Building the spiteful lady -
I get asked three to four times a day, "You got that boat in the water yet?"
It's my own fault. By writing this column and telling people the Spiteful Lady was almost complete I created our own demon ('Our' standing for Ray Elliott, Mike Boiduk and myself).
But we've got three excuses why we haven't dropped that wooden contraption into St. Anthony Harbour yet. You can pick any of them you choose and to each I've added a true story of my own incompetence.
The first excuse struck me two weeks ago:
I had clambered aboard the front deck to seal in the windows when I noticed a lovely spider's web. The web connected the boat to the ceiling rafters with mathematical precision - a fragile work of nature's beauty that put our own creation to shame.
"Seems a shame to destroy it just to take that boat out," mused Ray Elliott, the boat's mastermind, to my own agreement.
That lovely web, however, was destroyed in an act of rage when a nail bent off against my direct orders.
This latest incident brings us to the second excuse.
I call it boga - short for boat yoga.
The boga philosophy is an alternative to its Eastern cousin - yoga seems to be for uniting body and mind in peace with the universe.
Boga's not about that.
Rather it's about hitting thumbs with hammers, cutting fingers with handsaws and the consequent cursing that releases all the rage hidden in a man's heart, leaving him an empty smiling shell of a human being for when he leaves his shed and encounters civilized society.
One of many incidents comes to mind as an example of Boga:
The winter before last I was putting on one of the final planks. I had the fire burning in the barrel for warmth, the milled plank clamped around the curved bow, and a cassette of Cape Breton fiddle playing. As I stood there contemplating my plank before nailing it on, I was feeling rather at peace with the universe despite the nor'easter blowing outside.
Then a clamp fell off, the planked snapped out, smacked me hard on the forehead and sent me spinning into the wall.
My sense of peace shattered on the floor along with my half finished bottle of beer.
As I regained consciousness I uttered hateful words I once prided myself on having never used.
But the rage went down with the swelling and left me feeling great.
My rage with shovelling snow, pushing out cars, broken snowmobiles and sunlight deprivation grows over the winter. Consequently, I spend nearly all my free time releasing my rage in the shed - much like fellow boat constructionist Michael Boiduk.
But with spring came sunshine and all the little muscles that had tensed over a long winter relaxed and I had no anger left. So I spent little time at the boat.
I didn't need boga anymore.
Ray, meanwhile, has built a cradle under the boat to haul it out and finished rigging up the steering and motor. He's been busy and with the prospect of launching a boat with a half-completed house looming. I knew I needed some frustration to get me back at it.
So I'm trying to quit smoking, and the consequent buildup of anxiety has provided plenty of fuel.
This brings us to the third excuse:
Seeing as we get asked so much about the boat, we expect the Spiteful Lady to be sized up by many critical eyes.
None of us are proud men, but we're sensitive and if people make fun of our boat one of us might cry. While the original plan was to launch her with only a partially completed house, we're trying to get it looking pretty good.
So it was that I was insulating the walls of the house, where it rises above the deck, with expansion foam. I read the back of the can, skimmed over warnings about wearing gloves, eye protection, not overfilling a closed space and testing the product first to gauge its fantastic expanding properties.
Without further ado I ignored all the can's thoughtful warnings and drilled holes in the plywood walls between the joists and sprayed large amounts of foam into each space. Within minutes foam was pouring from every unsealed orifice of the house. Foam is also sticky - I raced and tripped and rolled in the stuff as I fought my losing battle. I found some a week later stuck under my armpit.
So when will the boat be in the water?
Beats me.
(Aaron Beswick is a reporter with the Northern Pen).
building the
spiteful lady
Aaron Beswick
The house is just about finished on the Spiteful Lady, the motor is installed and a steering mechanism has been rigged up. It's been two years and she's nearly finished, but don't ask when it's going in the water.
.jpg)
.jpg)
