Daniel Gumbiner - The Boatbuilder

“I think he’s down by the water,” the woman said.

“Which way is the water?”

She pointed behind herself, at a painting of a fern.

“Here’s his cell phone number in case you can’t find him.” She wrote the number down on a pink Post-it and handed it to Berg.

Down at the dock he looked around for Garrett. He tried calling the cell phone number but it went straight to voicemail (“It’s Garrett,” the message said). There were probably twenty boats along the pier and several more hauled out on land. The bay was calm, the morning windless and warm. A man emerged from the galley of one of the boats. He was holding a spray bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He puffed the cigarette and spat off the edge of the boat, brown tobacco spit. Then he turned around and yelled at someone in the galley. A short, chubby man emerged. He was wearing a hemp necklace and cargo pants.

“I looked at the October 15 thing,” the shorter man said. “That thing looks fucking awesome. They’re opening up the show. Oh, what’s it called? Shit, I already forgot it. It’s um… a classic motorcycle thing on the grass.”

“Oh, it’s part of that,” the cigarette man said.

“It’s really cool.”

“It’s ridiculously cool.”

“I don’t think I’m gonna ride the bike there, though.”

“Why not? It’s an easy ride.”

“I don’t know how much power it puts out,” the shorter man said.

“Just ride the 1. Don’t take the 5. Go super fucking early and take the damn 1.”

“Plus I haven’t found a cheap used regulator box yet.”

“Just get a new regulator box, Simon. Go to Grainger.”

“Grainger? They have motorcycle parts?”

“That’s not a motorcycle part, Simon.”

“Isn’t it a Bosch part?”

“Bosch is not motorcycles.”

“It’s not?”

“Bosch is one of the largest…” the cigarette man trailed off, sighed, and then continued. “Bosch is one of the largest electronics manufacturers in the world. None of that electronic stuff is motorcycles, Simon. I told you that.”

By this time Berg had walked down to the boat where the two men were standing.

“Garrett?” Berg interjected, looking at the cigarette man.

“Oh shit,” the man said. “Hey. You must be the uh… the guy.” He punched out his cigarette on the heel of his shoe and stuck the butt in his pocket. It was a Black & Mild and the smell reminded Berg of childhood, of smoking blunts behind the bleachers at his high school. Berg shook Garrett’s hand and then handed him a resume.

“Brought this for you,” he said. Garrett began to look over his resume and Simon nodded at Berg.

“How’s it going?” Simon said.

“All right,” Berg replied. After a few seconds Garrett handed the resume back to Berg and lit another Black & Mild.

“You’re totally qualified,” he said. “Totally qualified.”

“I’ve never worked on boats before.”

“You’re definitely qualified.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah man. I’m giving you a job. What’s your deal?”

“Okay.”

“You’ll go out on your first charter tomorrow.”

“What do you mean charter?”

“We charter a Gulfstar 50 on the bay. Name’s S/V Blown Away. You’ll be crew. Did it not say that in the ad?”

“No, it just said maintenance.”

“Fucking Mangini. I told him to list it as maintenance and charter crew, did I not, Simon?”

“You did,” Simon said. “As I recall you did.”

“Well, we’re gonna teach you everything anyway,” Garrett said.

“I have no sailing experience,” Berg said.

“Like I said, we’re going to teach you. Well, Simon’s going to teach you. For now, though, I want you to clean the galleys on all of these boats with Simon.”

He handed Berg the spray bottle.

“There are rags in the dock box,” Garrett said. Then he hopped off the boat and began walking up the hill, toward the clubhouse.

“Come find me when you’re done,” he called over his shoulder.

THE YACHT CLUB HAD an extensive fleet of dinghies and keel-boats. Lessons were open to members and non-members but they were mostly attended by members. Once members attained certain qualifications, they were able to reserve boats and sail them without instructors. Most days, Berg, Garrett, and Simon performed maintenance on the yacht club’s fleet, but they also crewed on the club’s charter boat. According to Garrett, several years ago Mangini had convinced the owner of the yacht club, Lucas Vespucci, to dip his toe into the world of chartering. He said there were several companies already doing it on the bay, mostly based out of Five Brooks, and they were making a killing. Vespucci bought a Gulfstar 50 for a hundred thousand dollars and sank a hundred thousand more into it to get the boat to pass Coast Guard inspection. For the past four years she had sailed as a charter boat but she had not come close to recovering Vespucci’s initial investment. Apparently, Mangini was under pressure to book more charters this season or risked getting fired. As a result, Garrett was under pressure to book charters, and he resented this a great deal.

“I can’t control who books and who doesn’t book,” he said. “He wants me chartering and he wants me doing all the maintenance and he wants me fixing Vespucci’s dad’s canoe. I don’t know, man. I can’t be in a thousand places at once.”

“Maybe if you spent less time smoking in the parking lot we’d get the maintenance done more quickly,” Simon said.

“Simon, say that one more time and see what I do.”

“Stop smoking in the parking lot.”

“One more time.”

“Stop smoking in the parking lot.”

“One more time.”

“I already said it twice.”

“That’s what I thought, bro,” Garrett said. “Step down.”

S/V Blown Away was a large, clumsy vessel designed for retired couples who wanted to go cruising in Mexico. The boat was almost always captained by Garrett but, on occasion, Mangini hired an old British man named Carl to captain her. There were also several other part-time crew, including a young woman named Shawnecee. She wore skate shoes and jeans and she had just come back from French Polynesia, where she’d been sailing on an educational tall ship. She said she was in Talinas for the summer to make some cash and then she was heading to Alaska. The first day Berg worked with her, he went down into the galley and saw a note on the whiteboard that said, “I love you Shawnecee. You’re doing a great job. —Garrett”

When he went abovedecks again, he found Shawnecee counting out life vests. Garrett always liked to have them ready before the charter began.

“Me and Garrett got in a fight this morning,” she said.

“About what?” Berg asked.

“There were potato chips all over the deck from the charter yesterday. I meant to hose them down before he arrived but my bike had a flat and he beat me to the docks.”

“Well, he seems to have forgiven you.”

“What do you mean?”

“The note below. On the whiteboard.”

“Oh no, I wrote that,” Shawnecee said. “He’s gonna be so pissed when he sees it. Doesn’t matter though. He can’t say shit to me. We started working for Mangini at the same time. I know just as much as he does.”

The boat was usually chartered by tourists or corporations that wanted to do some kind of adventure outing for their employees. On rare occasions, the boat was booked by locals to celebrate a birthday and, once, the boat had been booked for a Greek wedding.

“They had all these rituals,” Garrett said. “They poured a jar of black sand into a jar of normal sand. It was meant to symbolize… what was it meant to symbolize, Simon?”