The new boat had to be ready to launch by the end of August, a particular deadline that had everything to do with “Capital Gains Tax.”
As we understood the tax rule back in 1981, you paid no
capital tax on the sale of your principle residence as long as you used the funds
within two years to build your new principal residence. An article in Cruising World magazine assured us that a boat could qualify as a
principle residence. (Cruising World, February 1981, p. 26: submission from Daniel F. Hinkel titled "The IRS Loosens Up.")
Richard’s schooner Sea Lark had been his principal residence since 1967.
When I moved aboard
with him in the fall of 1978, our experience of living together confirmed his inklings that he wanted a bigger boat.
His contacts with Diane and Julio Ozan (see "Why A Design by Manuel Campos" - Dec, 2014) led him to commission the Campos design. Then he sold the schooner Sea Lark in early September of 1979, shortly
after I'd married him in June.
Did he ever figure what his real “basis” in Sea Lark was,
and what his real “gain” on the sale of that boat might have been? That didn’t matter. His idea was that he would pay no
capital gains tax on the sale made in September of 1979 as long as he was living aboard the new boat by September of 1981.
Richard is a guy who still sets himself deadlines, and makes good use of a driving force like the weather, the credit card payment due date, or the delivery of parts for the next task. Back then
in 1981, the tax deadline was a force, a driver, a challenge that had to be
met. The fact is, he thrived with any spur that would drive him harder, push him more forcefully, pressure him to
complete this task and get on to the next one. Is this obsession? I will never forget one sticky, late-July evening while we were both hard at work varnishing the cabin
sides we’d sanded earlier. I suggested
we might take the next day … Sunday … off.
A day for renewal. Maybe a drive
out to the county to visit friends, or pick blueberries?
Oh My! What a
response I got!
“Susan, I need you to kick my ass, not propose time off. We don’t have time for blueberries.”
Okay. Yes, Boss!
Deadlines had become so familiar to him after years of working for fisherman who had to have their boats ready to meet a barge date to Alaska. He actually tried to float the idea that we could be ready
to launch by the First of August if we put our minds and bodies to the work.
Well, I was too wholistic in my view to go along with THAT deadline. Or was it laziness? And yet, let me just admit right here my appreciation for his “stick-to-itivity” (as the old Mouseketeers used to say). That summer of 1981 was an education for me in Getting The Work Done.
In May: He built the cockpit floor … having laid the deck and begun the corking.
In June: He built the cabin sides and bulwarks. He carved patterns and had the chain plates cast …
On June 21, our second anniversary, we had planned to go for a hike - to get away from the boat, from the town. When rain cancelled that idea, Richard began to think of working on the rudder. Or maybe he'd been thinking of the rudder since before dawn?
So I brushed a fourth coat of varnish onto yellow cedar cabin top beams, laminated from wood he had pruned away when making the hull planks. Richard tackled the shaping of the rudder. We talked a bit about the future, but couldn't see far past the immediate goal of getting Abrazo launched.
By the end of June the bronze chain plates from the foundry had been bolted thru the planking, and we sanded the hull for another coat of primer.
In July: He hung the rudder, with Jay Taber's help to muscle it into position:
July 9: He had pitched the deck seams. I sanded the cabin’s interior finish strips,
which Richard had adjusted to mask the fact that the cabin coamings were ½” off
center. OMG! How did that happen?! When he consulted Bill
Modrell about the problem, Modrell said “Don’t worry. I’ve built
them as much as 3” off-center and they floated just
fine.”
The weekend of July 11-12, we made that boat trip to Guemes Island to bring the mast to Bellingham, and up from the water to the boatyard.
July 16 Thursday: We
drove to Seattle for a special dinner with Papa Hank Baila and Lura Lu
Radford. Garlic Scampi at Lakeview Lanai. Wonderful feast. Huge interruption to THE WORK! Hank lived with Lura Lu in her beautiful home on Lake Washington, very near "the pits" for the hydroplane races. At dinner LL announced her plan that Hank would stay with us in Bellingham during the first week of August when the Sea Fair races drew crowds to Lake Washington, and Lura Lu's family would all came to party in her home for the race events.
July 17: I put the first coat of varnish on the red cedar tongue-in-groove pieces that will make the cabin top. The foc’sle bulkheads were ready to be sanded and painted, too. Meanwhile, Richard fit the cabin top beams.
 |
| A graceful winch block unites boomkin and cabin-cockpit sides. |
July 19: Rain all
day.
