A Year On Hold

Holiday Letter 2007

I am not much for wasting time. I mean there is only so much of it and so many things beyond our control interfere with what little we have. So this year when breast cancer stepped front and center, I was not prepared to put the year on hold. Charlotte took the whole process in stride, and cancelled our travel plans.

Diseases have a life of their own. They unfold in a progression of discovery, diagnosis and treatment. Each of the above can be broken down into steps and since this is what I do for a living I am intimately aware of the process.

First comes discovery. Some one takes your blood, exposes you to radiation and horrors of all horrors, finds something. You were fine before they found it and chances are you feel no different afterwards, but now you enter a different realm. Of course you can ignore it--what do doctors know anyhow--but deep inside you have changed.

When you finally see your dour physician and are informed of your fate, the end of speculation usually comes as a relief. After the initial shock, a plan of action is presented. Frustration, tears and denial may follow the pronouncement and you may go home and sleep on it, but pretty much most people decide aye or nay in fifteen minutes.

Diagnosis is the next step. This entails a visit to your friendly neighborhood surgeon. I have found that surgeons love their work and that they try hard not to lick-their-chops at your predicament. They love nothing better than to have the chance to sample whatever little gremlin may be residing in you.

Once the extent of the malady is known it is time to start treatment. Sometimes just the act of removing the offending agent may be the cure, but then again it may not, and this necessitates a trip to the “ologist”.

As I alluded to above, you are changed by the diagnosis and because of this, you are in danger of becoming overwhelmed by it. Pain, both physical and psychological, accompanies the disease. Some people fight, some are resigned and some get on with life. The latter describes Charlotte’s reaction.

Pain is shared, unequally of course, by the recipient, by family and friends, and by the community as a whole. Just think of the colored ribbons adorning lapels, and the walks and runs that detour us all summer.

Now on to treatment, and here I will be more specific to our case. By the time you read this, the drugs and radiation will be a memory. A year is a terrible thing to waste, but then it was not really wasted, more like diverted for another purpose.

Chemotherapy consists of extremely toxic drugs kept in check by only slightly less toxic ones. There is a certain pattern to the months of treatment. To me it felt like great swells on the ocean with an occasional breaking sea.

Thankfully our boat was never swamped. She rose to meet the peak of the waves and glided steadily down their backside. The period of the waves was three weeks, and three weeks times eight doses of varying concoctions adds up to six months on the high seas, quite an accomplishment.

Radiation resembles the choppy waters of the Great Lakes. Being a daily event there is no time for reflection, the time being used up in scheduling and commuting. Charlotte describes this phase of therapy as being abducted by aliens. Massive, weird machines sequestered deep in the bowels of the hospital, aiming unseen beams of exotic particles at tattooed marks on soft flesh. Pretty creepy I agree.

So where does this leave us at the end of a year, better I think. Certainly more focused on the finite world we live in, with an appreciation for all that we have and all that we have to look forward to, with a palpable sense of the fragility and the tenacity of life, and finally, not with a year on hold, but a year of inner discovery.

The Admirable Resident

First published in HOSPITAL PHYSICIAN as a Code Blue Story in January 2003.

As a newly minted intern, I was just beginning a month on 2700, the telemetry floor, which was populated mainly by cardiac patients. Although my first nervous week thankfully passed without major incident, my second week was not to end so calmly. Late in the afternoon on Friday, as I was trying to finish my notes and get out before something happened to extend my stay (I had finally managed to get a weekend off), I suddenly heard a series of piercing screams coming at regular intervals. The sound of multiple nurses yelling for me quickly followed.

I rushed down the hall, reciting the ABC's of advanced cardiac life support. I had participated peripherally in a few codes since starting my internship, but this was the first time things were firmly in my court. When I entered the room from which the screams came, I saw a 40-year-old woman sitting in a chair; she was intermittently convulsing, screaming, and then sitting quietly with a perplexed look on her face.

Although she was in a room assigned to me, I had not seen her before. It turned out that some of these rooms, when empty, were used for staging interventional cardiologist cases. Before I could begin my preliminary examination, she started convulsing again. The thought crossed my mind that if I were to grab her, I would start convulsing along with her, as if she were connected to some electric device.

She obviously had an airway and was breathing; her screams proved that. As for her circulation, her face was red enough to show that blood was perfusing all her tissues. Not knowing exactly what to do, I called a code. I ordered an electrocardiogram, oxygen, and a chest radiograph and then shouted for the medical resident. My yell must have been fairly loud, because the resident suddenly appeared without being paged. A general practitioner who had spent approximately 15 years working in an emergency department, he had decided to do an internal medicine residency to become board certified in the managed-care world. He was a blessing to a new intern.

Nothing seemed to faze this resident. Walking quickly over to the patient, he carefully but firmly took hold of her shoulders. He managed to calm her and to stop her convulsions, reassuring her (and me) that everything was all right. At that point, we heard a chuckle behind us and turned to see the cardiologist. We learned that he had been on the telephone all afternoon with the patient's health maintenance organization (HMO), trying to get approval to replace her defective defibrillator. The HMO denied care at our institution, so she had been waiting for transfer at the time her emergency occurred. Because of the episode, she was subsequently taken to our catheterization laboratory for a quick remedy to her predicament. Later that night, the patient explained to me that this was the second time she had had a malfunctioning defibrillator.

Thinking back to my internship and the whole of my medical training, I feel an incredible depth of gratitude to all the teachers, fourth-year medical students, interns, residents, attending physicians, and patients that make up the life of a physician-in-training. But most of all, I am grateful to that one resident. I have tried to emulate the calmness and certainty of purpose he showed that late Friday afternoon whenever I find myself in a crisis situation.

Norway Stories

NORWAY STORIES -- INTRO-
DUCTION


Thirty years ago I slung manure, buried bloated sheep, pull apple tree roots on a 45 degree hillside, gained twenty pound and woke up every morning to the most incredible scenery framed by my cold bedroom's window.

I picked fruit, bailed hay, and cut grass to make the winter's silage; built roads and ate lovingly prepared food.

I hike up a steep trail to the tundra every weekend and gillnetted trout on an alpine lake in a locally built wooden skiff with the farmer's daughter. We ate them pan-fried with a little butter in an ancient wooden hut above the tree line.

I drank export beer in cold wet bottles cooled by a glacial stream with other young vagabonds from England, Ireland, Holland and the U.S., and out of desperation I read the complete works of Shakespeare.

I climbed and almost topped the local mountain called Vasfjoro. This I did against the wishes of my hosts, who in retrospect were well founded in their concerns for my safety.

