Drive/Ride/Wrench: Girasole

Girasole

Yeah, I know...this blog is supposed to be about my life with cars, yet so far I have also included an article about motorcycles as well as one about model trains. Why?

Well, first of all it is myblog and I get to decide what to write. But it is also the case that I have found many in the world of cars who also have interests in bikes and/or trains. For example, my first driving instructor David Love also owned a lovely Ducati with desmodromic valves (look thatup in you Funk and Wagnalls!) and once when I was standing in line waiting for entrance to the Sacramento Railroad Museum during an early Railfair I found myself in the company of four or five other people I knew from the vintage car universe.

At least motorcycles and trains both have motors. But why am I writing about sailboats? Except for use around boat ramps or docks, or when there is no breeze at all, these are powered by nothing more than wind and seem the antithesis of technological advance, though that latter is only a perception among people who are not familiar with just how much sailing has advanced since the “with the wind only” days of square riggers and other early designs.

I grew up in South Florida, to this day a rather idyllic place of tropical lushness and water, and just that much more so in the 1950s. But I developed not particular interest in boating. There were plenty of craft around, in a watery world quickly dominated by local industry churning out legendary names such as Thunderbird, Donzi, Wellcraft, and North American. The speedboat was king.

In fact, at one point the first real company I worked for moved from downtown Miami to the former Miami News building a bit further up the river from the bayfront. The next door neighbor was the Dade County Sheriff Department Marine Divison. In order to keep up with the speed and horsepower war of rogue boaters and drug dealers they were outfitted with North American boats..either 19 or 21 footers, complete with twin 500 hp Chrysler V8 power plants. They were obscenely quick and yet often were no match for some of those other makes.

One of my few excursions in powered craft was coincidently on a North American owned by my cousin Sonny, though with only a single V8 to power it. We went out in the ocean off Miami Beach and all it did was give me a pounding headache as we slammed over one swell after another. Not my idea of fun.

Despite that, during the time my department was still on the fourth floor of a downtown Miami building overlooking Bayfront Park and the Bay I would find myself often gazing out at the boats nearby....the sail boats. Perhaps it was daydreaming, perhaps a blank stare while trying to solve a programming problem, perhaps just a break to rest my eyes, but I recall how serene and even majestic they seemed...a bit likes white swans gliding softly over the pastel water.

Somehow or another two things occurred during this time period, which almost certainly took place in or around 1970. I do know that by 72 we had moved “up river.” Besides, 1970 was such an important year in other ways for me it is easy to believe that was the year I discovered sail boats. After all, it was the same year I bought the Porsche 914 I still have, and was also the year I visited California for the first time and was so taken I decided to move to the state which has remained “Golden” to me, and the 914 was a big part of that journey and life.

I had a work colleague whose last name is lost in the mist of time. Charlie was the “old man” of the programming department...I suspect he might have been in his 30s. That was pretty ancient not only for me, at 25, but for almost anyone working with computers back then. In fact, when I joined the department I looked around and decided I needed to find something else to do within five years as there appeared to be no one other than Charlie whose age exceeded the end of their 20s.

Charlie was quiet, unassuming...and even had the grey hair I associated with his “advanced” age. He also had a sail boat, and in some conversation learned of my interests and offered to take me out one evening after work.

A much larger Skipjack from kewordbasket
Note the back-lsanted mast
and the length of the boom

The boat was a “Skipjack, a basic wooden design used for oyster dredging on Chesapeake Bay, where laws at that time prohibited powered boats. also remember how crude it was, with a cabin that was merely a storage place and a “head” which consisted of...a bucket.

While Wikipedia says they were sloop rigged and 40-50 feet in length, for some reason my mind has it pictured as a catboat and nowhere near that length. It is possible we just did not have or use a jib, or course, and I would not have known a catboat from a catamaran at that point. I do remember the sharply raked mast and long boom characteristic of the design.

I was not so impressed that I immediately lusted after a boat of my own. At the same time, at some point I became aware of another more sophisticated...and interesting...sailer.

In the 1960s Roger MacGregor was a student at Stanford University. I believe he was studying for his MBA. I am not certain what provoked him to build his first sailboat, though he had left a job with Ford Motor Company to attend Stanford and do so, and his first effort was done as part of his course study:https://www.thelog.com/local/macgregor-halts-socal-production-of-26-sailboat/.

I think the Venture 21 was the boat he built for his studies, and I had head somewhere that the clamor and demand among friends and classmates was so high he then went into production in Costa Mesa. At the time I thought 21 feet was too big to trailer and store comfortably, but was excited when I heard that he was coming out with a shorter, 17 foot model.

I don't know that the Ventures were the first all fiberglas trailer/sailers, but they were high quality cloth layup boats of high strength, performance, and versatility. Stable and forgiving they were also light and fast.

Venture 17 from Sailing Texas site
If you removed the skipper you sould not tell this was not a 21

With my lifelong fascination with cars, model trains, and motorcycles, what was it which was drawing me towards this archaic and placid mode of movement? A motorized vehicle's top speed and performance are limited by its motor, weight, suspension, and other engineering factors, as well as the skill of the “pilot.” While this is also somewhat true of a sailboat, which is limited by its hull design, weight, sail configuration, and size (more on that in a moment) it is very sensitive to the skill of the skipper, and of course more subject to the natural forces of water and air. It was the need to sensitize my actions to the capability of the craft relative to those natural factors which was the appeal.

