Finishing the Move

A Readers' Advisory (for both of you): This entry is constructed from talk-over-supper hearsay and pictures I didn't take. 

Truthfully, this post is a reconstruction because, on the first pass, my laptop threw an uncharacteristic hissy fit -- or maybe suffered a burp of indigestion -- and pitched an 80% completed first draft into some uncharted quadrant of cyberspace, where a cyber archeologist generations from now might find its artifacts and marvel that in the early years of the twenty-first century, people stepped outside their pods and experienced the world aboard tangible conveyances.

Recreating prose is a demoralizing task. It's taken me a week to sit back down here, wondering what the hell I wrote earlier, doubting I can express it again, and keeping a suspicious eye out for another anarchistic episode from my crotchety PowerBook G4.

So, to get on with the story: Two days earlier, in the hinterlands of 60617, Smitten was lowered onto one of Great Lakes Marine's ass-kickin' long-haulin' trailers to begin her 700 mile journey east on I-80 to 10464 and the Morris Yacht and Beach Club.

I wish I could've seen her flying down the highway!

Oh balls, who am I trying to kid. I'm so glad I couldn't. As it was, I spent the entire two days she was on the road cringing for her safety. Some primal fears Zoloft just won't touch.

Here she is at the south end of City Island taking a little peek at the Long Island Sound waters she'll be zig-zagging across in six or seven months:

She's cooling her heels in the City Island Avenue middle turn lane, awaiting the all-clear to enter Morris. She looks so tiny on this behemoth:

With the yard's machine- and manpower in place, she trundles down the club's driveway to meet them.

Oversize Load, my ass. Smitty's 10' beam is girlishly petite compared to the rig she's riding.

Once she's positioned in the yard, the traveler lift rolls up behind her and, slings secured under her hull, pulls her up off the trailer. Swingin' free, just as cool as a cruiser in a hammock. Remember, tricked-out for comfort as she is, Smitten weighs in at about 9,000 pounds.

Set delicately back down on a second sturdy trailer, she's creeping across the yard to be maneuvered into the narrow slot that will be her winter home. The stepped mast and rigging will be stored in the Stepped Masts and Riggings closet for the duration, and remounted in the spring. (Which reminds me of that acronym B.O.A.T -- break out another thou$and.)

Voila. Snugged in with her winter neighbors. Til April, darling. Have a good winter's nap.

The most nerve-wracking aspect of moving a household is enduring your imagination's natural inclination to inventing scenarios in which the process goes horribly wrong. I'm not talking about things going wrong with stuff you can replace at Big Box -- I can forgive an otherwise-diligent moving company an oops! or two if it only means losing a keyboard drawer or a coffee Thermos. I'm talking about the terrible vulnerability of moving the dear things, the things we are so fond of that we assign them anthropomorphic qualities, the things that make relocating a you're-going-lose-most-of-your-sleep-for-the-next-few-months proposition.

For some relocating parties that thing is kids (note: not necessary to assign anthropomorphic quality to kids, it comes standard). For some, including Dave and me, it's pets. For others, and we fall into this category too, it's possessions that lie outside the conventional "reasonable and customary household goods," to use the language of one nationally-recognized moving company.

Specifically, Reader, "reasonable and customary household goods" does not include this five ton party girl:

The only scenario more daunting to Dave and I than moving the cats is the one that involves moving Smitten. And apparently to move her, as far as the corporate relocation company is concerned, we're on our own.

We're not on the other side of that story yet. This weekend, Dave is coordinating the final steps to prepare her for the journey. He'll sail her to Crowley's (with a big party of Guys on Board) where she'll be lifted out of the drink, winterized, her mast brought down (they call that stepping the mast), shrink-wrapped, set aboard a tractor-trailer, and transported across 730 miles of east-bound interstate to her destination here:

Where?

Let's back up. It happened like this:

Dave, bless his eagle eyes, spotted this geographical feature during a final descent into LaGuardia back in January:

And as it was January, picture this island blanketed in white, not green. Even absent the floating watercraft though, Dave recognized it for what it is: a nautical playground.

