Is boat love a perversion?

ANOTHER DAY, another Dear John letter. This one comes from Susan, in Seattle. She says her marriage is being threatened by boats. Can I help?

Well, Susan, it’s not often that I’m asked for advice in marital matters, but some years ago I received a similar plea from a boat widow in California, and this is what I told her. I hope it will help you, too:

DEAR JOHN – I need your help. I have been happily married for 10 years but I’m worried my husband is becoming a pervert. He has started secretly looking at boats. I do my best to satisfy him in every way, but I have found a yachting magazine hidden under the cushions in the den. It has a double-page spread of a gorgeous Hinckley.

He also keeps a well-thumbed cover from Good Old Boat magazine in his wallet. It features a shapely C&C 30 having a bottom job. I know he quietly goes on the Internet and watches videos on YouBoat.com and AdultBoatClips.com. There are advertisements showing provocative Catalinas saying: “Call us, we are in your city.”

Last weekend he went to Las Vegas with a bunch of guys from his office. I believe it’s legal in Nevada to consort with boats aged over 18. When I tackled him about it, he said they went to see the spring flowers. What should I do? —Cathy W., Dorchester, Calif.

Cathy, Cathy, please calm down, it’s all perfectly normal. Young boys straight out of puberty take pictures of boats they’ve got friendly with, and send them to each other on their cell phones. Your husband’s actions don’t mean he doesn’t love you. Men have been lusting after boats for centuries. Mostly they just look. Rarely do they touch. They live in a fantasy world. They mean no harm. If I were you, I would get advice. The two of you should make an appointment with a sympathetic yacht broker and discuss the problem. It’s just possible that a small deposit and reasonable monthly payments will solve everything. Good luck.

Today’s Thought

Love is a fiend, a fire, a heaven, a hell

Where pleasure, pain, and sad repentance dwell.

—Richard Barnfield, The Shepherd’s Content.

Tailpiece

Notice on a maternity room door:

“Push. Push. Push.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Is it love or endurance?

DO YOU TRULY LOVE your boat, or do you take it for granted?  I ask because Barbara Marrett says she never felt much affection for the boat she owned with her husband, John Neal, until they sold it.

Marrett makes this confession in Mahina Tiare: Pacific Passages, a book about the American couple’s extensive South-Sea wanderings in a 31-foot Hallberg-Rassey sloop. They eventually sold Mahina Tiare and parted with her in Brisbane, Australia.  By then, Marrett had sailed many thousands of deep-sea miles in her.

“Mostly I’ve just gotten impatient with her inconveniences,” Marrett says, “her small, tightly-packed spaces. I’ve cursed her many times but never spoken affectionately to her.

“And now that she is almost gone, I look lovingly at her sleek lines, at the wood I worked so hard to keep varnished. I pat her cushions and rub my hand over the soft curved teak handrails. I notice the subtle details which make her special, a cut above every other boat.

“Mahina Tiare is where John and I had our first date, our honeymoon. Even I, who didn’t care for boats, was impressed with her when I first stepped aboard on a cold December night. She felt warm and safe, like I felt in John’s arms that first night when he hugged me.

“She’s taken us to magical places and I never thanked her. Hurricanes, white squalls, we’ve tied up in impossible harbors, impossible anchorages like Easter Island and Pitcairn, but she has never lost an anchor, blown out a sail. I ran her into Greenhithe Bridge in New Zealand, broke her forestay, but she heeled over sideways and managed to slip us through without losing her mast.

“John always treated her gently and lovingly, but I just took her for granted. John earned her, but I married her along with John, competing for affection until slowly I spent as much time on her as John did. She has become home and I have learned the patience to live aboard her. She represents the happiest years of my life and with her passing, that chapter closes.”

Competing for affection, the lady said. Ah yes, there lies the rub for many cruising couples. If I had to guess, I’d say that men love their boats, and women do their best to endure them for the sake of the marriage. I know that’s not always true but I suspect it happens often enough to make long-term cruising an endurance test for many reluctant women.

Today’s Thought

An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have: The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.

— Maurice Chevalier

Tailpiece

“What happened to your ear?”

“Well, I was ironing my shirt when the phone rang and I accidentally put the iron to my ear.”

“Bummer. And what happened to the other ear?”

