This boat had been “the other woman” at least once before
Issue 38 : Sept/Oct 2004
When we first made acquaintance she was in Mobile, Alabama, and I was almost 1,000 miles away in Washington, D.C. I had heard stories of couples meeting on the Internet and ending up together without first having even one real date, but this wasn’t for me.
Two years of walking the docks had given me a good idea of what I was looking for in a cruising boat. I had heard good things about the Allied Luders 33. On the computer screen, this 30-year-old classic plastic sloop looked to be in good shape, and the price was right. But I couldn’t buy her sight unseen; so two weekends later, I arrived in Mobile for a firsthand look. As I walked down the rickety dock, her classic curves and swooping lines captured my heart before I had even set foot aboard. Our time together was brief, as I had to return to Washington to finish work. Not until I moved aboard and started preparing for an extended cruise would I really get to know her.
When I returned three months later, she was right where I’d first seen her. We were alone together for the first time. As I lifted the hatchboards, the musty odor of a neglected boat filled my nose. I inhaled the scent and, peering below, imagined a cabin filled with the smells of life aboard. First, however, would come the odors of bleach, acetone, wet paint, and sweat.
I knew she was a well-constructed bluewater boat. The previous owner had died, leaving it to his son to sell, so the history of my new boat had to be deduced through detective work.
Clues to the past
Cleaning and refitting her was hard work, but a labor of love from the beginning. My brother soon joined me, and together we began to uncover clues to her past. Emptying the cluttered lockers was like going through old boxes in the attic. We found ourselves sitting in the cluttered cockpit, more interested in studying old, miscellaneous objects than in working. Piece by piece this boat, older than I was, began to reveal her story.
From under the pilot berth we pulled charts yellowed and creased with age. Charts of Long Island Sound, Bermuda, New England, the Intracoastal Waterway down to Florida . . . each chart a history of miles covered over the past 30 years.
Tucked in with the charts were old work orders and receipts that revealed information about past repairs and upgrades: what year the tiller had been replaced by a wheel, when the Aries windvane had been added, when the rigging had been replaced. Rusty tools, left aboard by previous owners, provided additional clues as to what jobs had been performed.
The boat’s personal life came alive when, amongst old papers, I found two pastel envelopes. Spotted with rust and water stains, the handwritten pages were love letters written during the dying days of a relationship. In emotional, cursive script, words of pain explained that sailing had been the cause. “It is ironic that you dropped my key in the mailbox just days before the sailing season truly began,” she wrote to him in anger.
My boat had been loved before.
Shining lady
Together, my brother and I tackled one project after another in an attempt to make this lady shine again. We scrubbed and painted mildewed lockers, sanded and varnished faded wood. We replaced the windows and broken portholes, retrofitted an emergency tiller, and built a collapsible pedestal for the table.
She didn’t have a chart table, one of my requirements. But I had been willing to overlook this because there was suitable space in which I could add one. That is, there was a suitable space after we ripped out an oversized icebox. Having cut my teeth on the smaller refit projects, it was time to tackle major reconstructive surgery. Yet when I took the power saw in my hands to make the first incision into her interior woodwork, I was more than nervous. The surgery was a success and soon the starboard side, just inside the companionway, was cleared and ready for chart table construction.
The early days weren’t all fun and games. Before I could begin working on the chart table she tested my commitment. Her stainless-steel water tank, built into the hull, sprang a leak. There was only one option. My brother and I cut up the teak-and-holly floor and removed the tank. This was no easy task; at one point I thought we had the tank as thoroughly stuck in the companionway as a couch in a stairwell. We repaired the tank, replaced it, and rebuilt the floor. The project was a bigger task than I had been looking to undertake, but in ripping the boat apart and putting her back together I had come to understand her more intimately than before.
The process of fixing her up and getting to know her took more than a year. Another year was spent getting us both prepared for bluewater passages and island cruising. Like any relationship, we had our ups and downs, but on dark blustery nights offshore it made all the difference that we understood each other.
It took a bit of convincing, but my girlfriend finally accepted this other woman in my life. Together, the three of us headed south toward the tropics. The boat carried us safely through the Atlantic and the Caribbean, down to Trinidad, and back to the Chesapeake. At the end of an eight-month cruise, we were living together like a close-knit family, the boat taking care of us, and we taking care of her.
Four years after first meeting her, my love for the boat is as strong as ever. She is a cruising boat built to sail the blue seas. But now my life is changing. I’m moving on, going back to school, spending too much time on land. It is going to be a sad day when what has been a beautiful relationship ends, but we are headed in different directions. Still, we’ll always have our shared memories of Point-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
