Yorktown (7/18/2015)

I had a great Saturday morning sailing with a friend (R) on a wooden boat he built from scratch ever since I have known him (7 years or so).  It is a 18.5 ft. Eel, a yawl designed by the marine architect William Garden.  I helped R twice (just a little bit), a group of friends helped once to turn the hull, and another time to put her on the trailer, and it was an absolute pleasure to see her floating and in such a beautiful shape.

 Let me tell you she was a pleasure to sail, and it felt like she was going faster than what the hull speed would indicate.  It felt faster than my 25 ft. boat when we are going 6 knots, but then we were much closer to the water in this boat.  But yes it was absolutely delightful to sail.

We were sailing in the Poquoson River, which is a great river for smaller boats, kayaks and canoes.  R was still trying to get a feel for his boat, This was the 4th time he had taken her out for a sail and it was an honor to be invited.  We had a steady 10 knot wind (estimated by us) and we occasionally had the rub rail touching the water.  R told me he collected all kinds of pieces of lead, like lead shot and pieces of gutter and alike, totaling 300 lbs, and embedded them in epoxy to make the keel (he did not want to melt lead in his garage; what makes sense).  Other boat techniques he described included the manufacturing of a hollow wooden mast, all to save on weight, to make it light and easy to handle on land and on the water.  So yes it is a light boat and again it sailed super nice and very light on the tiller.  I had a blast being out on the water.

Seaford (8/17/2014)

It was a very quiet Sunday morning when I went to the boat to prepare it to receive a coat of nonskid paint in the cockpit.  I took this picture at 10 in the morning.  I was the only one there, and there were even very few people at the public boat launch in the far back of the photograph.

Typing the word cockpit makes me all the sudden realize that airplanes also have cockpits.  Interestingly the dictionary says its origin is from an enclosed area where they had cock fights.  It goes on and says it is also the name of the quarters of warships where the junior officers are housed.  A very interesting juxtaposition here.  On small water crafts like sailboats and smaller motorboats the word “pit” in the word cockpit sounds more true to its meaning; it is a well where you stand in and do most of the boating and having a nonskid floor is important. 

Oh well.  An egret was standing on the dock, peering down, probably looking for a juicy morsel like a small crab or small fish.  At low tide (which it was) the mud flats are often overtaken by fiddler crabs.  Neat little animals; the males have one huge claw and one that is the normal size.  Females have equal size claws.  Makes you wonder if size matters in this part of the animal kingdom as well.  There are so many ways of being attractive to the opposite sex in the animal kingdom; it is amazing.  Even in our own species, the humans, different cultures have different (physical) things they look at to judge whether that person makes a good mate.  It is absolutely fascinating what evolution did to further a species and facilitates selecting mates that would make my offspring more successful than yours.  That’s what Darwin called “Natural Selection” and “Survival of the Fittest.”  Guess that is also why we called out boat the "Beagle."

Anyway, there had been heavy dew fall, and after drying the boat and waiting some time, I had a successful day getting the nonskid paint down.  It is now safer down there; it looks better and hopefully less sensitive to water getting into the core of the boat.