Dockside, Part One

I started this post on May 26 and this is as far as I got (pretend you’re reading this a week ago):

‘Last night was my first night sleeping aboard Lady of the Blues and upon waking up (about an hour ago) it took a good minute of thinking to realize that for the first time in over a decade  (maybe a lot longer) I slept right on through the night without waking up for no good reason. By rough calculation we’re talking about a tad under 8 hours of solid unconsciousness, and several remembered dreams.’

Although I’m tied up at a marina (sounds weird to have a ‘marina’ on a lake, seeing that there isn’t anything ‘marine’ about where I am) as opposed to at anchor (‘on the hook’), which is where I intend to be most if not all nights once Lady is squared away and ready for extended, self-sufficient cruising, I suspect that the serenity of my nap last night was due to the gentle motion and the subconscious perception of a body of water just a couple feet below my skull, notwithstanding that this lake is in no way the equivalent of… well, to use the same term as in my first memoir… Big Blue.

Full disclosure: I’d only written the first paragraph above on the morning of my first wake up. I meant to keep rolling but the previous owner showed up to help with outfitting the boat and anyway I was extremely distracted by the list of stuff that needs to be done before I’m going anywhere. You have to have been around boats to understand the emphasis I just put on the words the list. 

The list is why I haven’t gotten around to posting this until now. The list isn’t so much ‘stuff to do’ – at least not to me – as it is an estimate of time until departure. Realistically, I’m looking at a month, depending on Steve’s whims. Steve is the aforementioned previous owner and I believe I lucked out with him, although he occasionally worries me regarding things he does not know about the boat he sold me – one example being the fresh water tank, which he didn’t know the boat had. Here’s how it more or less went:

Me: Where’s the fresh water tank?

Steve: Ain’t never seen it. I just bring bottled water along when I go out.

Me: But there’s a tank somewhere, right? I mean there has to be.

Steve: Ain’t never seen it.

I’ll leave it at that for now, conversationally, except to emphasize that Steve is a ‘good ‘ol boy’ of few words (and rare grins), although I have come to like him and trust him. Without his mechanical knowledge – when in the Air Force he tuned up F-18 fighter jets – and most especially his local knowledge, the list would only get longer as I sit here and I’d never get free of the damn dock.

Addendum: The idea that a houseboat would have no fresh water tank made no sense to me so I spent a good bit of time searching for it. That it took me a week to find it was mainly due to my assumption that it would be low down, probably in the bilge somewhere or under the bed or settee, as it is in all the boats and ships I’ve been on. This is to keep the center of gravity low (there’s a nautical term here like ‘center of effort’ or some such), which dampens rolling. My epiphany came when I realize that there was a space above the fridge that was sealed off; this made no sense either; storage space is a premium on nautical crafts of any sort.

I noticed the unused space while hanging one of the few works of art I cart around with me wherever and however I go: An inscribed photograph by a friend of mine from Montauk, Peter Beard. Beard is famous not only his photographs (especially of Africa and elephants) but for the art he adds to them. In the case of the elephant photo he gave me, he inscribed, ‘For Allan,’ then added a wonderful passage about how the elephant was king the African savanna until some ‘cunning mortal’ invented ‘the magic dust called gunpowder.’ (If you want a treat go to Peter’s website and look at his art.)

I decided to drill into the space above the fridge to make sure it was empty and came upon the tap-ring of metal. Bingo!  I rushed to the upper deck and moved the useless couch I hadn’t yet discarded and yep, underneath, there it was, the filler cap. I had searched everywhere but up there for the tank intake. They’d fitted the water tank where I least expected it, i.e., high up. Although I consider it a dumb move on the part of the designer, the big advantage is that you need no water pump. The two sinks are gravity fed.

Steve is one of those good ‘ol boys that isn’t much impressed by intellectual types; didn’t care that I’d written books and movies and even made a movie all by my ownself (I gave him a Water Time DVD and he watched ‘some of it.’) Now, though, I have him. Whenever we’re fixing this or fiddling with that, or cutting wood, say, for the custom book shelves he’s building me, and I screw up or don’t know something and he gives me one of his ‘looks,’ I smile and say, or imply, ‘Maybe so, but it took a Yankee writer to show a good ol’ boy where the water tank is on a boat he’s owned for 20 years.’ (I only said this once. You want to be careful with some folks’ egos, especially if you need their help.)

