Page 52 - MN

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Yo Ho Ho and a Can of Varnish
In Seattle, in the 70s, I had a friend named Wind Whitehall. He came to a couple of my shows and we got talking and became buddies. He lived on a 56-foot wooden schooner in Puget Sound. I had never been a boat person, but he took me sailing and I liked it. As usual, I was doing things backwards. Most people learn to sail in dinghies and work up. I started on a large schooner and worked down.
Wind was a carpenter who did extremely fine work, but had no sense of time. He would start a job, get distracted, and finish a few weeks after he said he would, which resulted in some pissed-off customers. He wasn't very successful, but he taught me a lot about sailing and about working on wooden boats. I like working with wood, and sailboats are the ultimate test because there are no right angles. Everything is curved, or a compound curve, and it really is a test of skill. So I would help him and he would take me sailing. We sailed up to the wooden boat festival in Victoria, Canada, and I was knocked out by the beauty of the boats and how nice the people were. In no time, Wind had talked me into buying a boat.
We found a 37-foot sloop named Watauga and I bought it from a family of genuine salt-water sailors. They'd sailed it to Hawaii and back and it was a really sea-worthy boat. It was designed by Ed Monk, and built in 1938 out of Port Orford cedar, with teak decks and cabin, and a spruce mast. It was a beautiful, sound, sailboat. I was a novice sailor, planning to live aboard.
We had a marine surveyor inspect the boat at a shipyard in Lake Union. He could find no major problems, so I bought the boat. They put it back in the water and Wind and I sailed it over to the Ballard Locks to take it out into Puget Sound. The Ballard Locks are kind of a tourist attraction, with people standing around watching the boats go in, the water lowering or rising, and the boats going out the other end. We motored into the lock behind a giant tugboat, and I shifted into reverse to bring my boat to a stop. There was no reverse. Oops. Meanwhile, the tugboat had drifted from the wall and we were coasting in between it and the wall, which was not a good place to be. Crushing my boat was a distinct possibility. Wind was quick, and he yelled up to the lock keepers and soon every line they had