Fire Sail: A Miraculous Attainment of a Family's Dream – Part 1

By Roger A. Marin

This is a true, almost unbelievable story, of how our Maine family, over a seven-year period and on a shoestring budget, with a lot of sweat and tenacity, and with what we eventually would have to concede as Divine Intervention, managed to build a beautiful and seaworthy 40-foot sailboat. Then, a couple of years later, sell most everything we owned, enroll our two sons in correspondence school, and sail away for a two-year adventure.

This is not a step-by-step building documentation and travelogue, but rather, a personal account of day-to-day frustrations, challenges, and rewards that were integral parts of our saga. It explains the background of a low income family kid who would grow to love boats and how, many years later, his own family would become swept up in the obsession of attaining his impossible dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roger A. Marin
• Release date: Apr 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310008528

Roger A. Marin

Roger Marin: The author and his wife ( both formerly of Maine) now reside winters in South Carolina and summers in Maine aboard their sailboat,Tribute, which they built from a bare hull. Time allowing, the author enjoys writing about the sailing adventures he and his family experienced/endured (Fire Sail Parts 1 and 2) and about more recent events he and his wife shared during their 14 years of day-sail chartering in SC and ME (Confessions of a Charter Captain ---pending). Three grandchildren and two sons provide enjoyment for the author and his wife, especially when the families visit them aboard Tribute.

Book preview

Build a 40-foot sailboat? my friend said incredulously and a little bit too sarcastically for a friend. What do you know about building sailboats? he continued, knowing my reputation for jumping from one project to another.

Nothing, yet, I replied, a little insulted.

And on your salary, where will you get the money? he continued.

I don’t know, but I’ll get it somehow.

Right. And maybe a rich uncle will die and leave you a million bucks, too.

I had been slapped with the glove of challenge. Now could I actually prove myself capable of answering it? After all, I was attention deficit and long before the term became a household word. And this friend had known me long enough to have observed how I jumped from one project to another.

This is a true, almost unbelievable story, of how our Maine family, over a seven-year period and on a shoestring budget, with a lot of sweat and tenacity, and with what we eventually would have to concede as Divine Intervention, managed to build a beautiful and seaworthy 40-foot sailboat. Then, a couple years later, sell most everything we owned, enroll our two sons in correspondence school, and sail away for a two-year adventure.

This is not a step-by-step building documentation and travelogue, but rather, a personal account of day-to-day frustrations, challenges, and rewards that were integral parts of our saga. It explains the background of a low income family kid who would grow to love boats and how, many years later, his own family would become swept up in the obsession of attaining his impossible dream.

Over the years since our voyage ended, my wife, Laurie, and I have listened to the typical questions of non-sailors, particularly those of our many charter guests. Why do you like sailing so much? Have you sailed since childhood? How did you learn to build a boat? How did your boys do?—and the catalyst to the following effort—That’s such a neat story, why don’t you write a book?

As most boaters and sailors will agree, there is no single answer to the first why. Everyone has his/her own opinion. For many, the sea and boats just have a way of getting into one’s being. The more you’re on them the more this is true, for better or worse, depending on whose point of view you’re listening to—the husband’s or the wife’s. Pun intended, many a marriage has sunk because of boats. More than once my wife, Laurie, and I have heard it said that some women would rather compete with another woman for their husband’s attention and affection than compete with a boat; that’s how strong a bond many men form with their water mistress.

In deference to the women who really do like boating, especially sailing, I offer my sincere admiration. However, of the numerous boat-owning couples we’ve met over the years, many of the wives have at best tolerated or patronized their husbands’ love and devotion to their boats —including Laurie, although in fairness, after what I have put her through it’s amazing that she can enjoy even fair-weather sailing, or me, for that matter.

So why this great attraction for me, personally…? I find cathartic, the beauty of a boat under sail, the freedom and lift of spirit I get when severing ties with shore-side pressures, and the independence from the modern conveniences to which we’ve all become so enslaved Then, there’s the thrill of the unknown and the challenge of facing what God’s nature may throw my way as well as the beauty of the universe best appreciated on a clear, moonless night offshore when a canopy of stars brings out the poet in me. And although I may never take it again, the beckoning highway to those faraway places with the strange sounding names still stirs the adventurer in me. Finally, and this may seem strange to most people, there’s the ability to float on the surface of the water without actually being immersed.

