It’s sweaty and the bugs are already innumerable but I couldn’t be happier. I’m reasonably healthy. (A recent campout was a test of health.)
Since the heat’s not kicking my ass I think I can sail / camp again! I love my little DIY sailboat. It’s an aquatic adventure machine!
In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, I built a tiny sailboat. It’s small and shaped like a brick. First impressions are misleading. What looks good is irrelevant. There’s math buried in that boxy shape. It punches above its weight class.
I built it around 2017 / 2018. I did a few test sails in 2018. I didn’t blog about it. I was afraid folks would mock the little craft (or its builder).
[Warning… rant follows.]
As I built it I sensed modern society shitting on the act of creation itself. It’s not about boats, it’s about crafting reality from an idea. If I’m building a boat and you’re into crochet that’s fine; we’re both creating a thing in the real world. But a lot of folks dismissively “roll their eyes” at the act of creation.
It’s not good. There’s no advantage in being a nihilistic douchebag. Yet a lot of grouches think it’s doubleplusungood to build a thing with your own hands. They pointed out flaws; I’d never build it, and if I did it’d sink, and I’d probably drown… in fact I deserved to drown. The only boat worth owning is a fiberglass wonder with a payment plan. As if debt is the goal more than the craft itself.
The oddest part is that it wouldn’t be a big deal a few decades ago. Anyone can cut plywood and try to make a thing that floats. I saw a million articles about it in old Popular Mechanics and other sources. It’s only recent that we’ve been trained everything is impossibly hard. I resent that. Wood and water aren’t mysterious.
Heck, Neandertals made boats!
Do not accept diminishment of the human spirit. A person who frets over some dude knocking together a rowboat in his garage is exactly the kind that’ll lose their shit over what they saw on the news that day. Lose too much spirit and you’re just a crop on the vote farm.
I posted after it was a success; in 2019. I thought it was good to post a happy story. Society was in full fledged paranoia. At the time I believed it was a temporary condition and the world would “snap out of it”. I was naïve. Society never did pull its head out of its ass. It crawled in deeper.
It doesn’t have to be that way. I think mass hysteria got out of hand when weaponized social media was matched with smart phones. I don’t know for sure. All I know is that I want nothing to do with it. It’s good to build anything. It’s bad to mutter that nothing can be done.
When I posted about my completed boat I expected to get pummeled. It didn’t happen. It was already sailing so nobody bitched that it will sink or doesn’t go fast. They were super positive!
People commenting on the blog are (of course!) awesome but I also got a lot of positivity in real life. Nobody who’s seen my little brick crossing a lake has complained about it or told me I suck. Everyone likes it. People step off tricked out bassboats and compliment a craft that costs less than their fishing gear. Campers amble to the waterfront from $80,000 RVs just to greet the dumb little boat as it beaches. They’re not greeting me, they’re greeting the cute little boat. I once sailed a 7 mile lake to a restaurant and apparently was entertainment for the evening. How cool is that?
I never expected a boat to charm people, but it does. It’s a basket of puppies.
The design is a Michael Storer variant of the PDR called OZ Racer RV. I discussed the PDR design in 2019. Here’s an old photo from his website.
Here’s a photo from my boat’s 2019 “blog unveiling“. You can find it in Walkabouts (Spring 2019). Isn’t that the goofiest little craft you’ve ever seen? Here the sail is reefed for rowing. I’ve beached it at an unnamed island. I felt like Tom Sawyer!
Here’s the last photo of the boat’s travels. It was taken in fall 2022.
Why all this retrospective? Because life got ahead of me but the boat patiently waited. It hasn’t moved since 2022; sitting outside (uncovered!) for several winters. I feared it was rotten. (I built one so I can build another.) Happily it looks sound. WHEW! In a few weeks I’ll check in more detail and (hopefully) all it’ll need is sanding and a coat of paint.
My first challenge is acquiring (resurrecting) a boat trailer. I used to haul it with a utility trailer. The trailer has been broke for a few years. Lucky me, I’ve got a “junk pile” that’s really a “resource pile”.
Today I pulled a long abandoned, never much used, boat trailer out of the weeds. It had been moldering for a decade. It’s cheap and old. It was built in 1982. I’ve had it for ten years but never used it.
It’s shot but repairable. It’s not configured for the hull shape of my boat but it’s the right size. I think I can figure something out.
So that’s the plan. I’m aiming to rebuild the trailer, repaint the boat, and go sailing/camping again. I’m low on cash but I might get by for the cost of a couple tires and a can of marine paint.
Wish me luck.
Rehabilitating a 1980s boat trailer? Are you nuts? You’ll never get it into 21st century compliance! Don’t be a fool, buy new! Sorry. May have misread this post. Naysayers are sort of like hiccups – annoying as hell but once you finally lose them you kind of miss the next anticipated (and motivational) interruption that never arrives. But that’s just me.