He had no idea what he was looking at, but he did a quick, mental, only-sailors-should-try-this-at-home triangulation, studied some local maps and concluded he had flown over City Island dangling off the south end of the Bronx. He filed the information away with a personal promise to visit the island to check out possible accommodations for Smitty.

That visit come on an unusually warm Saturday in March when he followed his nose to the southern tip of City Island and found Morris Yacht & Beach Club. He met the right guy, asked the right questions, returned on a similarly warm Saturday in April with the missus bearing a checkbook, and we joined up -- breaking Groucho Marx's cardinal rule.

A week ago, freshly minted membership cards in hand, we made another visit to reinforce in our minds that this is really where the girl is going to live. This is our new Monroe Harbor. (It pinches my gut to write that. I think MYBC will be many things, but it could never replace the camaraderie we enjoyed with the harbor staff and the tender captains, and the friendships of our luvly neighbors on the moorings of South Monroe Harbor. Sniff.)

Okay, toughen up, grrlfriend.

Here's the "beach" part of "Yacht & Beach Club":

You don't have to own a boat to join, you just have to want the access and the community the membership offers.

Six or seven years ago, the original modest clubhouse burned to the ground. This is the permit board for the new immodest clubhouse:

Certificate of Occupancy is imminent. A swank, new clubhouse is almost beyond my fathoming. When I walk onto the property, I see its soaring new profile, but I can't imagine the luxuries that lie within. Something more than Monroe's mildewed concrete block shower stalls? I'll have to see to believe...

Here's the tender dock and the fishing pier beyond:

I was carrying the wrong lens, and it was a hazy day, but still you can see Manhattan in the distance behind our mooring field. If you take off your glasses and squint real hard...oh, bah, forget it, no one can squint that hard without getting a major facial cramp. I was hoping I could point out the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, but I think I need to shoot with different equipment on a better weather day.

Here are Morris's swanky neighbors:

I need to point out that Morris is nowhere near a pretentious yacht club. The majority of members are sailors, and if you are unfamiliar with the, er, frugal nature of the typical sailor, just ask my brother-in-law, the motor yacht captain, to describe it to you.

Look, a happy guy:

Where's Em?

This summer, boys and girls, we're taking a different tack.

With all due respect to Little Miss Smitty Pants (who still floats -- I hope -- in Monroe Harbor) our story takes an abrupt right turn to the East Coast. New York City is hammering us (don't worry, in a good way) with sensory overloads that won't be brushed aside.

Little Smitten will always provide the structure for this blog, but I need to talk about all this new NYC stuff.

I gave the Rebel a new lens for my birthday. I know, I know, so selfless. It's a Sigma 70 - 300. It's, um, big, to use a polite-company word. I took it and the Rebel out for a walk the other day, just so they could get to know each other a little bit, and found myself...well...see if you recognize where I found myself.

Here's the first clue:

Uh-huh, pretty cryptic, I agree. Try the next clue:

Hint: Upper East Side...

I love this shot:

Hint: That bad boy Frank Lloyd Wright was involved...

Here's a gimme:

This should bring it home for you:

Yes! I'm at the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue at 88th. I'd show you a full wide shot but to do so, without the other well-hung lens in my bag -- the Canon 10 - 22, which was inconveniently left at home -- I'll have to direct you to this stock shot if you want to see what the whole elephant looks like, not just these individual parts my lens -- like the proverbial blind guys' hands -- singled out.

By the way, that stock shot? I came of age in a Chrysler Newport just like the one that's beached like a whale at the curb. But that's a different blog.

Wait, Wait! One More Thing Before We Sail

I was all set to start this post writing about and showing you pix from the delightful sailing excursions we've had recently with family and friends, old and new, when I got sidetracked by these pix I took a couple of mornings ago.

You see, it's our routine during these short Chicago summers to spend as many Saturday nights as we can aboard Smitten. We usually arrive at the boat late afternoon on Saturday, putter around for a while, cook a farmers' market supper, enjoy the Saturday night Navy Pier fireworks, then retire, according to our own clocks, to bed. I usually lead the way, turning in early to read for a few pages, then pass out with the book on my face. Dave follows a couple hours later, after another Becks and that infernal cigar, removes said book from my face, and crawls in after me.

All very civilized.

