something wrong at the yard

[willie]

Oh my goodness. YOU need a break Dave. Let's go sailing. She told me today she's waiting to go.

[george copeland]

Hey, Ave M. has a nice hull job. Thought often of that deep blue down here--but the thermal effect... Holy cow--with that dark hull at this time of year on Galveston Bay I could steam vegetables for sure. Just leave'em on the settee. But, you're right about Dave: he needs a good sail or two. Though he might be in the right frame of mind just now if you have things to do aloft.

[marymandara]

...The accidental boatbuilder contemplates the spreaders, wondering just how ridiculous a modern day hanging at the surrogate yardarm would seem. If only the purchase tackle that held him aloft were easier to take a bight in under load...

The forbidden and inherently ill-fated love affair ended rapidly on that first picnic at the beach, the otherwise comely legs hidden beneath a menacing coat leaving pause to wonder on her location the day the sasquatch images were captured on that Super-8...although the hair was coarse yet snowy white, almost glasslike in clarity. He brushed casually against her and felt a fire-like prickly heat rash welling from deep within...

[george copeland]

Yep. Too much styrene.

[george copeland]

Yes, ladies. Went back over these posts, beginning with the sad and mournful reportage relating the demise of those boats in Berkeley. A few remarks apropos the metaphysical takes on the sea and on boats.
I was lucky enough to have been reared by a father who is an engineering genius--better yet, one without a formal education. By the time I was 18, he had something like 35 patented inventions, and was, at the time of my highschool graduation, the designer and manufacturer of the world's most powerful agricultural tractors. They were behemoths. Beautiful lines, though, easy to work on, too--though they almost never needed it. Worked in some of the worst places on the planet, too. But they reflected the man who gave them their mechanical life. That is to say they reflected his values and experiences, and the math and engineering behind them were subservient to those values. It is the same with Mr Alberg. It is clear he valued beauty, simplicity and, above all, life. He evidently held that combined toughness and elegance were a fine achievement. And so he put them in his boats. As a practical matter, we are left to appreciate and experience something of what it meant to be Carl Alberg. I suppose I am saying that the boats themselves have no consciousness, but are conduits and transmitters for the soul of that big-nosed Swede. And it is funny how this works out. Just as there are devotees to the Ariel and Commander and Triton, there are today devotees to my father's tractors. A few really rich farmers collect them for the very reason that they represent real quality, like these boats, rather than a set of calculations grounded in planned obsolescence and the corporation's projected lifetime value of buyers.
Now...as for the sea. I think anyone who spends a lot of time on it must eventually come to know it is alive, in its own right. And that reference to Melville a few posts back is right on point, and Melville returns to that thought of the living sea in other works. As an aside, I am gratified that I have the pleasure of so erudite and eccentric a gathering. As a matter of fact, I hold that sailors of small old boats are the last remnants of true American nobility. Introspective, resourceful, independent, tough and free of the modern idea that a man of action is, ipso facto, Neandertal.

[marymandara]

Well said, George!

I'm a bit concerned now, though...if the boat is but a conduit for the spirit of Carl Alberg, does that mean that HE's the big Tower of Power fan and not the boat? LOL!

Guess I'll know if she starts singing along with the CD player like:

"...Down at the Niteclub//The women are righteous and waiting YouBetcha//Down at the Niteclub//We go Bump-shBump-shBump//Ya Shoooorrrre!!..."

Dave