“Well, I had to call 911, didn’t I?”

 

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Is it love or is it lust?

DOWN AT THE DOCKS the other day I overheard an argument about whether or not you can love a boat. One man insisted that he was looking for a Folkboat to buy because he had “fallen in love with her lines.” His friend insisted that it wasn’t possible to fall in love with a boat. “It’s lust, not love,” he said. “It’s desperately wanting something you haven’t got.”

Listening to them made me wonder whether I’d actually been in love with any of my boats. I would probably have said yes; at least until I’d thought about it a bit more. I have had boats that almost took my breath away when I looked at them, boats that would make me stop after I left them, and turn back to stare at them. If that isn’t love, what is it?

Well, here is what Louis de Bernieres has to say about love. He’s the author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin:

“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being ‘in love,’ which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being ‘in love’ has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”

He’s talking about the love of one human for another, of course, but that surely doesn’t preclude the possibility that a human may love a boat, even if the boat doesn’t love the human back. Love doesn’t have to be reciprocal. A man can love a woman with passion unrequited. And love does not necessarily involve sex. Nor does lust for that matter, though either may. I’m thinking of the love of a father for his son, for example, or of a wife for her daughter.  And lots of people say they love their dogs; at least they think they do, but they probably haven’t thought about it much.

As for lust, here’s what author C. Joybell C. has to say:

 “I don't define lust as anything evil or nasty. Lust as defined by me, is the feeling of desire: a desire to eat cake, a desire to feel the touch of another's skin moving over your own skin, a desire to breathe, a desire to live, a desire to laugh intensely like it was the best thing God ever created . . . this is lust as defined by me. And I think that's what it really is.”

And a desire to own a pretty boat, of course.

But I think Louis de Bernieres brings more light to bear on the subject. I think he’s saying that love is what should remain after lust inevitably runs its course. So, in fact, what starts off as temporary lust eventually turns into permanent love (of a sort) if you’re lucky. In which case my boats have generated in me both lust and love — but always unrequited.

Today’s Thought

 On the whole, I haven’t found men unduly loath to say, “I love you.” The real trick is to get them to say, “Will you marry me?”

— Ilka Chase, This Week, 5 Feb 56

Tailpiece

The nice thing about kleptomania is that if you suffer from it, you can always take something for it.

^{(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)}

When love goes wrong

LADIES — is your man cheating on you? Does he, perhaps, have a secret love? Could that love be a boat? Could he have a boat mistress hidden somewhere? Or could he be actively looking for one? Yes, I assure you, he could.

Here’s how you can tell:

1. Have you noticed changes in his appearance lately? Are there spots of anti-fouling paint on his sneakers? Does his T-shirt smell of diesel fuel? Is there waterproof grease on his jeans? How about varnish in his hair? Hmmm . . .

2. Is he practicing reef knots on his shoelaces and bowlines on his necktie? Hmmm . . .

3. Is the cunning so-and-so being too nice to you? Showering you with gifts, texting you every hour to say how much he loves you? Hmmm . . . Men don’t do that after the honeymoon. Not unless they have a secret love.

4. Is he using the internet non-stop, spending hours on Boatworld .com and MarineTrader.com? Is he chatting on the Cape Dory website? Check his browser history. Is he wiping it clean after every session? Hmmm . . .

5. Does he no longer seem attracted to women?  Has he stopped buying Playboy and suddenly subscribed to Cruising World? Hmmm . . .

6 .  How about your sex life? Is he losing interest? Does he have lots of nighttime headaches? Does he have a picture of a  sleek 30-Square Meter or a curvaceous Westsail 32 in his wallet? Hmmm . . .

7.  Is he extra grumpy around the house? Does he deliberately start fights so he can storm out of the house? Hmmm . . . You know where he’s going, don’t you? Straight down to the marina to lust over a 30-year-old Catalina 30 tall rig going for $17,500 with a low-hours diesel engine.

But fear not, madam. Remain calm. Tell him of your suspicions and be prepared for him to deny them. Also be prepared to deal with the consequences if he won’t come clean. Divorce is inevitable because men don’t change, especially the ones who cheat and run away with flighty boats. But divorce needn’t last forever. He’ll probably come crawling back and plead to be forgiven as soon as he receives the first bill from the boatyard. Then you, madam, will be in the pound seats.

