Any cruiser who does not remember that time when they were first allowed to head off and explore unknown shores in command of a vessel and their fate probably isn’t reading this. The thrill of adventure and freedom could not have taken root so I doubt that they would still spending time on a boating forum.
Here am I in the stalwart craft that was my first command, propelled by the push pole just visible in my hand, experiencing the magic of wondering what lies ahead just around the bend.
My second command was also the first boat that I built. Although I had great adventures in it, the abysmal hydrodynamics of one gallon turpentine cans possibly lead to my interest in boat design.
I also gained considerable experience about this time as crew in larger craft.
My grandmother purchased a seven foot sailboat without a rig a few years later and I designed and built a rig for which she sewed the sail. The boat was intended to have a jib and the small and shapeless muslin sail just barely got me across the small lake and back but I was sailing.
The following summer, I designed and built a proper catboat rig for the craft which has always been known as “The Little Boat” even though we never got around to painting a name on the transom. The boat sailed well enough to take me all over the one mile long lake where we spent our summers. Here is the young naval architect heading out on sea trials:
A picture of Little Boat the last time she sailed in 1996 with me at the helm:
Following the summer of re-rigging and sailing the Little Boat, my father and I built a 10 foot “Bluebird” sailing dinghy in the garage from Popular Mechanics plans. More accurately, my father built it while I watched. Launching day:
And, sailing Ta’aroa down the lake a couple summers later:
The next most memorable event in a cruiser’s life is the first cruise that includes an overnight. During the summer of my seventeenth year, my mother sewed a boom tent for Ta’aroa. My parents took me up to Lake George, we rigged and loaded the boat, and they said, “Give us a call when you are ready to come back.”
Note that nowhere in the spread of equipment, laid out especially for the picture, is there any PFD other than the two floating cushions. A couple days later, when I was in the middle of the lake with the sail fully eased and thundering, yet still needing to hike flat out to keep the one third swamped dinghy from capsizing, this equipment deficiency wasn’t particularly on my mind. Life was simpler then. You kept the boat from capsizing or…
A couple years after that first cruise, I began to sail in friends boats with cabins and bunks. Adulthood came along and I was soon working in John W. Gilbert’s commercial design office in Boston:
This actually wasn’t my first job as a naval architect. I don’t believe any pictures of my time working for Phillip L. Rhodes in New York exist.
The box visible at the lower left corner of the following photo is an acoustical modem which talked to the time share mainframe we used for calculations. Input was by blacking in boxes on worksheet grids that matched IBM punch cards. A courier took those off to some place where women (we just knew and assumed that such a job would be done by women) punched the cards. The cards would then be brought back and we would go through them to be sure the punches matched our worksheets. The courier would return and the card decks would be taken away. A couple days later, the bound book of results would be deposited on our desks.
By the time I finished working for this company five years later, I had programmed one of the first Apple computers to do many of these calculations.
I used some of the income from my job at Gilbert’s to commission the construction of one of the only two vessels I have owned as an adult before Strider. The other was a stitch and glue plywood version of the same craft.
I installed rollers set in concrete pads under the porch of the rental house in Allston, MA and built a frame with rollers in the basement so the Herreshoff double paddle canoe could be wheeled in and out through a basement window. I would come home from work on a Friday, roll the boat out and onto a two wheeled cart and walk it down to the Charles River. I would lock the cart to a lamppost and dusk would find me camped on one of the then very wild outer harbor islands watching the sunset. Sunday, I would paddle back up the harbor, go through the lock into the river, pick up the cart and return home.
I accidentally crossed Buzzards Bay in the middle of the night in that boat after getting blown offshore and lost but that’s a story for another time.
I continued a life of boating and cruising with fifteen years taken off to raise a family and fly small airplanes. That diversion ended in 2005 with the purchase of Strider.
What lies ahead? Barring the unexpected or a change of mind that is the essence of cruising, we will be returning to Gloucester Point, Virginia where Strider is currently hauled and heading for the lowlands to experience their un-crowded beauty in winter. Look for cruising posts to continue here sometime in the first week of February.
