Moulin Au Vent:
My boat, Someday, remained tied up to Moulin au Vent. But hopefully, not for long. The rumor in our small flotilla is that the salvage company that owns it has announced plans for towing Cousteau’s boat north, spending a gazillion dollars on the boat and then taking it on tour. The president of the salvage company says that it will be the showpiece of the company. Well that’s the plan.
Instead of a sail, Moulin au Vent had a wing system. Much like the wing of an airplane. None of this man-handling sheets and lines and turnbuckles for old Jacques. All he had to do was crank the wing structure according to the wind’s direction and Moulin au Vent raced ahead. It worked like a charm too. There are pictures of Jacques in old magazines sailing his experimental catamaran all over the Mediterranean off the coast of Southern France.
Unfortunately, Moulin au Vent had an almost fatal drawback. In a storm, there was no way to take that wing down. The very time you want everything above decks removed there’s that forty-foot wing sticking up into the hurricane. It’s like having your gas pedal bolted to the floor of your car, in a crowded parking lot.
In a storm in the western Atlantic, close to Bermuda that experimental wing and Moulin au Vent forever parted company. They say that when the wing was ripped from the deck and thrown overboard by the hurricane. The crew cheered.
The experimental wing went down to Davy Jones’ Locker and Moulin au Vent is now in a canal, beside Coco Plum Boulevard in Marathon, Florida. A sad derelict hulk riding the knife-edge of being restored or simply broken up into pieces.
People attracted by the famous name would stand at the end of Someday’s dock deciding whether to brave the slanted and crumbling wood, to say that they trespassed onto a famous seaman’s boat, even though that boat was slowly and ignominiously sinking into the mud.
I felt there was no way for this chapter in Moulin au Vent’s life to end well. Moulin au Vent, Windmill of the Seas, Jacques Cousteau’s experimental winged sailboat; a small ship that could have been, wallowed half-sunk, half-covered in green scum in a backwater canal in the Florida Keys.
On my optimistic days, I thought that surely someone would come along and save the boat. Someone with money and time and love for the history of that huge boat would magically appear and resurrect it to it’s former glory.
On my bad days, I would sit in the tiny cockpit of Someday, look up at that massive crumbling catamaran and compare Moulin au Vent to my life.
There were pieces of Someday all over the yard. The boom leaned against the railing waiting to be re-oiled with Danish oil. The bloody thing hasn’t been in use since the last time I oiled it and with all this Florida heat the boom needed it again.
Restoring this boat boiled down to a series of compromises. I tried my best, and if things didn’t work out exactly as planned, it was best to just shrug. I learned not to beat myself up about it. I just did it over again to the best of my landlubber abilities.
I started to work on the stern. I attached the stern’s rub rails, countersunk the brass screws and plugged them. The starboard stern rub rail dropped a little too far for my liking.
There was glow about the garage’s store room where the parts rested. The room shone with a smooth rich brown color gleaming like an expensive piece of well-loved furniture. All I needed to complete the image was the ‘throop’ of someone sitting on a leather chair, as opposed to fenders rubbing between the boat and the dock, that sound like a cross between a bullfrog and a party of teenage boys farting. All–night–long.
I took off the jib boom and front deck hatch. I repaired and replaced them. With nothing else to do, I re-varnished the companionway hatch for the third time. Jib, boom, floorboards, front deck hatch also. I varnished the companionway hatch and floorboards for the fourth time. I sanded the moldings and applied wood filler to the cracks and nicks in the moldings. I re-stained and varnished the moldings. This had to be the third or fourth time I did this, but I didn’t care. I started to forgive myself. Just find what was good, or salvageable, and work from there.
A friend from Winnipeg, Murray Van Norman once said;
“People say that an old sailboat is just too much work. But, what those people don’t realize is, we like doing it.”
For a year, Someday was tied to Moulin au Vent. I spent weeks staring up at that famous forgotten boat. I came to the conclusion that there’s projects you can do, and there’s things so big that you can’t. Don’t even start.
I could fix Someday; I couldn’t fix Moulin au Vent. I could fix my life from now on; I couldn’t re float my past.
It is what it is.
Rick Ranson 