Don Quixote

Heading for the Old Salt sea trials

Article by Greg Willihnganz

Now here’s a fool’s errand if ever there was one. Hop a flight from Cleveland to Seattle, drive up to Port Townsend, watch a couple hours of sea trials for a new 15-foot sailboat, and head home. Is this an appropriate use of my daughters’ inheritance? What whim or fancy has pervaded my aged brain cells?

Well, first there’s the romance of the gesture. A few months back, my last boat sailed out of the upper cross-beams of my garage and into the garage of my son-in-law’s best friend. I told him he could do anything he wanted with the boat, except for one thing: “You can’t return it.” So I am boatless for the first time in 60 years. But now I feel the long tendrils of the sea pulling me back to the boating life, or am I just drawn to the genius of this design, a boat so simple it will carry me past those skills I never fully mastered? Regardless, how noble to make a long, pointless voyage in the middle of winter to pay homage to a boat designed for me alone.

And, of course, there is the draw of Port Townsend itself. This mythical, Victorian-era town has a history similar to my own: a robust youth with promises of transcendent success that fell prey to existential factors leading to diminished outcomes and a quietly productive, comfortable old age. We are kindred spirits, this town and me.

In its heyday, the 1890s, Port Townsend aspired to be the premier shipping port on the West Coast. Wealthy entrepreneurs invested in beautiful Victorian architecture that still dresses up the place. But the vaulted hopes of the town’s patrons were dashed when the railroad chose not to extend a line to the end of the peninsula. Other ports soon became prominent leaving this sleepy town behind.

Today the ten thousand Port Townsend residents comprise a mixture of vigorous seniors, hard-working mill hands, gifted artists, and dodgy entrepreneurs. Among the latter is Josh Colvin, no longer a resident, but after 20 years he left his mark on the town. Colvin is the co-founder of Small Craft Advisor and the perpetrator of SCAMP, the pug-nosed bulldog of the sea.

Over the years, Josh has had his finger in many pies (SCA, Duckworks, Glen-L Marine, Kit Boats Co. and whatever consortium of reprobates is cooking up Old Salt) but all deal with small watercraft that take their owners out of their comfortable daily lives and into the inconvenience, deprivation, and hazards of life on the water. “Small Boats—Big Adventure” he writes, and through charm and guile persuades us we should risk life and limb just for the thrill of it.

In its glory days, Small Craft Advisor was a slick, full-color magazine, a rival of the better known Sail and Yachting, but written for the common man who actually uses his boat instead of abandoning it to one of the water-borne parking lots we call marinas. SCA served as a launch pad for SCAMP, which definitely achieved lift-off and today some hundreds SCAMPS are floating about. Josh has now transformed SCA to an on-line format, thus saving the forests and rare-earth inks of China, but sacrificing the revenue from advertisers.

So, what are we to make of his and Brandon Davis’s confoundingly unique latest creation, Old Salt? What should we think of this Rube Goldberg pastiche with a moniker that will make it unsaleable in the post-millennial market? Well, it’s a catboat, isn’t it? I mean, if it quacks like a duck..., but wait, isn’t this a rather curious catboat? Where’s the boom? How does the sail hold its shape? Am I going to be pushing the clew out with my left hand while my right hand holds the tiller? Outhauls serve a purpose, right?

Oh no, we’re being assured, there will be horizontal battens the full width of the sail made of some sort of poly-aliphallic-carbonate that won’t break like an uncooked strand of spaghetti and can easily be reefed—by gathering them into a roll I guess, and that will act like...well, a boom probably, only bigger. I’m wondering if, in a jibe, instead of bumping my head, this configuration will knock me over the side.

Another question: what happened to the disappeared centerboard trunk? What accounts for this uncluttered cockpit? The game’s afoot, Watson. Look in the starboard locker, it’s suspiciously smaller than the port locker. Oh, it’s an off-center centerboard. That won’t have any effect on performance, will it? Or, will it?

And there are other concerns, like...

How exactly do you get the water ballast out of the boat? Is there a hand or foot pump that will require vigorous exertions at the end of the day’s sail? Or do you haul the boat out on the trailer and let it pee at dockside like an untrained puppy with the bladder of a whale?

Despite its jaunty, nautical air, Old Salt is peppered with small innovations that warrant examination. But fear not. I, Don Quixote de la Macho, will mount my trusty steed, a Boeing 737, and brave the poorly air traffic-controlled skies to the shores of Puget Sound where I will take up my lance.

Where’s Sancho Panza when you need him? •SCA•