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| Joshua Slocum - Leadin' the Way Took this li'l fixer-upper round the world |
I
got an Old Fat Boat, she's slow but handsome --
Hard
in the chine, soft in the transom --
I
love her well!
She
must love me,
Though
sometimes I think its for my money!
--
from Gordon Bok's Old Fat Boat
Crank Boats and the Cranks Who Love Them
It
used to be, tucked away in cove and backwater or moored along the far
end of otherwise respectable harbors, one could find boats and
persons of interest. Crank boats and the cranks who love them.
Cranks
exuded personality.
Crank
boats were strange and wondrous of line, often fantastic of rig. They
had been built or converted or repaired or transformed, by steady and
patient labor, to match the visions of some dreamer. Their pedigrees
were dubious, mutted beyond all classification. Each a bold statement
of individuality. Each a leap away from the mundane. Ex-centric.
Invention
and experiment were casually strewn about, aloft and alow.
Solutions by those long of need and short of pocket. Improvisation,
makeshift and found-art the rule.
Form
may have fit function in obvious albeit unfamiliar harmony. Or
cross-purposes, inscrutable to the uninitiated, might jar the
beholder.
Previous
incarnations – as a ship's lifeboat, a painter's punt or fishboat –
glimmered through overlays of ingenuity, hinting of past lives.
Their
paint might have needed renewal, their rigging could stand tuning,
moss or even grass might have found a foothold. Plank and timber may
have relaxed, here and there, succumbing to entropy's lullaby.
Someone
invested themselves in these vessels. Someone loved them. Created them in their own image.
Like
their craft, those someones were a crank lot.
Often
gimpy or missing bits... teeth gone awry or just plain gone...
knurled by a life of hard knocks... piercing eye(s) squinting through
clouds of smoke... gruff and squally of temperament.
They
generally had nothing better to do than offer a drink and an
afternoon's worth of pleasant company. Stories to tell and lives to
recall. Big ideas and small. Horizons to cross once the Old Girl was
brought back into shape. Any day now.
Mostly
single men, but sometimes not. They formed a community who knew and looked
after one another. Welcomed and mentored new-comers, young and old.
*****
There
is challenge and pleasure to a crank boat, mostly lost to a
generation of sailors with standards. Who expect much of their
toys. Even the renaissance in traditional boat-building often demotes
tradition to dogma. Takes innovation for heresy.
A
crank boat is created by warm-blooded hands to convictions personally
felt and lived. Even second or third hand, it sings a siren song to
seduce a kindred spirit. But somewhere along its way, someone with a
soul cared enough to breath life into her.
Crank
boats have personality. You've got to learn their ways and humor
them. Maximize strengths and work around weaknesses. Most everyone
loves their boat. Crank boats are loved passionately.
Why?
What is it about imperfection that inspires true love where perfection
palls?
I
think the answer lies in intimacy, in the partnership which crank
boats demand.
They
are not turn-key. They won't settle for 'pride of ownership', that
smug and shallow glow from having the sense and means to make a fine
purchase. They didn't roll off some assembly-line perfected by
specialists.
With
a crank boat, you have to earn your pride. Overcome challenge and
obstacle. Apply will, wit and wisdom to deficit and obstacle. Work
the angles, break a sweat. Pick up a few scars.
Crank
boats teach us to think outside the box. We learn from them, their
lessons arriving without syllabus. They demand the best from us, and
we love them for it.
When
we buy a factory boat, we so often fit ourselves to them. Reduce
ourselves to the dull mean for whom they have been designed. Our
creativity is exhausted in the choice of colors, fabric or accessories drawn from a narrow list of 'options'. We convince ourselves that we are
now among the Beautiful People who inhabit glossy
advertisements. Worse, perhaps, is that it becomes true – that our
lives become a photo-thin imitation of happiness.
*****
Take
a walk, now, down the docks among the gleaming extrusions. If
anyone's aboard at all, how often are they polishing chrome to a
glister of glare? Or washing salt spray from their topsides, as if
their boat was allergic to the sea? How many have a morning or
afternoon to while away? How many have even a story to tell?
Hmm.
I'm being a bit hard and less than accurate, here. But you know what
I mean.
The
cranks are mostly gone, whether afloat or afoot. Pushed and priced
and fined and impounded and scuttled and land-filled from the public
harbors and corners of the sea. 'Cleaned up', as if we weren't
talking about a person. A home.
Who
gives a fig for vagabonds with their eye-sore fleet of derelicts?
I
miss 'em.