Today’s Thought

How do you know love is gone? If you said that you would be there at seven and you get there by nine, and he or she has not called the police — it’s gone.
— Marlene Dietrich, ABC, Doubleday 1962  

Tailpiece

The works manager phoned the railroad station.
“Are you the passenger section?” he asked.
“No, honey,” purred a female voice, “I’m the goods.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Northern love affair

I WAS ASKED the other day by someone who has spent a long time in the sub-tropics: “What do northern sailors do in winter?”

Well, some go skiing. Some flee south in RVs. Some go away on cruise ships. These are the dilettantes, the dabblers, the amateurs, the superficial tire-kickers.

And before you accuse me of using big words you can’t understand, let me explain that a dilettante is someone who follows sailing for an amusement, a diversion. Someone who doesn’t take sailing half seriously enough.

The real sailors are reading books of ocean adventures. They’re studying boat plans and looking at ads for Herreshoff 28 ketches. They’re making plans to get time off from their partners, and continue their clandestine affairs with their boats.

They’re poking holes in the shrink-wrap so they can get inside and sit on the saloon couch for a bit, maybe making a cup of coffee on the stove and searching for the half-bottle of rum they hid in the medicine cabinet. Just to fortify the coffee, of course.

They check the bilges for water and crank the motor over half a turn by hand, so the impeller doesn’t take a fatal set. They check that there’s air circulating, to deter mold. They switch on the VHF, listen to forecasts of raging storms, and grin to themselves, snug in their winter refuge.

They read with delight the logs of their past year’s cruising, and dream of those lovely lazy breezes and warm seas. They play back in their minds, time and time again, the peaceful nights at anchor, the early-morning call of the loon, and the shrill cry of a kingfisher carrying breakfast back to a forest of open beaks.

The thing about serious sailors, as opposed to those dilettantes, is that they are in love with their boats. They can hardly bear to be parted from them. They tend and care for them. They talk to them as if they were flesh and blood. They nurture them. They praise their good qualities and pardon their faults.

And in that definitive demonstration of ardour, they look back, long and hard, when they part. That’s what real sailors do in winter.

Today’s Thought
A man nearly always loves for other reasons than he thinks. A lover is apt to be as full of secrets from himself as is the object of his love from him.
— Ben Hecht

Tailpiece
“What’s the special today?”
“Ve got fine zoop today, sir. You like some zoop, mebbe?”
“Zoop? What’s zoop?”
“You don’t know what is zoop? You know what is stew, yes? Vell, zoop is same ting, only looser.”

Conquering dangerous love

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz/How beautiful my sailboat is.

AFTER A LONG COLD winter deprived of sailing, the time for renewal and reaquaintance has arrived. Time to take up again with the old flame.

Have you caught yourself marveling at how beautiful your boat is? Are you constantly planning to make it even prettier? Does it make you sigh and bring on that deep feeling of joy when you close your eyes at night and remember what it looks like? Do you show pictures of it to your friends?

Be careful, my friend, you may be in love. Love is dangerous. Love is temporary insanity, a mind, soul, and body out of control. Love is blind to all faults. It lives only in the present, ignoring the lessons of the past and warnings about the future. Love has no strings on its purse; it never balances its checkbook. This is a recipe for several disasters — definitely financial, possibly mental, probably social.

What to do about it? Well, this is serious. The usual advice won’t suffice. Deep breaths and cold showers don’t make it.

The answer is Controlled Love, Restrained Affection. You must act like a Brit with a stiff upper lip. Don’t wear your emotions on your sleeve. Conceal them. Stay away from booze, which loosens inhibitions; reject the glittering temptations of West Marine; ignore yachting magazines whose airbrushed pictures and panting descriptions are calculated to incite unbridled lust and take wicked advantage of the love-lorn.

When you can regard your boat purely as a form of transport, as a faithful dog without legs, as a means of keeping you dry when you venture out into the restless wet, you will be cured.

How soon will this be? Frankly, nobody knows. It hasn’t happened yet.

Today’s Thought
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
—Francis Bacon, Essays: Of Beauty

Tailpiece
“Doc, I need help.”
“What’s up?”
“I’m 88 and still chasing women.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I can’t remember why.”