Although most people take a boat’s flotation for granted, Laurie and I do not. Despite all our years on the water, we cannot swim—and we have tried to learn. Therefore, being safely afloat on a medium that we consider dangerous offers us a feeling that most people don’t appreciate. But I'll admit, there have been many times when rough seas have sorely tested that safely afloat feeling. Yet surviving danger does instill a renewed appreciation for life, or so I believe. Laurie on the other hand, well...

Chapter 1 – Getting My Feet Wet

Did I grow up sailing in Maine...? Hardly. Sailing is often, if not accurately, thought of only as a rich man’s sport; therefore, it was not on my blue collar, hardworking parents’ leisure program. They were too busy struggling just to eke out a living for themselves and their only child, and although more highly educated than my parents, I unwittingly have followed in their economic footsteps. That fact, however, has never discouraged my fascination with boats and water.

As a little kid, I always looked forward to rainstorms that would allow me to build roadside impoundments in which to float my armada of Popsicle-stick boats, and at age nine, I almost enjoyed a real on-the-water experience with my childhood buddies. Considering the outcome of that brief adventure, it’s a wonder I continued to find the medium so appealing.

My friends, Harry and Gilbert, and I had found a real treasure at the local dump—an old, decrepit rubber raft. Dragging our bounty home, we inflated it with our bicycle pumps only to discover that it suffered a few holes—nothing 15 or 20 bike tire patches couldn’t fix, though. Soon we had our boat relatively air tight and strongly resembling a red, polka-dotted doughnut.

My dad somehow found out that we had salvaged this craft, and knowing I couldn’t swim, he warned me that if I went out on the dump pond, he would personally see to it that I wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week, assuming I didn’t drown first.

Ever the obedient son, I soon found myself excitedly launching our ship with my chums, ready for our first adventure at sea. Suddenly, from nowhere, like an apparition, my father appeared on the shore, yelling and frantically waving at me to come in. Someone had ratted on us, and my fellow pirates, fearing my father more than me, mutinied and rowed me to my imminent death by butt flogging.

Despite that I survived, and a year later, Dad, an avid angler, introduced me to the sport. After three years of shore-side angling, which entailed a lot of wet and muddy feet, foul hooking bushes, logs, and each other, he decided I was ready to advance to boat fishing. He bought an old, very heavy, flat-bottomed, wooden rowboat. Finally, my first real boat!

Although I still couldn’t swim, Dad must have assumed that my being bigger would somehow make a difference. Actually, the difference was that I could now help him load this back-breaker onto his home-made trailer, swim or not. But a few miles of rowing the old tub that summer made us yearn for an outboard motor, something that wasn’t economically feasible at the time.

Over the next couple of years my father developed a serious case of boatitis (the bigger boat syndrome), a malady especially common among first-time boat owners. Through a lot of begging and whining, he managed to convince my aqua-phobic mother to let him buy a 12-foot aluminum boat with a 15-horsepower outboard. Heaven had arrived—my first motorboat! This vessel opened new horizons to us; some for which we weren’t at all suited: mainly, the ocean—the big blue, the mother of all ponds. But after a couple close calls on the high seas in our thimble-sized vessel, one of which was a near swamping by the tidal wave wake of a large sea tug in Portland harbor, we humbly retired to freshwater again.

However, even these smaller bodies of water offered us more than our share of challenges and scary adventures, including almost losing Bruce (a younger, brother-like cousin) overboard in a near-flip when I plowed into the wake of a much larger boat. Had my father not been blessed with quick, athletic reflexes and not stomped on his about-to-become-air-borne nephew’s foot, I’d probably be less one good friend today. So what if Bruce still limps. Yet, despite our misadventures, we persisted, and as we did my love of the water grew—as did the challenges.

Chapter 2 – Bigger Boats, Bigger Dangers

Eventually I grew up, physically, anyway, and went off to the University of Maine at Orono, and Dad, deserted by his fishing buddy, sadly sold the boat. My dream of someday owning a big craft would have to wait.

Senior year, I started dating a pretty and sweet junior. What Laurie saw in me, a six-foot, brown-eyed bean pole who emulated the comedian, Jerry Lewis, with my food-in-my-face antics, I couldn’t understand and I wasn’t about to ask. In 1965, upon Laurie’s graduation and despite her father’s strong objections and offer to send her to Europe if she would change her mind, she married me. Had she a crystal ball, she might have opted for the trip.