Hey, it just occurred to me that you all might have no interest in this boat stuff. Well, I think told you that this blog might evolve into something different due to my new lifestyle. Not that I’m going to go on and on about boat life, here or in videos. I tried watching Youtubes of boat folks and they were even more boring than ‘RV Life’  vids. Christ, water going by and wifey saying, ‘There’s water going by.’

And the prose in their blogs is more of the same. I can’t figure it. With RV life or boat life, who cares about someone else’s life unless they are doing something unique and/or have a real flair in how they string words or images together.

There’s this guy calls himself ‘Slim Potatohead’ — this is just for example — and Logan and I ran into him at a state park campground a couple months ago. Logan recognized him from his YT videos; we shared a campfire that night. Meanwhile, I’d looked him up. Makes a living doing Youtube ‘on the road hints’ and interviews. Gets like 80,000 hits, has subscribers up there in six figures. And the comments! Holy shit. People are poised like ‘Sean’ or whomever the state troll is assigned to my blog; they just can’t wait for another vid from ol’ Slim. I couldn’t get through even one.

At the campfire Logan noticed that Slim made a point of not being interested in my history as a writer and how I’d made a full-length documentary about a road trip and that it was on YT. No curiosity at all. This is what happens with people who think a lot of themselves. If it’s not about them, who cares? (Me, I didn’t care; I grilled Slim and learned a few things about how YT works. Notwithstanding this blog, I’d rather learn something than blab stuff about myself that I already know.)

Speaking of boring, I had better wrap this up. To sum up my plan: Get the boat ready (installing a solar array being high on the list) and do a shake down cruise of a couple weeks on this lake (in central Virginia), then put Lady  on a flatbed behind a big rig truck after cleaning and painting her bottom; then 145 miles to the Intracoastal Waterway near Virginia Beach. Ever see those ‘Wide Load’ caravans on a highway? That’ll be us, hopefully with Gus and me in the boat for the trip, since I’ll have no vehicle (see postscript).

Then the plan is to do ‘The Great Loop.’ Don’t know what that is? Neither did I until a few days ago. As soon as I realize what it is, I knew I had to do it. Look it up (don’t bother with the YT vids).

That’s the plan. More blogs to come but remember I’m pretty distracted by the list. 

I’m thinking of doing an Open Letter to Joe Rogan, who apparently is the most listened to interviewer on the planet; it’s said he got over a billion (with a ‘b’) Youtube views last year. Yeah, you can probably already see what I have in mind. To get an idea, you might look up his early videos, especially those involving Jan Irvin. Then suddenly old Joe became what he is now.

Allan

Okay, important (to me) postscript. Some of you may be wondering how I can afford a houseboat and an RV. Well, I can’t. In fact I’m in serious trouble financially. (It’s gonna cost like $3,000 to ship Lady!) I have to sell the RV and I will sell it cheap. It’s a 2008 Four Winds, class C, 27 feet (I think). Some minor dings and I pulled out the generator but everything works. The engine hums. The solar array is worth $1,000, or makes up for the generator (which I never used anyway).  It’s ‘Low’ list value is just under $14,000. High list is like $18k.

And I’m near Bedford, VA. I know. Pain in the ass. But I will let it go for $10,000.  I paid $28,000 in 2014. Please don’t ask detailed questions unless you are serious. Use allan at banditobooks.com. (I’ll include 4 months worth of freeze dried food, for when Mad Max shows up.)

Also! In cleaning out the rig I came across a box I had forgotten about, full of silver dollars I’d bought around 2002. A local guy, friend of Steve, offered $45 each for my lot of 33. That’s $1,485. I know they are worth more from scanning eBay. I’ll include photos here but they are mostly from the 1880s. One from 1879 and one from 1904, one from 1900. They are professionally graded MS63, which is very high grade. The mints are mostly San Francisco, Phillie, and New Orleans. No Carson Cities (which are worth $200 or more). I’m looking to sell the lot. Make an offer.

It would really help. I’d not sell them except for my dire straights. They are a great hedge against the dollar collapse, which is inevitable, as most of you here know.

Oh. Another catastrophe that maybe someone can advise on: My main Macbook Pro is down. Black screen. Beeps three times and repeats. I have a lot of photos and such on it. Bummer. It’s backed up on an external HD that I don’t trust. Advice? You can use allan at banditobooks.com for this one too, so as not to bore the folks more than already have today.

One last thing (I promise): Someone suggested I get another drone for the boat cruising. He’s seen some of my footage. Great idea. Can’t afford it right now. But any contributions will now go into the ‘drone kitty’ instead of $3.25 a month for gas money.