Tag Archives: Wooden boat

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Boats and water

Photrablogger asked “Water water everywhere :DΒ I am curious to know about your connection with boats and canoes. Because you grew up playing in such an environment?”

My maternal grandparents bought land on a lake in Ontario in the 1930s and we were all imprinted like ducks…. went there many summers. I went this summer. My family moved but that was the place where I knew the rocks and the trees and the cabins. My family was in tents, so I am particularly attached to the land. I use the cabin but want to sleep in a tent and hear the water and the wind and the rain…..

I don’t know who took the photo: from 1963, I think, I was two.

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Solar panels in the mist

This is for Photrablogger’s Mundane Monday number 25.

I took this in 2005 at Lake Matinenda in Ontario. The solar panel raft charges a battery that in turn powers a pump to fill a hot tub on a cliff about 12 feet above the water. It is a box with a custom pond liner and a propane pool heater. The raft was deployed each summer.

This year the solar panels are moving to the roof of the cabin….. no more raft.

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small pirate

In September at the Wooden Boat Festival I went down to look at the boats. There was a square rigger with a pirate. A 22 foot square rigger with the largest sail about the size of a baby blanket. After we had exchanged introductions, Captain Jack explained that his grandfather had built the square rigger to play with his grandchildren and he has restored it. It has an outboard in the middle, well, an inboard outboard so to speak. I asked how it sailed and he said, “Downwind.” I asked about hull speed and currents and he replied “AAARRRR, don’t talk to me about current.” A small child came by towing parents and he handed a pirate toy over from a big gold chest.
Then another small child came up. Very small with red hair. He gave her a pirate flag, which she waved. But she still looked at the boat. “You can come aboard,” he said. He told dad to bring her. Dad stepped aboard with her and Captain Jack put a black bandanna hat with a skull and crossbones on her. Then she saw the swords. Cutlasses made of foam! She reached for one. “Go ahead, you can have a sword fight with your father!” IMG_20150913_131056
She did, with me and mom laughing. “Would you like to take the wheel, matey?” said Captain Jack. She nodded. She and dad went back in the very small wheelhouse and she practiced steering the squarerigger. “Me boat has been shanghied, I’d better escape!” said Captain Jack, stepping ashore and leaving her and dad in full possession. The small pirate was very serious the whole time. This seemed to be new territory and she was concentrating on all of it.
Captain jack told me that he came to the festival last year and got invited back. He was very pleased and towed his boat from the inland lake. Hooray for Captain Jack and for all of the boat owners and contributors to the Wooden Boat Festival that encourage the children to be involved and Joey Pipia and all of the play pirates….

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Sun Tui

Sun Tui, my father’s boat and now mine, is back in the water. Two weeks ago today. Another boat ran into her and broke a chain plate and bent a stay last summer, just when I was thinking of sailing. I had not sailed her in about three years at that point, because of my sister having end stage cancer, my father’s emphysema getting worse, both dying.

Sun Tui means wind/water machine, I’m told. She is a 23 foot sloop, with a nearly full keel. She has plywood sides, not planks. She was built by American Marine in Hong Kong in 1959. She has a sister ship in the San Francisco Maritime Museum, the Mermaid. The Mermaid has a different keel. The Mermaid was sailed from Japan to San Francisco by Kinichi Horie, who made the first known solo nonstop crossing of the Pacific in the Mermaid in 1962. He was promptly arrested, because he was 23 and it had not occurred to him to bring a passport. He is known as Japan’s most famous sailor and has sailed many more boats all over.

My father bought Sun Tui in 2002, for $1900.00. Her sides were rotting out. He had the Port Townsend Shipwright’s Co-op replace the sides with 17 layer plywood. He said proudly, “The plywood is guaranteed by Lloyd’s of London.” He had a new jib made and a mainsail cover and a full boat cover. Then we sailed quite a lot, mostly in Port Townsend Bay. My daughter says she hated it when she was little. My father always brought oreos and orange soda. We would sail for a few hours because the kids would start banging against the walls and anyhow, I always had more work.

We raced, too. We were classed with the Thunderbirds, which are faster. They are lighter and have less keel. The trade off is that if one were to go out on the Pacific, Sun Tui is more stable. We beat the Thunderbirds once because my father knew the tides and that there was a backswirl along the shore. The tide carried us along more quickly, even though it seemed out of the way.

Once my father was out with the small fleet for one of the races and it was foggy. They were waiting for the fog to lift. The ferry goes back and forth from Whidby Island and the sailboats huddled to one side of the bay or the other, so the ferry wouldn’t squash them. Many boats quit, but my father stubbornly stayed out until the fog lifted enough to race. They gave him a pennant for tenacity on that one.

Sun Tui has had three major overhauls since my father bought her. The picture is from 2010, after the second, being carried back to the water, mast not back in place yet. I’ve sailed her three times since she went back in the water, now. I miss my father, but I think of him when I sail.