That same year, I began working as a freshwater fisheries biologist for what was then called the Maine Fish and Game Department in Orono. Fortunately, there was no prerequisite for being a swimmer to get the job. With my negative buoyancy problem, I couldn’t swim more than the 25 feet I could when I was a kid taking lessons at the YMCA. Even holding my breath I would sink. However, my optimism and love of the water expunged my mind of the dire consequences of falling overboard and having my boat drift away if I were working alone—and what’s a life vest?

Shortly after I got my job, Laurie became interested in teaching elementary school and found a fourth-grade position. It was at this time, that like my father, I talked my wife into letting me buy my dream boat, an old, 19-foot, wooden lap strake Old Town cabin cruiser. Actually, bathtub would be a better description because it rode like one. Yet in spite of this boat’s ability to jounce our teeth from our gums in any kind of choppy water, we had many a good time, and in keeping with my younger modus operandi, a few hairy moments as well on Maine’s lakes and coastal waters.

My first serious indoctrination to the wrath of the sea occurred on Frenchman Bay, near Bar Harbor. A close friend, Jay Krouse, and I planned to trailer my Old Town the 50-odd miles from Orono to the boat ramp in Trenton, near Bar Harbor. From there, I would motor across the bay to Sorrento while Jay drove around to pick me up. We wanted to leave the boat on a mooring in that harbor and use it as a base from which to winter hunt sea ducks, a sport only a masochist can enjoy. Sorrento had no boat ramp at that time, thus the necessity to cross the bay from the closest ramp, the one in Trenton.

Our Saturday morning departure date arrived cool and breezy with a forecast for gale winds. You sure you want to try this? Sounds like it could be nasty, Jay said, leaning his wiry, six-foot frame against the fender of my beloved ’66 Pontiac GTO. We had been planning this trip for weeks, so despite the forecast for gale winds and Jay’s reservations, I meant to talk him into going, anyway.

Hey, you know the weathermen. They’re wrong more often than they’re right, I offered. We’ve been planning this trip for three weeks. If we don’t go now, who knows when we’ll get another chance? The hunting season could be over. Jay conceded. After all, I’d be the idiot in the boat.

As my powerful Pontiac effortlessly pulled its looming load toward the coast, it didn’t seem all that windy … did it?

We located the boat ramp situated in a protected cove, and from that vantage point things seemed unthreatening. However, Jay, being more conservative (and brighter) than I, still questioned the sagacity of launching. You know it’s going to be a lot rougher in the open water.

Undaunted, I insisted on going for it. Can’t be that bad, but I’ll wear my life jacket just in case. I had finally said something intelligent.

Shortly after leaving the protection of the cove, reality set in as the true ferocity of the wind displayed itself in steep, six to eight-foot breaking waves. It could be that bad!

About a quarter of a mile offshore, I began to realize my folly. Never having been in seas that rough, I began doubting the seaworthiness of my little craft and my ability to handle her under those conditions. We were rolling so violently in the crashing waves that I was unable to keep myself in the helmsman’s seat.

Standing at the wheel, knees bent and feet braced, I fought to keep from slipping and being launched overboard. Nineteen feet now seemed like the size of a thimble as waves smashed over the deck, sending spumes of water up, onto, and through the canvas cockpit canopy. Hands galvanized to the wheel, I fought to maintain a course that would keep the bow into the breakers to prevent the boat from being smashed broad-side and capsized. Although I desperately wanted to turn back, I feared that turning would definitely roll and swamp us as we came around. This was no place for a 19-foot boat or a six-foot idiot.

Until that day, I had been accustomed to having some semblance of control over events in my life, but now I realized that I needed help from the Great Mariner in the sky, so over the howling banshee wind and the crashing of waves, I prayed harder and louder than I ever had. With salt water stinging my eyes and dripping down my neck, I pleaded, Please, God, get me safely to shore and I promise I’ll start going to church again.

He must have been listening because there suddenly appeared a momentary flat area between whitecaps. I didn’t hesitate grabbing the opportunity. I turned the wheel hard to port, goosing the outboard as I did so. We made the turn safely, and once spun around, headed for the landing cove, murmuring the appropriate thanks as the waves lifted the boat’s stern, yawing her from side to side. Then I began worrying about what I would do if and when I got back to the dockless boat ramp and had to stay aboard waiting for Jay. How long would it take him to get to the other side of the bay, realize I hadn’t made it, and then backtrack the many miles to the landing? I was freezing.

