No free lunch

By Joel Thurtell

Free boat? Joel Thurtell photo

They say there’s no free lunch.

I’m a journalist, so I know that’s not true.

But one thing is sure — there is no such thing as a free boat.

This is a fact so evident, a principle so fundamental, that I always manage to forget it when someone offers me a freebie boat.

You’d think I could remember. At two different points in the distant past, I accepted the gift of a free wooden Lightning sailboat, only to awaken from my fantasy world, eyeballing with an increasingly jaded view, poking questionable wood with a jack-knife and finally — having salvaged what hardware was worth keeping — I’d make that final trip to the landfill.

The rule applies as well to boats that are almost free.

For instance, my first boat, a beat-up steel rowboat I paid ten bucks for, and the “brand-new” wooden Lightning sailboat hull I paid five hundred smackers for and…

But those are stories I’ve already written. No point giving them away! You can read about them in my book, Plug Nickel by purchasing it from amazon.com

But the siren call is stronger when more than one boat is being offered.

So it was when I bumped into Joe Shields at a party in what used to be Ferguson’s and later Turner’s general store and post office on Iroquois Island in McGregor Bay, Ontario. What used to be a focal point of Bay life, the store where we went to replenish gas tanks or supplies of fishing lures, where we could buy a head of lettuce for the salad or a six-pack of beer and at the same time harvest the latest Bay gossip, now is the McGregor Bay Lodge, a resort with cottages for rent.

The store is history.

Joe and John Shields are identical twins who bought the former Wood/Fonde island in the Outer Bay back in 2007. By now, they’ve torn down and replaced the two main cottages. In typical McGregor Bay fashion, the island was sold together with “chattels,” which included boats, outboard motors, a couple of sailboats, furniture, fishing gear and just about everything else that wasn’t screwed or nailed down.

It was those sailboats that Joe Shields was interested in when we were chatting at the McGregor Bay Lodge party. He was interested in, well, whether I was interested in them.

As in getting them off their island.

Pity Soom Joel Thurtell photo

Now, some might have looked at those two CL-11 boats and seen nothing but junk.

And I’ve taken some ribbing from friends, who think Joe Shields got the better part of the deal.

Not so.

Oh, no.

With me, sentiment prevails.

Why, these two little 11-foot sloops are the very boats we learned to sail in.

The island, TP 1071, was owned partly by the Woods, my wife’s aunt and uncle and cousins, and by the Fondes, my wife’s own family. Sometime back in the 1960s, the Woods and Fondes decided they should learn to sail. They went to the Detroit Boat Show and found a little Canadian-built sailing dinghy that looked just right: the CL-11 is a smaller version of the CL-16, a Canadian-built version of the famous English sailboat called “Wayfarer.”

Sloop du Jour Joel Thurtell photo

Each family bought a CL-11. The Woods called theirs “Sloop du Jour.”

In those days, my sister-in-law, then Anne Fonde and now Anne Potter, was very young and just learning to talk. The trip from Ann Arbor to Birch Island is a long one. Today, it’s at best a 10-hour drive. Back then, with rougher roads, it took longer. Anne would get tired of the ride and ask the age-old kids’ question: When are we gonna get there?

She would be told, “Pretty soon.”

She repeated: “Pity Soom.”

“PIty Soom” is the name of the Fonde’s sailboat.

Except that upon sale of the island, the sailboats were part of the chattels that were turned over to the new owners, the Shields.

And now here was Joe Shields offering not one, but both of the sailboats to me.

Sloop du Jour and Pity Soom.

Free!

Wow!

No time was to be lost. A couple days later, I hopped into our Crestliner motorboat and tooled around shoals and islands for three miles or so to TP 1071. I tied my boat to the former Fonde dock and walked up the rocks, a way that is so familiar. I first came to TP 1071 in 1972 and until the place was sold, spent time there nearly every summer.

The deck is the old Fonde deck.

So familiar.

But the cottage is all new. The one my late father-in-law, Henry Fonde, built, was torn down and the lumber either re-used or burned.

Nobody home.

I left a note: “I’ll be back for the boats!”

Pity Soom at our dock Joel Thurtell photo

Next day, with help from Joe’s wife, Minnick, I began looking through old Wood and Fonde possessions — “chattels” — in one of the two small buildings the Shields didn’t tear down.

We located both masts, both booms, both mainsails, but didn’t find the jibs and one of the rudders is missing. Hey, I figured, it’ll turn up.

I towed the little CL-11s back to our island.

They looked great, bobbing beside our dock: A new home for Sloop du Jour and Pity Soom.

Mine!

Once I got them tied to our dock, I could have a closer look. Oops, the rudder mounts have spacers made, once upon a time, of plywood. Rotten.

Got on the Internet. C & L, the original maker, is still in business. But to replace the rudder mount spacers, you have to cut a hole in the stern air tank. To close it up after you make the repair, you need to install a 4-inch-diameter plastic inspection port. The port needs to be glued and riveted in place.

Cost of two sets of spacers, two inspection ports, sealant, bolts, rivets and Canada Post shipping: ninety-nine dollars and change.

This is why there is no such thing as a free boat.

Pity Soom centerboard. Not quite ready for action. Joel Thurtell photo

Now, let’s have a closer look at those centerboards. At TP 1071, standard procedure was to store mast, boom, sails and rudders inside. The boats were left outside, upside-down. The hulls are made of plastic and nearly indestructible.

But this treatment, it turns out, was not so good for the plywood centerboards. They were exposed for many years to rain, snow, ice, freeze and thaw.

One of the centerboards fell into two pieces when I removed it from the boat’s centerboard trunk.

The other centerboard, while thoroughly rotten, has retained its shape. It can be used as a template for cutting new centerboards out of something more durable, like mahogany.

And no more leaving centerboards outside to rot!

Went on the Internet and checked the price of new jibs, in case the old ones fail to surface. And the price of a new rudder.

We are talking hundreds of dollars to make these two “free” boats seaworthy.

Okay, repeat after me: There is no free boat, there is no free boat, there is no…

Got CL-11 parts, e.g., jibs and rudder? Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com