I smoked the meat of calves and sheep slaughtered in the barn and almost succumbed to the sweet smoke of the apple roots I had ripped from the hillside.

I guided, though maybe was lead by, the dairy cows coming down from their summer pasture to begin their long winter internment in the warm red barn.

I stood in trees picking fruit as large snowflakes blew off the mountain, melting in the warm autumn sun before ever touching the ground. I harvested potatoes with a plow meant for draft horses and now pulled by diesel.

I worked hard and enjoyed the simple honesty of the farmer and his wife. And I left with much more than I came.

I left with an appreciation for natural beauty. I left with calluses on my hands and a sense of the unforgiving sanctity of tradition.

I left understanding the fragility of life on the edge of a fjord and of the abundance of food that backbreaking work and fifteen acres can provide.

I left understanding the consequences of war and the German occupation. I left with my heart in my hands and all the produce that could be stuff into a 1960 blue VW beetle.

And now I am returning, thirty years hence. Spending as much in a day as I spent in a year. I am returning sleeping on 400 thread count sheets, and not old feed sacks and rocks.

I am returning with my wife Charlotte and not my traveling companion in 1973, Curt. He has disappeared into the Everglades to spend a life riding out hurricanes.

As we drop into Oslo I wonder if Norway can live up to my expectations: it seems hardly possible. Is it Thomas Wolfe that said you cannot go home again, but then home is the only place they have to take you in, so we will see.





WATERFALLS…


Global warming makes a lot of sense to me, heaven knows Chicago has gotten warmer. As a kid I spent the entire winter outside. Winter lasted from November to April, and I was able to sled, skate and freeze for the majority of that time. Quite a bit older now and on a flight from Kirkenes, Norway to Oslo, back-tracking the entire six day trip up the coast on the Kong Harold, one of the coastal steamers of the Hurtigurten line, I finally have the time to contemplate this trip.

Norway is spectacular – sounds trite I know – but around every bend I am forced to take three or four more picture and the road is very curvy. At one point I swore not to take any more photos of fjords, but this proves impossible. Now with five gigabytes of images stored on my hard drive I am wondering if they will all look the same when I finally get to review them.

On my first visit to Norway water was everywhere. It was overhead and underfoot. Rain gear, complete with rubber boots, was a necessity. I do not mean any of that namby-pamby Gore-Tex stuff. I mean real rubber coated cloth guaranteed to bake you alive if the temperature rises above fifty degrees.

Rushing streams of water were everywhere. I walked through them, drove through them, drank from them and never bored of watching the torrents fall from the sky over dauntingly high cliffs to be absorbed without a hint into the deep blue-black briny water of the fjords. Every crack in the rock was another excuse for a waterfall. Another excuse to revel in the majesty of it all. To contemplate the forces necessary and the time, time, time to wear the rock into submission. For it is not the rock that rules in Norway, it is the water.

At first glance Norway is nothing but rock, but on closer inspection it is the water that moves the people and freight, that provides the cod and the herring, that the oil platforms are built on, that makes the moss for the reindeer to eat and the sweet hay for the cows and sheep. It is the water that the Vikings sailed on and it is the water that inspired the people of Norway to build the wooden craft they take to sea in, once to conquer and now to fish and recreate.

There is a flat out cropping of rock that I have been privileged to trod upon thirty times in the last thirty years. It is half way up to Jonstal, the summer cabins of the farmers of Lekve. It is an open area to gaze on the farms and the fjord of Ulvik, the town that Lekve is part of. It is also the spot to refresh on the steep trek up or down the mountain.

Off to the side of the cairn, inconspicuously trickling, is a rock and moss laden stream with clear, cold, dark glacial water that flows out of the rock. Water so sweet I gorge myself on it; making my head swim and my insides ache. This water is the true soul of Norway. Ask any farmer or fisherman, they will agree with me.

And this brings me back to waterfalls or more precisely the lack of waterfalls. I remember them every where, gloriously streaming, careening down the side of massive cliffs or bubbling over moss covered rock, no more. There seems to be a deficit of water these days: less snow in the mountains and less rain in the valleys.

Tore the farmer is busily irrigating his hay fields and fruit trees. Tour guides are busily chasing retreating glaciers. And all this leaves me pondering, not so busily, green house gases and global climate change.




LIGHT…


In 1973 I arrived in Norway during the summer brightness and left in the gloom of an early winter. Never fully experiencing the zenith or the nadir of the sun’s passage across the Northern sky, but none-the-less getting a sense of the immensity of the procession. This short trip is meant to exploit the midnight sun, being more interested in light rather than darkness at this point of my life.

I get a sense of the light in Oslo. It is 10:00, 10:30, even 11:00 PM before the light begins to fade. Every one is out parading around the town and you have to convince yourself to get ready for bed. I watch from our vantage point at the Grand Hotel as brightly painted 1950 vintage American cars drive past to stop and party at The American Club just down the street; their beautiful paint gleaming in the late evening sun.

The first mistake southerners make is not drawing the curtains in the hotel room to get some sleep. The light makes you feel invincible, like being eighteen again. This behavior has dire consequences days into the trip. I am sure Rick Steves mentioned this in his travel guide to Norway, but I was too preoccupied to pay it any heed.

From Oslo we travel north to the farm country and it only gets worse, well brighter actually. Ulvik is our destination. It is a dead-end branch of the Hardanger Fjord. This area is the orchard of Norway. All the brochures show spring’s blossoming fruit trees intermixed with tidy red farmhouses and barns. The fjord is always in the background, more often than not pictured with a cruise ship hovering in the bay in a misguided attempt to give the scene more cachet.

As if it needed it. Ulvik is the equivalent of New England, the Rocky Mountains and the Northwest coast of Canada wrapped up in one small hamlet. In Ulvik we sit in our own little garden provided by Sjur and Helen, the farmer and his urban wife, who run Uppphein Farm B&B where we are staying. The farm is located one shy of the highest tier of farms as they snake their way up the mountainside from the fjord below.

When we should be having our after dinner nap, we are deciding where to eat. And when we should be dressing for bed, we are sitting in the garden looking out at the fjord below. Farmers are tractoring by, sheep are bleating and I need to force myself to get under the covers and dream about sleep. At 3AM I awake to see the light glimmering on the water hundreds of feet below and wait for breakfast.

I will not bore you with the splendor of our boat ride up the coast. I do not possess the literary skill to do the description justice and after all I am writing about the light. We venture north on the mail ship Kong Harold at a touch below fifteen knots till the light becomes more pervasive and finally never disappears beneath the horizon.

