"That'll Buff Out" (October, 2022)

A favorite phrase* that I can recall actually saying to a used car salesman after convincing him to let my Ethiopian friend in Akron take one of his vehicles out on a test drive. I'll always wonder if it really did. Amsale did not buy that car but did eventually improve her driving skills.

* The opposite quote of "That's NOT gonna buff out" is frequently the more appropriate.

The Universe delights in doling out dings, bumps, dents and scratches. Some are physical, some are emotional, but nobody is immune. I suppose I've received my fair share over the years, but by and large, I've been lucky in that most of them have actually buffed out over time. Either that, or the backdrop canvas of the rest of my life has so come to resemble the specifically damaged areas as to become indistinguishable.

Chad, Shayne and Chuck

Both times we've put the boat away in Marinette it has been a bit emotional... a bit sad to be ending the season, and a bit stressful to safely pilot that 35 tons of steel and plumbing to the correct space-time coordinates. We had arranged to arrive at our winter marina on Friday evening, just before the end of shift so that we could put the boat directly into the well for Monday haul-out. The idea was that we could disable the engine and work on the boat all weekend while it was safely tied off and easily accessible from all sides. Friday morning broke beautifully, the wind, rain and high seas from earlier in the week had largely dissipated. Lori's instincts to delay departure paid off handsomely. Our friendly marina guys shoved us off and waved farewell, and insisted we give a mighty blast on our improved (but not quite finished) air horn. We did so.

Halfway into our 60 mile jaunt south, we found we were ahead of schedule, so Lori made a detour to do something she'd always wanted. Her parents kept a lake cottage near Menominee Michigan when we were in college, of which she had (mostly) good memories. It faced almost directly out at Chambers island in Green Bay, and there was a lighthouse facing west that she could always see at night, but never at day because of the terrain and distance. Lori hugged Chambers island relatively close and cruised down the west face of the island till the shy lighthouse finally peeked out from the surrounding trees. Satisfied and still ahead of schedule, she decided to double back and circle the island before making port.

It was still beautiful out, but the circling was nearly a mistake... we were heading into a strong sun in probably the most densely fished portion of Green Bay. The nets were all buoyed properly, but the little buggers were ridiculously hard to spot when backlit as brightly as they were that day. I kept careful lookout from the pilot house roof, but Lori still had to perform emergency maneuvers a couple times to avoid running over the nets. Our more knowledgeable friends later told us that the nets are typically placed a good 8-12 feet down, well below our 4.5 foot draft, but we still feared tangling our roll stabilizer fins in the anchor lines for the buoys.

Chambers Island light

After dodging all the fishing nets and threading the gap between the Chambers Island and the Fish Creek shoals, we headed fairly directly into the Menominee River and waved to all the people walking out to the lighthouse. This time our small VHF radio worked well and we successfully hailed the Ogden Street bridge keeper, who lifted the bridge and let us upstream. From up top, I spotted a fishing boat sneaking up on us from behind the breakwater giving Lori a chance to sound the airhorn again, to our immense satisfaction. All that was now between us and our berth were three warships and a few shoals... were we to make it without incident?? (if you don't know the answer to this question, then you haven't ever read one of our previous trip reports)

Lori cleared the warships under construction off our port side, and expertly dodged the shoal that we saw snag a sailboat as we began the season. I was readying the lines, circling the decks, relaying everything that I could see that Lori could not over our headset radios. The marina crew had heard us hail the bridge and as we got closer, we could see them waiting for us. I continued giving Lori my docking suggestions (that she only occasionally overrules) as we angled towards the marina. The approach to the well is very tight for a boat our size and requires a bit of a zig-zag. She was lined up pretty good and gliding in at a crawl, not much wind or current... things were looking real good.

... on the other hand...

I got both bow lines tossed to the dock crew and then moved to the starboard bow position where the boat's nose was getting uncomfortably close to a piling. Mark was already there with a fender, and I tried to help him by moving one of my fenders further towards the bow intending to place it between the hull and the piling. The boat was barely creeping in at this point, nonetheless, I managed to get my right hand trapped between my fender line and the hull just as the boat grabbed the fender I had just placed and started rolling it forward between the hull and the piling. The 3/8" nylon line quickly became (very) taut as I yanked my hand out from the pinch point.

