BOATS HAVE SOULS AND PERSONALITIES

BOATS HAVE SOULS AND PERSONALITIES

Lewis Keizer

We like to think we own a boat. But for good or for ill, we are also owned by the boat. Each of the eight boats that have owned me had a soul and a personality. So it is with all boats, power and sail. I took care of each one and passed it on in better condition than I had received it, and for that reason my boats always took care of me.

The somewhat inefficient placement of port and starboard navigation lights on the bows of modern boats is probably rooted in the ancient tradition of painting eyes on both bows. This honored and symbolized the soul of the boat, keeping a good lookout, and warding off danger at sea.

What is the soul of a boat? Well, first we must understand that soul is mind or consciousness. Everything created and built by us—cars, boats, houses, computers—has its own kind of intelligence or soul. But boats are way more soulful than cars, which have been around for only a century. Boats were being constructed by prehistoric cultures many thousands of years ago. More than any other human artifact, from earliest times boats were regarded as living beings with souls. Modern boat design has grown and evolved over the ages, and every modern boat shares in this psychic heritage.

The soul of a boat is rooted in an ancient, invisible, and ever-evolving reality of mathematics and esthetics committed to paper by a designer. It is immutable and doesn’t change with each new owner. Alberg designs draw from one kind of soul; Nathanael Herreshoff designs draw from another. By contrast, the personality of a boat is different even for boats of the same design, being dependent upon the physical build of that design done with variations of quality and detail by human hands. It can improve under the care of a knowledgeable owner or degrade through the neglect or poor seamanship of a boat abuser.

Whatever name is given to a boat merely reflects the mentality of its legal owner, not the boat. 

You can name your boat something flippant like Breaking Wind, but it doesn’t reflect its soul. The same boat will have many owners and many names.

But naming a boat can be a modern way of representing the soul and personality of that individual vessel. Boats have been traditionally referred to as “she” and given female names, probably because sailors and owners were men and women were considered to bring bad luck to a voyage. The male relationship with a boat was like a marriage with mutual responsibilities—I take care of you, and you take care of me. So men have often named their boats after women.

But souls don’t have gender and neither do boats. Today many responsible boat owners are women. In fact, looking online through ten thousand current boat names at http://10000boatnames.com/, the majority of them are genderless names like Andiamo, Carpe Diem, or Escapade. There are also many male names like Orion or Popeye.

A walk through any marina reveals that there are responsible boat owners and boat abusers. Responsible owners make themselves knowledgeable so they can improve their boats, but abusers neglect and kill them. The personality of a boat—its performance, cosmetics, and market value—can be cultivated and improved by human ownership, but the invisible soul of a boat remains unchanged. Therefore it is the soul of a neglected good old boat—not the visible personality—that calls out to a sailor who falls in love with it and devotes himself to restoring it and bringing it back to life.

Boats have life-cycles. With love and care, they live long and grow old gracefully, but neglected they age prematurely and die. New boats straight from the factory have immature adolescent personalities with sawdust in fuel tanks, loose bolts in the bilge, and all kinds of issues that reveal themselves on a shakedown cruise. But as a new owner works to improve his boat’s personality, the vessel matures. It becomes more reliable, trustworthy, comfortable, and serviceable, and its invisible soul begins to shine brightly through its physical personality in performance and esthetics. There may be many pretty boats of the same design out there, but this especially loved one becomes the boat that turns heads and gets photographed.

My new-to-me Cape Dory 28 was maintained beautifully by the original owner from the time he took possession of it in 1978. He named it Levon after his Chesapeake Bay retriever and cruised it all over the Pacific several times.

A boat named after a dog? I don’t like to change boat names, but did I want to keep the name Levon? Did I want a boat with the soul of a dog, no matter how noble a dog it may have been?

But after a little internet research, I found that Levon is an Armenian name that means Lion and is pronounced “Lee-von,” like English Leon. Aha! A boat with the soul of a lion! I could live with that (especially since it came with the name already monogrammed on dishware, towels, and blankets). So my boat has a male name and is not a she, but a he. Our relationship will not be like a marriage, but a close friendship.

I started out by cheering up Levon’s personality with a complete new chain plate installation, dodger, canvas, and electrical upgrades including a windlass. Levon was quite attached to his original owner, but now he is so grateful for what I’m doing to give him another thirty-five years of life that he has taken quite a shine to me. I will take care of him, and he will take care of me out on the water.

Do I talk to Levon? Sometimes with words, but mostly in the silent communion of a singlehander. I admire his handsome Carl Alberg lines and rugged strength, solid hull, and intelligent, seakindly motion. We sail together, and that says it all.