I stand bundled in my new sweater and stare, as the sun never drops below 15 degrees. At first it seems to be darkening, then an instant pass midnight it begins to rise and morning begins, warmth reappears and a certain mania takes over. The ‘night’ this first occurs the boat is infused with energy. The entire compliment of passengers and crew are up and celebrating.

The second night, after a cold day of wind and rain, the clouds clear just prior to midnight and the few souls that are up feel the heat of the rising sun as it reflects off the surface of the Barents Sea. I resist pointing my camera at the hovering sun and try to not to stare, but cannot help myself. Little red orbs cloud my vision as the sun’s photons change the chemistry in my rods and cones.

On the last day of our journey the light has a smoky, fluorescence quality to it. It streams sideways like a million arc lamps lighting up the southern face of Europe’s northern most cliffs. As we stream along a succession of glacial valleys, mountains and villages are bathed in it. Finally I draw the curtains to put the North behind me.

Now as I write this we are chasing the sun back across the North Atlantic. I expect Chicago to be dark and although jealous of the midnight sun I leave behind, I take comfort in the familiar glow of mercury vapor that perpetually baths the city in light.

Norway Story - Manure Bucket

Holiday Letter 2006

Thirty years ago I was handed a plank that moments before was holding back a great dammed up river of, lets just say, very ripe manure. Not knowing exactly what to do, I grabbed it knowing that Lars Brandstveit, the Norwegian farmer I was working for was all business. More planks followed and more manure flowed. We proceeded to fill the large rectangular steel bucket on the back of his 4-wheel drive tractor, and then Lars drove the bucket and me to the upper pasture.

Little did I know I was to spend the next week, pitch fork in hand, spreading bucketful after bucketful of sh-t in circles radiating out from the center of the piles that were regularly delivered from the barn below. My amazement at actually standing in piles of year old manure was tempered when I realized I was fertilizing next years hay crop and somehow that mollified my tormented soul.

Why am I telling you this, because this year on July 3rd, 2006 Charlotte and I were riding in that same bucket up past the high pasture in Norway. We used it to travel half way to Jonstal, the name for the summer cabins at the base of the local mountain call Vassfjora. This time Charlotte rode next to me with the late farmer's son Tore at the controls. His six-year-old grandson Lars, grandpa's namesake, was perched behind him in the cockpit of the rugged Italian four-wheel drive tractor.

It turned out that this was Charlotte's first tractor ride and you would think we were on a speeding roller coaster at Great America for all the hoop-and-hollering she was doing as we made our way up the steep rock strewn road. In 1973 we would have started at the back of the barn and climbed some 1000 meters up doing a fast Norwegian jog through fruit trees, deciduous forest, towering pines and firs, into larch and short scrub. Finally emerging on the mossy tundra above the tree line.

In forty-five minutes of relentless walking we would leave the well-manicured farms along this branch of the Hardanger Fjord, and walk high into the greenery, rocks and snow of the high summer pasture amongst the thirteen huts that belong to the farmers of Lekve. Though we are in Ulvik proper, every small grouping of farms has their own title and Lekve is where the Brandstveit's farm is located.

Once we reach the top we are surrounded by mountains, valleys and trout filled alpine lakes. It is here and in other similar areas that the citizens of Ulvik rode out the German occupation. And it is here that I spent every weekend but one of my three month stay on the Brandsteivt's farm in 1973.

The cows and their by-products are long gone, so the bucket is as clean as a farm bucket can be. Tore, with the urging of his wife Karin, has made us a comfortable seat of old pallets and cushions. It was a bit like riding in a Model A's rumble seat except we faced backwards. Once hearing protection was donned we started on our climb. Tore engaged the hydraulics of the tractor decisively lifting the bucket, and us, a meter into the air. This should have enabled us to clear most obstructions, but due to the severely rutted road did not.

I had been exhorting Charlotte for months with threats of Jonstal. We were to have started getting in shape for Norway at the first hint of spring, but as it worked out we were less active. To make matters worse Charlotte's ankle mysteriously swelled, turn blue and painful the beginning of May. Sticking to the adage to avoid treating one’s family, I directed her to the local Urgent Care facility with instructions to request an X-ray. Five hundred dollars later, not including an eighty-dollar ankle brace, a fracture was ruled out, ice applied, Celebrex swallowed and disaster averted.

I could count the cylinders firing as we slowly made our ascent. We passed through three or four fenced off areas: first rocky fields, then deciduous and coniferous forests that delineated the various pastures. Our Midwest sense of grazing land is turned on its head and as we break out of the tree line onto the tundra Charlotte exclaims, “The Sound of Music” and right she is.

But I am getting ahead of myself here. I have skipped over our final forty-minute hike up where no tractor could go. The rock out cropping where we drink sweet water from a glacial stream filtered through miles of rock and moss. Looking out over the Hardanger fjord and hiking past two special boulders: one named for an alcoholic berry that grows on its top and the other called the “Bride’s Chair” due to its distinctive shape.

Walk simply does not describe the slippery moss covered boulders, the stream beds traversed, the horse fly’s nipping at our heels, the cool of the dark canopy, the heat of the open mountain sun, and the effort we extend trying to follow the long stride of this tall Norwegian farmer with the new titanium hip and his skipping grandson.

For two out of shape, car addicted flatlanders we do not embarrass our country or ourselves. We arrived intact and were fed sunny-side up eggs with thin slices of smoked salmon on thick whole grain bread spread with sweet butter and washed it all down with quarts of instant ice tea.

We discussed gillnetting trout and skip stones while little Lars skinny-dipped in a clear glacial lake. To get there we walked through moss much drier than I remember. There has been little rain or snow in recent years. This is evident in the sparsely covered mountaintops and the disappearing waterfalls.

The decent, while more torturous and hurtful to feet and knees, was anticlimactic. If that can ever be said while catching views of Ulvik’s bowl shaped valley as it cradles the terminus of the great Hardanger fjord. As if the walk to Jonstal was not enough for one day, Tore peeled off at the upper pasture to turn the hay he cut earlier in the morning, leaving Lars to guide us down the steeply graded road to the homestead.

Below awaits a meal of whole baked salmon and boiled parsleyed potatoes that we ladled a delicate white sauce onto. We drank apple juice frozen since last years harvest and ended the meal with fresh strawberries covered in clotted cream and sprinkled with sugar.

Other than the coffee, all we needed was a crisp Riesling to top off this meal, but alas it is dry on this Norwegian farm. After dinner the four of us sat on the veranda over looking the orchards of the Hardanger valley and waited for the sunset that never came.

Cultural Connections: Connecting Cultures Through Kimono and Sari

This article was initially published on the Chicago Japanese American Historical Society's website: www.cjahs.org.

