20 - Nora Comes Home to Shady Side
Eleanor Gets a Baby Sister
Sometimes I’m a slow learner, doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Some call that the definition of insanity.
And yet, even knowing that definition, here I am with a brand-new-to-us, fifty-year-old boat tied up to our dock behind our house, as of this afternoon. It’s slowly taking on water. Seems we have just acquired another project boat. My third. For right now the bilge pumps seem to be winning the race but I’ve got to finish this blog post and look into those leaks before our 1975 Lyman 24 Biscayne sinks.
The problem with project boats as my old neighbor Chris Wood used to say, you never quite catch up with the projects as more things break. That was pretty much the case with Griffin, the star of my first book, “Adventures in the Ditch” about a cruise from Annapolis to Miami. After four years I let Griffin move on to another owner.
Actually, I’ve found that with enough time and money you can catch up. We’ve pretty much done that with Eleanor. She is in good shape and just needs normal maintenance, love, and care at this point. We can take care of her needs pretty easily now that I’m retired.
Eleanor introduced us to an interesting world of antique and classic boat nuts. Two of them, Bruce and Hank, are a very specific flavor of nut – they love Lymans. Lymans are lapstrake hulled skiffs built in Sandusky, Ohio from 1875 to the 1990s-ish. Terese, being from Toledo, has a soft spot in her heart for them now too. We’ve been looking around for one to go in our boat lift in place of the thoroughly modern 18-foot fiberglass bow-rider we’ve sort of outgrown.
For my own amusement, and possibly yours, I’ve decided to blog about our journey to bring our Lyman back from near demise. I’m starting a separate Substack blog so we can keep this one dedicated to Eleanor’s future adventures. If you have any interest in the evolution of a project boat, go on over to https://alymaninshadyside.substack.com and please subscribe. It’s going to be an interesting learning experience, at least for me.