Part 3

Recent example of significantly improved and updated descendant of my first attempt. It probably doesn't leak!

Now enlightened by the sobering realization of the potential dangers of my adult-unsupervised rocketry hobby, I returned to my source of inspiration in search of another, not quite so life-threatening, diversion. Boy's Life published an article a few months later that advertised the joys of sailing wherein it described the potential fun to be found from a sailing surfboard. I was instantly attracted. This was new to me and sailing was something I had never considered. Of course, this was waaaay before wind-surfing became popular and it’s my personal opinion that the result of my pioneering efforts in the field of boardsailing undoubtedly set the groundwork for the birth of the sport!

I'm not sure why the life-threatening aspects of waterborne activities never occurred to me. I suppose that the vigor's and enthusiasm of youth must tend to interfere with sound reasoning. And besides, the article's focus was about having fun and never mentioned a word about drowning. To my credit, I was beginning to display the capacity for learning from my mistakes and this time I sought out and acquired my mother's approval before embarking into this new field. She enthusiastically offered unconditional support by hauling me to hardware, lumber, and fabric stores and even eventually sewed the sail for me under my close supervision. I paid for the project with my own, hard earned money from a paper route.

Because of my earlier exposure to boating and those "wanna-be-out-there" inclinations, I was irresistibly drawn to learn everything that I possibly could about sailing. The Boy's Life article offered a general rundown on the principles of sailing and even had a "blow-up" drawing of the board's construction. I studied and read that article so many times the words began to fade from over-use. It was very rudimentary and didn't look all that complicated… something that I fancied myself capable of building despite being fatherless and only 13 years old.

Each morning when I got to school, I made sure to arrive early enough to have extra time to spend in the school library before class. I read encyclopedia articles about sailing and searched for any adventure books on the subject. Popular Mechanics would often expound on sailing and have related articles. When I was 16, one of my favorite magazines was National Geographic. Besides the attraction caused by puberty to its photos of half naked African tribal women, I found articles with pictures of boats suspended in the absolutely clear, almost transparent waters of the Caribbean. The emeralds and blues were breathtaking and almost unbelievable and I longed to go there someday in my own boat. I discovered the ongoing publications (also in National Geographic) that periodically updated the progress of the circumnavigation of 16 year old Robin Lee Graham. http://www.bluemoment.com/dove.html

I was enthralled. Here was a boy my own age out doing what I felt like I was destined to do. I eventually bought his book titled Dove, and over the years read it numerous times.

(But I digress…)

With the help of a skeptical friend's father and his table saw, I ripped a 4X8 sheet of 1/2 inch plywood in two. I clamped the two 2X8 sheets together and, using straight lines and a jig saw, I graduated the bow to a point and tapered the stern. This gave the illusion of speed and stability and it was even beginning to look like a boat. I scrounged pieces of 1X4 from my friend's father's scrap box to fashion the sides of the hull. The boat had neither rocker nor curvy sheer and probably looked boxy and unstylish. To me, it was a thing of splendor and beauty. The hull was hollow and about 4 inches thick. I screwed the sides to the bottom and installed solid blocking for the mast. I built a box for the centerboard and cut a corresponding slot in the bottom and deck so the board could pass through.

Before attaching the deck, I puzzled for many days on the right way to make it watertight. I was young and didn't know anything about fiberglass, the technology being quite young itself. My doubtful friend, who was by now taking a passive interest in what I was doing, helped inspire me with a technique involving heating several 10 ounce cans of tar until melted. Using gloves, this was then liberally poured over every joint from the inside. It looked a mess but would soon be concealed when I installed the deck.

The deck installation was a bit trickier. Lacking very many other options, I was sold on the tar idea. The process would involve laying a bead of hot tar along the top of the side boards then lay the deck down into it but would necessitate quick action to complete the installation before the tar cooled, which would render it an obstacle rather than a sealant. I again enlisted my dubious friend and we heated two cans of goo and worked both sides at the same time. We set the deck and, while he checked to ensure that it was sufficiently squished into the black mush, I installed a number of screws through the plywood and into the sides. As you have probably already surmised, this boat would eventually be guilty of leaking like a proverbial sieve, offering only short excursions before requiring a lengthy hull purging.

