I like designing things

          I like designing things.  The desk in my bedroom has a fold-out typing table (it is 22 years old, after all), and a built-in book case across the back.  I keep teh back of the desktop mostly clear and one shelf mostly empty so I can see out the window behind.  Most of it is painted white, but the desktop is a stained a rich cherry and varnished.  Although the design is still (I think) pretty nice, the construction is vintage early-Jeff: plywood and 2X4s along with a few pieces of other dimensional lumber.  But until the Beatrice Ann came along, my desk was the bit of construction I was proudest of.
          I would love to design a boat, but that is where my courage fails.  I've done a little reading, perused many designs, and followed many boat-design conversations on the Web, made a tentative drawing or two, but I simply don't know enough yet.  Boat building is costly in time and materials--even my three-month hardware-store ply Surprise has at least 2 kilobucks sunk in it--and I built it about as cheaply as I could, and sail it with borrowed rigs.  I'm far from willing to invest so much in my own design--or even in someone else's design before it has been put to adequate test.  Even in building the cabin I added to the Beatrice Ann two years ago (which, unlike the boat, I did design), I was sufficiently unsure of myself that the whole thing can be removed with little serious damage if I decide to.
          This week I have the kind of design challenge that I relish.  All three boys just bought new bicycles, courtesy of Beatrice's parents.  The reason they did not have bicycles already is because someone in the neighborhood has sticky fingers--we have had three bicycles stolen at two different times over the years.  Of course, none of the bicycles taken was locked or put away at the time, so we were in no hurry to replace them, even if we had the cash lying around.
          Now we have bicycles again and need a secure and weather-proof place to store them.  Boats have foreclosed the garage option.  The previous storage was under the corner of the house, but even the smaller bikes of a few years ago did not fit there comfortably.  So here is my design brief:

• each bicycle must be locked and accessible individually, so taking out one doesn't leave others exposed or unsecured.
• access must be easy and quick enough not to prevent bikes from being used frequently and on the spur of the moment
• precipitation must be kept out
• the bikes must be difficult to steal
• the shed should be no larger than needed to do these things.

          Having lined up the three bikes (and leaving room for my own, just in case I rehab it), I think I can accomplish all this with a shed 6 feet long and 5 feet wide in which the bikes alternate orientation and can be pulled out either end--that way the bikes handlebars don't interfere with each other and can be stored in a smaller space. A pitched roof will shed rain and snow.  Doors will close both ends, both to keep out weather and to make it harder for a passerby to see how the bicycles are secured inside.  I will build this out of exterior plywood and 2X4s (with maybe some 1X2s to save weight), and I will design it in such a way that it can be assembled or disassembled of two or three sections on-site (since it will be a heavy son-of -a-gun).  I figure to keep it raised a few inches off the ground to allow air to move.  Exterior latex paint will help it last.  It will probably sit behind the garage, where it will not kill any grass or shade other parts of the yard. 
          I may look to see how retail bike sheds deal with some of these problems before I commit too far.  I plan to do a quick preliminary drawing and buy most of the lumber today or tomorrow.  This will be a satisfying build!

Why adventure?

                I live in a nice home, weather-proof and warm with a well-stocked refrigerator and a wife who loves to cook as much as I like to eat her cooking.  Our bed has a heated mattress pad and a down comforter.  And yet I persist in wanting to go out on the water in a cramped boat, eating instant oatmeal and canned soup and drinking instant coffee, getting wet and cold, and tossing and turn at night in a berth that cramps my legs.  At some point the wind will probably fail or turn foul or blow hard.  Rock and reef and current will make life difficult and stressful.  I will come home with hands raw from hauling on wet lines.  Even so, I go.  This is a never-ending source of wonder for my wife, Beatrice.

                Why do I do it?  I know from experience that I will be glad for a hot shower and a good night's sleep when I get home, but no sooner home and done writing up the trip than I'm planning the next trip.

                I can't say I'm sure myself.

                I look for clues in the kinds of trips I plan.

                  Many, especially early on, are firsts: first time overnight, first time sailing the whole length of Narragansett Bay, first time in open water sailing to Block Island.  More recently most trips take me back to places I remember fondly, or places I want to explore more fully.  To most of these trips there is either something of novelty, or some kind of challenge testing the capability of skipper and boat.  Taking Surprise into Buzzard's Bay in a bit of wind and sea was such a challenge, as was overnighting in her last December. 

                An occasional trip is the exception that proves the rule: one weekend I stopped at a little deli on my way to the ramp and bought nice food and desserts, then had a leisurely sail to a quiet cove nearby and a long time to eat nice food and watch the sun set.  These trips are usually solo!

                I look for clues in the parts of the trip I enjoy most.

                The planning will often consume days and weeks of those quiet moments when my time is my own.  Charts will be pored over, lists drawn up, tide and current tables consulted, problems chewed over. 