But, what really makes the Saturday night routine special, is Sunday morning. It's sooooo peaceful to float there, on one of god's biggest waterbeds, listening to the slap of water on the hull, the birds bwawking their wake-up squabbles, the distant hum of traffic on Lake Shore Drive. I usually pop awake at first light. The other morning, presented with a fairly dramatic veil of clouds, I decided to haul it out of bed, grab the Rebel, and take a few pix of Monroe Harbor just before sunrise:

This one's looking east. That's our neighbor Private Eye in the foreground, awash in the delicate morning light.

Here's the view to the west. I could insert some snarky comment here about the ownership change at Sears Tower and the name change to Willis Tower, but that would be inconsistent with the generally peaceful vibe of this sunrise moment, so I will let it be:

And here, I think, is the money shot: my luvly floating neighbors backdropped against the museum campus:

At this point I put the camera down, climbed back between the covers, and resigned myself to another peaceful, floating 40 winks.

An Official Apology

This just in: Our attorneys have informed us that the aforementioned winch, which I perhaps mistakenly characterized as being of dubious repute and usefulness, has threatened legal action unless I retract my purportedly libelous statement describing it as "a total bum, only along for the ride."

The evidence suggests that the sailing vessel hardware that, for the Court's purposes, will heretofore be described as Winch Number 4, provides a vital service as Capt. Dave's late-night cigar holder:

I stand corrected and deeply regret any pain and suffering I may have caused any party.

Sheesh...

One More Geek Sailor Entry

Those of you who have labored aboard Smitten know that the winches are an integral part of the sailing system, used to provide leveraged energy to unfurl, trim and furl the sails. We've probably put you to work cranking away on one, tightening the sheets for maximum sail pressure. Or you may've seen the winches at rest, performing the more mundane chore of keeping the sheets, halyards and lines organized, as one is doing here:

I'll take this opportunity to explain the term "sheets" as it relates to sailing. A lot of people, myself included before I got some learnin', assume that "sheets" refers to the sails. Logical enough assumption, the sails are (often) white and cloth-like and long and wide. "Sheets" seems like an appropriately affectionate nickname for another valued element of the sailing equation. But "sheets" actually is an all-purpose word for the ropes that connect to and control the sails. For example, when we hand you that rope with the red thread woven through it, and ask you to pull, you are using one of the jib sheets to manipulate the jib sail from one side of the boat to the other during a tack. (Stick with me, kid, we'll make a virtual sailor out of you eventually.)

(BTW, for those of you who find yourselves described by friends and acquaintances as "three sheets to the wind" with puzzling frequency, and wonder what it means, click here.)

So anyway. Of the four winches on Smitten, we depend very heavily on two, and somewhat lightly on one. The fourth is a total bum, only along for the ride. It was the two heavily-depended-upon that we tore apart a few weeks ago for a clean and lube:

There must be 45 pieces to each one of these, all fitting together like a Swiss watch. Dave has done this drill enough to know how they come apart and go back together (with some back-tracking and second-guessing), but I admit I was baffled. So I was put in charge of the WD-40 bath we set up in that Trader Joe's coffee can. A smelly task. Not the coffee's fault. But with a little soaking followed by a good terry cloth rubdown, all 45 (x2) pieces got a thorough degreasing.

It should be noted that the yellow of my foul weather bib overalls in the picture above is the exact same color as the Porsche Boxster that I'm adamant will be living in my parking spot at some point in the future.

Now the pieces start going back together, along with about seven different types and weights of lubricant. Place was starting to look like that shelf at the Walgreen's. Oh, don't get coy with me, you know which shelf:

Then the winch stem gets a good going-over:


And everything starts to fit back together:


Careful....caaaarrrrrefulllllll:

Hey look! A little buff-up and we got our winch back, better than new:

It ain't over til the crank test is done:

Yup! Contact!

Ok, for cryin' out loud aleady, let's go sailing.

Of Entropy, Mayhem and Tarantulas

My mom-in-law is fond of saying that when her two boys were growing up and sharing a bedroom, there was an undeniable Oscar and Felix quality to their relationship. She alludes, of course, to Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, and the diametrically opposed domestic natures of the now-iconic roommates, with Felix being fastidiously, even obsessively, neat and Oscar being a big honkin' slob. She shared the memory long before Dave and I were married, but it didn't deter me from entering into a matrimonial contract with Oscar. In retrospect, I wonder if she wasn't trying to warn me...

