MALABARBARIANS GRATEFUL
by Brett Beardslee

As I write this, Malabar X is quietly slumbering the winter away in Newport, dry docked and shrink wrapped, wondering what she has done wrong. One would think that a lady as beautiful as she, from such an upstanding family, would winter somewhere warmer with water on her belly and sun on her spars. It isn’t because we don’t want her to.

My name is Brett. I am first mate on the old girl for her summer job as a cattle boat on Seneca Lake in central New York state. I know it’s not polite to refer to daysail passengers as “cattle”, but after about the thousandth time of hosing chicken wing sauce and italian dressing off the teak decks, sanding cooler and camera gouges out of the teak railcaps and hatches and pulling things I wouldn’t even try to flush through a house toilet out of her polished bronze head, cattle is what they start to seem like. They are our bread and butter. I just wish they’d keep their bread and butter on their sandwiches.

Malabar X was re-launched in May of 2002 after a keel up restoration that basically entailed burning the old hull and starting from scratch. I could ramble on and on about her construction and the 20,000 plus man hours it took to make her what she is today, but anyone who’s interested should just make an effort to see her. She is all that plus a bag of chips. What I’d like to do instead is explore the age old dichotomy of money vs. fun. Why does the really fun stuff have to cost so much money, and why do the really fun people not have any? I mean, it’s not like we’re starving or anything, but it sucks to love something so much that you can’t possibly afford. And she loves us too, that’s the kicker. We sail her right on the edge every second and we lavish attention on her that we don’t even show our friends and family. She’s supposed to be for sail, not FOR SALE!

Doug Hazlitt, our fearless captain and Malabar’s savior, is absolutely unashamed to wedge his foot in the door of any lending institution foolish enough not to lock it. He is friendly, talks fast, and dreams big. His family also owns a winery, which doesn’t hurt. Good wine is a great ice-breaker. It is people like Doug who can rally people like me to commit huge amounts of time and effort to non profitable activities. Without people like Doug, people like me would never get to play with such cool toys. God bless him.

We’re still coming down from the thrill of our last adventure which was sailing her in The Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race. It was a solid month to get her there, win our class and get back.. It took forty three cases of beer to finally purge the fresh water out of our landlocked livers and get some salt in our veins, but we got her done. Our plan is to eventually drink enough beer to pay for the boat with the money from our returnables, so we can’t afford not to drink.

The best part of The Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race is the people. We are not alone! There are people from all over the country, the world even, who are just as ridiculous as us! And when we’re all together in a bar, we look like the biggest bunch of misfits you ever saw. I never wanted to be able to grow a beard so bad in my life! I even took to rubbing my face with table salt to make it redder. To be shown the kind of hospitality we were by people like Lane Briggs and his friends is an amazing feeling. It’s like meeting family you never knew you had. In the information age in which we live, it’s easy to feel lonely on a wooden schooner, but it turns out there are other people who can’t lay them to rest either. It’s a beautiful thing to get us all together for something as positive as this race.

In order for us to get to the coast, we have to go through a series of twenty nine locks on the Erie Canal to the Hudson River. In October, it is the coldest place on earth. The first thing we did was snap the foremast while pulling it, almost ending our trip before it even started. But people tend to rally around grand adventures and old wooden boats. It took a lot of beer and epoxy, but we got her fixed. The only shower we got on that leg of the trip was outside, at night, with a borrowed garden hose from a construction site. In New York we had to replace our bowsprit heel iron bolts with larger ones as they were bent to the point of breaking. Seneca lake can get pretty ugly, but we’re talking about the Atlantic Ocean here. After a raucous night of breakdancing and tackling each other into piles of trash on the street corners ,we came to the conclusion that the absolute best way to see New York City is from a quarter mile off shore.

Off the coast of New Jersey we made friends with the crew of the schooner Adventurer (a MalabarVI sister ship). It was great to see them both side by side bobbing on their hooks like a page out of classic yacht history. They seemed like old friends. John Alden would have been proud.

I’m pretty sure we won the pre-race party, although the Adventurer guys made a strong showing. It certainly felt like we had the next day... Sailors like their cocktails; schooner sailors especially. There’s a small window of drunkenness before unconsciousness when you actually forget how in debt you are, and a boozey slumber can drown out the normally deafening sound of your boat rotting.

The race was a joy. We knew the boat was fast, but had never had a chance to sail her against her peers. We were not disappointed. All those schooners under sail at once is truly an awesome sight. I will never forget crossing bows with the Pride Of Baltimore in the middle of the night, her massive rig backlit by the moon, both crews just hooting and hollering, hard to weather and on top of the world. We crossed our finish line at Windmill Point about three in the morning and watched the Pride slip out of sight as we just got pounded on our nose. There is a lot to be said for size (unless, of course, you’re paying dockage). At some point, exhausted, I crawled into my dark bunk and curled up next to my warm girlfriend only to find that she was the ship’s carpenter, Cody. He is a wonderful craftsman, but man his beard is scratchy! Denise was passed out under the fisherman stays’l which we had struck about an hour before. I was too tired to care. Our Jolly Roger was in tatters. Everything that was once stowed neatly was now in a heap on the cabin sole. At the worst of it, I had taken blue masking tape and made labels for our wet Carhart jackets that said Helly Hansen, Henri Lloyd, and Gill. Even those had blown off.

I’m pretty sure we won the post-race party too, although the crews of Woodwind and the Sally B. made us work for it. Nothing beats standing around in a circle with a bunch of other drunken sailors singing bawdy sea chanteys. Wouldn’t it be great if our world leaders did that every now and then?

We were blown away by the generosity shown us by everyone involved in this race. We were treated like family by everyone we encountered. The party was great. The food was great. The people were great. To feel like you’re home when you’re so far from it is wonderful. Especially when you haven’t washed your clothes in two weeks and you lost your toothbrush the first day out. I guess that’s what happens when people pool their efforts to do something positive. It’s more than a race, it’s a big fat effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. You can feel good about it. See? Pirates can be nice!

As for the dichotomy of money vs. fun, I think it’s obvious which is worth more. Hopefully Doug will kick in some more doors and we’ll be back next year. If not, then “Oh, well”. Another classic schooner has been saved, and she’s given us way more than we’ve given her. You can’t put a price on thatAnyone interested in Malabar X’s construction should visit cayugawoodenboatworks.com

 

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