Captain Rick

An American classic, in my inner ear

Rick is aiding immeasurably in bringing Sea Nymph up to “shipshape and Bristol fashion”, and me up to a level where I don’t endanger myself, or other innocent bystanders on Penobscot Bay.

Whether or not he consciously realizes it, I think the point of what Captain Rick is doing, is to install a mini-Captain Rick in my head. There will soon come a day where Rick won’t be around to bark commands, and issue soothing snippets of seagoing wisdom, to guide my way.

At some point, I’ll be alone out there, perhaps tying a fender to the pushpit, or something more serious, and mini- Captain Rick will be in my head saying “Never just a clove-hitch. Always finish off with two half hitches. That way it’s not going anywhere”. That’s how I’ll know that the mini-Captain Rick installation is verified, and operational.

It’s the same as when you have your Python language core implemented on a mainframe, and you need to port it to a smaller processor. I am that processor and Captain Rick is the mainframe. These days, I can feel the bits and bytes being assembled in my working memory. We’re talking about accessible, fast memory, or it’s simply too late, the moment of crisis or decision will not be met. Long term, slow memory is fine for armchair sailers, but here we are talking about the here and now, where Captain Ted will have to spread his wings.

I’m starting like my mini-Me download theory, for it’s explanatory power, across a range of cases. For example, I found out that the general manager of Journey’s End Marina, Mike Rossiter, is descended from regional shipwright nobility. His grandfather or great grandfather built the 100 year old Total Loss (aka the Mercantile) on the beach upta Swan’s Island. Now I know why Mike, who’s only 40 of so, has a decidedly gruff, no-nonsense competent demeanor. It’s gotta be the download from great-grand-pappy. To build a 100 foot schooner, white oak over white oak, on a beach at Eggemoggin, he needed some powerful juju. Probably got it from his ancestors. It stands to reason that Mike is now packing a strain of the same stuff. I advise that you should think twice about nepo babies. Who knows what downloads they hold inside.

To give you a taste of the Rossiter download, I texted Mike at the yard and said that I’d like to go ahead and have him pull Sea Nymph’s substantial trailer over to Sail, Power, and Steam Museum (SPSM) , about 3/4 mile away. He was sitting at SPSM with the load, impatiently waiting for me, when I drove directly there, and I swear he must have teleported. In the time where I had driven that short distance, he had somehow made the snap decision to do the job himself right away, hook up my heavy trailer, and gotten there ahead of me. For all I know he had stopped off for a quick coffee break along the way. It was uncanny.

Back to the topic of mini-Me downloading, this is why people love to teach, I suppose. It’s a form of immortality, or perhaps at least some sort of influence beyond the grave. The other day, I told my grandkids, about how aliens from Mars only have 5 fingers, and so they count “One, Two, Three, Four, Ten”, and so on. Later that afternoon Iris told one of my neighbors about it, and about how aliens from Venus have two fingers, and that’s why they count “1, 10, …”. My download to her had taken hold, and with luck, will outlive me.

I first met Captain Rick aboard the Antarna, about 50 years ago. I was one of the hippies, and he most decidedly was not. His hair was cut short, in a crew, and there was a certain manner he had that told you he was living in a different world, without marijuana and Jefferson Airplane, etc. Everything he exuded was in contrast to my California surfer, Exeter preppie vibe. He was all about New Jersey, and being a nautical nerd. I was more Late Pequot Yacht Club, with a California twist.

But even then I sensed that we weren’t so different. This nautical adventure we were embarked on bridged those superficial divides. Something strong here, that we both loved although at this stage his was a deeper love. For instance, he unironically used the feminine gender when referring to any craft beyond a yawlboat. I couldn’t have done that convincingly, so I didn’t even try. Beyond that kind of thing, he simply knew what he was doing. He already had a knife strapped to his belt, where he could get to it in an instant. All my fellow sea cadets would soon adopted this affectation, but not on the first day, the first week. It would take a little time to inhabit this new role.

