Dog Days

Thursday morning, coming back from doing a painting in the village, I spotted something thrashing in the river, just upstream of the bridge. Slack water. Dead low tide. At first I thought it was a snapper wrestling with a big carp. The green hump of a shell, a flash of yellow, but what's that? A snaky tail? Two? Standing astraddle my bike in mid-bridge, jaw hanging, I watched the roiled splashing tangle. Eventually it resolved into two big snappers. Rolling and tumbling. Fighting? Love-making? Playing? Sometimes you can't tell with the locals.

Canon Corner

The stifling heat and drought continues. Petty grievances boil into hot disputes. Angry words have been spoken down by the waterfront, and it's rumored the harbormaster has applied for a concealed gun permit. Reminds me of the days when Delano was the master, and packed a 45 on his hip. I always thought that was for shooting the fish, though.

When we might have a couple weeks of ninety degree weather a year, and the rivers were foul with paper mill discharge, nobody was bragging about the recreational resources of the Cathance. It was great eel fishing, and a few old cranks with wooden boat fever dabbled on the waters, but the smart money was up on the lakes, or pickled in brine. Now everyone has money, and the bankers will help you pour it into a Bayliner, or a jetski. On a hot Saturday afternoon, when the parking lot is jammed, and the kids are yammering, the entertainment values at the landing are superb.

Delano at Jimmy's

Building this barge has kept me out of the fray, more or less, but the rumbling reaches all the way up here to Brooklyn Heights. Most of the old timers have abandoned the public landing for Jimmy's mushrooming marina operation. He's stuck out another finger pier, and applied to the necessary authorities for a gas dock, etc.

While Seth was here we Bondoed the skiff and stuck it under Jimmy's ramp, where it's languished from inattention. When my brain started to boil again this week, I went down to take the waters in the fuggy morning. The skiff was full of green slimy water, a rich algae soup with a few dead eels tossed in. I scooped her dry, used Bruce's scrub brush to take off the scum, and spun out into the tide.

Red Skiff

Cardinal Flowers

Didn't go far. Rowed against the current to the double bridges, and tried to catch an angle with Olympus. One of those impossible subjects I've wanted to paint, and I snapped away at it from all the floating vantages without getting a purchase. The kids have spray-painted reefer plants and "THC" on the abutments, in honor of Mary Jane, and cardinal flowers made a vivid showing against the silted shoreline.

The Cathance is so sediment laden and iron brown from the bogs that your hand disappears when you stick your arm in. As the tide goes down, the banks are coated with ooze, and glisten with a pale umber sheen. I admired reflections of dead willows in the turbid mirror, and zagged through the fleet to the marina. By the time the sun was eating the mist there were coffee breakers in the parking lot, and a sportsman backing a bass boat down the ramp. I toted the oars back to the Eagles, and recommenced gate making.

Reflection

Maid in the shop

The Sternmaid came along swiftly. All the structural decisions had been made with Greenville the Moose, and the framework prefabbed. All she needed was image work. Took about ten days to get her together, which works out to $50 a day, not counting materials and overhead. You wanted to get rich and famous in the arts? But where else could you get such a chuckle?

Big Mike has been stopping by to check out the work, and he pointed out another layer in the Moose image. Opening up the great north woods enhanced the habitat for white-tailed deer, and Alces americana. Our current bloom in moose and deer has followed the chainsaw, where mature woods have been replaced with primary browse. Give that Moose a McCullough. Mike thinks the Sternmaid should be draped in gill netting to get Her just right.

Sternmaid Calls Home

Mary

Tuesday Mr. Mann helped us erect Her, and I promptly went into a tailspin. There's nothing like finishing a creative rush to leave you confused. Turn up the heat, and you have a complete muddle. I beat my head against it for a couple days, but only got bruised. Couldn't find a scene to paint. Even a great new model at Carlo's couldn't bump me awake. (Mary is in her sixties?! Jeeze, I hope I'm in that shape then.) And the Millennium Toad just sits there waiting for topsides.

I don't know how paper designers keep sane. I can sketch design solutions until the moon sets and still be loony. There are a host of inter-related decisions facing me when I approach the ark, and as long as I juggle them on paper I'm stymied. I'm still considering a dipping lug rig, like a Thames barge. That means a 23 foot sprit to hold up the sail, which then has no gaff or boom. The sail, as they say, is loose-footed. The advantages of a sprit rig is that you can fold the mast with all sails set, to duck under a bridge, and you don't have a killer boom swinging at head height.

Rollover (Photo by Seth)

Dance Around (Seth Photo)

The cons of a dipping lug are that reefing down the sail in a breeze is a puzzle, without a boom to lace to, and you have to find some purchase point beyond the after end of the sail to haul it down to. Without a boom to spread the sail, and connect your sheet to, you have to make a stern fitting of some kind. The quandary is compounded on this barge, because the planned sail goes out well past the stern, requiring a boomkin. Worse yet: a lug sail should be clewed to the lee quarter to take twist out of the sail, which would necessitate a long traveler outboard of the transom. Or a shorter sail plan.

Either way would impact the way I build the after deck. I have a bundle of such conundra, each one blocking the path to woodwork. Like: what about this mast? Eli and Isaac dropped off the redundant stick from David's sharpie three weeks since, and I've been slapping the oil to it. Dry as dust, it's been hanging above the chickens in the recycling barn for 20 years. Do I really have the courage to take a saw to it? Cutting a big stick in half is a gut-wrencher. And I have to choose: to tabernacle or not to tabernacle. Tabernac!

