17 thoughts on “Scapegrace, RIP

  1. Michael, I’m terribly sorry for your loss of the boat. Not knowing your circumstances, I’d have to resort to optimistically wishing you the best in replacing her.

  2. Superb father
    You in mid season form

    Takes a lot to blow you up to that pitch these days

    No doubt
    Scape grace down
    seems a hard sacrifice
    to yield a little splendid prose

  3. You have my sympathy, Michael. If the insurance works out, maybe you can get another boat. It seems to have given you a great deal of pleasure, and those who find you intolerable never stopped carping about that boat, acting as if it were some grand yacht and you an aristocrat.

    • To be quite honest, that was the impression I always got when the conversation here turned to Fadduh Smiff’s boat — perhaps not a massive yacht, but something just a bit more ostentatious than what he actually had. That foto he published a week or so ago was actually the first time I’d actually seen his boat, and my first thought was whoa, that’s a pretty basic craft, there, like the kind of boat a guy would have who actually knew a thing or two about real sailing!

      I was actually hoping for something a little more cushy, with a large enough cabin to hold a cozy little sofa you could sleep on in a pinch, maybe a small bar with enough cabinet space for some Scotch and mixers and maybe a little dorm fridge.

      Long story short: my sympathies. It looked like a nice honest boat that brought you many hours of nice honest fun. I’d defy any of the ankle-biting trolls that come on here to cast their peepers at that boat and call you some kind of bourgeois hypocrite.

      • Yeah, it was a fine boat but far from ostentatious. I did love it when all the mailing-list Pecksniffs jumped to the conclusion that I was Mr Hutchinson River Parkway IV, of Park Avenue and the New York Yacht Club. People’s projections about one are always fascinating.

        • Where was this rush of accusers father S
          at one of your pinko brainiac elite lists
          Not bull dog Hensuch’s op ?

          Or that odious trot coop
          I got thrown off
          after less then 24 hours
          For format violations
          and general mental clown status ?

          Btw I know father and he is indeed
          a real sea salt
          right out of maritime legend
          Like
          long John silver and
          that boy on the burning deck

          • He once bested my uncle Neptune Paine
            In a Mano a Mano
            Straight across
            Lake glimmerglass
            On July morning
            in identical puffins
            If I remember rightly

            It was 40 years ago

          • “Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
            As born to rule the storm;
            A creature of heroic blood,
            A proud though childlike form.”

          • ‘Twas both, actually. Not so surprising in the case of the ‘Trot coop’, but I was a bit taken aback to encounter it on the other. From the proprietor himself, no less.

          • The dogwood bull hen himself ?

            One could only pray for such a savaging

            ” why …why u ….u …Counter revolutionary…yacht mans
            U …. ”

            Far better then
            simple
            running sea dog
            of the imperial fleet “

    • I can agree with your sentiment — bread’n’roses and all that — but, honestly, I wouldn’t know what to do with a friggin’ yacht, man. I don’t know how to sail at all, and I barely know how to swim, and besides, I’ve never really been a yachting kind of guy.

      Now, then, a fully-restored ’68 Mustang 2+2 Fastback with a small-block V8 — that’d be fuckin’ grand, man.

  4. Here you go Michael,,,,,slightly larger than Scapegrace. perhaps too much so but supposedly good sailbots –
    http://sailingtexas.com/201201/sirwin32104.html

    I learned to sail many decades ago but it never really caught my fancy,,,powerboats were better for saltwater fishing. So i became the overwhelmingly proud owner of a giant 16 footer that, within a few years, had
    no choice but to transform into a 28′ owens….ahhh that’s a while ago but [as i think you know] it’s quite easy to fall in love with salty blue water.

    Anyway, sorry about the loss but know you will be back at sea.

    Another but much less w/l –
    http://sailingtexas.com/201201/ssanjuan23114.html

    Good Luck

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