Chapter 3: It's CONTENT!

After having lived aboard old CONTENT OF FALMOUTH for about six weeks, I've realized all too late that the surveyor overlooked the most crucial factor prior to my purchasing her. He didn't survey me. The old hooker is sound as a dollar—well, as a Swiss franc—but what about me? Am I good enough for her? She was built with such inner strength and quality that she comes down to me (after 61 years) in such condition that a bronze nail drawn from her planking a few months ago looks as if it had just come from the chandlery in Falmouth. I, on the other hand, have been known on occasion to lie, procrastinate, boast (even to bend, fold, and mutilate)—generally to give evidence of the tacky nature of my soul. My teeth are full of rare metals and ceramics, my eyes myopic, and I have unbelievably severe dandruff. Any surveyor not in cahoots with the former owner would have thumped my rib cage once and pronounced me hogged, nail-sick, and strained.

Yet, you say, the dear old chap is modest to a fault to admit all this in public. Not so. I admit it only because it is not going to be true much longer. Maybe it isn't even true now. How so? Because the old girl is reforming me. She's working a kind of resurrection. In short, she has challenged me to live up to her. My good seawife, Nancy, already has a stock expression for the phenomenon. When a cheap or easy solution to a problem occurs to me, she'll say, ”It's CONTENT!” and I know that I must use bronze screws and not galvanized nails.

The first repair I've completed is the skylight coaming, which had a spot of rot. I cut out the rot and fitted a graving piece, a “dutchman.” I've done any number of such repairs on wooden boats I've owned in the past and I know that normally this job would have taken me a weekend, one day to cut and glue, another to plane, sand, and varnish. But,I started almost a week ago and the job's not yet done. Ordinarily, I would have part-eyeballed, part-measured the dutchman, cut it, clamped it in place,

then sawn down through the sloppy seams once or twice until the seam between the dutchman and the rest of the coaming was good enough to make a strong bond and look OK. Not this time. I had in my mind's eye a perfect joint, the kind one sees on fine furniture. So despite the awkwardness of the situation as far as firm clamping was concerned, I set about to achieve perfection. I measured carefully and made the best first saw cut I've ever made. A dockside kibitzer said “perfect” when I testfitted the newly cut piece. It wasn't good enough. Down through the seam I sawed again. Better, but still not good enough. Again. And so forth, on into the night, working under a light. Finally I got it so that the light from a 100-watt bulb could not be seen through the seam. But there was one trouble. Most of my piece had gone into sawdust. I now had the best-fitting seam of a too-damn-small dutchman anywhere north of Macon. I began again. When I finish this writing, I'll finish the sanding and varnishing of the new piece. It's an acceptable fit but it's really not good enough for her. Next time.

You see, I'm beginning to radiate a faint glow of sanctity already and I've hardly been aboard through three spring tides. What will I be like after a few years? My splices will all be served, my brightwork varnished and rubbed, my decks holystoned. I shall emerge shining and spotless, a paragon of seamanlike virtues, well able to live up to this fine vessel, and will probably not speak to any of you at all.

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