09-13-2008, 09:37 AM
I am on Victoria Island in the Arctic Archepelago. It is five degrees below freezing. It is 268 degrees Kelvin. The puddles are frozen over and there is a dusting of snow on the muddy ground outside. I had to de-ice my aeroplane this morning and I have nothing to do now but go to various online forums and piss people off by complaining and pontificating above my knowledge level.
Last week I took my boat out of the water and folded it up and put it inside its tent for the winter, a ritual I have come to despise. There are probably some sailboats still on the lake back home but soon they will be put away too, in Garages or under tarps. I will visit my boat three or four times as it snoozes in its Canadian Tire tent. I imagine to myself that the boat is unhappy as well. The paint looks darker when it's below freezing outside, and not as shiny, and with the mast folded up it looks chastened as it squats on its trailer, like a good dog who is being punished for no reason. My sailing friends will soon be switching their interests to more wintery things and it will make me feel funny to run into them at the supermarket or downtown because I know I should keep in touch over the winter but I don't because it makes me think about my boat.
The good news is our boats will last longer because for every year that goes by, they only age by three months, since they spend the other nine being freeze-dried. You can still find peices of good oak from HMS Erebus and HMS Terror washed up on the beach up here. Franklin would be proud of the longevity of his silverware, which also turns up periodically.
This winter I will make a coil mat out of old rope for the cockpit sole in my boat. I don't know if this is a terrific idea, since the mat will get wet down there but I'm going to try it and see. I am also going to try to make a removeable seat that sits athwartships across the cockpit just aft of the companionway that I can sit on facing aft for rowing, because I put oarlocks on the boat this summer and I like how she rows. That is, I like how she is able to be rowed; the weekender is not a terrific rowboat but it is handy to have in the evening when the wind peters out. I'm thinking of making the seat like a canoe seat, a frame with a woven centre, padded on the bottom of both ends where they sit on the regular fore-and-aft seats. I might make a new taffrail because the old one is getting ratty from being used as a handhold, and I might creep down to the cruising club with a screwdriver and steal Ryerson's bronze anchor fairleads once I figure out how often he goes to check on his boat. This I will blame on "the thief" who periodically steals dinghies and kickers from the unwary cruisers. Or maybe the giant ravens who have a taste for shiny things. I'm also thinking about using some old bendy fibreglass tent poles to bend into a bow shape and hang from the boom on my boat to make a roomy boom tent for camping next year.
I don't think I will really do any of these things: I spend all winter scheming about improvements to the boat, and one day the ice is gone and I'm too busy sailing to get around to any of them. I have, however, a three-minute-long movie I made about my sailboat, and I am going to go watch it for the twenty-third time today. It is set to the tune of "a wet sheet and a flowing sea" and "I's the B'y who builds the boat" and it has started to bug the piss out of everyone around the crewhouse (except me).
Last week I took my boat out of the water and folded it up and put it inside its tent for the winter, a ritual I have come to despise. There are probably some sailboats still on the lake back home but soon they will be put away too, in Garages or under tarps. I will visit my boat three or four times as it snoozes in its Canadian Tire tent. I imagine to myself that the boat is unhappy as well. The paint looks darker when it's below freezing outside, and not as shiny, and with the mast folded up it looks chastened as it squats on its trailer, like a good dog who is being punished for no reason. My sailing friends will soon be switching their interests to more wintery things and it will make me feel funny to run into them at the supermarket or downtown because I know I should keep in touch over the winter but I don't because it makes me think about my boat.
The good news is our boats will last longer because for every year that goes by, they only age by three months, since they spend the other nine being freeze-dried. You can still find peices of good oak from HMS Erebus and HMS Terror washed up on the beach up here. Franklin would be proud of the longevity of his silverware, which also turns up periodically.
This winter I will make a coil mat out of old rope for the cockpit sole in my boat. I don't know if this is a terrific idea, since the mat will get wet down there but I'm going to try it and see. I am also going to try to make a removeable seat that sits athwartships across the cockpit just aft of the companionway that I can sit on facing aft for rowing, because I put oarlocks on the boat this summer and I like how she rows. That is, I like how she is able to be rowed; the weekender is not a terrific rowboat but it is handy to have in the evening when the wind peters out. I'm thinking of making the seat like a canoe seat, a frame with a woven centre, padded on the bottom of both ends where they sit on the regular fore-and-aft seats. I might make a new taffrail because the old one is getting ratty from being used as a handhold, and I might creep down to the cruising club with a screwdriver and steal Ryerson's bronze anchor fairleads once I figure out how often he goes to check on his boat. This I will blame on "the thief" who periodically steals dinghies and kickers from the unwary cruisers. Or maybe the giant ravens who have a taste for shiny things. I'm also thinking about using some old bendy fibreglass tent poles to bend into a bow shape and hang from the boom on my boat to make a roomy boom tent for camping next year.
I don't think I will really do any of these things: I spend all winter scheming about improvements to the boat, and one day the ice is gone and I'm too busy sailing to get around to any of them. I have, however, a three-minute-long movie I made about my sailboat, and I am going to go watch it for the twenty-third time today. It is set to the tune of "a wet sheet and a flowing sea" and "I's the B'y who builds the boat" and it has started to bug the piss out of everyone around the crewhouse (except me).
