Ulysses would know what he had here--
...and Leif Ericksen would know which lines to pull and how to handle the tiller.
There's not much on my boat that wouldn't be familiar to sailors from millennia past. Even the new stuff--the 5 gallon bucket with snap-tight lid, for example (guess what that's for?)--they'd probably figure out.
As Sankara goes through her 50-year re-fit, I'm impressed with how unchanged the fundamental boat is from the craft that sailed the ancient world.
Sure, I yanked out the 50s-vintage knotmeter and will replace the old-timey depth sounder, but most of what's on this boat is "original equipment", that is, stuff the original guys would have used. A fair amount of it is strewn from the boatyard to the back deck, the garden to the garage--but it's all boaty--I just hope I can find it when it starts going back together.
Okay--there's a "new" used Perkins diesel, there will be GPS, big 12V deepcycle batteries--but that's just icing on a very basic cake. I feel a comradery with the sailors of those early times--and for the boatbuilders as well. The late, great boatbuilder Bob Prothero said, "the boatwrights from those early days--with just hand tools and muscle, it would take a half dozen men a half a year to build a boat--but you guys, with your power tools, pneumatic compressors, new-age technology, why six guys can build a boat in about six months!"
Ulysses would know what he had here--
...and Leif Ericksen would know which lines to pull and how to handle the tiller.
There's not much on my boat that wouldn't be familiar to sailors from millennia past. Even the new stuff--the 5 gallon bucket with snap-tight lid, for example (guess what that's for?)--they'd probably figure out.
As Sankara goes through her 50-year re-fit, I'm impressed with how unchanged the fundamental boat is from the craft that sailed the ancient world.
Sure, I yanked out the 50s-vintage knotmeter and will replace the old-timey depth sounder, but most of what's on this boat is "original equipment", that is, stuff the original guys would have used. A fair amount of it is strewn from the boatyard to the back deck, the garden to the garage--but it's all boaty--I just hope I can find it when it starts going back together.
Okay--there's a "new" used Perkins diesel, there will be GPS, big 12V deepcycle batteries--but that's just icing on a very basic cake. I feel a comradery with the sailors of those early times--and for the boatbuilders as well. The late, great boatbuilder Bob Prothero said, "the boatwrights from those early days--with just hand tools and muscle, it would take a half dozen men a half a year to build a boat--but you guys, with your power tools, pneumatic compressors, new-age technology, why six guys can build a boat in about six months!"