Advice to the lovelorn

IT’S NOT OFTEN that I’m asked for advice in marital matters, but I could hardly ignore this plea from a boat widow in California:

DEAR JOHN – I need your help. I have been happily married for 10 years but I’m worried my husband is becoming a pervert. He has started secretly looking at boats. I do my best to satisfy him in every way, but I have found a yachting magazine hidden under the cushions in the den. It has a double-page spread of a gorgeous Hinckley.

He also keeps a well-thumbed cover from Good Old Boat magazine in his wallet. It features a shapely C&C 30 having a bottom job. I know he quietly goes on the Internet and watches videos on YouBoat.com and AdultBoatClips.com. There are advertisements showing provocative Catalinas saying: “Call us, we are in your city.”

Last weekend he went to Las Vegas with a bunch of guys from his office. I believe it’s legal in Nevada to consort with boats aged over 18. When I tackled him about it, he said they went to see the spring flowers. What should I do? —Cathy W., Dorchester, Calif.

Cathy, Cathy, please calm down, it’s all perfectly normal. Young boys straight out of puberty take pictures of boats they’ve got friendly with, and send them to each other on their cell phones. Your husband’s actions don’t mean he doesn’t love you. Men have been lusting after boats for centuries. Mostly they just look. Rarely do they touch. They live in a fantasy world. They mean no harm. If I were you, I would get advice. The two of you should make an appointment with a sympathetic yacht broker and discuss the problem. It’s just possible that a small deposit and reasonable monthly payments will solve everything. Good luck. (And don’t call me, I’ll call you, okay?)

Today’s Thought
Love is a fiend, a fire, a heaven, a hell
Where pleasure, pain, and sad repentance dwell.
—Richard Barnfield, The Shepherd’s Content.

Tailpiece
Notices we noticed:
On a maternity room door:
“Push. Push. Push.”

Do you love your boat?

ARE YOU IN LOVE with your boat? I ask not out of any mawkish desire to pry into your private affairs, but for a very practical reason. If you are in love with your boat, you need to snap out of it. You need to fall out of love with your boat. At least until the economy improves.

Of course, it’s not always easy to tell if you love your boat. There are varying degrees of love. You can be ecstatically in love with a new prom dress, or staidly and comfortably in love with an old pair of hiking socks. There are different phases of love, from hot boil to low simmer. Love is temporary insanity. Love is hormones out of control. But above all, love is giving. Giving everything you can. In normal human beings, that includes giving your body. In the case of boat owners, it means new sails, new winches, new electronics, a new engine, new everything you can imagine to make your boat happy and love you back. Love is Nature’s way of separating a yachtsman from his money.

Whoa! In these hard economic times, love is madness. You have to stop maxing out your cards with gifts for your boat. You must pull yourself toward yourself and become a calm, rational human being again, otherwise you’ll end up in debtor’s prison where no boats are allowed.

Easy for me to say? Well, hold on, I can help you here. I can tell you how to fall out of love with your boat until the economy improves. It’s all to do with remembering.

—Remember the time she wouldn’t tack, got into stays and embarrassed you in front of the yacht club that wouldn’t accept you as a member?
—Remember when the engine quit just as you were about to pick up the mooring buoy and the cover was still on the mainsail and you hit three boats sideways on before you could get the anchor overboard?
—Remember when you got seasick and your mother-in-law didn’t? Remember how she laughed?
—Remember when you came last in the Wednesday evening race because your boat ran into a big submerged plastic bag and deliberately wrapped it around the keel?
—Remember when the oil pipe split and spewed hot oil all over the engine compartment?
—Remember when the alcohol stove flared up, removed your eyebrows, and burned the galley curtains?
—Remember when your cousin with diarrhea blocked the head with wodges of toilet paper?

Think on these things. Remember the bad times. Ask yourself why you’re in love. Ask yourself if you really should be. And stop buying presents. Enough already. It’s not a comfortable old hiking sock. It’s only a boat.

Today’s Thought
But he who stems a stream with sand,
And fetters flame with flaxen band,
Has yet a harder task to prove—
By firm resolve to conquer love! —Scott, The Lady of the Lake

Tailpiece
I believe it was Kierkegaard who once remarked that the trouble with life is that it can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

Nevertheless, some people do live in the past and they tell me it has one great advantage – it’s a lot cheaper.