For a mast and boom, I bought a length of hand rail dowelling and installed a number of screw eyes for sail attachment. I wanted a “traditional” sail so mother took me to the Beehive, which was a mercantile store downtown that carried fabrics. I bought a substantial yardage of unbleached muslin which had a tan bark appearance and a number of wire shower hooks that were shaped like a pear. I cut the triangular shape of the sail from the muslin and mother sewed a hem round about. From the scraps, she sewed patches over the wide part of the shower hooks leaving the narrow, latching part of the hook to protrude past the edge of the sail. These were installed down the luff and across the foot and would eventually clip into corresponding screw eyes on the mast and boom.

The only other things missing were the centerboard, rudder, and paint… relatively easy projects compared to the intricacies of the prior work. At this point the reader needs to bear in mind that all of this I did lacking drawings with measurements, no knowledge of, or references to center of lateral resistance or center of effort and their relationship to each other. I had no clue about righting moments or ratios of displacement to sail area.

http://www.2020site.org/canoe/sailboat.html

I did this all from my 13 year old gut despite negative public opinion and based on my faith in the magazine, my mother’s never ending encouragement and faith in me, and my research at the library. The entire project gave me confidence and good feelings of optimism that it would work. And, work it did!

Part 2

Mother did a noble job as a single parent, raising her 5 children of which I was the youngest. We actively attended church every Sunday and "Mutual" during the week. My youth group focused on Boy Scouting, which helped displace the lack of a father in my young life and gave me exposure to "guy things" and an outlet for my juvenile, repressed energy. One perk of belonging to Boy Scouts in those days was a subscription to Boy's Life; a monthly publication designed to entertain an adolescent imagination and motivate creative activities. I remember one article in particular whose theme was an introduction to model rocketry. It listed the main ingredients of the propellant, which was comprised of a good amount of sulfur. I had had some exposure to the flammability of sulfur and was acquainted with the similarity of its odor to that of matches. Deduction? Matches must be made of sulfur.

Having had my creativity recently stimulated by the magazine, I took a pen apart, the barrel of which resembled the shape of a rocket. I then began breaking the heads off the matches and carefully packing them into my little rocket. Fortunately, despite my age and naiveté, I had the smarts to decide that my test flight ought to be done out-of-doors so it would be free to "sore to the clouds."

The rocket's first test flight fell a little short of my expectations. It did manage to get off the ground, however, and I likewise managed to dodge the errant, swerving course of its 10 foot flight around the back yard. The project clearly needed improvements in design and theory, which necessitated the enlistment of several neighborhood friends and their ideas.

One of the boy's older brothers was into pellet guns with CO2 cartridges and was able to secure a spent cartridge from the garbage. It was the near perfect shape we were looking for. Another boy located a short piece of water pipe in his father’s shop, which would serve as a barrel to give our rocket directional stability. This was starting to look like a well founded, researched, and scientific endeavor. Together, the fuel team prepared the match heads and haphazardly used a piece of wire to pack them in as tightly as possible. I shudder today as I think of the potentially catastrophic results had one tamp of that wire generated enough friction to prematurely ignite the sulfur.

With the rocket fueled and ready to fly, the next problem was to secure the pipe in an upward direction so our rocket would go where rockets were supposed to go while giving us access to ignite the fuel. We migrated to the vacant lot behind the house and tried but couldn't agree on a bracing solution. Somebody suggested it but nobody was daring enough to risk holding the launch barrel by hand (another surprisingly mature display of a bit of cautious reasoning) so we laid the pipe across an ant hill, giving it a slightly elevated attitude. We theorized and debated briefly the trajectory of our newly re-titled missile. We concurred that it was aimed at the back of the house but theorized that it was all of 50 yards away and none of us believed that it could possibly get that far. We concluded that if it did, the house would make a nice backstop, serving the purpose of keeping us out of trouble with the neighbors.

