"Boat
Borrowship"
October
3, 2002
If
you were to believe the propaganda promoted at most boat shows,
you might think that buying a boat would be a joyful experience.
I wouldn't know myself, since I've never really "bought," a
boat - at least in the old fashioned sense of the word "bought"
as meaning something you actually paid for in full. Mostly I
just borrow one from the bank for a few years and return it
when I've run out of money and they've run out of patience.
Our family
has become something of a foster home for boats that have no
place to go, because it's for darn sure we can't go too far
in the kinds of boats I keep bringing home. This boat borrowship
thing may not be a wise investment of my time and money, but
I like to look upon this practice as a benevolent act of charity.
At the very least, it keeps the bank in business and Tommy,
my boat surveyor, in beer and surf wax.
| 
"Dad,
that's the boat for us"
|
When I
"borrowed" this old trimaran a few years ago, I had a short
but simple set of borrowing points. The boat had to sail flat,
seal tight and sell cheaply. I had already suffered and recovered
from a bad case of boat mortgage matrimony and wasn't going
to be lured into another one of those painful boat custody relationships
where I worked all week and some weekends to maintain a boat
that I could only visit on holidays.
Bennie, our housemother, Budget Director, and the primary sponsor
of the "earth is round, so let's sail flat" theory, was keeper
of the coffee can that held our boat borrowing money. Since
Bennie was particularly bothered by the design defects found
in our other borrowed boats- namely that the boats heeled over
every time the sails were set, she suggested we look for a more
stable sailing vessel.
"A
condo would be nice. Do they sell condos at the boat shows,"
she asked.
When I
saw the small stash of fives and twenties we'd salvaged from
our last boat lending disaster, I decided to restrict my search
to the narrow creeks and dirty boat yards where insurance companies
often abandoned busted boats after hurricanes.
Once I
spent the better part of a warm Saturday trying to coax John
Farmer at Camp Don Lee to part with one of his busted boats.
I explained to John that the one boat that seemed to show the
most promise, and thus was the pick of the litter had become
a navigational hazard blocking the main channel to his canoe
dock.
"All that
remains above water is the bow and part of the companionway.
The salon is submerged and the engine is buried under two feet
of water. The only thing that boat is good for is stabilizing
the sandbar that's been filling up your creek. I'd be doing
you and the camp kids a favor if I hauled it away."
Well, despite
my best efforts to denigrate the flagship of his sunken armada
and claim this boat for myself, John reasoned that there might
yet be some value in his floundering fleet, so he pulled the
boat off the market, though not off the sand bar at the entrance
to the creek.
While this form of boat hunting proved frustrating and fruitless,
it wasn't long afterwards that I found another abandoned boat
that matched the meager funds in our coffee can. You see, just
about every time the boys and I would return from Beaufort or
Ocracoke on our small Ranger 23 - the Ranger being a little
too small for a trip to the islands and way too small for my
wife, the boys would look longingly at the wooden trimaran across
from us and say, "Dad, that's the boat for us."
I wasn't
sure why the boys kept saying this, since the boat looked like
a mud splattered doublewide trailer that had fallen off its
foundations and slipped into the creek. There weren't any opening
ports and the only entrance into the boat was through a submarine
type hatch in the middle of the deck. I told the boys that their
mother, Bennie, would never go for a boat such as this, since
its greatest asset was a surf sticker claiming "Longboards Rule."
She looked for all the world like a bald sea gull with flesh-colored
pockmarks and two beady eyes peering out across a narrow nose.
I'm speaking of the boat, you understand, not Bennie.
What the
vessel lacked in "Catalina comforts," however, she made up for
in square footage, so of course we "borrowed" the boat. Now
we're the caretakers of a Piver 30 trimaran that has enough
deck space to host the harbor happy hour or a small church revival
and, depending on the delegation and denomination, we can do
both at the same time. When folks want to know how they'll spot
us when we pull into an anchorage, I generally tell them that
we look like the cruising Clampets.
I use a wooden yardstick as a tiller extension and steer from
a Wal-Mart lounge chair positioned in the cockpit. It looks
odd, but it works. We keep wet, dirty clothes pinned to the
lifelines because the stench discourages the gulls from unloading
their arsenal on our deck. (Gulls don't have much pride, but
there are some things even they won't poop on.) For a long time
I had the silly idea that I would take Kontigo to the islands,
but Bennie assured me the boat wasn’t "see" worthy.
"See,
you can’t sit up in the bunks, you can’t cook in the
galley and I’m not going to pee in that space you call
the head. If you want me to go with you to the islands on that
boat- and I pray you do not, but if you do, you’ll have
to make some structural changes to the living quarters."
So I have.
Last year
I paid a fellow a large sum of money to take a chain saw to
the deck of Kontigo so we could raise the roof, rip up the deck
and refit the rigging. Slowly - perhaps before the bank runs
out of patience and I run out of money again, Kontigo is beginning
to have some of those Catalina comforts Bennie loves so well.
But you needn’t worry about us getting uppity about our
new yacht. Even with all the fine fixings we’re adding
to our boat, we’ll still be hosts for the harbor happy
hour and Bible study. Just remember, it’s a BYOBB affair.
"Hard
Aground with Eddie Jones" was a regular column in Carolina
Cruising (later Coastal Cruising) from the late 1980's thru
the mid 90's. Eddie joins TownDock.net as an occasional
guest columnist - writing when the words come. Eddie and
his understanding family sail "Kontigo" out of
Whittaker Creek in Oriental. |
