For the complete set of photos of this phase, see the Google Album
The winter of 2022/23 was relatively mild, and Selkie came through just fine. Now, it’s time for her cover to come off, and lots of work to get done sprucing up some things and getting her back in the water.
Several of the important projects over the winter need to get finished up, including removing the old marine head and holding tank, and removing the pressurized alcohol stove (they were a decent idea, but in practice tend to set things on fire) and now that I have no toilet and no stove, we need to tweak that.
Thankfully, an AirHead composting toilet, and a small butane burner, are going to do the trick! The composting toilet is so great because it just does not smell unless things have gone awry, and I get back all the storage space that a sloshing tank of liquid human waste under my primary bed was taking up.
(…Seriously, that is every bit as gross as it sounds)
The new bottom paint and boot stripe just look so good it blows my mind. Plus how clean the hull came with a little gentle cleaning with Barkeeper’s friend… it does a heck of a job on the brown stain from algae and general grime in the harbor water.
Her new name is on, but covered until we can launch her and get a naming ceremony done to introduce her to Posidon and the winds under hew new name.
What’s in a name? … a lot, actually.
Names for boats are A Thing, because for thousands of years my ancestors have been trusting their lives to the beautiful, maddening, capricious beasts that are sailing vessels, and so they need an identity all their own.
Much superstition is baked into the DNA of sailors, who have their origins in men who had no way of predicting the weather past RIGHT NOW and only knew that tides exist, not why they happen. A lot of the superstitions are sexist (no women on board), racist (there’s a lot of these, I don’t wanna go into it), and/or downright weird (don’t bring bananas aboard)… so I’m choosing to ignore those and lean in to the ones that feel right.
The chief among these, is that once a boat is named…. you don’t just CHANGE it, you have to make that: A Thing.
Selkie and I had a long (one-sided) conversation on the way home from New Bedford, where I asked her several times what her name was… and she just kinda napped through it all; like she was pretty dissociated… by the end of the trip I told her that if she didn’t have a name she wanted, I was picking Selkie for her, and since she never picked one, Selkie it is!
No, I can’t tell you her old name. It’s bad luck.
…Look, it’s her deadname, ok?
ANYWAY. Once you decide you’re going to commit and pick a new name, you have to Follow The Forms and Mysteries, which goes like this:
– Remove every mention of the old name that is on the boat. Paperwork, books that have bookplates, labels, etc. Also the old painted on name on the transom (the boat’s rear end)
– Clean the boat stem-to-stern (I mean, that’s just good to do regularly anyway)
– Paint on the new name (or get a vinyl decal of it) and COVER IT UP for now
– Stamp or engrave the OLD name into a small hunk of metal
– Launch your boat (if she’s not in the water) and hold a ceremony where you throw the old name into the water to symbolically “sink” the old boat and mourn her loss.
– Then, introduce her to the 4 winds (“Boreas” – North, “Nortus” – South, “Eurus” – East, and “Zephyrus” – West) and Poseidon/Neptune, and remove the covering on her name, and pour a libation (I used 12yo Glenmorangie scotch) on her, and to Poseidon, then all the crew aboard toast her.
Afloat once more!
Steve Morse, of Morse Overland Transport is my go to guy for launching and moving the boat. He has this hydraulic trailer with arms and lift capability that can slide in under the boat on land or in the water and just scoop her up like a newlywed spouse and move her from place to place, and in or out of the water. (You can see some video of moving through the yard in the google album for this post)
So… we’re floating again, but the mast is still dead weight cargo. THAT needs fixing!
I also need a way to get to and from the boat when we’re out seeing islands… enter “Pup!” (… come on, what else would the little boat on the back of “Selkie” be called??)
Motoring the boat with the mast down feels VERY. FREAKING. WEIRD. You would think it would be less tippy, right? I mean, there’s not the GREAT HUGE WEIGHT up above it. But it’s the opposite… without the mast up taking some of the energy, the boat just rolls around and sloshes like the worst slow motor boat EVER.
The boatyard I’m using to put my mast up is Royal River, in Yarmouth ME. It’s hard to find a yard these days that will do the mast without you being a storage customer, simply because it’s a pain in the ass for them to be waiting on you to be there… so I made sure to be there the night before and just hang out at their fuel dock so I was ready the MINUTE they were in the morning.
Getting to Royal River, means going up the so-named river, and the navigation is like doing a tightrope act on the back of a python… lots of switchbacks and tight turns. BUT, we made it, and have our mast up, and now it’s back to Portland and ready for a shakedown cruise.
We are docked at the Aspasia marina, a very much working class boat place, in South Portland, on the E dock, and early for much of the boating traffic… it’s only early May, but I am impatient and have a lot of miles to put under the keel!
Mom and I took her out on the bay for a shakedown to get the sails up and see how she handled… the answer?
…
…
AMAZING. Cannot WAIT for the adventures this summer!!
Leave a Reply