That Dave is, um, order-challenged, and I am so intolerant of clutter that when reading In Cold Blood I root for the bad guys, I guess it's safe to say that Dave has reconstructed his Oscar/Felix relationship in his adult married life. (And me? I just knew a great catch when I saw one. Happy anniversary, honey.)

It also needs to be noted that one of the synonyms for "neat" is "shipshape," and one of the hallmarks of a well-run ship, for a multitude of reasons not the least of which are comfort and safety, is a Felix-approved level of cleanliness, order and organization. Which is why I find this picture so hilarious:

This is what happens when Oscar has free-run of the boat.

Now, to be fair, this picture of the cabin was snapped during Dave's most intense days of hull preparation and painting. He knew I wasn't going to be around much, he had a big job to do, and he had no time for picking up glasses, emptying ashtrays and plumping pillows during this party. So I don't really hold the condition of the cabin against him.

But, my god:
Ouch! My head:

ARRGH! MY GALLEY!!!:

All I could do was back out slowly and retreat to the cockpit where, at the end of a hull work day, we retired over a bottle of wine and talked about floating:

And Dave did this quick sketch of me:


He did a pretty nice job, though I never suspected I look this much like Michael Jackson, and I have no idea why he drew that tarantula crawling up the left side of my head...maybe a reference to the profusion of spiders that will make their home on board during the course of the summer. But, all in all, not bad for government work.

Apply, Buff, Repeat

My dad taught me how to wax a car. He also taught me how to polish a shoe, because he was a stickler for a well-polished shoe. He paid me a dime for every pair of his shoes I could polish. I was nine, so for me this was High Finance. Eventually he gave me a raise to a quarter for every pair of polished shoes. Little did I know at the time this was probably to be, proportionally, the biggest single raise I would ever enjoy in my professional life.

But back to waxing the car. As well as he taught me, waxing a car is nothing like waxing a boat. For starters, with the family Chrysler, you didn't have to balance on a ladder to accomplish the task, with the exception of covering the roof, maybe. And, because the family car was inevitably gunmetal blue or sage green or (whoa! get ready for this, Marge!) burgundy red, but god forbid NEVER white (shows the dirt!), it was fairly easy to spread the wax and, as its chalky whiteness set up against the dark background of the car's finish, keep track of where you'd been.

Not so on a white fiberglass hull.

I had no clue what I was doing here, but Dave took a darn nice picture of me doing it, don'tcha think? You noted the name of the boat, right? :)

Could not for the life of me see where I had already been with my rag applicator unless I got down off the ladder, walked a few steps away, cocked my head in such a way as to let the indirect light of the sunny day bounce off the fiberglass surface and reveal, hopefully, a circular wax application pattern. Then I'd have to note where the circular pattern stopped in relation to some arbitrary benchmark on the hull or on the topsides (a lifeline stanchion? a scuff? the stained remains of a smooshed bug?), reclimb the ladder, swirl another schmear of wax on the applicator that was rapidly deteriorating under the strain of constant rubbing, and continue my circular way forward. Dave's character may have been strengthened by paint removal, mine attained super-hero status by wax application.

But eventually I made it down the starboard side of Smitty's hull and back up the port side, with my co-captain in close pursuit, buffing with a serious power tool:

Ahhhh, that's what you count on a co-captain to do. Especially one who fills a desperately-needed urban condo closet with a large chest of drawers that's branded "Sears Craftsman."

Later, he shaved and I reapplied my make-up in the crisp reflection of that blue stripe.

Strip, check. Prime and paint, check. Wax and buff, check. Hull work complete. Next on our pre-launch housekeeping list, we clamber aboard and take a peek at the situation in the cabin.

Of Bottoms, Spanx and Vera Wang

What is ablative paint? It's bottom paint designed to erode away from the hull, micro-millimeter by micro-millimeter, as the boat moves through the water, shedding biological growth like algae, zebra mussels, barnacles and other free-riding stowaways, setting them free in the sloppy glacial bathtub of Lake Michigan. Picture house paint that strips away, microscopic layer by microscopic layer, every time the wind blows. When you roll ablative paint onto your hull, nothing organic sticks for long. It has the net effect of cladding your bottom in Teflon.

