[FONT="]If you see Strider in some harbor between Cape Breton and Key West in the next couple of years and are invited aboard, be prepared for a shock. You will be amazed how old and worn she looks. There are shrink wrap blisters in the topsides, a huge gash and dent in the aluminum toe rail from a previous owner’s long ago collision. Her superstructure has been painted and there are gel coat cracks and patches everywhere.
Things aren’t quite so bad below and her cabin is my favorite place on the planet, especially when the Dickenson cabin heater fills it with flickering light. Behind the teak veneer plywood and fiberglass though, I know there are things of which Maine Sail would not approve. I dread the thought of a survey when my cruising takes me beyond the coverage area of my current carrier and I need new insurance. That may keep me from the Bahamas next winter.
There are reasons for this state of affairs. One is that I spent almost my entire professional life in the world of working boats. If you have seen a fishing boat at a wharf, rusty and battered, the tool of men in a hard life, patched together just enough to make do, you know the side of the tracks I’m from.
I can’t find the exact quote of Sterling Hayden’s right now but I think it would paraphrase to something like, If your ship doesn’t have some rot in her, she isn’t fit for a voyage. He, of course, thought of a “voyage” as an adventure of the human spirit and not just transport from A to B at lowest risk and insurance premium. For that I admire him and feel a kinship. For the rot in his soul and character that he went to sea to escape, not so much.
He was also rationalizing the fact that he always bought boats which, though they were old and tired, were too expensive for even a movie star’s salary and required too much money to keep them going. I feel a kinship there as well. Although Strider may be tiny compared to Wanderer, I suspect the economic ratios are pretty similar. A quote I can remember is, “Every true voyage must rest on a firm foundation of financial uncertainty.” I’ve got that covered.
Strider is also an accidental vessel. That she is now the center of my life and fits my needs and temperament so well is one of those things that show how possible the improbable can be. I had turned my back on sail and the sea. Only the inertial of career kept me connected with the marine world that had become simply a workplace. I was consumed with aviation, flying and managing a small plane for a flying club, writing for aviation on-line magazines, and as active in the aviation forums as I have become here.
My then wife said one day out of the blue, “Why don’t we get a boat?” The strain in the marriage was already evident and I thought, If there every was time to jump straight up and say, “YES!” this is it. The plan was just to buy an old and inexpensive beater of a boat for daysailing and occasional overnights close to home. One of the issues we were struggling with was my “negativity” so I decided right away that there wasn’t going to be any of that where the boat was concerned. Going into a boat purchase without a healthy dose of skepticism and negativity is never wise but I knew even before I got off the plane in Detroit that we would be buying the boat I went out to look at.
My experimentation with a totally positive and optimistic outlook resulted in the days after Strider arrived on a truck being pretty shocking. As five hundred dollar day at the marine supply store followed six hundred dollar day during five weeks in which I pretty much disappeared from the family, it got very quiet around the house. I still carry the emotional scars from the days that the credit card statements arrived.
We all know the story of the baby that was supposed to save a marriage and became instead the stress that finished it. To make a long story short, that was Strider. Not long after a summer in which we found out that the boys didn’t like sailing very much and my wife couldn’t stand being on a boat with me, I was the divorced owner of a 32 foot sailboat and rediscovering sailing and cruising to the extent that I gave up flying to devote myself fully to it. The boys came to appreciate sailing the summer after that.
I’ve since spent a good part of my life and most of my money upgrading the boat for the task of taking me long distances in my retirement. There are some things that are important to me, clean fuel, strong rigging, fast wome… oops, my fingers ran away with me there. Anyway, cosmetics are pretty far down the list. Strider is a workboat. Her job is to take me on a voyage. That voyage is now my life. I’ve reached the age where my face and the boat are a pretty good fit. I’m just going to focus on keeping the heart pumping, the water out, the rig standing, and see as many new places as I can before someone has to carry me off the boat.
Strider's website: http://www.cruisingonstrider.us/Boat.htm
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Things aren’t quite so bad below and her cabin is my favorite place on the planet, especially when the Dickenson cabin heater fills it with flickering light. Behind the teak veneer plywood and fiberglass though, I know there are things of which Maine Sail would not approve. I dread the thought of a survey when my cruising takes me beyond the coverage area of my current carrier and I need new insurance. That may keep me from the Bahamas next winter.
There are reasons for this state of affairs. One is that I spent almost my entire professional life in the world of working boats. If you have seen a fishing boat at a wharf, rusty and battered, the tool of men in a hard life, patched together just enough to make do, you know the side of the tracks I’m from.
I can’t find the exact quote of Sterling Hayden’s right now but I think it would paraphrase to something like, If your ship doesn’t have some rot in her, she isn’t fit for a voyage. He, of course, thought of a “voyage” as an adventure of the human spirit and not just transport from A to B at lowest risk and insurance premium. For that I admire him and feel a kinship. For the rot in his soul and character that he went to sea to escape, not so much.
He was also rationalizing the fact that he always bought boats which, though they were old and tired, were too expensive for even a movie star’s salary and required too much money to keep them going. I feel a kinship there as well. Although Strider may be tiny compared to Wanderer, I suspect the economic ratios are pretty similar. A quote I can remember is, “Every true voyage must rest on a firm foundation of financial uncertainty.” I’ve got that covered.
Strider is also an accidental vessel. That she is now the center of my life and fits my needs and temperament so well is one of those things that show how possible the improbable can be. I had turned my back on sail and the sea. Only the inertial of career kept me connected with the marine world that had become simply a workplace. I was consumed with aviation, flying and managing a small plane for a flying club, writing for aviation on-line magazines, and as active in the aviation forums as I have become here.
My then wife said one day out of the blue, “Why don’t we get a boat?” The strain in the marriage was already evident and I thought, If there every was time to jump straight up and say, “YES!” this is it. The plan was just to buy an old and inexpensive beater of a boat for daysailing and occasional overnights close to home. One of the issues we were struggling with was my “negativity” so I decided right away that there wasn’t going to be any of that where the boat was concerned. Going into a boat purchase without a healthy dose of skepticism and negativity is never wise but I knew even before I got off the plane in Detroit that we would be buying the boat I went out to look at.
My experimentation with a totally positive and optimistic outlook resulted in the days after Strider arrived on a truck being pretty shocking. As five hundred dollar day at the marine supply store followed six hundred dollar day during five weeks in which I pretty much disappeared from the family, it got very quiet around the house. I still carry the emotional scars from the days that the credit card statements arrived.
We all know the story of the baby that was supposed to save a marriage and became instead the stress that finished it. To make a long story short, that was Strider. Not long after a summer in which we found out that the boys didn’t like sailing very much and my wife couldn’t stand being on a boat with me, I was the divorced owner of a 32 foot sailboat and rediscovering sailing and cruising to the extent that I gave up flying to devote myself fully to it. The boys came to appreciate sailing the summer after that.
I’ve since spent a good part of my life and most of my money upgrading the boat for the task of taking me long distances in my retirement. There are some things that are important to me, clean fuel, strong rigging, fast wome… oops, my fingers ran away with me there. Anyway, cosmetics are pretty far down the list. Strider is a workboat. Her job is to take me on a voyage. That voyage is now my life. I’ve reached the age where my face and the boat are a pretty good fit. I’m just going to focus on keeping the heart pumping, the water out, the rig standing, and see as many new places as I can before someone has to carry me off the boat.
Strider's website: http://www.cruisingonstrider.us/Boat.htm
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