Why do we live in Chicago? It is not for the weather, traffic is not a big selling point and as far as the government, well I think enough said. We live here because of a word that I fear is quickly becoming a cliché, diversity. Living in small cities while working my way through school, I quickly became bored with the lack of diversity in those towns and grew to love Chicago’s people and food, music and architecture, art and though I am not a devoted fan, sport. The constant variation keeps my mind (and stomach) stimulated and entertained.

So to this end, on a February morning when a faint hint of spring was in the air, a diverse group of Chicagoans gathered at the Indo-American Center on North California Avenue to discuss how attire and appearance impact the Japanese American and Asian Indian American communities. Present were representatives from the Field Museum, Indo-American Center, Japanese-American Cultural Association and the Urasenke Chicago Association, a group of Japanese and American tea enthusiasts; the group that I am affiliated with and the reason I had been asked to participate.

This was the first planning session for Cultural Connections, an event sponsored by The Field Museum’s Center for Cultural Understanding and Change. The center brings the museums anthropological mission into the neighborhoods of Chicago by partnering more than twenty ethic museums and cultural centers. The theme for this year’s programs -- The Language of Looks.

Though we are here to organize the event, I find myself in the midst of one of the best history classes I have ever attended. My fellow attendees comment not only on history, but demographics, anthropology, theology, philosophy and no less important, fashion design.

I learn that Japanese history in the United States begins with the Meiji period, some 150 years ago when Commodore Perry's Black ships forced Japan to open its doors to the West. These first immigrants to America were farmers and agricultural workers. Their history in America is complicated by import quotas, exclusion laws, picture-brides and darkest of all, forced internment and resettlement.

This contrasts with the more recent history of an urban Asian Indian culture that migrated to America in the 1960's during the Cold War in response to a need for professionals, mainly scientist, engineers and doctors. They had the advantage of speaking English and being able to settle wherever the jobs took them. There was no need for them to be segregated into towns as the Japanese were on the West coast.

Their disparate backgrounds have seen the Japanese strive for inclusion while the Asian Indian's inclination has been to blend and reshape American culture. To think of this in real-time, count how many women you have seen in sari versus kimono, it will be thousands to one.

The title of the program is “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…How Am I Perceived By All?” As the afternoon proceeds various presenters discuss how history, politics, economics and culture all play a role in dress, as does social status, gender, group affiliation, profession, values and taste. How the resources available to us, our communities accumulated knowledge and creativity, combine to affect how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived by the culture at large. And you thought dressing for work in the morning was simple.

What is dress after all but cloth? It is just there, unless drawn attention to as in couture. It is what grandma and grandpa wear, and what culturally aware youth use to play off of: sari with jeans and high heels, coats and accessories made out of antique kimono fabric. For most, ethnic dress is only brought out of the closet for important milestones: birth, coming of age, marriage and death. It is not a comfortable part of life.

We think of ourselves as sophisticated and some how distanced from the natural world, but as Darwin's finches have evolved their coat of feathers in response to natural selection and isolation, so has our dress. Many years ago I spent three months on a small farm in the town of Ulvik, Norway. During the summer, at festivals and weddings, the locals came dressed in traditional garb and depending on where the revelers hailed from their dress differed slightly. It was very regionally specific to a trained eye. Trying to figure which towns were represented at these events was a bit like bird watching.

Another aspect of dress not often considered is technique. You do not just throw kimono or sari on−you dress. There are multiple layers and acres of cloth to wrap yourself in. There is extravagant jewelry and demur sashes to be adorned with and then there are the knots.

I have become intimately aware of this since acquiring my first kimono in the 1980’s. In Western clothes knots are not much of a consideration. Most men learn to tie their shoes and neck ties early in life, usually instructed by a patient grand parent. Women have scarves to master, but these pale to the knots involved with wearing kimono.

Having sailed on Lake Michigan for forty years and practicing marlinspike seamanship for much of that time, I still find securing my kimono a daunting task. Most knot tying is done in front of you with the proper orientation, but when dressing you are at a disadvantage. If you are lucky enough to have a mirror then what you see is backwards and if not, well it is like tying your shoe laces with your foot tied back behind you.

But what does this have to do with ethnic dress, simply it was all designed before that little machine we seldom think of, the zipper. I am not sure when the zipper was first developed, but I know a lot has changed in the world since then and our specific cultures have had to adapt to the changes.

A perfect example of this was the story told by a young college-aged Asian Indian women concerning nose piercing. Her mother was shocked to find out she had gotten her nose pierced while away at college, but her grandmother was so happy that she bought her multiple nose rings. It was as if her ethnicity skipped a generation before reasserting itself. Her mother had done what she could to fit in and her daughter had found a way to blend tradition with the fashion of the day to make a strong personal statement.

So in the end what are we left with? Some one at the end of the program commented that the topic should not have been the Language of Looks but the Calculus of Looks because dress is the outcome of multiple variables. It is an adaptation, over hundreds of years by millions of people, in response to the world they find themselves in. Sometimes in favorable circumstances and sometimes in dire ones, but always looking to the future and to what will be the best for them and more importantly for their children, though they seldom realize this until they themselves are parents and grand parents.

Gunkhole

Holiday Letter and Messing About in Boats 2005

Most people have a vague idea of what a gunkhole is. The best description of one is a snug, secluded and safe anchorage. It is the type of place that Captain Kid would hide out in.

For boaters the word conjures up thoughts of tropical paradises that the likes of Conrad and Melville wrote so convincingly about. It brings to mind the famous cruising grounds of the Bahamas, the Chesapeake or the San Juan islands in the Pacific Northwest, but here on the southern most spot of the southern most Great Lake we have to settle for what we can get.

The Great Lakes do offer several world class cruising grounds: Door County in the northwest corner of Lake Michigan, the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior, and probably the most herald, the North Channel and Georgian Bay on Lake Huron; some 400 miles of open water north of Carrie Rose's mooring in the mouth of Montrose Harbor.

I have never made it to any of these Great Lake's treasures. A lapse in my forty years of boating that I find hard to forgive myself for. Time and again I have heard of the wonders of cruising in the North Channel and Georgian Bay from yachtsmen that have sailed the world, but on my first futile attempt to reach the gunkhole of gunkholes last year I petered out about a 100 miles short and headed for home.

This year though, this year of a new pope, continued war in Iraq, Michael Jackson's acquittal, rising gas prices, terrorist attacks in London and Hurricane Katrina, Charlotte and I started out with great expectations of a leisurely journey up the western coast of Lake Michigan to Trawler Fest. Yes, I said Trawler Fest. Who in their right mind would think that any self-respecting wife would consent to such a trip let alone accompany her husband on it, but off we went.

