So I drove from Missoula to Bluffton, South Carolina, to check-out Polaris Jack and spend some time with George and Lillian at their home on The Bluff. It's an old summer "cottage" arching back through the generations of George's Low Country roots. If I remember correctly, George's family lived in nearby Savannah, but fled to the bluff cottage above the May River to escape the summer heat.
Tucked back on the bluff, hidden in a canopy of oaks, the house is a relic--virtually unchanged over the last century or two, it's still uninsulated, with high ceilings made of heart pine. Piles of books and paintings and photographs line the walls. A huge front porch spans the southern wall, facing the river and dock. It's an oasis, tucked there in the old growth; Bluffton has become a boom-town, a destination, one of those posh southern towns one reads about in the "best kept secret" section of a magazine.
An outdoor shower sits outside George's workshop. It's for sailors that pass through, tie to his dock, just like I did. And they come--the sailors--from far and wide. They tie to the dock, eat big meals cooked over the fire or in the welcoming, little kitchen. And back in George's lair, he has an arsenal of tools and sailboat parts that he's accumulated over the decades. From hurricane damaged boats he finds lost in the marshlands to old parts left behind by cruisers, he saves it all--and he knows where it all is. And he can make a boat go with those old parts.
"I like a boat that needs me," he once said to me. He's an orator, of sorts; he was once the mayor (famed for dressing as a turkey buzzard at the town parade) and also a high school history teacher.
Polaris Jack needed him. Or someone.
When I arrived in Bluffton, I slept aboard the boat, tied to the dock. By day, I spent time with George and Lillian and their continuously revolving cast of friends and family. The doors are always open there, and people come and go; it's the south one reads about, daydreams about. Mint tea on the porch. Late dinners. Long talks as you pass each other on the dock. The clocks there seem to work differently than they do in the north. Time slows, moves in accordance with the easing of the river. No hurry. People matter.
Boats matter. George and I worked on the boat. I was being hazed--could I handle the boat, the project? Was I the right one?
And did I want to take on the boat, the project? I'd sold my last boat after my feverous realization that boat's needed too much of me; was I willing to give that much of my life to a boat again? Perhaps the opposite of George in that sense: He wanted a boat that needed him. I wanted a boat that demanded nothing of me.
Or did I?
Remember what the poet said: "If you can bring nothing to this place but your carcass, keep out." That's William Carlos Williams, people.
Polaris Jack is a boat that speaks. A statement of course that makes no sense to anyone unless they've experienced a boat like that. I'll try to explain. It'll take a while. I'm new to this blog shit.
But right now, as I write this, Polaris Jack is a few miles inland, here in Downeast Maine, inside a lobster boat building shop that's never seen a sailboat before. She's gutted, undergoing a significant rebuild; I'm alternately scared and excited, or maybe not even alternately, by the scope of the project.
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