The Boat is Offered

In late 2017 my Aunt Alice and Uncle Michael announced they were selling their house and moving to a condo. The following January my mom and I traveled down to CT for a couple of days to help them pack/organize parts of their house. Because of the down sizing Uncle Mike was cleaning out a lot of his workshop. And though I lived in only 500 sq. ft in the heart of Boston at the time, I took anything and everything he was willing to part with. I came home with three boxes full of tools and spray paint and odds and ends. Plus two speakers and enough copper wire that I was able to connect the speakers in the kitchen to the record player in the living room (I know this is very millennial of me. But I’m old enough to remember the towering record player my parents had in the early 90s).

I also came home with a boat. Well, not so much home with it as coming home with the notion that I owned the boat. At some point in the weekend, he walked me out to their garage. It was a typical New England two car garage. A car hasn't been parked inside in 3 decades and instead it's full of all the things you need to take care of snow and a yard and a resident with "big" hobbies. He opened the right bay door and pointed up. Suspended from the low rafters was the Armand's Joy. "Don't feel pressure, but it's yours if you want it". I couldn't believe it. Of course I wanted it. This is a special boat.

Built in 1998 by my Grampy from a kit, the Armand's Joy is a 12 foot, single mast, wooden sailboat - a Swifty 12 from Shell Boats. I have memories of sailing, rowing, and motoring around in it several summers in my childhood. Grampy signed me up for sailing lessons when I was about 10 at a local pond. I had a blast. Until they made us fully capsize the boat. But 23 years later, if I was in a boat that capsized, I’d still know exactly what to do. He brought the boat on several lake vacations and we'd try to sail it without a lot of success because the weather was too nice. But we had a little outboard motor and my Grammy would buzz my brother and I out a bit and we'd fish. It was great. But. Kids are dumb. And I didn't like the outside much. So it went largely unused while I was in high school. And then it went to Uncle Michael. He used it a good amount, from what I'm told. He also did quite a lot of repairing himself. Which was a lot of adding epoxy - a solution my Grampy also loved and is slowly becoming my solution to a lot of problems as well.

I was thrilled at just the idea of getting it back into top shape and out on the water. Of course, life got in the way. I didn’t have the brain space for the logistics and it turns out my Uncle Mike was getting very sick. He passed in March of 2019 and after a couple months my Aunt Alice (his wife) mentioned the boat. It had to move from it’s temporary location (it had been there more than a year) – the house it was at was being sold.

Now let’s talk a little bit about Madison, CT. I have close friends with parents who live by the shore – their street ends at a neighborhood beach. This house they live in includes an enormous deck that looks over a marshy area and then eventually out to the Long Island Sound. The family has been in this spot forever and so have many of the neighbors. And they’re all boat fans. Including a neighbor’s son in law that builds boats for a living. I’ve met him from time to time in the summer – always a chat on the beach when we’re there at the same time. So I asked him at a Memorial Day cocktail deck party “What do I do?”. He said “go see it, check the bottom isn’t rotted, take some pictures and send them over and we’ll see”. So I did. There was water in it from a tarp that leaked. And the deck and top boards were pretty banged up. But the bottom was sound. So I took pictures and sent them along. And the reply was “looks like a good project” along with a brief first impression and then “and the trailer looks like it’s in good shape if you can fix the tires”

An idea was starting to form. I’d find a place to rent a garage and then rent a truck and trailer. I really thought the trailer would be too much to fix myself and my tiny little hatchback isn't really the first thing you think when you hear the phrase "hauling a boat". Plus then I would need to do something with the trailer while I worked on the boat. Three weeks later I had found a garage. It was a bit damp and has a lot of bugs – but also had a lot of potential as a place to keep and work on the boat. Part of the plan was in place. But renting a trailer is near impossible so I needed to re-evaluate. A company claimed that a hitch installed on my car would be able to haul 2000 pounds. And most people I talked to about it had the same response “we all tow more than we probably should”. So after more than a year, I was headed to Connecticut to repair a trailer, attach it to my car, haul it back to Massachusetts, and then settle in for repair. Oh how overly optimistic I was. About everything.