By now I think you all know we have a Nordic Tug 32 called Carrie Rose, named after Charlotte’s grand mothers. She is number 32044 to be exact, a very important factoid for all Nordic Tug owners. The last boat built at the old facility and one of the last to be built with lots of teak as opposed to lots of aluminum. This makes Carrie Rose distinctive, but a challenge to maintain. After much preparation and sweat we were ready to head out when I noticed an odd occurrence. The tachometer would not move when the engine was started till I goosed the throttle a bit.

I have trained myself over the decades not to ignore the little voices that talk to me. You know, the gremlins that sit at the back of our craniums and as the oracles of old, predict the future. Predictions that, like most of Greek mythology, consist mainly of dread and not useful recommendations for which stocks and mutual funds to buy to help pad our 401K's.

During my Internship I learned never to disregard these subtle hints, but admit to ignorance this August 13 of 2005, the day we departed. After pumping the head and filling the water tanks, we motored out early in the morning into a northeast wind with white caps and spray crashing over our bow heading for Racine, about a five-hour trek racing along at 10 mph.

Somewhere out on the lake, an hour in route, the gremlin's predictions materialized as my voltmeter drooped and the tachometer started doing the jig. Unable to ignore this obvious tomfoolery on the part of the boat, we headed for the first viable harbor up the coast – Waukegan. We altered course because any thing on a boat doing the jig, except maybe the captain and the first mate, is cause for concern. Weighing our options we decided to head for Larsen Marine, a large boat repair and storage facility.

Please bear with a little background information here. When you begin to consider where to pull in for the night on a boat there are various references that are studied listing types of accommodations and amenities available. In boating circles this refers to transient slips numbers: gas, diesel and pump out availability: service, parts, and in dire circumstances haul out facilities and lastly how to contact the marina.

It once was when you were just outside the harbor entrance, you'd call the marina using the VHF radio on Channel 16, but as with every thing else in life these days this simple task has become more complicated. The Coast Guard recently reserved Channel 16 only for emergency and official communications, and Channel 9 for hailing other boats and the marina as in this case. You are still to monitor 16 at all times in case of an emergency, but if you only have one radio and are to be getting a call from a boating buddy you would be listening to 9 not 16. Needless to say it has caused some confusion.

At this stage of my life I am blessed with not one but three radios and hence monitor all channels. This means I get to listen to all types of dribble while waiting for one caller in distress. But it also means I have been able to rescue a few folks in my time after hearing their cries for help.

To get back to contacting marinas, we would in the recent past hail the marina on 16 and then switch to another channel to talk, but now in many cases we find that no one is minding the store. Our tactic is to try 9 first, then 16 and if both garner no answer start the search for the phone number. Of course to complicate matters further all the area codes have changed several times since our references were published.

A cell phone is a remarkably fickle device out on the water and should never be relied upon to save one's skin, but seems to be the only thing reliably answered by marinas these days. Once we get through to the harbormaster and our slip (33 feet with starboard tie up) is reserved, we head in.

Harbor entrances with their “red-right-returning” light to the starboard and green light to the port are simultaneously comforting and disquieting. Comforting to go from rolling in the waves and being prey to the hyperactive weather on Lake Michigan to the quiet protected water of the harbor and a drink. Disquieting to suddenly have waves, currents and trolling fishing craft converge with unfamiliar shoals and rocks.

So as we carefully approached the entrance to Waukegan Harbor with the tachometer wildly fluctuating and cross the boundary of the harbor mouth that separates the watery world from a land focused one, the miscreant gauges assume their proper place, but are never to be trusted again.

Remember this is a story about gunkholes and a gunkhole we inadvertently stumbled upon while waiting for the parts to fix our ailing diesel. Granted it was within spitting distance of the first Super Fund site, in the midst of large boat moving equipment, enormous grey work and storage sheds, and what seemed like an infinite supply of golf carts, all in constant motion and named for their drivers.

We floated there, tied to a working pier watching all sorts of expensive craft being lowered or raised into and out of what had become our home. We waited in relative peace while hoping for one of the aforementioned carts to veer towards us bringing news of delivered parts from far away places. After 4PM we shared our world only with Dan, the night guy who lives in a trailer perched in the middle of the asphalt parking lot that seemed to be baking even on cool days.

This was our world for the first four days of our summer vacation this year. Not a friends apartment in the Latin Quarter of Paris, nor anchored in a bay off the Bitter End Yacht Club in the BVI, not in a traditional inn in Takayama looking up to the snow covered Japanese Alps, no not even in the Tuscan hills out side Florence sleeping in Alberto's ancestral home guarded by Penny, his handsome German Shepard...but not bad.

Transition

Good Old Boat as "Nature Says When" 2005

Ever since I was a child machines have fascinated me, especially if they have big diesels in them. The sounds that emanate from these machines: the whirls, the pssst, the throbbing - well they just seem alive. The mass and momentum, even when creeping along mesmerizes me.

Davenport, Iowa was my home for some 1000 days (but whose was counting) and the one thing that kept me entertained all summer was riding my bike down to Lock and Dam #15 to watch the big tows go through, usually on their way down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, with their cargos of wheat, soybeans and corn destine for some far off country.

The five story push boats and their barges would slowly glide into the lock, almost silently till it was time to stop, then clouds of black smoke appeared from the stacks to the sounds of tympanis and bass drums. The equivalent of many hundreds of truckloads quickly came to a stop as a seething caldron of water erupted at the rear of the boat.

It is all done with such élan; I just hoped that if I ever got a boat (a dim prospect) I could do as well with thirty feet as opposed to three hundred plus feet. It all seems organic to me, like large breathing, belching and well farting creatures have descended upon us. I would sit there for hours in the warm sun, on the banks of the river and just watch and dream.

But this is a story about the transition from sail to power, a transition that occupied a good decade of my life. I cannot remember when I first saw my first small tug, I mean one which I could actually own. I cannot even remember if it was in person or a photo in an ad but it certainly left an impression on my frontal cortex similar to the first Herreshoff design I gazed at in a big coffee table book. These are real boats designed to look and act the part, and come from an American tradition of working boats and not the imagination of some anonymous euro-design team.

Now remember this is happening to me in pre-internet days. I wasn’t able to get gratification by typing “tug” into the search engine and have a few thousands images instantly available. I commenced to search and while secretly looking at powerboats magazines I saw an ad for a dealer selling tugs about half a days drive from my home base. So one Saturday morning my wife Charlotte (she had figured out my obsession by this point) and I took a ride to see these exotic creatures.

