I drive past this sailboat every day, twice actually. I get the coming and going views and would probably miss it if it were gone, but it doesn't look it's going anywhere soon. It's not in the water it's in a vacant lot next door to some one's house. It appears to stand on its rudder (the thing in the middle; I drink water with some reluctance, everything else nautical is beyond me) though I suspect it's actually being held up in some form of a stand. It's pretty tall, the deck looks like it's ten feet off the ground and a decent length-this isn't an America's Cup Yacht or a Newport Sailing Sloop by any means, but it's a good sized vessel. These early April mornings are pretty good for shivering me timbers but I've never even been to Long John Silver's, so the John Masefield stuff is a stretch.
It's mostly blue in color, though the cabin seems to have aspirations of white, but Two Years Before the Mast have taken the toll on the color-though speaking of mast, it doesn't actually have one. On both sides, assuming the next owner will want to paint it (her? Ships are 'she' right?) and making sure the hand is now forced, someone has painted on both sides "$995 OBO". I'm a bad person to incite with open-ended fuzzy phraseology like 'or best offer.' What if I knock on the owner's door with a recycling box full of cleaned soda bottles and a voucher for a dollar off a breakfast meal at the fast food restaurant about a mile away. That's my best offer, matie, gimme the boat (ship? When are boats ships and when are they boats? And how do you know?) but truth to tell, I don't know what this sailboat is worth, and I guess that depends on who is doing the wanting.
I have no idea how old the sailboat is (it's impolite to ask a lady her age, if, indeed, all ships are she) and I'm not sure if, like cars, there are model years involved. Did someone say to Ahab, 'you should hold on to the Pequod for another year, even if you don't catch that albino whale, take the tourists out on day trips, otherwise you're gonna get killed on the resale value.' Not likely, I suppose, and even less likely he'd have listened to that, or any, advice. Not sure Brian Wilson would have been comfortable on board though I suspect he wouldn't have had to worry about the cook throwing away his grits or eating up all of his corn.
I'm not even sure the sailboat floats, but I want to believe that it does and could, and would, be as seaworthy as anything on the Thames, be it the river in Connecticut or the one through London. I would be afraid to sail wooden ships on the Cuyahoga River, rolling into Cleveland to the lake even though I had a juke box graduate for a first mate (she couldn't sail, but she sure could sing. Farewell to you Danny F). Not sure what I'd do, but if I had a boat, I'd go out on the ocean and if I had a pony, I'd ride him on my boat. I wouldn't be all that amazed to encounter those well-known mariners, the Owl and the Pussycat. And if they had had a problem with their beautiful pea-green boat, rather than ship-hike, I would offer them passage aboard mine. And, perhaps, later I'd watch as hand in hand on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon, the moon. They danced by the light of the moon.
-bill kenny
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