At this point, Lori ceased receiving my calm and measured instructions regarding rudder, throttle, transmission and bow thruster. I may have said a bad word. I grabbed my right fingers with my left hand and walked to the aft deck deciding that Mark could now be in charge of giving Lori instructions. I just tried to keep calm and to keep blood off the boat. Mark and Lori did fine and finished the job in short order. Lori fetched me an old T-shirt and some ice from our brand spankin' new freezer and got directions to the Marinette hospital. The emergency room there gets solid marks. Despite it being a fairly busy Friday night, they got me treated and discharged in about 90 minutes, including x-rays, stitches and a lot of glue. Diagnosis was significant laceration to my r. middle finger, but no broken bones or serious damage to tendons. A month later now, I'm still working on rehab for both that finger and an additional self-inflicted laceration to my left palm from two weeks earlier.

That night, I'm pretty sure we had some drugs and alcohol to prepare us for the weekend of boat labor. 1st up on the list was to yank out the muffler again... Rick Ness had generously repaired it at the start of the season for us when it was spraying seawater all over the diesel, but warned us that it was pretty rusted out and due for replacement. Lori and I convinced ourselves we could remove it ourselves, 'cause we'd seen it done by others while I was down with Covid in June. [LORI: One major reason for arriving during business hours was to rope one of the boatyard crew

The new one is gonna be SO SHINY!

into helping haul out the muffler. Alas...] It wasn't pretty, but the two of us squeezed that ungainly 140# hunk of steel out of the engine room, up the spiral stairs, out the pilot house door, over the rail and into the car and delivered it to Northern Machine in Escanaba. They promised to recreate the exact size in lighter weight stainless steel over the winter for more money than I choose to think about just now.

I'm afraid that I may have partially inherited from my father an aversion to washing vehicles. To my farmboy dad, tractors were simply tools that were supposed to do a job forever and without being coddled. He would change oil and coolant, but much beyond that, the machine was on its own. Any breakdown was met with an impressive amount of anger and yelling... the least profane of which was the philosophical jewel of "A machine that doesn't work is USELESS." This attitude regarding tractors extended to lawnmowers, chainsaws, cars and pretty much anything else more complex than a rock. Neither my siblings nor I can recall him ever washing a car during our childhood. I've bucked this trend somewhat, and have even been known to be fussy about some of my vehicles, at least during a honeymoon period. Perseverance has good quality original 30 year-old paint, but it has become weathered over the last two seasons on the water and was in need of some love.

So Lori and I took our first swing at paint restoration, bought a dual-action buffer and supplies, and wore ourselves out. We convinced ourselves that the tool vibrations would speed up the process of growing new flesh on my hand injuries. We didn't do expert work, but it does look improved. We'll try to get some more done this winter and when we launch. It was almost

soothing how most of the oxidation melted away to a satisfying shine on the blue contrast striping... that part buffed out. Then there was the paint gouge on the starboard bow from an ill-advised practice session early in our ownership where we learned that it's not so easy to power the boat against mooring lines. We bought touch-up paint, but couldn't get the can to spray properly, so the evidence from that event is still there to remind us. That didn't buff out... yet.

Our last night on the boat was supposed to just be some relaxing and recovery, but we started hearing explosions as we were handsomely dining on the last scraps out of the fridge. It turned out that while we were slaving away with our buffers, Marinette was having their end of the summer bash on an island park just upstream from us. They put on a really nice fireworks display including some clever floating components, and we had great seats for it. We switched on the air compressor and at the grand finale when everybody usually blows their horn, we found that we were apparently the only boat watching. No matter, we made up for the sparse boat attendance in decibels.

As I'm typing this with my damaged hands, I'm admiring all my scars that haven't quite buffed out yet... many date back to my childhood.

• Lacerations to my left wrist: from slipped rasp strokes while hand-crafting hundreds of wooden boomerangs to use and sell... worth it.

• Three broken fingers: from playing scores of games of vintage baseball barehanded... worth it.

• Various cuts and punctures: from a decade of manufacturing robots with the Dexter high-school team... worth it.

• The "dear John" letter: received from my high-school sweet-heart my first week of college... worth it (met Lori the next week)

• Huge loss of time & $: failed attempt to commercialize my patent... worth it (my grandpa would still have been proud)

• Surgical scars from a completely re-built left wrist: from falling off my mother's roof when my brother-in-law wouldn't hold my ladder... OK, not really worth it.

Not everything buffs out, and not everything should.