‘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.