It could not have been more than forty degrees out and was drizzling and foggy by the time we got up north to the dealer. They were very patient with us considering that it would probable be another fifteen years before we would have enough where-with-all to purchase one of these little ships.

I took a few pictures of the tugs and placed them on the refrigerator. Not on the front, which is reserved for family, friends and more attainable goods, but on the side. Every day as I walked into the kitchen I would see these two boats perched up on their cradles and think about the possibility of actually owning one.

Time moved on and we became the owners of a superbly built 31 foot Swedish sloop, got a mooring in the harbor I had first started sailing in thirty years before and hence fulfilled the dream of a life time. The next five years were spent rebuilding every system and learning to sail her properly. Another five years went by and all of a sudden we had become middle aged.

This was a shock to both of us. I think I first realized it when the top of my head got sunburned. I couldn’t understand this; it certainly looked to me like I had a lot of hair when I looked in the mirror. Other clues, such as taking thirty minutes to straighten up every morning after sleeping in the V-berth and having to approach getting to the head in the middle of the night like a military campaign, brought the inevitability of aging home.

So I decided to start looking in earnest for a powerboat of the trawler type. I had never paid much attention to powerboat design, figuring it would be simple compared to sailboats and I think there is some truth to this but not enough to warrant ignorance of the subject.

Starting my search for information I first looked to the various powerboat magazines but mainly found boats which could sit-in for the shuttles on the Spaceship Enterprise or ads with either young body builder types or older gents with shocks of white hair with the prerequisite bikinied blond on their arm, but not much about boat design.

Little by little I started to decipher the lingo and understand the differences between planing, semi-displacement and displacement hull forms: the pros and cons of inboards versus outboards, single screw versus double screw, diesel versus gasoline and thruster versus no thruster. I also started to come to grips with the concept of gallons per hour versus gallons per season. I have paid much more attention to the price of crude oil since signing the mortgage for the tug.

Oh yes, I forget to mention we did go over to the dark side and are now the owners of a 1990 32 foot single-screw, semi-displacement tug soon to be renamed the Carrie Rose, after my wife’s grandmothers. We still have the sailboat but it is on the block and our friends, though at first somewhat suspicious and wondering if I was also going to become a republican, have been very gracious. I even think they are a looking forward to their first ride, as I am having been on a powerboat for less than five hours in my entire life.

So today, on this spring day with the cumulus clouds gently gliding overhead from the southwest, I am in my car parked at Montrose Harbor, looking out through the harbor entrance at downtown Chicago, trying to imagine what my mooring will look like with a stack and a pilothouse instead of a mast and a dodger.

I spent the last ten years getting ready for this moment, but I think I will sign up as crew on the Wednesday night beer can races just to keep my feet in the water as we heel over to the gust on Lake Michigan.

Tugging

Holiday Letter 2004 and Waypoints (Nordic Tug newsletter) 2005

We had our shakedown cruise all planned out. Our new boat Carrie Rose, a Nordic Tug 32 named for Charlotte’s two grand mothers, was lying in Sturgeon Bay, WI. While on beautiful Green Bay we were going to venture out and get familiar with power boating.

I started sailing forty years ago at age eleven and have only driven a small cruiser for less than 1 hour before it deconstructed itself, stranding us in the middle of a shallow Florida river. With my life to this point being dedicated to piloting sailboats, being around our new powered house was making my already troublesome reflux act up.

As often happens with plans, this one went astray. We tried to visit her often, making the eight hour roundtrip from Chicago eight times but only managing to get out thrice on Lake Michigan and for not very long at that. Sturgeon Bay is tucked into the middle of a peninsula that separates Green Bay from Lake Michigan and it takes a good hour to slowly motor out to the lake. Once out it is usually time to turn around and come back.

The first time I suggested we take the tug out I got an incredulous look from Charlotte. Now Charlotte is not one of those women that have abhorrence to recreational vehicles. You know the whole panoply of two and four wheeled, keeled or un-keeled vehicles that most men spend their lives lusting after and squandering their fortunes on.

She has motorcycled across the country, ridden bicycles in all types of terrain, taken many a cold shower on camping trips and spent the last ten years sailing Lenore, our sadly departed 31’ sloop. But some how the prospect of actually moving Carrie Rose gave her pause. I also spent the last seven months since the bank bought her for us anticipating and dreading this day. Just starting the engine filled me with trepidation. After all the big cream-colored Cummins diesel sitting under the pilothouse cost more than any car I have ever owned.

To put it off a little longer I decided to check the vital fluids. Yes, there was water in the raw water strainer and oil in the oil pan. The fuel filter was full of glistening amber dew and the sickly green anti-freeze was topped off. It was time to sit down and discuss the de-docking maneuvers. To make matters worse we were actually at a finger dock.

While it was nice to have the utilities and the camaraderie of fellow boaters that comes along with docks, we are used to a mooring. On a mooring you have anonymity. People stick to their own business and you can usually slip off your lines and depart unheeded. This is not the case when resting in a modern dockuminium. There are eyes everywhere.

The docks are haunted by the poor souls of newly retired 50 y/o men with way too much energy and no interest in daytime soaps. Even the joy of Oprah or Dr. Phil eludes them. They sit, wait and dream of mechanical dysfunctions (on boats other than their own mind you) to give them a reason to get their Craftsman tools out of the rear locker and lend a hand. It makes me think of derelict salvage tugs waiting off dangerous shoals for their next victim. Luckily salvage rights have no bearing at the dockside.

But I digress; it was time to head out to sea. Carrie Rose was all warmed up. Water and more exhaust than I could ever imagine was emitting out the back. The bright yellow power cable was tossed off; the dock lines let go. Charlotte was ready to spring aboard with the last tether as I eased the tug into reverse and then abruptly veered starboard.

Was this the tremendous prop-walk from the 4-bladed prop connected to 210-turbocharged-horse power? Well no, it was the forward dock line we had forgotten to disengage. Putting the tug in forward, Charlotte managed to get the offending dock line off and get on the boat but by that time we were jammed sideways between two docks.

My mind turned to all the dockmanship books I have read for some pithy maneuver to get me out of this mess. Nothing came to mind, but the time wasted in inaction allowed the wind to blow us out into the channel. I managed to get the boat pointed in the right direction and only just missed those nice people’s boat farther down on the pier.

Once freed, I turned to see who had witnessed our inaugural cruise and was amazed to see not a soul. It seems the inhabitance of these, and for all I know, all docks nap in the early afternoon. Taking on the envied European characteristic of a long lunch.

We had done it. We were free and I promised myself to enjoy the moment and not fret about the return trip till off the lake. On the premise that nobody really cares much when things go right, I will just say that we brought Carrie Rose in expertly and were tied-up before any of our now awake neighbors reached us. We were acclaimed for gently docking, especially without any help and expletives.

