Americans know, if ever travelling outside the country, that most things we do are constrained by the threat of lawsuits. Certainly, every decision I made during my career was colored by it. But we’ll come back to this.
From our floating pier at Front Street Shipyard in Belfast Maine, I can see through Carrie Rose’s pilothouse windows the bejeweled waters out into East Penobscot Bay. A little to my right is the Belfast City Marina and to its right three enormous painstakingly maintained Fourier tugboats. They are painted a somber red with yellow smokestacks displaying a large capital “F”.
Their names are the Captain Arthur Founier (who I met two decades ago, but that is another story), the Fournier Girls and the Fournier Tractor. They hug each other as they hug the side of the city walkway.
To their right is a gathering of harbor buildings in various stages of ramshackle-ness, and to their right Front Street Shipyard’s two massive work sheds. Multiple sailing catamarans, sail and power cruising boats, superyachts and commercial ships are scattered throughout the gravel lot that the sheds empty into.
In a remarkable feat of common sense, the city and shipyard decided to ignore the liability of the common walkway passing right through the working shipyard. It adds to Belfast’s allure to stand a few feet away from the raising or lowering of towering craft into or out of the river.
And slightly back from the launchpad floats Steely Ann. We were told one of the founding partners of the shipyard, the son of the humorous E.B. White, domiciled here when in Belfast. It is constructed of three shipping containers fashioned into a slick piece of architecture and painted the same shade of red as the tugboats.
Belfast is the terminus of the Passagassawakeay River. Access north on the river, except for small boats, is blocked by two bridges. The original low bridge has been turned into a walkway and the new lofty bridge has an unending stream of cars and trucks crossing east and west.
Rivers, at least in my experience, amplify the weather and the tidal currents flowing up and down stream. Through no planning of our own, we always come to dock on one of Front Street’s single floating piers when the current is roiling and the wind is happily gusting. A hard learned lesson is to dock into the current or the wind if the former is absent.
I make a wide turn in the narrow channel and adjust Carrie Rose’s path to negate the effects of the current. Another hard won lesson is to not spare the horsepower while executing this maneuver. I drive the port bow at a 45 degree angle to the dock and at the last second before a collision, spin the wheel hard right and power into (or just next too if lucky) the dock.
If I get it correct, the stern, where Charlotte is stationed, will kiss the pier and allow a line to be secured to the cleat. Now hard in reverse for a second and with the help of the bow thruster counteracting the effect of the wind and current, keep us off the pier. A line tied midships and we are not going anywhere. I leisurely step off the boat onto the pier, and attach the bow line and add other lines as needed.
To assertively drive the boat into the pier places my sympathetic nervous system in high gear. It is the opposite of running from an attacking grisly bear. On the way in I take slow abdominal breaths, so when the time comes I can ignore what my monkey mind is telling me to do and do as Admiral Nelson commanded and go straight at ‘em.
The engine off signals the completion of the docking tasks. Charlotte and I usually find ourselves sitting in the salon soaking up the suddenly calm atmosphere. If we messed up there is a debriefing. If not, then it is best to leave things unsaid least we jinks the next attempt.
I tend not to be superstitious, but let’s be serious, we are on a boat, on the water, where both demons and angels live!
Buck's harbor, Maine
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