Here am I in the stalwart craft that was my first command, propelled by the push pole just visible in my hand, experiencing the magic of wondering what lies ahead just around the bend.
My second command was also the first boat that I built. Although I had great adventures in it, the abysmal hydrodynamics of one gallon turpentine cans possibly lead to my interest in boat design.
I also gained considerable experience about this time as crew in larger craft.
My grandmother purchased a seven foot sailboat without a rig a few years later and I designed and built a rig for which she sewed the sail. The boat was intended to have a jib and the small and shapeless muslin sail just barely got me across the small lake and back but I was sailing.
The following summer, I designed and built a proper catboat rig for the craft which has always been known as “The Little Boat” even though we never got around to painting a name on the transom. The boat sailed well enough to take me all over the one mile long lake where we spent our summers. Here is the young naval architect heading out on sea trials:
A picture of Little Boat the last time she sailed in 1996 with me at the helm:
Following the summer of re-rigging and sailing the Little Boat, my father and I built a 10 foot “Bluebird” sailing dinghy in the garage from Popular Mechanics plans. More accurately, my father built it while I watched. Launching day:
And, sailing Ta’aroa down the lake a couple summers later:
The next most memorable event in a cruiser’s life is the first cruise that includes an overnight. During the summer of my seventeenth year, my mother sewed a boom tent for Ta’aroa. My parents took me up to Lake George, we rigged and loaded the boat, and they said, “Give us a call when you are ready to come back.”
Note that nowhere in the spread of equipment, laid out especially for the picture, is there any PFD other than the two floating cushions. A couple days later, when I was in the middle of the lake with the sail fully eased and thundering, yet still needing to hike flat out to keep the one third swamped dinghy from capsizing, this equipment deficiency wasn’t particularly on my mind. Life was simpler then. You kept the boat from capsizing or…
A couple years after that first cruise, I began to sail in friends boats with cabins and bunks. Adulthood came along and I was soon working in John W. Gilbert’s commercial design office in Boston:
This actually wasn’t my first job as a naval architect. I don’t believe any pictures of my time working for Phillip L. Rhodes in New York exist.
The box visible at the lower left corner of the following photo is an acoustical modem which talked to the time share mainframe we used for calculations. Input was by blacking in boxes on worksheet grids that matched IBM punch cards. A courier took those off to some place where women (we just knew and assumed that such a job would be done by women) punched the cards. The cards would then be brought back and we would go through them to be sure the punches matched our worksheets. The courier would return and the card decks would be taken away. A couple days later, the bound book of results would be deposited on our desks.
By the time I finished working for this company five years later, I had programmed one of the first Apple computers to do many of these calculations.
I used some of the income from my job at Gilbert’s to commission the construction of one of the only two vessels I have owned as an adult before Strider. The other was a stitch and glue plywood version of the same craft.
I installed rollers set in concrete pads under the porch of the rental house in Allston, MA and built a frame with rollers in the basement so the Herreshoff double paddle canoe could be wheeled in and out through a basement window. I would come home from work on a Friday, roll the boat out and onto a two wheeled cart and walk it down to the Charles River. I would lock the cart to a lamppost and dusk would find me camped on one of the then very wild outer harbor islands watching the sunset. Sunday, I would paddle back up the harbor, go through the lock into the river, pick up the cart and return home.
I accidentally crossed Buzzards Bay in the middle of the night in that boat after getting blown offshore and lost but that’s a story for another time.
I continued a life of boating and cruising with fifteen years taken off to raise a family and fly small airplanes. That diversion ended in 2005 with the purchase of Strider.
What lies ahead? Barring the unexpected or a change of mind that is the essence of cruising, we will be returning to Gloucester Point, Virginia where Strider is currently hauled and heading for the lowlands to experience their un-crowded beauty in winter. Look for cruising posts to continue here sometime in the first week of February.
