There’s a crack in everything.

A favorite lyric in one of Leonard Cohen’s songs,

‘Anthem’, goes like this...

‘Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

there is a crack, a crack in everything

that’s how the light gets in.’

I can hear that gravel-cool voice as I try out my new grinder for the first time and look down and see what I have done. Nose-block #2 needed a little shaping so that the keelston, which is a cap that fits over the entire keel and will attach to the bottom halves of the hull, fits properly. That moment, just then, feels a little like the time I decided to give myself a haircut. The difference is that this will not grow back.

And so, I embrace imperfection and come to terms with the reality of life as I know it...that ‘perfect’ is a state of being just out of my reach and not anywhere near all that it’s cracked up to be.

I can fix this and it will be okay and I prefer it this way. And I am pretty sure the boat will work and float and that there will be a warmth experienced by all aboard who will, even on an overcast day, see the light that finds its way in.

On the smelting of Lead...

The earliest evidence of smelting lead was discovered in Anatolia, Turkey and dates back to 6500 BC. This is the sort of statement people confidently make in the early 21st century because Jimmy Wales discovered Wikipedia.

From what I’ve read about smelting lead I’m not entirely convinced that it was a great evolutionary leap. Indeed, I would not be surprised if it stunted growth, reduced brain size and caused unpleasant skin legions.

I’ve noticed on my boat building forum that everyone building one of these boats is a man. This may explain the capable, deductive, experienced, reasoned exchanges regarding the melting of lead in your backyard, to forge the keel that will be your boat.

Are they fucking crazy?

The going wisdom is to visit your local tire dealer and collect the little weights they put on wheels to balance them. I, of course, warm to the community-centered spirit. Having enriched and expanded the connection I have to my local tire dealer and secured a couple of hundred pounds of wheel weights I plan my smelter. I buy a high-powered propane burner, cast iron kettle and slotted spoon (to skim the dross, of course). Respirator ready, fire extinguisher and welders gloves all set out on the deck.

As it turns out, there isn’t very much lead in tire weights. They may be cheap, or even free, to aquire but they smoke and congeal and spit out toxic additives I don’t even want to think about. I immediately go down to McGuckins, my locally owned hardware store, and purchase $246 dollars of pure lead-shot, neatly packaged in 25lb bags. It goes well. I fill my keel and centerboard and hope I never have to do anything like this again.

starting at the bottom

‘Pocketship’is a great name. It is both descriptive and telling. It is a little boat that feels and looks like a much larger yacht. And, to be honest, the idea of it taps that part of your brain that aspires and dreams and plots and hopes.

Building Pocketship starts with the keel assembly. That’s the very bottom of the boat, that nose bit I just told you about, the centerboard housing and centerboard and, lead weight. The nose is just about done, but I need to cut it to size...which is a direction that sounds benign and informative until you realize that messing up will require another weekend building noseblock #3.

I’ve completed the centerboard housing and just need to clean it up a bit. The inside is fiberglassed. This is another thing I have never done and have been told is challenging. It really wasn’t that bad. I liked laying out the glass fiber, mixing the epoxy resin, smoothing it all out, wearing the goggles and mask and getting it all done with the same attention to time as a bomb disposal expert.

I mentioned lead. Coming up in a little while is the melting-lead-in-your-backyard-and-pouring-it-into-the- keel part. I’m nervous about this and there are not many lead smelting videos on youtube. I dropped off flyers to the tire repair places in town asking if they might give me the old lead weights that come off the wheels they balance. I now have two large buckets of them in the garage. I look at them and consider the practical alchemy that must take place to make those weights into my boat’s keel. I am also slightly concerned about the toxic waste I’ll be releasing into clean, pristine Boulder. I think I’ll do it at night.

Today I used a router for the first time. With all the dangerous, appendage threatening devices I have acquired, the router is a relief. It is like cake decorating. You hold it against the wood and it carves attractive shapes with little effort or talent. I like it so much I want Ben to become a routing expert. He is good at it and likes it too, even though he has never decorated a cake.

So far I’ve admired the bits I have made. No one thing has given me greater satisfaction than the nose-block I’ve already told you too much about. I am also very pleased with the centerboard housing I have made. Now I have to put it all together, glueing the nose and centerboard housing to the keel sides. It’s not like a rubix cube but it does cause a similar kind of anticipation and angst. I am on my own. The garage is cold, very, very cold.

As I plan how I will stick it all together and then clamp it and warm it and perhaps say a little chant I realize how permanent my decisions will be. There’s no going back with epoxy. You stick it, it hardens, and you get what you got yourself into.

I know this sounds bad and that any of you reading this, and especially any of you who know me well, will experience great empathy at this moment and expect me to go onto explain how I worked through the inevitable failure stalking my every move.

The truth is, the glue is drying and I don’t really know if it is going to be okay. But it is okay and I am remarkably content. This is a good thing considering that small frustrations in my past have resulted in throwing things I was trying to fix, like children’s bicycles, over the neighbors fence.