As it turned out our shakedown cruise came early one calm morning while we crossed a 900-foot deep section of the lake to Frankfort, MI. We stopped only once on the way to let a gigantic lake freighter pass in front of us, even though I did have the right of way.

Three weeks later with 500 miles under our keel and more diesel out the tailpipe than during my entire sailing career, we tied up to our mooring at the mouth of Montrose Harbor in Chicago. Looking around we both exclaimed that it was the nicest harbor we had visited all summer.

Wind

Messing About in Boats as "Lake Michigan Wind" 2004

I was first introduced to the winds of Lake Michigan at the tender age of eleven while going out for my first sail. It was also my first race and it took place in the waters off Jackson Park Harbor in Chicago. Having just retched over the side, the race began with cries of starboard as the captain, my juvenile delinquent friend’s father, careened his 26 foot Eastwind across the starting line, dodging the bow waves of the entire fleet due to his mistimed start.

At that point, being too scared to be sick, I settled into the long race, listening to undecipherable commands and being helped by an older gentleman who interpreted for me and made sure I pulled the right line at the right time.

But this essay is about wind and that day the lake with its low clouds and white-capped 4 to 5 foot waves was riled up due to a northeaster. A wind that I had experienced as a landlubber but never fully comprehended till that faithful day off of Jackson Park.

Wind and water is a combination that tends to make up many of my dreams. Over the years as spring approaches and fall recedes, the expectant winds are awaited and as the wind clocks around from northeast to southeast, so to does summer follow winter.

For those who have no experience with Lake Michigan, she lies mainly north to south for approximately 350 miles and probably averages 60 miles athwartships. Chicago snuggles the southwest corner, in the shallower reaches of a lake that dives to 900 feet beneath your keel at its deepest center. The weather on the lake is, lets just say, abrupt.

While living in southern Florida on a rusting 33’ Mason designed sloop, I reveled the gradual nature of the weather. With the exception of a few squalls, the weather came in slowly; politely introduced itself and then proceeded to hang around for weeks on end. This is not an option on the Great Lakes. If I can anthropomorphize; the weather on the lake tends to be vindictive. I forever find myself looking over my shoulder, searching for where the next blow will come from and it usually does come.

We in the Midwest happen to live at the convergence of two monumental weather systems that collide and do battle over our heads. Great masses of cold dry air from Canada regularly meet the warm moisture laden air from the Gulf of Mexico, to which the added vagaries of the jet stream make one paranoid as hell about the weather. The winds that concern me here are not from the cardinal points of the compass but from the edgy combinations of NE, NW, SE and SW.

First let me talk about the most benign of these winds – the southeast. Warm gentle breezes that are so steady you barely need to man the helm. Great sailing winds, the perfect wind to invite your mother-in-law out for a sail.

A few summers ago these SE winds predominated and oh what a glorious summer they made for. While we sweltered onshore, a mile out in the lake the thick polluted air gave way to 10-degree cooler 15-knot breezes. We just left the diesel on a little longer to reach the blessed wind before raising our sails for peaceful close reaches all summer long.

Even in the most perfect of summers the blustery southwest winds occur. Stirred up by traveling over the entire south side of the city and hitting the shear cliffs of downtown Chicago’s skyscrapers, they sweep sheets of 20 to 30 knot winds out onto the lake like the drying sheets flapping on the clothesline in your mom’s backyard.

It took years of coast hugging agony to realize that if I just sailed five miles further out, the wind would be strong but no longer gusty; the perfect combination for my heavy 31’ Swedish sloop. The dreaded southwest winds on summer afternoons became welcoming. These same winds are also responsible for the unseasonably warm weather in the spring and fall and on an occasional winters day, make it feel like spring.

Then there are the northwesters. On a couple of late season cruises they blew in and left the boat covered in snow. The barometer usually drops in anticipation of these winds. And as opposed to the southwesters blowing over a hot turbulent city, these winds come across the Great Plains and the Canadian artic.

Due to Chicago’s location on the western shore, the lake remains flat even with the high velocities of the northwest and southwest winds. As I man the tiller, I watch intently the darkening surface of the rippling blue grey water as the wind churns up the wavelets and I await its effect on the rudder. As the gust hit the sails the reason for the term weather helm becomes obvious.

Finally there is nothing like a northeaster out on the lake. Waves roll in from Beaver Island some 300 miles away and the wind that has been unimpeded for all that distance hits full force. No wavelets here, no gusts, just grey white-capped rollers breaking with wind blown spray. These are the winds that cause you to double reef and keep you hoping you can get the boat into the lee of some outreaching headland.

My father had multiple barometers hanging around the house that he would tap once or twice each day. He never bothered to explain it to me and I never bothered to ask, but nonetheless, now at fifty, I find myself doing the same thing. Tapping away I have noticed that commencing in the late spring and ending in the early fall, the barometer is stuck, unmoving and hovers around 30. Then one day in September I will tap the glass and the needle will abruptly drop. It is then that I start to plan for winter.

Having been lulled into complacency by the heat of August, I begin to realize that it is all over for another year and await the first northeasters of the upcoming dreaded winter season to appear. While winter negotiates between the northwesters and the northeasters, I start ruminating on arcane subjects, such as the wind - fair winds to one and all.

Under a Tuscan Cloud

Holiday Letter 2003

Since we’d confirmed our arrival at Alberto’s Podere Di Pillore I have had some trepidation. I am not sure why. We spent a wonderful two weeks there two years ago, but I thought there are so many other places to explore, should we have come back here.

I usually don’t look forward to long flights but I was excited to learn that we would be flying the first leg of our trip to Florence on an Airbus. Curious these many years of seeing them fly over our house, I was excited to actually fly in one. I love to watch the “heavy” planes coming and going, imagining what adventures await the passengers. I think of these planes as the great trans-oceanic liners, on a much more informal basis, of our times. Not an original thought I know but one that keeps me entertained as they ceaselessly fly over our backyard.

The shape of the Airbus intrigues me. It has four engines and a profile reminiscent of the 707, which was the first ship to carry me off to Europe. The wings are what get me. From below they look almost glider like—slender and coming to sharp upturned points at the ends and now sitting at 37,000 feet looking at them, they are even more magnificent. As opposed to Boeing’s stout wings, these are lithe with multiple controlling surfaces. While sitting on the tarmac full of fuel they hang down somewhat dejectedly but once we start to roll their ends perks up and sail.