Rick wore a knife, but he was by no means violent, in any kind of lethal way. Even now, though he’ll admit that he had become accustomed to settling matters with his fists. That’s one reason why his father had sought out this unusual school on a ship: to keep Rick away a habit of fisticuffs.

Me, I’d never propelled my fists forward, or any other direction, in anger. To my embarrassment, I’d once told my Exeter school chums that I’d never been in a fistfight but I’d “socked a lot of people”. I have no idea where that ridiculous assertion came from.

The magic of Antarna worked on us all, and within a couple of months, we were scampering up the rigging, wearing rope belts, and sleeping up on deck.

In the context of our small school, Rick and I led separated lives aboard the Antarna. I came with my own extended cohort, who had arrived aboard via a process of chain migration. I was the 2nd link in our chain, which started with Brendan, who independently researched the existence of this offbeat school. Brendan was one of my best friends at Exeter, and we had belonged to its flow child adjacent counterculture. At the end of our senior year, while others were making college choices, Brendan told me about this school on a ship. It’s embarrassing to me to admit that I was drawn to this idea, partially via Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Wooden Ships. I decided to sign up as well. I told Phil, and then Phil and I went up to Acadia, and met Pogo, who we also told. Then Pogo’s friend Jane asked if she could come along as well. And so it went. Kinda like the Wizard of Oz for entitled American teenagers, with Antarna as our Emerald City.

Rick kept mostly to himself, at first. He did befriend the bosun, David Zwang, and David’s wife Bonnie, though. He used to go up to Dave and Bonnie’s cabin in the foc’sle and “talk ships”, a truly nerdy way to while away the evening. Meanwhile, my Exeter friends and I, with a certain growing retinue, were passing our evenings under the poop deck, making up goofy songs.

I’ll save those stories for another time, since they don’t seem so relevant here. (I refer the curious reader to my shipmate Elizabeth Garber’s book, for a deeper dive.)

My point is, I liked Rick perfectly well, although we hung out in different circles. Mind you, there’s only so far away you can be from someone on a 350 foot square rigger. Besides, Rick was one of the responsible, capable ones, and I count myself in that number. We can draw a circle around this capable group, for now, with a dotted line. I could have more to say, at some point, about the dotted line group.

Now it’s 50 years later, and our courses were long set and followed. After a stint of boatbuilding, followed by years and years of college, I spent the bulk of my career in software. Meanwhile Rick went on the the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, and shipped out for a while. He decided that life wasn’t for him, though, and spent a few decades as an airline pilot. In later life, he served as first mate on the Matinicus run of the mailboat, up here in Maine, and eventually he and his wife resolved to settle up in Rockland.

Rick and I have talked about the question of whether we were basically the same people then as we are now. Our consensus is “yes”. Rick is still a by the book boat nerd, and I haven shaken out all my residual hippy. Whatever got planted by Antarna though, has spread it’s roots more widely, even if the plant itself is more apparent with him, than it is for me.

This became quite apparent when I encountered a showstopper issue upon arriving in Rockland, at the Journey’s End Marina. Somewhere between Lake Champlain and Rockland a vital piece of the roller furler gear went missing. I immediately began researching the part, and I was looking at about $500 worth of hardware, plus shipping, putting in a delay of one to two weeks.

Rick leapt into the breach, and began improvising like a madman. Suddenly it began to appear that the day might be saved. He worked up a solution involving a short length of chain and a couple of shackles. With 24 hours, we were back up and running, and it’s not even clear whether I should bother ordering the part this season.

Rick and I are thick as thieves now. We have fallen into a kind of friendship that doesn’t some so easy to a Boomer WASP like myself. I have assume the role of student, and Rick, of teacher, and for now, the relationship is working. I have to send off this blog post, because I need to get out to the boat. Captain Rick will be wanting to see some progress, and I have sails to bend on, and solar panels to put up./