Fortunately, he was waiting for me when I arrived. Once we had the boat wrestled back onto the trailer, Jay explained. I decided to drive out to the mouth of the cove and watch to see how you were doing. Then, as I was about to head for Sorrento, I saw you turn around.

I was extremely thankful he had waited and happy that he didn’t say the well deserved, I told you so. Seawater drenched and infinitely more respectful of the sea, I returned home—another adventure chalked up to experience, but far from being the last.

Yet all my early boating experiences didn’t prove life threatening; some were merely embarrassing and stupid. One such humbling incident occurred the following summer at Seal Harbor, Mt Desert, with the old cabin cruiser. Jay and his wife, Pat, accompanied Laurie and me on a pleasant day-cruise around the gorgeous and mountainous island. I had begun to wise up to the inherent dangers in Marin/Krouse escapades, so I had brought along a borrowed, 10-horsepower outboard, just in case the big and old 100-horse Merc conked out. From my limited life experiences, it appeared that if I were prepared, things didn’t screw up. Well, it was time to put a hole in that theory. The big motor quit about a half-mile offshore.

Terrific! I yelled, desperately turning the ignition key. Lots of whirring; no starting. Lots of cursing; no smiles from Laurie.

Jay asked the logical question. Are we out of gas?.

Can’t be; I filled up before we left home, I said, walking aft to double check the tank gauge. It’s nearly full. Good thing I brought the little motor. It’s going to take a while, but it should get us ashore. So, with the 10-horse we slowly putt-putted our way into Seal Harbor and a fishing dock. Pat and Laurie were kind enough to limit the chiding to just a few sniggers and shakes of the head.

It was a Sunday, and the boat repair shop was closed, so Jay and I tried to solve the problem ourselves. As we were removing and checking the spark plugs, we noticed two local fishermen sitting on their haunches on the wharf above us, staring down like two vultures and taking all this in.

About a half-hour into our work, one of the men called down to us, Not havin’ much luck, eh?

Frustrated and covered with grease, we chorused an abrupt, No.

Then, as he spit a jowl full of gross, brown tobacco juice into the water, the man asked, Is that black rubba’ hose with the big gas tank settin’ on it the gas line to your motah?

Pat, sitting in a deck chair, tried to muffle a laugh, as did Laurie. Jay and I looked down at the line, then at each other and then just shook our heads. What idiots! Indeed it was the gas line, and the weight of the big tank had squeezed off the supply—so much for college educations!

Despite, or maybe because of such incidents—and many more to come—I developed into a knowledgeable mariner…I think.

Chapter 3 – Reintroduction to Sailing

While living in Orono, Laurie and I made friends with Bob and Cindy Robinson who took us and other friends sailing, and although we really didn’t get into it then, this experience served to lay the foundation for our future with sail.

In 1968 my division chief transferred me south to the Belgrade Lakes Region to work as the assistant regional fisheries biologist. That put Laurie, our lab, Raven, and me closer to the ocean and lakes than we had been in Orono. In Hallowell, just a mile south of my new Augusta office, we bought our first house (seven rooms for $13,500!); it would become home for our two sons: Eric, born January, 1970, and Craig, September , 1971.

Although Laurie and I felt it important to the boys’ formative years that she stay home with them until they reached school age, we couldn’t afford to live on just my $5,000 (a year) salary, so Laurie babysat for a few kids in our home and eventually opened a nursery school with her sister, Vee. Later, with both sons in grade school, Laurie restarted her teaching career. We would remain in Hallowell for the next 10 years.

During our first six years in this area, we still owned the Old Town tub, but in 1974, a friend and fellow biologist, Phil Andrews, and his then wife, Phyllis, asked us to buy a used Tartan 27 sailboat with them. We sold the Old Town, used the money to buy our share of the Tartan, and finally received our first sailing experience as actual owners.

Unfortunately, since neither couple could really afford to enjoy the vessel as we would have liked, we were forced to bareboat charter her to help pay the myriad bills associated with owning a boat; the proverbial hole in the water.

A year later it became obvious that we couldn’t economically justify keeping the craft, so, sadly, we sold her, but not before I had thoroughly caught the sailing bug and our boys had gotten their feet wet, as well. However, we weren’t finished with sailing.

Chapter 4 – Birth and Death of a New Dream

With the taste of salt water and sailing still strong on my tongue, but boat-less, I began having withdrawal symptoms. Laurie, the boys, Raven, and I traveled much of Maine’s 3,000 mile coastline in search of the elusive oxymoron— the larger, affordable boat— but found none. Even old wooden boats that had the headroom I sought were too expensive. I endlessly poured through sail magazines and drooled over the gorgeous vessels for sale—all beyond our means. I became a true malcontent; I needed a boat!

