Maintaining the Boat

As anyone who has ever
Had a boat can attest,
Maintaining a boat
Can be a full time occupation
And then some,
Especially if the boat
Is the size of the Araner.
There are things
That should be done
On a fairly regular basis
To keep a boat operational,
And few of these had been done
For the Araner.
To start with,
Her wooden hull was leaking
So pumping the bilge
Was a perpetual task
Complicated because the seals
On the hand pumps were wearing out.
The teakwood deck
Had not been properly sealed
And varnished
For a long, long time,
So it needed to be soaked down
Regularly with salt water
To keep it from splintering.
I have no idea how many buckets
We lost over the side
Trying to collect water
For that purpose.
After a month or two at sea
The toilets began to fail
And could no longer be used.
Climbing into the bow sprints
For sanitary purposes
Was an adventure
In and of itself
Especially when under full sail.
We tended to get saniflushed
Every time the hull
Cut through another wave,
And had to hold on
For dear life,
But it was very effective
At cleaning us out!
The Araner was equipped
With some rather large fresh water tanks
But they quickly became foul
Probably because they were not
Properly maintained either.
The Araner was equipped with
Ship to shore radio
Which was seldom if ever operational.
The engines and generator
Also required a lot of work
And it was a credit to Sugar Baer
That they operated at all.
In fact, early on
We spent considerable time and effort
Trying to find Johnston Island,
A restricted US naval base,
On the hopes that they would make
Emergency repairs
To get us back under way.
The biggest flaw to that plan
Was that we weren’t able to find it!
Who knows whether or not
The scam would have worked
Had we been able to try it out.
Well the Araner needed to be retrofitted,
That much was obvious,
And that was the stated reason
We were headed to the South Pacific
In the first place.