I’ve known numerous people who, as children were subjected to piano lessons. Years of scales and classical songs. I however was not one of these fortunate children (secretly I do wish I was one of them), instead for my eighth birthday my parents brought me a 9 ft yacht. Yacht is probably too grand of a word to describe the little wooden dingy that is known as a minnow.
I remember we went out to this farmers shed and Dad paid some cash for in exchange of this blue wooden boat, a boat for me. It had a blue sail, with a sail number that was quite low, 126 for memory, which like a serial number means it’s an early one. It was painted in a couple of tones of blue. It was on the heavy side for its size as it was made some plywood, and probably weighted the same as dad’s fiberglass catamaran, at least for a eight year old it was way to heavy to lift.
It sat on an old wooden frame, that had supports for the hull in the right places. When we picked it up it had been sitting in the shed for a while and was covered in a layer of dust. We loaded it onto the trailer and took it home. I can’t remember the journey there, nor home. Nor can I remember whether I knew what we were doing. But at the ripe old age of eight I had a cool status symbol, I had a boat.
I soon learnt that having a dusty covered boat wasn’t as all it was cracked up to be. Unfortunately for whatever reason, still unknown to me to this day we had to repaint it prior to it being sea worthy (or lake worthy).
The only kind of painting I knew as an eighth year old was painting on paper, like in art class. I knew things were painted, I just wasn’t familiar with the process. But while others my ages were becoming acquainted with the D major scale, I on the other hand was becoming acquainted with boat repairs.
First we had to remove all the old blue paint. The deck was a different color to the hull, but both had to be removed. There was a variety of methods used to remove the old paint. First there was the good old sanding, course grit sand paper, coupled with a hand block. Boring and hard work. Then there was the heat gun method, for certain sections this worked great, huge clumps of strange warm paint lifting from the surface of the hull, almost like flipping an egg in a pan. Christmas time must have come around by this stage and I was given a “finishing sander”. The name should have given it away, but it turns out a finishing sander is pretty useless at removing old paint. Finally the day came when the hull was once again bare again.
The next step in the process is resealing all of the edges on the hull with fiberglass tape. I don’t actively remember taking part in this process, I just remember the boat upside down in the shed, and the smell.
Now seems like a good time to start to paint, however the story has a bend in the road. For whatever reason dad decided to store the boat leaning against the side of the house, with a tarp covering it. Which wasn’t totally unusual. However it was in an upright position with the front of the boat pointing towards the sky, instead of lying on its side. One stormy evening a gust of wind came and was caught in under the hull of the boat and like a large wooden kite it wanted to fly. But sadly it isn’t a kite, it’s a boat and instead it came crashing down. Our driveway at the time was made of rocks, about the size of two adult fists together, and the boat came crashing down on a section of this driveway. It was as if all the previous work had been in vain. The hours of sanding, and stripping paint lost. It wasn’t really that bad, but it felt like the end of the project.
Around the same time of acquiring this yacht, the drought started to kick in, and the local lakes started to dry up, another set back.
Finally the day came to paint, dad had repaired the hole caused by the hull crashing into the rocky driveway, and we were back on track. But wait, you can’t just go straight to the top coat, after all we had spent the days and nights getting back to the bare word, no first we must turn the boat pink with primer.
There was another coat of paint required after the primer, which was white so I’m assuming that was a form of undercoat. Then finally came the day when we could add color to the boat. A project that had taken 1/5 of my life to complete was finally coming to an end. I chose to paint the deck a purple, the underside of the hull a orange yellow, the cockpit was also this orange yellow and for fun we made the mast 3/4 yellow, and then feathered it into the purple. It was much more exciting than the other minnows I had seen with their plain white hulls. I think I was ten when we finished.
I think I sailed that boat on the local lake around 5 times in my life. It would be depressing to work out how many months of effort was put into each sail.
I was reminded on his project today while preparing a window frame for painting on my house. I have noticed that it as been worn by the weather and parts of exposed timber are starting to show through. I had planned to do it over the summer, but never got around to it. Autumn has mostly been out window with a broken shoulder and I heard the forecast this morning was for no rain till Monday. When I saw the glorious afternoon I seized the opportunity.
However as I worked away at scrapping the old faking paint, which on the house is a strikingly similar color to the boat, I was trying to get back to that raw timber, even though it wasn’t necessary. I was trying to fight the sun, it’s warmth and the daylight it provided, against my perfectionist tendencies. It was a losing battle, I couldn’t have it both ways. The paint needed to be applied, but the surface also prepped. In the end I feel I archived around 90% of the prep work required.
I wonder if my yacht project was the birth of my perfectionist tendencies, or was it just reinforced there?
To this day I continue to have side projects. It’s how I learn and grow & keep life interesting.
I never named the boat, nor sailed it in a race. I just worked on it, never fully enjoying the fruit of the labor, just the labor itself.