For the summer following my first boat’s cruise missile attack on the waves I happily stayed on shore. I nibbled away at the third boat’s build. Thankfully, the simple design meant it had an occasional straight line and that was a lifesaver. Even so, I was building from scratch and had never done such a thing. I often had to learn some new woodworking technique. Every step was a delightful lesson in a skillset I’d never before considered.
I took my time; playing tortoise over hare. I was interrupted many times. It sat unfinished a whole winter. It was constantly put on the back burner for a dozen of life’s other issues. I also wasted excess materials through delays, experimentation, and ineptitude. Money well spent! I was having a ball.
Like everything, my build went overtime, over budget, and had many setbacks. Not despite this but because of it, building a tiny little sailboat was the best thing I’ve done in years.
Here's some Curmudgeonly advice about building a boat: If you're considering it, do it. Start immediately. Don't wait another day. You will have the time of your life. However, if you just want to own a boat and not build one... ...run away from the workshop like your hair's on fire.
I had a lot to learn but also building any boat (even a tiny simple one) is more complex than it looks from a distance. Nothing is easy! If you think it’s no big deal to build any boat then you’re a victim of one of two misunderstandings. Possibly you’re already experienced and don’t remember your learning curve. More likely you’ve been mainlining Dunning-Kruger.
Persistence means you almost always win… if you keep trying and don’t die before the finish line you’ll get there. I completed my build late last summer. I did the last few finishing touches, fretted over how to rig the sail, and practically had to drag myself away from obsessing over increasingly minor details. These things don’t end so much as hit a point of diminishing returns.
(Also, the instant you’ve finished a boat… you start thinking about building another.)
I called it good and the next day (as soon as the mast’s varnish was dry) I set out to test it. True to form, I went solo. No, I don’t know how to sail.
Such a sweet feeling! Building a boat (even a simple one) is a whole different universe than simply buying one. When I finally got the sail raised I felt like Jack Sparrow, Captain Cook, and a Viking explorer all rolled into one!
“Sea trials” on a smallish shallow lake went well enough. I declared it seaworthy and went on a sail/camp trip to a vastly larger lake.
The boat did great but I don’t know how to sail. Also, combining sailing and camping was a fiasco. I backed off my camping plans but still froze my ass off.
Who cares about the details? I made a boat. My boat was fine. I. Made. A. Boat.
On the last day of that trip I got about a mile and a half from shore. That’s about as far from shore as a canoe should ever get. Even though it’s very small, my boat didn’t seem to be out of it’s league. Meanwhile, I had lines and knots and oars and shit everywhere. I was completely befuddled with the apparatus of harnessing wind. Then, as the wind remained predictable long enough to let me send the boat went where I intended it… everything clicked.
It dawned on me… I’m a guy who built his own boat. I did it! Fuck yeah!
I can’t describe how pleased I was. It’s just a tiny sailboat but I built the little bastard by hand and I did it right! It sailed straight, was airtight, had safety features like buoyancy tanks, didn’t break, and more or less went where I told it to go. If you’ve ever built something; an engine, a vehicle restoration, a clock, a computer, furniture… you know the feeling. What fun to be a MAKER! You can’t help but love what you’ve wrought. Humans weren’t put here merely to order shit off Amazon!
That was late in 2018. I wanted more sailing practice but it snowed. My fault for finishing so late. In 2019, even before my local waters were thinking about ice out, I set out on a road trip. I’d go toward any likely unfrozen lake and “wing it”. I started a travelogue about my “cabin fever recovery” trip. You’re reading it right now.
That’s how I wound up camping off season, in April, hundreds of miles from home, in a tent, near a lake, all alone. Next to the tent, still hitched behind my Dodge, was an old utility trailer. Strapped in the trailer, having patiently waited for thousands of miles, was my tiny little boat.
I built a boat! Life is good!
I’m just guessing that a bunch of us would really like to see some photos of this fine watercraft. Please?
Photos will pop up around lunchtime.
I find that similar sentiments can be applied to almost anything creative/constructive. I wrote a book. I sat back and thought, “Holy crap, I wrote a book!” The next thought in my head was, “I need to write ANOTHER book.” So I did that. Then, predictably, the desire to do it yet again surfaced. To do it more, to do it better.
When you lose that feeling, that’s when your passion turns to tedium. That’s when it’s time to stop doing it and move on to something new.
Passion/tedium; you got that right. That’s part of why I backed off my book effort. I really like my squirrel story (and have it mapped out/outlined) but fun was drifting into “work” and so I took a break. I’ll get back to it in due time. I need to finish the story and after some time off it’ll be “fun” again. (A summer of sailing my tiny boat might help too!)
This:
I found that quite inspiring.
“I. Made. A. Boat.” Oh, hell, yes!
“mainlining Dunning-Kruger”
Has my vote for a tattoo to be put on unsuspecting yahoos while passed out drunk.
How about anyone who has a 4.0 GPA in college but can’t do a goddamn thing gets the tattoo? At graduation you’re given a few very simple tasks (what the kid’s these days call “adulting”). Blow it and they tattoo “Mainlining Dunning-Kruger” on you. 🙂
Neal Stephenson has an epic bad guy in “Snowcrash” (1992) with a similar tattoo. One of many colorful characters in Snowcrash is a violent nutcase called Dmitri “Raven” Ravinoff who has a tattoo on his forehead that reads “Poor Impulse Control.”
The US Navy had a textbook for sailing, and I suspect they still use it since sailing is still taught at all NROTC programs and at Annapolis. Unfortunately my Google-Fu is sub-par and I cannot find it, but it ought to be available through the US Naval Institute Press. As I recall it made for a great introduction to the techniques but was not very advanced. Still, better than nothing. https://www.usni.org/press/about
I’ll check it out. Though, most of what I’ve seen written about sailboat sailing is aimed for 25’+ boats with two or more sailors. Also a certain amount of writing is details aimed at winning races. I think one dude puttering about in a tiny boat isn’t anyone’s nice market? It was completely normal right up until it wasn’t.
Seems like Ole Evinrude (love the name!) introduced the world to outboards and sailboats were never the same. They fell to motorboats just like horse riding fell to the Model T. Reading up on how to build a boat I was struck by how in the 1920’s small boat sailing wasn’t anything special. It was just a way to get around and maybe go fishing: “well how the hell else am I gonna’ land a nice bass”. Even in the 1940’s “build your own boat” wasn’t considered exceptional. Now it’s pretty rare.
Whoops, went on a digression didn’t I? Thanks for the info. I’ll sniff around for the book and also keep learning by experimentation.
From what I remember 30 years ago it covered standard safety and rules of the road, went on to techniques like properly trimming sails and avoiding luffing to how to ride with the wind and tack, then on to more advanced things like the math on how to navigate and compute drift by distance and circle back in case of overboard. All in all a valid tome but certainly intended as background for your first real sailing experience. I shall continue my search, let me know if you find one.
Will do. Thanks.