                For a trip of any duration, I will take my time collecting and stowing gear and thinking through menus.  My wife wonders at all this time I need, not grasping that I find this planning and preparing very satisfying.  I am solving problems I know how to solve, which is much more fun (and easier) than trying to figure out how to get one son's grades up, or deal with the administration at another son's school. 

                The trip itself of course has its own satisfactions.  The trip is reality, life made simple, almost elemental.  It calls out skills most don't have.  Negotiate the hurricane barrier against the wind while dodging fishing boats.  Beat out of the river while watching the shoals.  Make Woods Hole before the current reverses.  Find a good sheltered anchorage with good shore access.  Exercising skills of seamanship is also very satisfying, and makes good fodder for some "modest" bragging among acquaintances.  And even if I never mention a trip, I'm still taken with a sense of wonder at lying at anchor in a distant place, reached with my own skill and effort.

                The clean-up after the trip is, admittedly, the part I'm least fond of.  I realize this on my rare day-sails, when I can take the trailer off the car, back it into the garage, and be done.  But the clean-up is followed by time at the computer writing the story of the trip.  At one time I wanted to write for a living.  I know now that my writing is not up to this, but I still enjoy putting my thoughts down the best way I know how.

                Finally comes the remembering.  I love reliving past trips.  Many's the time when Stephen, my youngest, will come to me with, "Dad, remember the time we...?"  When I first began to sail again, I thought I could live forever on the memories of our first few adventures.  Many more adventures later, I'm afraid I've gotten a little piggish.  But even so, remembering these trips gets me enormous "bang for my buck."  As does the planning.  In fact, a three-day trip could easily bring a month of pleasure.

                I guess that's why I adventure.

Winter Float Trip Down the Taunton

                  Having recently lost my job, I immediately did what any of you would do in my place: I began planning a boating trip.  Granted it was winter, there was snow on the ground, and I've never been out on the water earlier than late April: this would not wait until spring.  Winds in these parts are usually too strong for comfort at this time of year, and the water too cold to feel safe far from shore; so this would be a river trip.  I looked into my favorite river, the nearby Taunton, that winds through much of south eastern Massachusetts and has an amazingly remote and wild feel over much of its length.  A little checking disclosed that it was navigable for many miles farther upstream than I had ever gone.  I would begin close to the river's source, taking advantage of a documented "kayak put-in", and drift 21 miles lazily downstream over two days to a convenient ramp I knew.  The Upper Taunton Float Trip it would be.

                My first thought was to take Surprise, my Michalak-designed Jewelbox Jr, which would keep me comfortable in her fully-enclosed cabin, but when I discovered that all the kayak put-ins were simply places a road crossed the river, I realized my 15ft 300lb boat would not work.  It also occurred to me that a one-way trip in a tall boat would become a disaster if just one of the many bridges in my path did not have adequate clearance.  Serendipity, my 16ft Graham Byrnes-designed Birder 2 kayak was the obvious choice, but since I would have to carry much cold-weather gear and presumably sleep in the boat, that might not do, either.  No, I would drift downriver in Bebe, my 11ft Michalak-designed Piccup Pram, a stable boat that was light enough to get over the guard rail by the bridge, but would neatly carry all the gear I could need.  Although open, I had added a little hard top dodger that would keep light rain off my stowed sleeping bag and maybe a little wind off me.

                Logistics for the launch would be tricky: the reputed "kayak put-in" I found on the web turned out to be a bridge in a suburban neighborhood.  It had no parking, almost no shoulder, and the guard rail would be an obstacle if not for the car-top unloader I'd be using.  A rather steep bank, a brambly non-path, and then jagged rocks completed the route to the water.  In an effort to avoid unfavorable attention from neighbors and the police, we would get the boat down and empty the car of its volumes of gear--chucking it over the guard rail into the snow as fast as possible.  Beatrice would then head home and leave me to get the boat to the water and put the gear in order.

                It was an arduous task, and I looked like I'd been on the water all day before I even stepped into the boat.  but I finally pushed off and recovered the painter.

                I was immediately entranced by the myriad forms that ice could be sculpted into by cold, running water, and changing river levels.  Every bank had its tiers of ice shelves, each recording a freezing episode at a different water level, and every pendant tree limb had its icicles: many  in rows of evenly-spaced pendants like a chandelier, some inexplicably bell-shaped.  At one point I finally traced a rhythmic noise to a twig, moved by the water, swinging an ice pendulum against another branch.  It looked like some kind of machine built by wood elves.

                Belt-and-suspenders fashion, I carried both oars and a canoe paddle.  After an hour or so of unskillful oar work, I finally abandoned them in favor of my paddle.  I eventually found I could guide myself very comfortably seated on the edge of the aft deck; I find it difficult to stay comfortable sitting on the floor (even with two boat cushions) and even more difficult to shift around easily.

