"Your boat is here."
"The Pearl? No! I've just taken her to the tip."
"She's here. She's out on the lawn."
A few years ago, I wrote on A WineDark Sea to "stay tuned for the voyage of the Pearl." It seems her voyage these days is less traversing wavy seas than waving clover and now she's bogged in the grass less than half a kilometre from my home as an art installation.
Classic. Pearl's true north always spins south to Toa. She's been following me around town for quite a while now.
At the opening of the Boat Show exhibition, us three past owner/lovers of the the Pearl - the New Romantic, the Mad Frenchman and me - gathered on the grass with glasses of the artists' red wine to toast the Goddess of the Wooden Boat.
We are all still in love with her ... but we three also know that affairs with the Princess are high maintenance and best avoided in the interests of sanity. So it was yet another happy goodbye.
Bless all who sail in her!
ReplyDeleteThat's not the one that Jack Sparrow used to sail is it Sarah?
ReplyDeleteYou know I saw that boat there and I didn't realise it was 'Pearl'. She has as many lives as a cat that one! I thought she had reached her final destination at the local tip....
ReplyDeleteWell, I thought the same. The tip is a kind of final destination after all.
ReplyDeleteTom, she is the very one. She'd fetch more than a few candlestick dollars online. My agent will be in contact. Rum is extra.