G-d that my parents were not afraid of very much and passed that general lack of fear to me.
I built and repaired wooden boats for a living most of my adult life. I own a small aluminum skiff because it gets me to the places I like to fish and costs very little to operate.
Gerry: Were you the guy who once commented that you worked on John Wayne’s yacht?
Phobias are something that does not need explaining or reason.
They do not respond to either.
Someone who reads this site worked on John Waynes boat? No way.
Everybody has something that freaks them out, to some extent.
Oddly, I’ve been scuba diving in 90 feet of cold, dark water and just had the usual ‘don’t mess up’ thoughts, but being in a small boat on a big lake unnerves me something fierce.
I wouldn’t say I had a phobia of water too deep to touch with my feet while holding my nose out of the water, I simply have a distaste and discomfort of it, and so I avoid it.
I never learned to swim as a youth due to terrible, oozing athlete’s foot that only went away once I entered adolescence. That in itself caused no fear; in the Army we had to go in the pool and hang on the ledge once a year, not actually thrash and swim, and I rode in a boat sans life jacket in the Agean Sea when we live fired in Crete, and was wowed by the voyage.
Then after I decided to learn to swim at the local Y when I got my Army discharge, I was in an open pool session, got overconfident from doing laps, and let myself sink halfway to swim vertically from a depth, instead of simply across.
And no matter how much I paddled, I remained suspended in the center. Even with the “dead man’s” fetal position, guaranteed to bring you up, no luck.
The water’s convection slowly brought me to the side, and I painstakingly climbed the grout of the tile with my finger and toe nails until I surfaced and breathed the most grateful lungful of air since birth.
Now I want no part of deep water, even if you put me in damn bathysphere or scuba apparatus.
A sloop has a single mast with a mainsail and one foresail. A ketch has two masts, and can have a variety of rigging styles, though still generally fore-and-aft. Then there’s a ketch-rigged schooner, which is a large sloop with two masts and, etc.
VERY roughly said. As any sailor will tell you.
M
I LOVE being out on the water in a sailboat — as long as it’s not out of sight of land. Out in the middle of Georgian Bay would qualify. You have my sympathy.
M
Og, yes I am the guy.
Gerry N.
I thought so. And I must reiterate in saying that I am insanely jealous.
Used to do a lot of canoe camping in my younger days. Only thing unnerving to me was being in a big, clear-water lake (e.g. Moosehead Lake in ME), & looking down 25+ feet & being able to see the bottom. Kinda felt like floating in mid-air.
I hate boating, too.
But because I get horribly, horribly seasick – if not for that, I’d probably find it quite pleasant.
Mark, and then there are the Yawls, which look like Ketches except . . .
;)