Idea…why don’t I build a boat? There were a number of build-it-yourself options out there; so what if I knew nothing about boat building? I was young and foolish (today I’m just foolish). Besides, how hard could it be? I was about to find out.

Expecting some objections, I put on my practiced and most sorrowful puppy-dog face just before I broached this latest scheme to Laurie. Honey, I said. I’m really frustrated. We can’t find any boats that are the size we want at the price we can afford. What do you think about buying a boat-building kit?

But you don’t know anything about boat building, she reminded me. Where had I heard that before.?

Yeah, but I can find some books and learn. I mean, people have been building boats forever. It can’t be that hard.

Yes, but remember that little shed you built for your mother when we first married? The roof fell in. Damn! Would she hold this over my head for the rest of my life?

Come on. That was a long time ago. I've learned a lot since then.

Deciding to change that subject Laurie asked, Besides, do we really have the money…and the time? Her dark brown eyes challenged me for an honest response.

Well we can use some of the money we got from the sale of the Tartan to start the project, and I’ll spend my weekends and vacation time on it. If we can get a hull and deck, it shouldn’t take all that much time to finish the project. (If I’d only known.)

Well, if you really think you can handle it, I guess it’s okay with me. I’m tired of your moping around like you’ve lost your best friend.

Somehow I gleaned information on an Alden designed Caravelle 42, recently built by a boat yard in East Boothbay, Maine. With her long overhangs and sweeping sheer, she looked gorgeous in pictures. Over the phone, I discussed with the company's salesman, the possibility of their building just a bare hull for us. He assured me they could do it in fiberglass at a price we could afford. However, I’d have to find my own source of lead for ballast.

With that goal in mind, I made the rounds of the local tire stores, buying all the discarded lead tire weights I could find. The going rate at that time was six cents a pound. I lugged them home in five-gallon buckets at about 80 pounds a bucketful, and after a couple of weeks, though I’m sure it was my imagination, it seemed my arms were getting significantly longer; I hadn’t recalled ever being able to tie my shoe lacings without bending over.

I came up with an idea on how I could turn all these little hard things into something easier to handle. Honey, I think I can melt this lead on our electric stove. I’ll use some of the old pots from the shed, and I can exhaust the fumes with the overhead vent. What do you think? I hoped she’d see the logic in it. She didn’t.

I don’t think that’s such a good idea. You just remodeled the kitchen. What if you start a fire?

Moi? I said indignantly, poking my finger in my eye, hoping my clown antics that originally attracted Laurie to me would allay her fears. Look, the lead doesn’t have to be very hot to melt, and I’ll be watching it closely. I’ll keep the boys out of the kitchen and even keep a fire extinguisher right next to me.

Laurie thought about it for the longest minute I had ever waited in my life. I guess so, she finally, though dubiously replied. Ta da!

With my first smelting effort the high heat and heavy weight of the lead managed to mold a cheap aluminum pan around the stove burner. Fortunately for me Laurie was upstairs when I performed this feat of foolishness, so after the pot cooled a bit, I was able to pry it free and destroy the evidence before she had a chance to see it. Perhaps it would have been better if she had caught me then and shamed me out of my hare-brain scheme because a couple evenings later, I really screwed up.

Not realizing there was a bit of moisture in the pot that I was using to form the ingot, I poured molten lead onto it—apparently not a good combination. Kapow! A small explosion spewed a large dollop of lead onto my wrist and another onto Laurie’ inlaid linoleum that I had just installed, not only lifting a layer of its surface, but a couple layers of my skin. This was a much more impressive act than the melted pot trick.

What happened, Daddy? Eric cried as he, his tow-headed brother, and their ashen-faced mother flew into the kitchen.

Holding my wrist under cold water, I sheepishly glanced at Laurie’s floor. Ah… nothing much, I said. Just forgot to wipe out the pot thoroughly and the lead hit some moisture and flew up in the air.

Nothing much? Laurie exclaimed, her color rapidly turning from pale white to ticked-off red. What have you done to yourself? Let me see your wrist. Geeze, you’d better let me put something on that.

It’s not that bad, I lied, trying not to squirm and acknowledge the excruciating pain shooting through my wrist.

"And look what you’ve done to my