We had a small, brass hand pump for the boat. It had a coarse screen on the bottom so that when you were pumping out the last bit of water from the bottom, it wouldn't suck up big pieces of paint chips etc. which might be on the bottom. The screen was tough and curved upward, in a concave fashion, into the downward facing flange of the pump. I don't remember the hose that went out over the gunwale, I think it might have been just a length of garden hose – green. It had one of those stainless steel clamps, that you tighten with a screwdriver, which held the rubber hose onto the pump – I guess I do remember. But the pump made a satisfying sucking sound when you had pretty much gotten all the water out. It was always a great relief to hear it.
I'm talking here about the second sailboat my family had. The first sailboat is a vague memory – it was a homemade affair which was very frustrating for my father. But this new boat was bought, ready-made from a boat yard somewhere near our home. I was around that kind of age before you really needed to understand the way to drive to a place. But I can remember going there with my father. The smells – methyl ethyl ketone and sawdust. We got the boat with its own trailer and brought it home, all new.
There was a lot of excitement when this boat was "launched" – that's what you call it when you slide a boat into the water that has been sitting on a trailer or otherwise dry land. But anyway, in it went, just like you'd think with lots of splashing and hollering. There was some confusion over the stays – the long wires that keep the mast in place. The stays come down from the top of the mast or the spreaders and secure to the gunwale or outer perimeter of the boat. There are lots of nautical terms for these things – "turnbuckles" to adjust the tension of each of the stays, "dead eyes" to attach them. There is a forward stay that the front sail, or jib is attached to with little hooks very similar to the kind on the end of a dog's leash – they can be clipped on or removed as you prefer.
So it's a little bit tricky though because you have to "step the mast", which is pretty straightforward in concept – you're simply putting the base of the mast into a cutout hole in the deck of the boat and standing it up straight. In theory it's very simple, you can see what's supposed to happen. But there's a point when you've lifted the mast up into a nearly vertical position and then the boat tips or the wind blows or any other number of destabilizing events occur – the results can be disastrous. Some people helped my father get the mast stepped and the stays tightened to a nominal tension. You don't want to drive the mast through the bottom of the boat by tightening the stays too tight. It would then be like a bow and arrow kind of scenario. I can remember a cartoon depicting this in Mad magazine. There was a diver underneath the sailboat, pinned to the bottom – it was terrible and hilarious, but also exciting because I understood the basic physics of this calamity – I got the joke.
So the boat went in, the mast was up – it was pretty great. I think at that stage, we had lunch and when we came back to take her out, the boat was sitting on the bottom full of water! It took a lot of bailing and I came to know the value of that nice little bilge pump.
"She'll just have to swell a little, that's all", an old seamen friend of my father laughed. Dad was a little perplexed. She did the same thing every spring and it was nice to see my father's confidence grow. Once the wood swelled up, I don't think she ever leaked a drop.
© Phil Oliver 2017
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