Being the experienced "Rocketeer" of the group, I was assigned to light the fuel. I cleared the debris from the back of what was now being termed, the "launch projector" and made a small trail of match heads leading to the motor. This acted as a fuse; the most distant one igniting the next one and so on until the closest one lit the motor. Today, I conceitedly marvel at the ingenuity of a bunch of 8 year olds to come up with a plan that would give me time to evacuate the area. Somebody offered a short countdown, which lent even more authority to our scientific experiment after which I lit the pre-igniter and we all scattered for safety. There was a bright flash and we heard the sound of a prominent and powerful "swoosh." We saw a smoke trail emerging and lingering for about 5 feet from the end of the projector and almost instantaneously heard a loud "whack" come from the back of the house followed by a rapid succession of a whispered, "swuh, swuh, swuh, swuh, swuh" that faded away to nothing. We stared at each other, astonished! We couldn't believe what had just happened.

With loud war whoops and squeals of delight, we ran to the house to see if the missile had survived and to celebrate our success. The first evidence we encountered was a large dent in the siding; a one inch crater by about half an inch deep. We fanned out from there in a scientifically organized search for the remains. We finally found it and, although it was intact, it had ricocheted about half the distance back to the launching pad!

The excitement was apparent in our voices as we exchanged theories and postulated about the magnitude and power of our little projectile, each description out-doing the one previous. We were already formulating plans. "Lets do it again," someone urged!

We began to walk to the house, trading ideas for improvements on the next launching when somebody alerted us that he could smell smoke in the air. We turned around and, to our horror, discovered that the back lot was quickly becoming engulfed in flames. With wide eyes and in a bit of a panic, we ran toward the lot and frantically began stomping it down before it got out of hand. Several alert neighbors came to our aid by dragging garden hoses to the scene and concentrated their efforts in the areas that had, by now, grown in magnitude to a point that foot-stomping was no longer an option. We managed to get it extinguished shortly before the fire department arrived. They surveyed the damages and finally pronounced the scene under control and we all went our separate ways.

As they left, my fellow scientists offered condolences and hopes that I not get into too much trouble for what had just transpired. Later that evening in lieu of nutritious food for my dinner, harsh words were served up. For dessert, threats against my freedoms and well-being were administered. After promises were made, I was relegated to an early retirement to bed and a valuable lesson was taught and learned… and apparently never forgotten!

Just getting started

Part 1

I was born early in life, around the year 1949. I inherited my father's nomadic genes (or so my mother told me) and his aspirations to visit foreign soil. She once related that he had dreamed of moving to Australia and taking advantage of an offer for free land. It was their incentive for immigration. I got the impression that she considered his dream to be more of a curse (something I'm sure my wife can relate to).

He was born in Canada into a farming heritage and learned that the weather up north is harsh and not conducive to easy farming. Of course, farming has never been considered "easy" but an early plowing is next to impossible when the ground remains frozen until late spring. His wayfaring tendencies kicked in and he moved south to eventually buy a dairy farm in the fertile valley of Ellensburg, Washington where I was born and where he lived out his final days. Ironically, throughout his lifetime, his world travels were limited to the Pacific Northwest in the pursuit of an income from carpentry. He did very little farming beyond maintaining his 40 acres, which supported several pastures of alfalfa and a few pigs, chickens, and cows.

After his somewhat youthful passing (he was only 47), mother moved the family to Walla Walla, Washington and accepted a teaching position over second graders, which was all I ever knew her to do. I spent my youth in the landlocked, rolling hills of wheat; an unlikely place to nurture maritime ambitions. As fate would have it, however, the Snake and the Columbia rivers were close by and we were in the habit of occasionally spending time picnicking, swimming, and relaxing on their banks. I believe it was on one of these occasions while, as a lad, I watched the boats crissing and crossing and felt a stirring in my soul and I yearned to be “out there" and the curse was born.