About Boats
I am drawn to the water. Always have been. I need to be close to it, to be able to get out onto it, and view the land from it. If I visit a new city I don’t feel I can really see it until I find a way to get on the river or ocean and see it from that vantage point. If it’s a city with no water–like Santa Fe, NM for example–I just don’t connect with it at all. On the other hand I love Venice, which is a city made of water with its buildings rising out of the water on stilts like splendid dry docks for its inhabitants.
To make this possible, you need a boat. People have all sorts of different relationships with boats. For some they are a luxury. I like them best when they’re born out of necessity.
The last time I went to Venice was with my family in the summer of 2005. A week before we were due to go my 10 year old son Graham dropped a marble paving stone on his foot and broke two bones. Venice is a city you have to be able to walk around. Even a wheelchair is not much use, because of the steps on the little bridges over the canals. We considered canceling our trip, but Graham was distraught. So I looked for a motorboat to rent. Now, in Venice they don’t like tourists to rent motorboats. The locals use the canals like roads, to deliver groceries, get to work, move apartments and so on. The tourists are best confined to the water buses and taxis, or the $400-per-hour gondolas. The last thing they need is tourists playing dodgems in their streets, getting themselves drowned in the polluted waters and so on. But I managed to find a boat rental place a little out of the centre, and in broken Italian I persuaded them to rent me a boat. It was unglamourous, like a giant coffin without a lid, but it was big enough for nine people, and we set off armed with a map of the canals to find an apartment above a bakery where some friends were staying, to pick them up and make a tour of the city and the neighbouring islands.
I’ve done a lot of boating in my life, on several of the Earth’s oceans and in all kinds of weather, but navigating around Venice in a motorboat was the most challenging seamanship I’ve ever had to do. Using just a flick of your right wrist on the throttle you have to find your way down tiny canals with inches to spare on either side; avoid water taxis doing 35 knots and gondolas doing 3; and parallel park into mooring spaces, with other boat drivers screaming at you. AND there’s a current! Still, we saw more of Venice that day than we possibly could have done by any other means—and young Graham lay on the bow, his leg in a cast and his crutches beside him, looking up at the fabulous Medici architecture, completely enthralled!
That’s really the best use for a boat, in my opinion: one born out of necessity.
Why do I mention this now? Because I am close to choosing a boat to put in my garden in England and use as a studio. I’ve been scouring the Internet every day for four or five months. I have about 12 brokerage sites bookmarked, plus I have several eBay saved searches, so I get emailed every day with new ones as they get put up for auction. Of course, the most practical choice would be a good solid fibreglass boat that would require minimal maintenance. Light, watertight, lots of space. But will that work for me? No. Because it’s the romance of an old wooden boat that makes this a fun idea.
Where we live, we’re close to a river mouth. All summer long we see Thames Barges float by that are over 150 years old. We see gaff-rigged schooners and cutters and yawls, clinker-built dayboats and half-deckers, elegant Edwardian sloops and Dutch merchant sailors: all of them insanely impractical compared to today’s fast plastic ‘Bendytoy’ cruisers. No matter how much you fancy an old ‘woody’, any sensible man would steer well clear of those old hulks, and get himself a practical modern boat that won’t leak or sink, and that he can stash away in a barn all winter and that won’t deteriorate before next Spring. But will that work for me? No, not in a million years.
I’m going to sleep on it, but I think I’ve found my lifeboat. She’s on blocks on a farm in Berkshire, about as far from the sea as she could get, and still be on the British mainland. She’s somewhat neglected—in fact the owners are planning to burn her unless I buy her this week—but she has enormous potential. A lovely mahogany interior, and a wheelhouse to die for. I’m not going to tell you any more about her until I make up my mind, but let me just say this: she is a boat born out of necessity, and if I decide she’s the one for me, I will abandon myself to a whole new romance with a wonderful ship, the open sea, and my imagination a blank sheet of manuscript to fill with the soundtrack!
ooooh. that sounds lovely.
as i was reading this, before i got to the part where it sounds like you’ve found your boat (or perhaps it’s found you), i was going to suggest that for an impractical fool’s errand, somewhere on the far side of the genius/madness line, you could rescue the Teignmouth Electron from the Cayman beach where she’s resting. Google maps puts her here: http://tinyurl.com/2ma5yt
although, with her history of madness and electronics, perhaps she’s not the best place to put a studio after all…
Of course, you know that Venice has been a city of composers for 100s of years. Vivaldi taught music to orphaned girls there during the Baroque era and Stravinsky spent his leisure days there in more modern times (and is buried on one of the islands there), to name a few. While Venice may be In Peril, it will remain a musician’s city in our hearts and minds…
Thanks for sharing your stories. Best of luck with the boat!
