⛵ VOYAGE #04 — SV Lucinda
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⛵ VOYAGE #04 — by Nick Jaffe — November, 02, 2020
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SV Lucinda #04
Welcome to edition #04 of VOYAGE: the lockdown in my home state of Victoria is easing, which means I may get to see my family for Christmas — I haven't seen them properly for nearly a year!
I bought a boat — with one of my best pals, Sarah Andrews. Let me explain:
Over a decade ago, Sarah emailed me:
Hi Nick — my Mum sent me a link to your website, we were both rather astonished. I'm not much of a writer, but I'm a 26 year old Australian ex-pat, sailing solo around the world on my Ericson 39, also with an art background... Until recently... I sank it off the coast of Baja, Mexico and was rescued by the Mexican Navy. How dramatic — my parents freaked out!
Sounds like my kind of person.
We wrote a few emails backwards and forwards and then we never really kept in touch. I sailed across the Pacific, Sarah was stuck in Mexico and life continued on... However, unbeknownst to either of us, our lives continued on in a strangely parallel fashion.
In 2017 while setting up my house as an Airbnb (out of necessity, not out of a burning desire to enter the short-stay business), I stumbled across Sarah on Instagram, who was then starting her own now rather renowned Airbnb, Captains Rest, in none other than Tasmania, some 4 hours drive north of me!
At the time I was making swags in my workshop (a kind of bivouac/bedroll), designed for sleeping on the ground in the outback) out of canvas. In a funny twist, it turns out Sarah's parents are perhaps the most legendary swag makers in the country.
Not long after finding each other again online, I was to finally meet Sarah in person, and we've been most excellent mates ever since, our lives and interests curiously intertwined. We spent New Years Eve in south of France at La Vigneron eating escargot — where I was also able finally finished my book. I then flew to South Africa via Kenya to continue my overland expedition, while Sarah flew to Paris and explored castles in the U.K. We then both unexpectedly flew the gauntlet home at the beginning of the pandemic from different continents: I vividly recall talking to her on the phone at Jeffrey's Bay for my birthday, trying to work out if the pandemic was the end of civilisation or a glitch in the matrix. I still don't know which it is.
So, with that as the backstory, let's talk about our little boat, Lucinda: she's a 19ft Bruce Roberts Adventurer trailer sailer, with a centreboard keel, 5hp Mercury outboard, and the tiniest set of sails — in fact, everything is tiny — a mini furler the size of a grapefruit, an anchor for your back pocket and halyards the width of your pinky finger. While Constellation was only 7ft longer, there seems to be some weird ratio with boats, whereby for every 4ft or so in additional length, everything else seems to double in size...
My instincts tell me geopolitically, economically and otherwise, global travel as it was back at the beginning of 2020 may not return until at least 2022. This leaves my Cape to Kapp project in jeopardy, both logistically and financially — I'm presently working with a fixer in South Africa who is helping me out with customs logistics on the ground — in the meantime I'm discussing my options with the AAA in Australia with regards to my Carnet, which expires in exactly one month. It's all up in the air! But as Don McIntyre says: it's not an adventure until something goes wrong — and boy has it gone pear shaped!
While I'm supposed to be somewhere north of the equator in Africa and Sarah is supposed to be exploring the parapets of some Scottish castle, we are doing neither. This is not to complain, it is just to highlight a difference in expectation versus reality — in truth, the reality of living in Tasmania through these times is perhaps the greatest gift we could have asked for. But, adventure beckons and Lucinda is our ticket for maximum exploration: she can be towed at 50kts upwind, we can launch her in seas, oceans, lakes and rivers and we can gybe or tack with our left hand (without a winch) while sipping a Dark'n'Stormy in the right. Lucinda can be perched on the side of the road like a caravan, or we can pull her up onto a lakeside beach and camp as if she were a kayak: in essence, Lucinda is effortlessly practical. It's easy to forget that sailing doesn't always have to involve a lot of money, logistics or the crossing of oceans to be enjoyable.
I will leave the finer details till later, however we've outlined a set of unique adventures and routes within Tasmania, beginning on the first day of our southern summer, December 1st.
More stories from the cockpit of Lucinda over the coming months!
Books
While the last several months have been perfect reading weather, I won't lie and say there has been an underlying and distracting anxiety which has diminished what could have otherwise been a personal reading renaissance. I'm currently reading at least 4 books at a time, but concentrating most on Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Das Parfum: Die Geschichte eines Mörders), by the enigmatic Peter Süskind, who as it turns out may be as secretive as the mysterious Thomas Pynchon... Oh to be of a calibre of genius and success that one does not have to interact with the world beyond the pleasantries of ones own life and creativity...
Recent photographic outputs
- The short motion story I did for Kathmandu on Sarah Glover is up on their YouTube channel.
- A few of the lifestyle photos I did for Bellroy are up on their website for the new Transit Workpack.
Recent workshop outputs
- I'm doing a sale on some of my carry objects, including wallets and camera straps — a good time to get something made by yours truly, as gifts for the coming festival of a certain religious leader.
Recent inputs
- Can lab-grown brains become conscious? — and if they can, should we be allowed to create and destroy them?
- 62 films that shaped the art of documentary filmmaking — I've been reading and watching a lot of short docs recently!
Elsewhere
My primary Instagram / Website & work / YouTube Channel / Workshop Instagram / Airbnb / Twitter
Reach out
If there is something you'd like me to riff on in the next edition or delve into further personally — simply reply to this email.
Colophon: written in Markdown with a dash of CSS in iA Writer, captured via Squarespace + Zapier & shipped to you via Buttondown + various tubes.