After all the intensity of sailing across the Sound on Saturday, we had significant wind for a night, a day, and a night on the hook. Sunday drifted by while we were huddling down below dodging the heavy winds and reading. You know, living the dream…while also prodded by our truest natures (nature? nurture?) to make something, do something, which something became our last blog post.
The photo above does a glorious job explaining how it felt to wake up on Monday morning in Threemile Harbor, East Hampton, New York, in the peace and quiet of a still dawn.
We spent the early morning cleaning up and stowing the boat. The temperature was slated to reach 60 – leaving behind the highs of 40 and 45 for, we hope, the loosing action of a stronger sun. We had to go out and explore our home in the Hamptons.
To actually buy a house in that part of the world you pretty much have to be a millionaire/billionaire from Manhattan (a few exceptions being made for those servants the rich cannot do without, for where would happiness be without a clerk to sell a shirt or a nail tech to buff and fill? But, of course, those sorts are housed in special zones clearly labeled to keep out the well-behaved children of the rich while being irresistibly alluring to the older kids who know that “Mobile Home Park” is another way of spelling “Acid Score”).
Unless, of course, you’re us.
We launched the dink and gave’er a good eyeballing. The sailing had shaved her beard and revealed a patina that reassured us. Yes, there is real copper in the bottom paint we pay over $100 per gallon for. We rowed the mile into a secondary channel. Really – this place is strange. A channel, not more than 50′ wide, brought us from Gardiner’s Bay (just off the Long Island Sound) into Threemile Harbor. A few marinas line that channel, but more cluster at the south end, through another channel that is even narrower. The expectation is that ever smaller boats would traverse ever narrower channels and burst out in the Atlantic Ocean.
We put the dink on a dinghy dock next to a Boatel launch that was actually launching a boat. We both thought that it a bit strange that they would be launching plastic-destroyers this early in the year.
We set off on foot for the town of East Hampton, 2.7 miles south.We had this big plan of going to see Jackson Pollack’s studio, the East Hampton windmill, and what we had read was one of the coolest little downtown Villages on the East Coast.
Well, after spending the last four days on the boat never walking more than 30 feet at a time, the 2.7 miles to East Hampton actually felt like a big deal to me (James). The little village wasn’t that great, all the grey ponytails driving around in expensive sports cars can only be laughable a few times at most before they just get old, everything was way over-priced, and – check this out – the Pollack house was not only the opposite way from where we had walked, it was closed. So we walked back.
That was no big deal really. We like walking together, even on a long one, and just being together makes us happy.
So we headed back to our very own home in the Hamptons. This time, I (Dena) rowed. I felt strong and serene handling the oars. It reminded me how much I loved living at anchor in Maine.
This is us, doing what makes us happy. I brought us up near the Monitor.
What a good-looking stern!
We had planned to sail north to New London today and get business underway. Our dirty clothes bag is bulging, our stores are thinning, and we’re skeptical about how much water we have left. But rain threatened, and another day off beckoned, and today, again, we’re living the dream.
East Hampton, home of Rabo Karabekian and the Abstract Expressionists! Do you know that book? Bluebeard, it’s Vonnegut. Love him, love that book, love that character. He has love/hate with East Hampton and the Hamptonites too.
Questions:
> What is the copper paint for? Why do you need that? Is that typical, or an alternative you chose?
> What do you mean by plastic-destroyers? You’ve said that before and hoped I could pick it up from context, but no luck. Looked it up and it’s not standard boater language that I can see. So you old hands are coining terms and being terribly clever without me and I can’t stand for that.
From context you mean a certain type of vessel. My guesses:
– A boat that uses a power source to go zoom zoom fastfastfast, which attracts sailors who want to drive aggressively and would destroy a plastic (as an adjective) boat it smashed into.
– A mean boat like that made from plastic (as a noun). Maybe a Destroyer is actually a specific type of ship and these are miniature versions for home use.
– A fancy silly tricked out for show boat that destroys the owner’s plastic…Visa card.
That photo of James reading shoeless and bespectacled is so dear. I really love reading about your adventures, so much, obviously, but I’m not usually jealous — I’m not up for the asceticism nor the exercise, I’d be hot and hungry for sushi (or whatever I want, immediately) and my feet would hurt and I’d complain the whole time. Don’t like to be cold, hot, nor wet and don’t like to work.
But I do love to float and to read. That picture made me straight up jealous.
Weather up there looks nice for most of today. May the wind be with you, and kind.
Indeed Ms. Kate!
Rabo like his paintings, crumbled to the floor under the frame… I loved that book, it was my favorite of all of Vonnegut’s books and yes I have read them all. In Breakfast of Champions, Rabo’s diatribe on the value of art was the reason I changed my major from Bio-Tech to photojournalism, really. There is nothing left of his ilk in East Hampton that I could see but that hardly matters.
Plastic Destroyer is a term I made up to describe a fiberglass motorboat, and yes, yes and yes to all of your eloquent and descriptive reasons for the term… It means all of the above.
I met a woman in Blue Lake, Ca. in 2001 that told me that the vicarious sojourner was just as important to the adventure as were the adventurers themselves and in your case it has indeed been the case. So many of our stories over the last year have actually been written as a direct result of the inspiration that you’ve given us through your on going dialog with us. I would love to have the opportunity to take you out for a sail on a perfect summers day but being as though a sailor can count those days on one hand in a lifetime of sailing maybe the vicarious adventure would be enough to slake your thirst, but, please keep in mind that you are always welcome aboard our ship.
BTW: Most of today’s very expensive bottom paints contain certain amounts of the chemical Cuprous Oxide (Cu2O) or copper oxide. The more copper you have in your bottom paint, also known as anti-fouling paint, the less growth you get on the bottom of the hull. Of course after being in the saltwater for a year the copper patinas and it looks really cool if your the one that went through the hassle to put that toxic shit in place…
http://www.sovereignnations.net/2012/06/18/ready-to-splash/denanjames/
James, James, yes! Pale vampire-skinned me would brave the fiercest sunshine to sail with you on a perfect summer day. Ah, you know how to spin a marvelous fantasy, don’t you just? I paid for grad school making up hot fantasies for men on a schoolgirl phone sex line, I know a good tale spinner when I see one. Or tail spinner, for that matter.
I’m a lucky girl to be along for this ride and know it. Thanks for doing all the dirty work.
Hey, now that you’re looking for jobs, howz about taking up some phone sex shifts yourself? Alright money for creative work, set you own hours night or day, the dress code is easy to manage and you can do chores or art projects at the same time. I’m pretty sure you’ll need a dedicated land line, though, which I reckon is kind of a barrier to those who live at sea. Oh well.