Thomas and his boat,
Sitting in a tree,
k-i-s-s-i-n-g !
It sounds like we have an album of love songs to look forward to!
I can’t wait for you to introduce us all to your new muse Thomas.
Thomas,
I,m glad you’ve found her.
Theres something about saving something old giving it a new lease of life again.
They have soul like they have taken a little piece of the life force of everyone thats been on/used them,be it an old bit of kit or a boat.
You know what I mean can quite put your finger on it, sometimes its just the smell ‘like old books’.
Like you I now feel at ‘Home’ by the sea, must be we are old salty sea dogs at heart.
Regards
Lindon
What a great surprise! That is one of the loveliest tracts of prose I have read in any medium in a good while!
Wow, another uber-vibrant photo! I swear it looks like Graham was Photoshopped into that image, it’s so crisp. What kind of camera are you guys carrying on vacation?
Really looking forward to seeing photos of the boat. There’s something about the thought of saving some history and beauty from flames that adds to the romance.
It was an Olympus C3030. The previous blog had camera phone shots taken on a Nokia N94.
My father-in-law is a huge boater and has restored several old wooden boats. Both cruisers, and now one of the old classic speedboats. He truly has a passion for taking time to re-varnish the old teak, and putting everything back into, pardon the pun, ship-shape condition. His latest project (3 years in the making now) is sitting on blocks in a garage. I’m guessing on the exact age, but it is probably a 1950′s or earlier wooden speedboat. The wood was so bad in places they’ve had to buy raw wood and re-shape it again. Since they don’t have the money for a massive steamer to heat the wood to bend, my ever industrious father-in-law designed a built a relatively cheap steamer that heats and bends boards. This is the same guy who gets a kick out of restoring vintage Jaguars too. If you embark on a boat restoration, I wish you the best of luck. I’ve seen him do two in the six years I’ve known him. Tons of work ahead for you, but I’m sure you’ll get as much pleasure out of yours as he always does. Best of luck!
Brian
Thomas,
I don’t envy you, with all the work it’s going to take, but I do appreciate it when someone takes the time to restore an old wooden boat.
Question: why not dig a pond in your garden with a dock and actually float the thing. Then you can have the added character building chore of cleaning the bottom every few days. Heck, you can even cast off and anchor in the middle of the pond for privacy. For months at a time! Put a wind generator on the stern and maybe a solar panel or 10 and you are good to go.
There is a wooden boat restoration website with a forum full of romantic lunatics such as yourself. If you’re interested, I’ll look it up for you. (On the website I frequent for another form of romantic lunatics: sailboat racers)
You know we’re going to want to see some pictures.
Don’t forget to take the shot of it sitting where it lies before you haul it away.
cheers
Doug
Thomas,
On another thought, have you decided how you are going to power your studio? One thought that occurred to me based on your description of your location is the potential available from the canal you are near. Does it have a flowing current? Tide? Do you have right of way to either build a paddle wheel or divert for a flow? The same efficient rare earth magnet based generators they are using for windmills can be used with water as well.
For another idea, consider that FedEx operates their Oakland airport facility almost entirely with solar power during the day using solar panels on the roof. It’s an expensive proposition, but very carbon friendly.
cheers
Doug
Hi Thomas,
I guess you will be giving a lot of thought to acoustics… I’ve spent much time on boats over the years and acoustically they had one thing in common. – they were all awful!
At least you are going for wood which will make things easier. Plastic or steel would be a nightmare whichever way you look at it. I am now imagining you lugging an amp and source into the thing to test it out before signing and the incredulous look on the yard managers face!
Good luck in this highly romantic and totally cool venture!
Jon