I realize it is the deliberation and commitment and no-going-back’ness that gets to me. It is the same reason I like to write with a fountain pen and that, when inspired by something, I sit down at a typewriter that is as old as I am, and tap, tap, tap out what it is and how it matters to me. Strike the key and the letter is there. Ink on paper. Each thought and idea committed to a simple and deliberate act. No going back. Hey don’t get me wrong, the computer gets me through deadlines and work. Tap it out with no consequences. Easy. But there is something deeply satisfying in this chisel and hammer, ink on paper, dive from the cliff, no going back way of getting something done. And, anyway, what I’ve already built is too heavy to throw over the fence.

whats in a nose

I started on something called a nose-block. This is a bit of wood shaped into something like a nose that will, one day, be the first bit of the boat that cuts through lake, reservoir and sea. There is something Jewey in the nose I have made, not only in shape and prominence, but also in the deliberate way I imagine it leading the assault, making the landing... the way marines or maccabees do. It occurs to me, I find my own way through everyday life, nose-first.

Ben helped me on the nose bit, and so did my friend, Bob Haney. Ben enjoys dangerous machines and wearing accessories and outfits designed to protect. He likes wearing the respirator and operating the chop saw in the same way he dons his hemipterous armor for lacrosse and American football.

Bob Haney knows more about how things work than anyone I know. When I cut a 3 inch slice into the wrong side of nose-block #1, like that bit in Chinatown when Jack Nicholson’s nose gets sliced, Bob said this happens all the time. He then gave me some very wise advice and a number of large and serious tools, one of which (a thickness planer) reminds me of the wood composting machine in Fargo.

pocketship arrives

And then on a warm summer day early in September it arrived. The UPS man drove his very large truck down the alley and off-loaded the 550 lb. box.

Imagine one of those wooden model airplane kits with all the perfect little pieces you would punch out and glue together (I did this a lot when I was Ben’s age). Then imagine a boat instead of an airplane and Jack discovering the giant’s model boat box at the top of his beanstalk. I was Jack. And the magic beans...well that is a much longer story and although we did not have to sell our cow..hey it’s the fall of all falls, starting last fall 2008.

Back to the boat...

I spent a day organizing the 4x8 sheets of marine plywood containing the giant’s punch out parts. It took another week to realize how many bits were not there and that I was expected to make myself. Little things like the tiller and mast, the boom and rudder, all the rigging, the deck, spars and companion way (hatch)...and more.

I'm going to build a boat

“I’m going to build a boat”. I had wanted to say this out loud for a while, but hadn’t. And then, it just came out...“I’m going to build a boat”. We were just finishing dinner. The first bottle of wine was also just being finished, and that yearning, pathetic, predictable dance of ‘shall I open another...I don’t know...okay then...red, white?’’ had just wound down.

Our children were all there, Oliver, Lucy and Ben, witnesses in the way successful cold war spies are. Oliver and Lucy processed this in the unique way they each do. Oliver encouraging and supportive. Lucy with eye-rolling amusement. And Ben. Ben absorbs all. He is a 13 year old sponge. He is unbridled enthusiasm, unfiltered feeling with the reserve and discretion of a fog horn.

I like Malcolm Gladwell. When I open my New Yorker magazine and skim down the contributing writers, he is always one of those I am looking out for. David Sedaris is another. I met Malcolm Gladwell one time he won’t remember. I did recommend him to a large sporting goods company, adidas, as someone I thought might be a good choice as an inspirational speaker. I heard they enjoyed him immensely. What does any of this have to do with the boat I am just starting to build, and Ben?

Without Malcolm Gladwell, no-one would know what a ‘Tipping Point’ is. His cleverness is in seeing something so natural that we, as a culture, never even bother to give that something a name. Like a fish in water* or a human in air, each never really notices what is most essential and obvious. Ben did. He picked this ‘dad and boat’ thing up and in the small world we share he, well, broadcast it.

It wasn’t long, less then a week, that people I know well were asking about the boat I was building. And then, in a couple of more weeks, people I didn’t know all that well were asking, too.

Like the wine-dance, there was another kind of dance coming up. Vicky would have to agree to give up her garage, where I would be building the boat, and park on the street. Breaking her routine, making her walk with groceries, clear ice and snow in the winter was asking a lot. I approached the matter in the way a nine year old Arnie might ask for a puppy. “I’ll wake up extra early and clear the snow, I’ll wash and fill up the car whenever it needs it...promise I will, really”.

In the end, Ben was the spark, the catalyst, to this tiny tipping point and Vicky, in her way, gave me her support and blessing. By the middle of summer I had no choice. I could move my family into a witness protection program, or buy the boat and get on with it.

I clicked the order button on the Chesapeake Light Craft website, cleaned up the garage, bought and borrowed tools and watched youtube videos on how to use the tools.