July 21: Sanding the
cabin top cedar pieces again, I got the final coat of varnish on before
midnight.
July 23: Richard had the cabin lid pieces all screwed on. Amazing what a jolt of security comes with a fixed roof! And it was so beautiful inside: red cedar strips, glassy with varnish, glowing between the shining yellow cedar beams that cross-connect the autumn-gold of those Douglas fir cabin sides. I wish I could give you a photo of that fine sight.
“Now,” he said, “We need hot sun for 4 days.” That would be to condition the layer of Irish felt, stretch the canvas over top, and paint with Gacoflex.
July 24: I sanded the boomkin, while Richard fit the canvas cabin top. All work was interrupted that Friday by visits from Peter Fromm, our favorite photographer; and from Peter Burgess, on a break from building his own boat behind a blackberry patch in Edison.
July 25, Saturday: We
hosted a garage sale out behind the Bag End Trading Company shop wanting to free ourselves from the boxes of dishes,
doodads, pots and pans we'd brought from Hank Baila’s place in Seattle, as well
as any books and clothes we could sell from the apartment to make moving
easier. We cleared $55.
July 29: Another rainy day. Richard wanted to finish the gumwood caps but he had to wait for dry times. We worked inside the cabin, sanding foc’sle stringers and main cabin interior before varnishing all.
During this time, also, Richard had been working to repair the boom on S/V Aura, owned by Alan and Joyce Slade of Red Star Paints. Alan would do the finish painting of Abrazo's hull in trade for the boom repair.
August 1: Sanded the main cabin interior thoroughly: deck beams, cabin sides-back-front, curved bulkhead, mast step. Then we vacuumed out the hull for the first time, getting ready to put the last coats of varnish down in a dust-free interior.
ERROR: During one of
our sanding frenzies I snapped my dusk mask into my eyeball, abrading the cornea
… very painful. Richard had to take time
off to help me get to the doctor’s office where they squirted salve into my eye
and fitted me with a patch. The eye is
the fastest-healing part of the body … the Doc assured me I’d be fit to sand and
varnish again in three days.
Looking back on this time, I remember a story from the
wonderful Seven Arrows, by
Hyemeyohsts Storm. The brave little
character, Jumping Mouse, is faced on two occasions with the need to give up
one of his eyes in order to heal a Greater Being, and the story suggests that
giving up one of your eyes is symbolic of giving up an old way of seeing.
Richard and I both had to trade away bits of our old ways of seeing to accomplish the creation of our new boat. Meeting deadlines, balancing work with time off … Oh, what waves of revisioning are required sometimes!
By 8-2 Richard had scraped the pitched deck, and set the gumwood caps in dolfinite. He plugged the fastenings, and scraped the dolfinite.
8-5 We prepared to
take care of Papa Hank during Seattle’s Sea Fair hydroplane races. Brother Bob flew in from Boise to drive Hank
to Bellingham. Bob’s 12 yr. old son, Rob,
who lived with his mother in Vancouver BC, joined our temporary bed and
breakfast. Poor Robbie had terrible nightmares
his first night sleeping in our apartment; maybe it was the tension among his
relatives, or maybe the constant rumbling roar of Georgia Pacific’s pulp mill
outside.
My varnish work on the interior cabin sides was poorly done;
so Richard decided to do that himself. Despite
the guests, we were both still working at 11 pm when a strange man came along,
wanting to talk. He might have been
drunk, or otherwise mentally impaired.
He just wanted to talk about boats!
8-6 Wilder, Inc began work … at 6 a.m. … on the parking lot next door, including attacking the wall of blackberries that guarded Abrazo’s hull!
Richard started painting at 6:30 a.m.
I varnished the cabin’s port side – outer, that is. Later, we took young Rob to the Bellingham Armory
for an active session of roller skating;
he slept much better that night.
8-7 Richard put a 3rd coat of primer on the hull, then crafted and fit the cap for the cockpit. He knocked together temporary covers for the forward hatch and for the main cabin’s skylight hatch.
8-9 Alan Slade painted the first finish coat. Hank suffered constantly with hiccups.
8-11 The Extra Bailas left for Seattle. Richard booked Launch Day with the boat movers and with Weldcraft's tammy lift for August 28.
8-12 Worked on deck all day. After many coats of varnish on the cabin sides and boomkin, the work is completed with grey paint to maintain Abrazo's "work boat" appearance.
16 days left. Al Slade completed the finish paint and the
waterline.
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