Brush Creek Yachts ~ Concentric Circles and Paradoxes
(This is a post started last August; am just getting back to it.)
It will take nearly four hours of driving to get there, to get where the boat is, a boat built by hand in the loft of an old barn. We head out at sunrise while there’s still dew on the grass.
We don’t go east toward the coast, though, where most boats and builders of them live. Instead, we turn and go the other direction – to the southwest into the mountains. Instead of the land of crabs and oysters and skipjacks, we’re going deep into coal and bluegrass and moonshine country.
After 200 miles of driving we’ll still be in Virginia, though just barely. From south of Fries it’s just 10 miles as the crow flies to the Carolina line, and 20 to Mount Rogers, the highest peak in Virginia. This is where Marvin Spencer, proprietor and master craftsman of Brush Creek Yachts, lives and builds boats.
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Logging as an Art Form
Came across this video a few days before Christmas. Just found it again.
Cutting timber on steep mountainsides in Switzerland. So steep that no conventional equipment can be used. It’s all done by hand, with chain saws and hand jacks.
The trees have to be partially felled, carefully shaped, prepped and aligned, so when finally broken loose with the jack they shoot straight down the mountainside to the water below.
Once there, the logs are caught and corralled, then chained together in a big boat-shaped raft and towed down the lake.
INS HOLZ (IN THE WOODS) from mythenfilm on Vimeo.
Winter Harbor ~ Nocturnes
It’s almost time to go. In the morning the Melonseed will get stuffed with gear, leaving a little room to skootch back and forth, tacking upwind all the way back. The tide will be out. Lots of short tacking. Another front is coming through, bringing rain. I’ll try to slip out ahead of it.
Most will wait another day to squeeze out the last few hours they can before heading back. A few plan to leave soon after I do. Beating my way out into the headwind, I see Wesley in his skiff on his way to the island to pick them up. He nods approval as he goes by.
Winter Harbor ~ Ephemeral Arts
I made some things. Did you find them?
Terri had to go back early. We sailed over in the Melonseed and dropped her at the marina. When I got back, she texted clues to find things she’d hidden around the island.
It wasn’t that hard. I found her trail a few steps from the kitchen door, and easily followed her meandering path for a quarter mile through the dunes. With so few people on the island, a single series of footprints is like a story written in large print. Here she stopped to ponder a pile of bones, here at a clearing to take in the view of the marsh, enticed from here to wander in a grove of pines.
Winter Harbor ~ Blind Woman in a Snow Storm
7 Down: Where Leonardo da Vinci is buried.
Oh yes, I know that one. Leonardo da Vinci is buried in the chapel at Amboise. A chateau in the Loire.
How did you know that, without even reading a New Yorker?
I always remember, because it reminds me of the night I met that charming blind woman in the middle of a snow storm.
Was that when you were in France?
No, not in France. In Fluvanna County. I was house sitting for a friend at Christmas. A big snow storm came through. I let the dog out before bed, and it did not return. I got in the four wheel drive car and drove around looking for him. Down the road, I suddenly came upon a woman wading through the snow. She was wearing Long Johns, a bath robe, and a sort of antique broach.
Excuse me, ma’am, but can I give you a ride?
Oh please, I hope you can help. (She looked a little sideways as she talked. I thought from the glare of the headlights, but realized she was blind.) My husband has rearranged the whole library, and we can’t find the one book to settle this argument. Do you happen to know where Leonardo da Vinci is buried?
Strangely enough, I actually knew the answer. While I studied painting in Paris, I was invited to visit the Loire Valley where a chapel was built around da Vinci’s tomb. A beautiful chapel.
Why yes, in fact I do. He’s buried at the Chateau d’Amboise, in the Loire Valley.
Oh thank god. Will you please take me back down the road and tell my husband? He will not sleep until we know. Oh, and we have your dog. He’s been quite well-behaved. Has not peed the rug or nothin.
Overheard after dinner conversation.
Winter Harbor ~ Marsh Sailing video
A compilation of sailing clips taken over several days. A cold north wind made for some blustery conditions at first, then calmed down as the front moved through.
Really lovely stuff, marsh sailing.
If you watch to the end, there’s an explanation of how I smashed the stem nose back in October at the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival in Saint Michaels. I still haven’t quite got over a wave of nervousness when trying to sail and take photos at the same time.
Surprised it took this long to have a mishap, but definitely shifts the balance from taking photos back to more attention to sailing.