SELLING JOY AND REFITTING LEVON

The sale of my Ranger 29 JOY is pending. I have purchased a Cape Dory 28 named LEVON (Armenian name meaning Lion, pronounced Lee-von). The decision to sell such a fine boat that I had refitted was difficult because JOY and I had formed a mutual admiration society and worked very well together. But my experience cruising to Mexico on LEGACY, my C&C 34 that I sold in La Paz, had convinced me that for extended ocean cruising I needed a boat with a better Motion Comfort ratio. That is because unlike many sailors, I stay queasy on a fin keel for most of the voyage. Motion Comfort is a ratio measuring the quickness that a boat moves in a seaway. Both LEGACY and JOY have about the same ratio as other modern fin keeled cruisers (23-24). I needed something above 30 to be comfortable single handing on the ocean. Realizing that I wanted to continue ocean cruising, I started looking in summer of 2012 for a small, sturdy full-keeled sailboat that I could afford. I looked at many seaworthy and available 28-30 foot boats in the $15K range such as Pearson Triton, Columbia, Southern Cross, and Farallon, and even a Ranger 33, but most were under powered and needed a lot of work. 

Then I found the Cape Dory 28 of my dreams! Motion Comfort ratio of 31, almost a good as a Westsail 32, but a much better sailing boat. The owner had bought it new in 1978 and sailed all over the Pacific many times. He had installed a new Yanmar 2GM20F with about 50 hours and kept the boat beautifully maintained. Five sails in excellent condition, new bottom paint, the original dodger framework, a good working gimballed propane stove and oven, and the original job boom. I had the boat surveyed and it was considered to have a market value of $25,000. 

BUT the original chain plates had to be replaced. In spite of all the excellent work the Cape Dory factory did with this wonderful Carl Alberg design, single-hull mold, water-tight deck-hull, and it's brass fittings throughout, they used mild steel butt plates welded to J-shaped rebar for the chain plate anchors. After 35 years they were extremely corroded. So the boat was advertised for $15,000 and I raided our home line of credit to snap it up.

My surveyor, Francoise Ramsay of Wedlock in Sausalito, recommended an experienced boat builder named Michael Lael for the chain plate work. He spends summers in the Bay Area, winters overseas, and works privately out of his fully equipped shop boat at Brisbane Marina. His estimate for the job was $2500/side, which included design and installation of extra partial bulkheads for the main shrouds, plus extra for designing and fabricating an anchor bowsprit fitting and running proper wire for the Lewmar700V electric windlass I would later have installed. This was less than half the estimate the owner had gotten from Svendsen's for the same work. 

Meanwhile I had made a web page for JOY and put her up for sale. Here is the web page: https://sites.google.com/site/ranger29joy/ Over two months I showed her to about 25 people, from neophytes to experienced sailors. I turned down an offer for $11,000 and another for $13,000 because it would have to be paid in many installments. I wanted to sell JOY to someone who would cruise and properly maintain her. Finally the right person came along.

Here is what Levon looks like now with her new jib boom cover, Lewmar windlass, and stainless bowsprit fitting.

 

It took two men two full days to cut out the old chain plates.

Here is what the corroded butt plate looked like. It practically crumbled in my hands.

Here are the new G-10 partial bulkheads in Michael's shop, and views of the new chain plate butt plate and anchors, each bolted securely to a bulkhead.

I have cleaned and replaced hoses on the two 30-gallon water tanks, installed electric windlass with both deck and cockpit controls, added proper chain and rode for the Lewmar to my Manson Supreme anchor on the bowsprit, and installed a galvanic isolator. I also replaced the ancient three-pin cockpit connector for the tiller pilot with a modern six-pin for my new Raymarine Autohelm that enables it to receive NMEA string navigation commands from chart plotter, and I repaired the water leak through the tiller head from the original owner's newly-pitched propeller. This week I tore out the old Whale Gusher Titan manual bilge pump and will replace it with a new one. I also had fittings made for the stainless dodger frame so I can fold it down as needed and installed it in the cockpit. After that, when I can afford them, canvas for the dodger, refits for propane stove, new SH Matrix VHF with AIS, and new Raymarine chart plotter and RADAR. Then a whisker pole, maybe an ATN snuffer for the gennaker, and finally a serious cruising dinghy of some type yet to be decided. 

Hope to be putting up new blogs on cruising SF and Monterey Bays and coast. Then finally South for commuter cruising, hopefully by Fall, 2013.