Mast unloading

The only way to get beyond the paper shuffle is to grab it in both hands. After walking around the mast for days.. measuring, recomputing, avoiding.. I finally grabbed the saw and put it to spruce. As always, the choice is obvious, once you make it. This stick had a crook in it just at the point where a tabernacle would go. Will go. And I lopped off the stepping butt. Squared off the bowsprit. Oiled the cut ends. There. I've started again.

The corn is high, and Max is into his first feed. Beans and cukes and broccoli and squashes and new spuds and ripe tomatoes. MMMM. Peppers promising. The Y2Kists are buying out pressure canners and digging root cellars. Where's that shotgun? We're just glorying in veggie feasts and the second wave of roses. Peggy has been spending her mornings and evenings in the gardens and they look luxurious despite the drought. Crickets and grasshoppers. Rose of Sharon. Hold that breath.

Max's Corn

Gringo

The summer inhalation of returnees begins to exhale. Seth finished the house carpentry, packed up his kit, and took off for Mexico and points south. He's trekking down the Yucatan to Belize, where he's enrolled in an ecology field study program for the Fall. It's still a wrench to have him go. Not to mention the envy.

I thought of him when I was chatting up a research crew on the dock the other morning. Doing a 3D current study of the Bay using the latest Doppler acoustic imaging technology. Green Ed was guiding three fed scientists in a tin boat, intending to map salt intrusion up the Kennebec, river mixing, and general flow patterns. While the techs chased an electrical short, I jawed with the botanist aboard, who was excited about a statewide marine grasses database she's working on. Like pre-WWII anthropologists scurrying to identify all the peoples of the world before distance disappeared, this generation of ecologists is trying to map environmental systems before they are impacted beyond understanding. Maybe like trying to catch a shooting star. This is the sort of stuff Seth's professors are about. I can see him running a laptop on some outer reef.

But the dream of a houseboat colony on Cathance has woken up weird. Back when Shorey was conjuring the Kennebec Houseboat Co. nobody imagined rivercycles out of Waterworld or Merc-cruiser monsters in Bowdoinham. Now the MERRY B is rotting up the Ridge Road, and the Shoreys have retreated to the Dutch canals. Sailboats are unwelcome on their old river moorings.

The Merry B

Eloquent Clouds

The pull of the tide still tugs me, though. Saturday I took the three horse down, toggled it to the stern of the skiff, and Peggy, CC and I went upriver with the flood. We slapped into the breeze with the 2-cycle rattling, then nosed into the guzzles, and rowed among the grasses. Brilliant yellow-green textures of marsh grass over ruffled waters, shade under the oaks, and an eloquent canopy of mushrooming clouds. How can you blame folks for wanting to play boat? We tied up to a ledge under the trees and dove in. A small frog kick-stroked by, and I scooped him. He squeezed between my cupped fingers, did a graceful dive, then swam back and sat on the slick rock next to me. Companionable. A Seadoo roared by, tossing us in its wake, and when I waved and grinned the rider looked surprised.

It's still possible to find the solitude on the water, if you're willing to take it in spells, in the off hours, between buzzings. We'd forgotten how important the floating life is to our mental well-being during the hots. Peggy and I came back soothed, and all the more eager to get this scow in the water.

Standing back from the heated hassles and the nostalgia, what seems to have happened on Cathance is a layering of multiple use. Not an explosion of the old eelers, sailers, and houseboatists, but a diffusion of new uses, seeking out varied niches. Jetskiers are the bad guys of choice at the moment, because they are noisy and intrusive in the once quiet backwaters. But they are like kids on motorcycles, gone before you know it. When the four-cycle transformation is complete, and the dust settles, they probably won't be any more bothersome than deer flies. And a lot more fun.

Down on the salt I've heard lobstermen bitching about the kayakers. How they are endangering themselves and creating a new responsibility for the fishermen, who watch out for other boaters. How they're a hazard in the fog. And I've heard of islanders who are incensed at the influx of paddleboat arrivals. Some have deleted their islands from the Island Trail, due to over use. Now Kayak Mike has put out signs at the landing offering rentals, instruction, and tours. Is this a new nuisance, or just another layer of use?

Kayak Trooper

Paddler

When the Friends of Merrymeeting Bay started mouthing off about this undiscovered resource, I cursed them for contributing to media pollution. And the explosion of river use justified my grousing. Only a stupid fisherman brags about the best holes. But now we are in the throes, it's nice that the Friends do their annual trash cleanup, because we need it. They could still pipe down, though. Enough is enough.

Trying to see this river and estuary through all the windows reveals how many views there are. The botanist sees a pattern of grasses. The jetskier knows it's a slalom course. The sailer is tangled in a web of wind. The dawn canoeist never encounters the high noon bridge diver. The shard hunter thinks of archeological settlement, while the realtor measures setbacks. If you let every activity intrude, your peace and quiet evaporates. Maybe the way to keep your cool in a busy world is to find new layers. Focus on another aspect. Like launching a painter's barge, so it all becomes a visual subject.

Yellow Barn

Dog Days

Later in the day, after the snappers had stopped their whatever, a gang of kids were diving off the bridge, ignoring the NO-NO signage this town has insulted us with. When I stopped to parle, they complained about the oil slick sheening the water. When Peggy and I dabbled upriver, she kept pointing out globules of oil on the surface. There's no denying that multiply use has its ecological impacts, and all this playing boat is making rainbows on the river. The fishermen are changing over to the clean 4-cycles. The jetskis are 2-stroke spewers, though. And my oily old three horse is a noxious antique. I've been called that myself.