Walkabout: The Larger Journey: Part 3

I was earnestly seeking a “new way” based on a type of craft I’d never used and couldn’t quite describe. I wasn’t sure where to start. Locally I couldn’t physically find a craft that seemed right. (I do live in the hinterland.) Lost between kayaks and bass boats (both in stock at a dozen dealerships within driving distance) I was grasping at straws. In retrospect it seems obvious my first few feints in the right direction would end in failure. Fits and starts are a sign you’re learning and growing. Show me a man who’s never failed and I’ll show you a pitiable creature who’s never enjoyed a proper challenge.

I bought “study plans” for a Chesapeake Light Craft (CLC) Northeaster Dory and read every word. I was about to build a kit. This was going to be a very expensive build. It would probably exceed $5k by the time it was done. In retrospect, the build vastly exceeded my ability. I now know it would have taken many years to finish the kit! (And not an inconsiderable number of years to absorb the strain on my budget.)

Literally days before I was going to pull the trigger, I found a different choice. I discovered a traditionally built “double ender” on Craigslist. It was “in need of TLC”. It had been built (by hand) by a man who might have been a genius and at the very least I wish I’d met him. Alas he’d passed on and in his absence the boat had deteriorated. I had a naive and totally misinformed idea of how to fix it. The very traditional design exceeded my ability. I tried but failed. I began calling around to find a “repair guy” who could do what had stumped me. In a world of rotomolded kayaks, welded aluminum bass boats, and fiberglass sailboats I was doomed. I kept calling around for years!

A few years later, almost frantic to have a small wooden rowable sailboat, I bought a little 14′ sailing dory. It too came from Craigslist and it too was cheap. I towed it home a very long distance through a snowstorm. It looked awesome, right down to special traditional hemp rigging, but it leaked. It wasn’t usable. I wasn’t surprised it leaked but thought it might be easy to goop it up with something chemical to limp around a lake for a few years. I spent many hours building a cradle to lift and rotate it. My intentionally half assed repairs didn’t work out.

With boats, you can do it right… or you can sink. I (temporaily!) tabled my Plan B boat.

Stung by two failures, I backed up a bit and took an introductory traditional boatbuilding class. In three days, I learned the vast immensity of what I didn’t know! I’d been swimming in circles, lost in a universe of ignorance! I was shocked at how completely clueless I’d been. I saw the folly of my attempts at repairing both craft. It wasn’t so much that I was an idiot or had done everything wrong. It’s that you cannot reason your way out of problems that are necessarily solved only with experience you lack.

My problem wasn’t lack of raw knowledge. You can read anything in a book. I’d been stopped by situations of which I didn’t even know I was ignorant.

There was so much to learn.

Challenge accepted!

In fact, my goals had changed too:

I no longer wanted to be a guy who owns a boat. I wanted to be a guy who built a boat.

There are many of the former, almost none of the latter. In twice failing I’d found inspiration to chose the path less traveled. That’s just how I roll.