Two planes and nine hours later, finally over Florence, we land in the clouds and rain and make our way to the rental car stand. There we are warned of the crazy Italian drivers by a beautifully dressed French grandma and her cardiologist husband who have confided in us the longing for their grand-children growing up in Washington D.C. Seems the children are resistant to all their grandparents efforts to pass on the French language to them, ah Americans.

On our last trip we had a Fiat Punto - it should have been called a Pokey. The Italians took full advantage of its lack of horsepower, though Alberto, our host and innkeeper, thought it probably had more to do with the driver’s lack of horsepower. Even the Vespas seemed to sense the Punto’s lack of spirit, but today my confidence is bolstered when it is announced we have an Alfa Romeo 156 turbo diesel and it appears to have UMPH! I take the keys from Charlotte. You see I had been so traumatized by my experience as an unwilling participant in the Italian Grand Prix for two weeks on our last trip that I made Charlotte promise to drive this time out, but upon seeing the Alfa’s coat of arms on the grill all my foreboding faded away.

Of course, we immediately got lost but reluctantly I followed my navigator’s insistence to just keep going, “this just feels right”, she repeated over and over. And it did, once the Centro sign appeared I knew we would recover from our first misstep.

You have to remember that we are not actually staying in Florence but in a small hamlet called Caldine, a narrowing in an already narrow road. This down to earth little town makes Lincoln Park look lame. We watch for the tiny off shoot of a road that leads to Alberto’s orchard. The road immediately becomes a one lane twisted, blind curve infested, 45-degree up trail past apartments, trains, homes, gardens, orchards, grapevines and finally leading to Podere Di Pillore, Alberto’s ancestral home from the 13th century.

We launch into the driveway, skid to a stop, catch our breath and see Penny, his German Shepard, approach with a tennis ball in her mouth—nothing has changed.

The smell catches me: rosemary, thyme and sage. If you could write a book, you could write a book about the smell. Even the forty-degree wind and rain do not dampen it and this day the air is laced with the smell of burning wood from the fireplaces giving it a deep rich note, not unlike the tannins in the local wines.

Alberto, cellist, professor and farmer, greets us apologizing for the weather. It seems that nature is finally taking its revenge for our despicable handling of the environment. The summer had been a disaster. No rain for 8 months with temperatures in the 90-100 degree ranges. The grapes were a total loss as the olives may yet be, a catastrophe in Alberto’s words. I should mention that Alberto produces olive oil and vinegar to which I have become addicted.

He informs us that he has enough olive oil for his most important customers in Ann Arbor, MI and Japan this year and that this is agriculture, dependent on nature and he has wonderful land and on to the next year. While lamenting the bad fortune in the hills this year, I am selfishly hoping that somewhere there are 12 bottles for me in his shed.

He shows us our cozy little suite that feels like the heat has been off since the 13th century. We are to clean up and rest for a couple of hours then he will take us shopping and to Mario’s to make a reservation for dinner. Now in the telling this seems simple enough but the grace and complexity of these tasks here in Caldine is deceptive.

We jump in his car, which he puts in neutral to begin it rolling down the hill, slips it into gear, and pops the clutch to start it. It being a fairly new Fiat station wagon, all I can think of is the confused little microcircuits under the hood wondering why the key wasn’t turned on and the starter engaged. It seems it is a new car for him and he has no idea of how to defrost the fogged up windows as we careen down the steep road into town. I am thankfully allowed to turn the knobs and instruct him in the use of the curious defrost options, though I am sure the dials will never be changed again whatever climatic conditions are encountered.

On the way we drive out into oncoming traffic, just miss a bus squeezing through the main drag of Caldine which is barely wide enough for several Punto’s but now in the late afternoon, with all the locals congregating in the shops and parked on the road, is narrower still.

We get to Mario’s, no pizza and different owners but they were students of the professor when he taught high school music for 6 years and appear very fond of him. We invade the restaurant and he explains we are “vegetarianos”, the only word I understand in the flurry of the exchange. We’ll be back at 8 PM, it seems we have passed the test. We pull out, then back to get the forgotten eggs at the butcher next door to Mario’s for the frittata he plans to make the piano trio he has been blessed to play with. The eggs are wrapped in newspaper and come from the free rangers just a across the road.

Now to the wine shop, a place run by an ex-bike racer who travels to the US to buy old radios, restores them and makes enough money to keep making his own wine. The locals bring their bottles to be refilled and we buy a red and a white of his finest for 3.60 euros. Then across the street for bread and cheese at a beautiful little deli where all the local men are having their shot of afternoon espresso.

Everywhere we stop, the lively conversation makes us wish we had taken that conversational Italian course at the Italian Consulate in Chicago. Alberto sensing this says that this is Tuscany and every meeting is theater. We have a wonderful dinner at 8, then bundle up and sleep for the next 10 hours.

Thinking About Building a Boat?

Messing About In Boats 2001

One day after going on about building a certain wooden dingy for the 1000th time my future wife said, “Why don’t you just build the damn thing already?” Well I didn’t build that boat but I did build another and another and so on until I had built five. The last boat is a recently finished Wee Lassie of Mac McCarthy’s design.

It just seems that there’s always another boat I need for some specific purpose. Like I never wanted a canoe until I built a couple of kayaks. All of a sudden, when on a river or lake, while having to portage or get out on some muddy bank the idea of a canoe started to make sense to me. So that was the next boat.

Then we acquired a larger sailboat that needed a dingy, so I thought why not make the sailing dingy that I’d thought of years ago. I even put a reef in the sail just like the Pardy’s said I should do, and this always gets a laugh from the dockside cognoscente.

The other problem is that my wife likes to do all this messing about in boats stuff, as opposed to my friends’ wives who seem to have been born with the hate-boats gene. So I have to build two of everything.

One day at a wooden boat festival this guy was building a strip planked kayak and right next to it was a beautiful Wee Lassie. My wife commented on how cute it was. He said go take it for a paddle and bade me to take the form home and build the boat. Well she went paddling and I ended up hauling the forms to my basement and four years latter my 5th boat was born, a Wee Lassie. The thought of putting such a thing, varnished within an inch of its life, into dirty water horrifies my mother. And I think she might have a point considering that it occupied me for about ten times the designers estimated building time.

It seems that every boat I’ve built brings me closer to understanding why people have a need for all these myriad boats. It helps me to understand the boats that Chapelle documented from ever little hamlet on the East coast. And it helped me to understand, or should I say experience, boat design first hand. I’ve gotten to feel how flat versus round versus V-shaped hulls react to wind, waves and my clumsiness. And how a deep boat with fine ends will track straight all day and one with a pronounced rocker will spin on a dime.

So if any of you are thinking about building a boat, just build the damn thing.