Thing is, we move Smitten around so much in the course of a summer sailing season that not much grass grows under her feet, so to speak. Doing what it's designed to do, ablative paint doesn't remove much biological matter from her hull because the biology never gets an opportunity to latch on in the first place. And as a side-effect annoyance, the blue paint "ablates" all over the place, staining everything she cozies up with: the mooring bobber, the bridle, our feet, Canadian geese, the neighbors’ boats, mermen, sea monsters...you get the picture. (Actually, you don't get the picture, because I didn't take a picture. Bad blogger, me! I'll try to be more thorough going forward.)

So anyway. End of last season we decided to re-evaluate our choice of bottom paint.

During the spring and fall, when we spend a lot of time in the boat yard either prepping our boat for the summer or putting her up for the winter, we amuse ourselves between housekeeping tasks by judging other peoples’ boats. We aren't alone in this pastime. Strolling among rows and rows of cradled watercraft, we either mentally compose snarky anecdotes, or ogle in slack-jawed admiration. The one feature of other peoples’ boats we focus on -- because we don’t get much chance to so in the harbor unless something really bad has happened -- is the hulls.

We'd looked at a lot of other sailors' bottoms (yeah, okay, come back when you've finished sniggering) and after arguing the pros and cons of blue bottoms, red bottoms, green bottoms, and the so-very-tempting copper bottoms, we'd drawn the conclusion that what Little Miss Smitty Pants needed was a Little Black Dress of a bottom.

But before she slithered into the maritime equivalent of a Vera Wang, she needed two primer coats of gray. To continue the sartorial analogy, these two coats are the lingerie, the slip, the $200 Victoria's Secret hit, the Spanx of the bottom painting process:

Then, when the Spanx have dried, the final coats go on:

(Wondering now as I'm looking at this, will Dave's eventual knee surgery be covered by our boat insurance?)

Those inevitable squares of unpainted hull surface area under the cradle supports? They got the same Spanx/Vera Wang treatment by the yard jockeys once Smitty was off the cradle and hanging on a sling, awaiting her big splash into the Calumet River. We hope.

Oh, look at that sexy girl, with her gleaming black bottom!

And here's the most satisfying moment of the whole bottom paint process...peeling off the waterline tape:

Ahh, such a nice, crisp line!

Next up, detailing the hull.

Just For the Hull Of It

Fast-forward through the coldest, snowiest, most eternal winter in the history of North America when Smitten spent a lot of days covered with this...

...and, ta-da! it’s time finally for spring launch.

Well, not so fast, Bordeaux Breath. Got a little housekeeping to do before the big splash. This year, due to current household economic conditions, a lot of the spring prep that we used to blithely hire out, we are doing ourselves.

Let’s take a peek at what the big guy has been up to:

(Don't look now, honey, but there's a Teletubbie under on the boat.)

I had been hinting since last summer for a fresh look for the hull, and Dave was tired of the ablative nature of the old paint (more about that next post) so this seemed like the year to repaint the bottom. It had been a few seasons since our last foray into the bottom-painting jungle, though I still wear clothes spattered with the happy blue paint we used.

This year, using a variety of means including sandpaper, chemical strippers, influence-peddling, payola, physical threats, dynamite and my lemon-and-garlic salad dressing, my co-captain meticulously removed every inch of the old bottom paint.


Little by little, with great shedding of blood, sweat and tears, and selfless sacrificing of time he would otherwise spend rubbing my feet and popping Swiss chocolates into my mouth, off came the paint.

Down the port side, 'round the horn, up the starboard side...

...and let's not forget mr. rudder. A huge job well done. And perhaps one of the greatest deterrents to even considering buying a bigger boat.

If character is built on every linear hull foot that’s scraped, stripped, primed, painted, waxed and buffed, we have enough characters now to cast Les Miz. Well, at least Dave does. He performed most of these miracles. I just stepped in at the end, spread a little wax, and took the curtain call.

Next up, the bottom painting process.