A boat has a maximum hull speed which relates directly to its length at the waterline. There is little ability to influence that. But within that limit, how the sails are trimmed, how the weight of the crew is balanced, and how the rudder is managed are all the tools you have to work with to wring out its capability. This is an intense challenge both mentally and physically even if you are just “crusing” rather than racing. There, timing also becomes a critical factor.

I never followed up on my daydreaming as life interfered. But long after I retired the musing raised its head again and I began scanning ads for used sailboats. I was amazed at how relatively inexpensive they were, given that they never really rot away and should not, in theory, depreciate. At the time I thought Sherri would love to be out on the warm lake waters but did not question far enough her resistance to what she thought would make her sea sick on a small craft. What I was after was a comfortable cruiser with some creature comforts such as a pop top cabin with standup headroom, bunks for sitting in the cabin with good ventilation and sleeping inside as desired, a galley with water, and a toilet. The real target was a Catalina 22.

1979 "poptop" Catalina 22
from Just Sailboats site

I had two major concerns regarding an appropriate boat. The first was a self-imposed restriction. Once I sold the Ferrari I had, in theory, an open stall in my 30'x50' workshop. So I was not worried about the length of a boat I bought, at least in terms of storage. I wanted it out of sight and under cover. Not ony would his minimize wear on lines and paint and general maintenance, but I neither had any more outdoors storage room behind the shop (there being the car trailer and camper stashed back there), but it was unfair to Sherri to ask her to tolerate something sitting out in front of the shop.

So the boat had to fit into the shop...and unknown to me, our builder cut corners by putting seven foot rather than eight foot high doors on the shop even though the specs were to match the garage attached to the house, whose door is a foot taller. Of course, I could have, at that point, stored the boat in the house garage, as I did not yet have plans to restore the 914. But I really thought it “belonged” n the shop.

My second, and huge, worry was how exactly one managed to raise the mast on a 22 foot boat. The mast is normally longer than the boat, so perhaps 27 feet of aluminum, which is not exactly light. I tis also an airfoil and subject to trying to move sideways, which it obviously must not be allowed to do, in a crosswind while raising it.

All the systems I read about and saw pictures of seemed to exceed my physical and engineering abilities...and involved some clumsy apparatus which had to somehow be hauled in the truck to the launch site.

And then I saw the following ad on Craigslist:

2011 Craigslist Ad

Not only was this the same sleek model which first attracted my attention decades earlier, and not only was it an early boat built in roughly the same time period, but it seemed to co me with a slew of gear and an intriguing electric winch for easy mast raigin & lowering,” though I wondered how that might work.

I first called, then drove down with my friend Lee to look at it, and within hours had a demonstration of how to raise and lower the mast, had secured the funds, and made the purchase, practically snatching it out of the hands of two ladies who were hot after it. Of course I had measured the height on the trailer and it did indeed look like it would (barely) squeeze under the shop door...I hoped.

That turned out to be a learning experience. While the boat does clear...it is by inches and even then requires some innovative adjustments. I can't just merely back it in attached to the truck. Actuallly I can't back down the driveway with a trailer at all.

I never thought about trailer issues when we bought the property and had the shop built. The way the driveway was cut down the hill to the back, the pad in front of the shop, and later the grading for the gravel drive around and behind the shop were all very unfriendly to long trucks...the Dodge is well over 20 feet long.

So I have to drive forward and then attempt to back up to swing the trailer at least part way so the rear is facing the shop door...and this means only partly...I have to then unhook from the trailer, swing it around by muscle power, reconnect, and then (with one more adjustment) back into the shop until the trailer wheels are on the concrete floor of th shop.

The adjustment? Believe it or not I have to remove the mast support crutch from the transom of the boat and rest the mast on top of the cabin hatch. The gives me several more inches of vertical clearance. But not enough.

The next step is to unhook the trailer from the truck, and lower the tongue onto a small, 300 pound wooden furniture dolly. This lowers the front of the boat down at least another foot. Finally this can squeeze the rig into the shop. For the final step I jack up the tongue and substitute a few boards for the dolly and I'm done. Fussy? You bet. But successful.

Unfortunately, to date I have only sailed the boat about four times. But each time I loved the actual sailing part. It is as responsive, quick, and gentle as I thought it would be. The way I say it is that the boat is happy when the swing keel “sings.”

I am not much of a joiner but I did look for a club to join but the closest one is another half hour drive each way compared to our local reservoirs. And though I did manage to find a couple of people to come with me Gary and Jerry both live in the Bay Area and thus realistically are only able to come once in awhile.

But I have become friends with Tim, who I learned sailed a lot many years ago, and is interested in starting in to it again. SO I am hopeful that we can start slowly and locally and expand out from there, perhaps with overnight trips and moving from central valley reservoirs to mountain lakes where the weather and beauty is better but the risk, due to the afternoon thunderstorms is higher.

Meantime I have considerably cleaned up and improved the cosmetics of the boat, including a lot of wood work and cabinet building to increase the utility of the admittedly marginal cabin.

From the first I saw here I named her “Girasole.” Why? I love the Italian language...truly the “bella lingua” of the world. And it is so efficient and innovative. Unlike English, which is said to have over a million words, Italian has to make do with only 150,000. Thus it has had to be clever about context as well as compounding new words from simpler components. “Girasole” is their word for “sunflower.” t is made up of two words...a verb and a noun used as a verb modifier. The root is “girare,” which means “to turn.” Then “sole” is added, which is the word for “sun.” Thus the literal meaning is “turns to the sun,” which, if you watch a sunflower during the day, is exactly what the flower head does over the course of daylight hours.

The perfect name for the (for me) perfect boat.