DO YOU WANT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR SINKING THE BOAT?
That Must Be a Trick Question
A rhetorical question, actually, with a little trick in it; he succeeded in leaving me speechless, a rare situation indeed. I definitely have the habit of addressing unexpected things as a question that doesn’t require an answer. I think we’ve all done this, and then the words hang in the air. Sometimes they’re regrettable; much more often, they need to be said. I wrote a book about that.
Last Sunday evening I was introduced to a computer program called Microsoft Project. We solemnly entered the tasks at hand and the estimated timeframes of each, in keeping with the constraints. The FIVE pages printed excruciatingly slowly, estimating our timeframe to be far longer than our current goal. The list covered most of our dining table, lying haphazardly atop a remarkably difficult 1,000 piece puzzle of Colorado’s Maroon Bells, still there because it’s not in our nature to set uncompleted things aside.
I took a very long sip of my sale-rack red wine blend, which fortunately was flowing nicely. Silence reigned until I broke it. “Is it possible that I still have no idea how long this is going to take?”
That question, too, was rhetorical. We know we still don’t actually know.
Quick background…when this repair began, we had a small brown spot on the port bow, which we thought was a little rot in a tiny percentage of our home. Note the descriptors: small, little, tiny. We need two months, we told the boatyard when they hauled us out of the water, maybe three, to get this repaired. That was eight months ago; you never know what path SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE might lead you down.
One crucial, time-consuming task is caulking, sealing the seams between planks. (I gave up complaining about the redundancy of boat terminology; there is all kinds of caulking in the world. This timeless art, in some regions of the planet, is called corking.) There are sought-after professionals who pound cotton into boat seams because it has to be done just so. That’s all they do. We have hundreds of feet of seams to caulk but we’re not seeking them because they charge what their skills are worth. I wrote more about it here:
I think this task should fall to me even though I’ve never done it. I consider myself teachable, even though taking direction after being an independent business owner and strong woman for decades is harder than one might think. The sharing of my opinion on this matter led immediately to the title, which bears repeating. “Do you want to be responsible for sinking the boat?”
My crooked eyebrow raise clearly said, ‘NO, I don’t want to be responsible for sinking the boat, but we are our resources.’
The true purpose of this question was to emphasize three things. First, every part of this precise, intricate work, while large in scale, has a multitude of parts, each of which is reliant on all of the others. If we fail in one step, we fail, and the result can be dire. Second, time plays no part here. If it’s wrong, even the slightest bit wrong, we rip it out and do it again, or recoat it or whatever needs to be done, regardless of the cost. Third, forty tons doesn’t float unless everything fits together perfectly, just as designer William Hand, Jr envisioned it nine decades ago. Pounds and pounds of soft cotton are essential for such a fit.
On Thursday we completed rebedding (resecuring and resealing) the massive bronze backstay chainplate on the port side. That little(?) task on the list is a multi-step, multi-hour task; we have eight more to go. As we do each one the seams beneath it need to be caulked. You got it, here’s the opportunity to teach and to learn.
As the temperature plummeted under a stunning sky, I got my first lesson in another ancient skill, with all its rhythms, challenges and intricacies.
Wooden boatbuilding is art, and I appreciate its timelessness. Everything will fall into place as it needs to.
In due time.
~J
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Tiny footnote ***There’s only one person I’m currently aware of that doesn’t care whether he and his crew sink the boat or not, as long as all his enemies are on it.
This was a good reminder for us with our iPhones and e-cars, for whom history started yesterday, who have not nearly enough gratitude and appreciation for the technical skills of those who went before us, crossed oceans, crossed prairies, and eventually took to the skies because they knew how to turn metals and wooden into durable vessels, vehicles, and crafts.
We still stand on the shoulders of giants.
I suppose my suggestion here is too late. Just like when you buy a new shirt and the label has fine print that you should experiment with cleaning materials on a small unobtrusive area before washing, before you start the caulking process on the below the waterline areas, practice, practice, practice! on some out of the way deck planking 'til you get the feel of the cotton going in just right! I hope it is going well with you!