Allport Marine Survey
Tony Allport, SAMSŪ SA Serving the Puget Sound Region |
Humor
| Accidental Art By Tony Allport
I was a deckhand on a seventy foot schooner on the coast of Maine. It was mid-May and we were fitting out for the tourist season, during which we took up to twenty passengers on week long rustic cruises. It was the ideal summer job, I thought, and I didn't want to blow it. I had the task of painting the mastheads some fifty feet in the air. They were white, typical of a traditional gaff rigged schooner, and the masts were fir trees about sixteen inches in diameter. The mastheads were at least six feet tall and they were home to peak halyards, spring stays, trestle trees, and cross trees. You got there by climbing up rat lines attached to the shrouds.
Not wanting to carry up and keep track of any more gear than I needed, I opened a gallon of Interlux #220 on deck and tied a light messenger line to the wire handle. Sticking a paint brush in my back pocket, I went aloft with the other end of the line. My plan was to carefully hoist the bucket up once I was settled in the cross trees. I didn't
The deck and cabin top cleaned up pretty well, but the large amidships awning looked like a veritable Jackson Pollock. It wasn't bad actually, so I let it dry in its new abstract state. The captain was not impressed. As he paid my wages that week, all seventy dollars, he said; 'I'll make you a deal, "Jackson." Promise not to do that again and I will write you a recommendation to art school in the fall.'
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I am not sure what I was muttering as I scrambled out of the rigging, but it would have made a pirate proud. It was an ignominious descent and those onlookers on the pier weren't helping at all.
realize, however, how badly twisted the line was. As it stretched out with the weight of the bucket, it began to unwind, slowly at first. As I continued to hoist, it picked up
speed, spinning faster and faster. Like a washing machine out of balance, it wobbled and cast spirals of white paint into the air, splattering the deck and awning below. "Oh, my God!" What should I do? Pull it up? Drop it? Catch the next bus out of town? After a panicky moment, I lowered it quickly down to the cabin top. Fortunately, it landed upright. I dropped the messenger line after it and swung down on to the rat lines. Staring in disbelief at the mess below, I noticed the paint can slowly sliding toward the edge of the cambered cabin top in a slippery white puddle.
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