                The current was near the lower end of my expectations.  I had made a late start, and as the afternoon wore on I became worried by the prospect of not finishing the trip in time for a daylight pick-up at following day's rendezvous.  From then on, I began to paddle gently but steadily to add another knot to the boat speed.

                This upper part of the Taunton was entirely new to me--even after years of boating on it, I hadn't even known it was navigable this far up until I reconnoitered it in recent days.   Even so, I know the lower Taunton's wild look is partly illusion: river bank trees screen the eye from nearby suburbs and strip malls.  I expected the leafless trees would make this trip a bit grimier, showing the truth behind the illusion.  But in fact miles sometimes passed with not a house to be seen.  When I wasn't drifting through red maple, black oak and white pine woods or brambly scrubland the landscape was  more likely to be farmland than suburbs, and only a single short stretch of the upper river passed through a downtown area.  This was mainly because of protected areas and wetlands along much of the river.

                 I'd tried to  pack for all eventualities: extra blankets and hot water bottles to aid an inadequate sleeping bag, extra stove fuel, complete change of clothes in plastic bags in case of capsize in the 37 degree water, etc.  But I didn't anticipate what occurred.  Obstructions in the form of overhanging tree branches and fallen trees were common.  At one point the way was largely blocked nearly all the way across.  I headed for the biggest opening, close to the left bank, but soon realized I wouldn't make it, so turned for a much narrower opening in midstream.  The boat struck, went broadside, and stuck fast pinned by the current.  I pushed with oar and paddle, but was unable to budge the boat.  I had time to consider the width and probable depth of icy water that separated me from the nearer bank, and the unknown likelihood that help would be within easy walking distance.  After a moment's reflection, I worked to raise leeboard and rudder to reduce the pressure of the current.  This was difficult because of that same sideways pressure.  Then I was able to work the boat forward and aft repeatedly until I came to a place in the snag wide enough to get one end of the boat free, and suddenly whirled away like a leaf in the eddies.  I may only have been stranded for 5 minutes or so, but it seemed longer.               The ice and forest were wonders, but so were the birds.  Often at the sound of my paddle, or even a slight movement, waterfowl would spring noisily into the air hundreds of feet ahead.  Most of these were of a kind I had never seen before, although I'm trying to find out.   (These seemed entirely black and white with a sort of bold pattern of a few stripes on the sides of head and neck, and a repeated call that ascended from low to high pitch).  Others included Canada geese and mallards.  Nearly always these birds had been floating in some slight shelter by the bank that I had not noticed.  On one stretch of river, I scared up flight after flight of mallards over several minutes, surely amounting to hundreds of birds in all.  The electronic camera I carried was not equal to catching these until I learned the trick of keeping it in a warm pocket so it its lens cover would open faster.  Only once did I actually see these birds before they took flight.  I had been drifting without paddling when I saw the mallard pair swimming in open water.  I froze and was able to drift to within a few dozen yards before they spooked.

                  Darkness began to fall well before I had reached the halfway point of my trip.  I opted to drop anchor well-short of a major highway because I didn't want to get caught close to road noise and civilization.  Sweeping around a tight bend, I worked to the inside bank and tossed the little danforth in an eddy, and, as it dragged gently, then tossed a little grappling ashore on the end of the painter.

                 In a half hour the tent was up with the sides left open, the white gas stove was hissing on the aft deck, and soup was warming.  Arranging a sleeping bag wasn't easy in such a confined space, but I had snuggled in with a hot water bottle at my feet my lantern lit and a book in my hand by 7:30.  Lights were out by 8 and I slept better than I usually do in boats.

                A little rain began to patter at first light just when I thought virtuous people should be up.  I pulled the sides of the tent down and remembered that I wasn't virtuous.

                The rain had stopped and I had stowed tent and stepped ashore by 7am.  I hauled the stern up and used the aft deck to make breakfast while I stretched my legs.  I didn't feel much like exploring--not wanting to come across any unhappy landowner--and pushed off again not much after 8am.

                The afternoon found me more and more often in patches of farm, ranch and suburb, and the wilder bits were often more scrub than forest.  Even so there were things worth seeing: an oxbow lake I'd spotted on Google Earth looked quite navigable as I swept by, and I am already planning a return trip to kayak that stretch with the boys.

                After passing under rt 24 I was on familiar waters: my boys and I had kayaked this far.  The seamier side of Taunton also would accompany me for part of it.  But the biggest annoyance was the wind that had sprung up: every time the river turned south I was faced with a respectable headwind that would try to spin the boat end for end, forcing me to work simple to keep her pointed bow-first so I could see where I was going and help in paddling.  Sometimes the wind was enough to halt my downstream progress almost entirely.

                By the time I reached the ramp below downtown Taunton, I was tired, and glad to be off the river.  It would be an hour's work to get the boat unloaded, roll it up the ramp, and prepare for Bea's arrival with the car.  Even so, this was a wonderful trip and I have new interest and confidence in off-season adventuring!