The good kind of work

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

When I sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in 2018 with some good friends — a turn of luck I am eternally grateful for — I realized then and there that I wanted to spend some portion of my life on the water. The reality is, I have to work a lot more years to make that possible; but, in the meantime, I’m finding ways to get my fix.

Last fall, with the first snowfall looming in the forecast, I stumbled into one of the greatest purchases of my life. One of our readers, Ted Wert, emailed me about another matter and we struck up a conversation about sailing. A fellow sailor, Ted mentioned briefly that he knew of a sailboat that was possibly on the market.

A 1967 Rawson 30 sailboat — the Free Spirit — at Glengary Bay.
Photo by Ben Olson.

A week later, I met with Tom and Marjorie Trulock at Glengary Bay Marina and took a look at the boat. It was a 1967 Rawson 30 with a cabin, a durable-yet-elegant look and a handful of sails. It had also been fitted with an outboard motor instead of the stock inboard, which was a big selling point. She had taken some light damage on the toerail and taffrail after the big windstorm on Labor Day 2020, but, for a 54-year-old boat, she was in otherwise decent condition. The cushions smelled a bit of mildew and everything needed a good cleaning, but the bones were great.

I enlisted my friend Jake Hagadone — an able lake sailor and younger brother to Reader Editor-in-Chief Zach Hagadone — to go in on the boat with me to help share costs and restoration. It has turned out to be a great partnership.

Let me preface my next remarks by acknowledging that I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing when it comes to boat repair. I’ve owned a handful of boats over the years. One was commandeered from Bob Witte’s front yard, full of peanut shells and about a decade’s worth of leaves piled up in the cockpit. I installed a new battery, replaced the fuel and managed to get a year on the water before it ultimately sank in the slough by Dan Shook’s house. 

This was before the byway was built, so I salvaged it from the water, towed it to the dirt lot by the Long Bridge where people used to park cars they were selling and watched the snow cover it for the winter — then promptly forgot about it. The following spring, the sheriff’s office called Bob, who was still listed as the owner, and told him to come pick up his damn boat. Sorry, Bob.

The next nautical failure was a 1976 Bayliner I bought for $800 from the lot at Gas ’n’ Go a couple of years ago. The deck was rotten, so I spent the next few months ripping up all the bad wood, re-fiberglassing the hull and installing new stringers — it took me 10 seconds to write that sentence, but about two months of hard work and upward of $1,500 to accomplish that mission. 

Prior to installing the final deck, I had a mechanic check out the engine and was told the head was cracked and it “wasn’t worth working on.” Exasperated, I ended up just giving the thing to my landlord, who has a piece of land where it can either moulder in peace or slowly be built back up to seaworthiness.

Failure is just the hors d’oeuvre to success, as someone once said, but I was making a habit of it. So the decision didn’t come lightly to take on a 30-foot sailboat; but, Tom and Marjorie gave us a great price so we could afford to put some decent money into restoring the boat.

We finalized the purchase and reluctantly covered the Free Spirit with a series of tarps for the winter. A couple months ago, Jake and I began to make trips out to the boat to start a host of projects. We planned to gut the cabin and sand down everything to bare wood, replace the toerail and taffrail damage, clean and oil the teak wood, sand and paint the entire topside decks, and replace the foam and fabric for the dozen cushions, among other small projects.

As the snow receded, I noticed the urge to get out to the boat come up more frequently. I’d rush through a morning of work to buy a few hours in the afternoon to drive out to Glengary for another quiet, brisk day attacking the next task. Though it’s always hard work restoring a boat, these excursions became the bright spots of my week. 

There’s just something about that drive out to Glengary Bay that sets your mind at ease. I’d look out onto Gamlin Lake where small huts kept anglers warm on the ice, wishing them a good day’s catch. Then one day the ice had broken and it was a lake again (this just a day after we had all tromped out on the ice like fools).

Pulling into Glengary Bay is like stepping back in time. Marinas around Lake Pend Oreille have mostly undergone a transformation over the years to sterile watery parking lots chock-full of big fancy boats moored like dreams you’ll never conquer. But at Glengary Bay, it’s like happening on a small Alaskan bay with just a few homes and a big, wide lake reflecting the snow-capped Cabinet Mountains across the water. Every hour I spend there reminds me of what North Idaho used to be like, before we all got in a big damn hurry.

I’d spend a couple hours hand-sanding the decks, pausing occasionally to listen to the eagles calling from their nest across the bay. Phone reception is spotty and, even if it wasn’t, I would still keep the phone in my truck, because I don’t want anyone to contact me when I’m working on the boat.

Slowly, we began to check projects off the list. The teak rails were sanded, cleaned and oiled. The cabin sole was pried up and everything sanded down to bare wood. The topside deck was sanded, primed and is now in the process of being painted with non-skid.

With each minor accomplishment, Jake and I are inching closer to those glorious days in the not-so-distant future when we’ll be hoisting the mainsail and pointing our bow toward the big lake for a weekend camping adventure. 

While driving back to town one day after a particularly hard day of sanding, I thought about the fact that while we’re restoring the boat, what’s really happening is the boat is restoring us. Just knowing that I have a sailboat out there waiting for the next bit of work to do is pleasing to my soul, as if our lives are somehow intertwined.

As a good friend said to me the other day, “A man needs a project to work on.” It doesn’t get any simpler than that. Because we — all of us — do. Whether it be home repairs, hobby projects in the garage or artistic endeavors, when you pour your time and energy into creating or restoring something to its former glory, you find that the work you do on these projects benefits your own life.

Owning a sailboat is not just about sailing, it’s about putting a bit of your soul into the restoration and upkeep until at some point they are co-mingled. The boat ends up being an extension of yourself, and you get out exactly what you put into it.

Last weekend, Jake and I took our first shakedown cruise in the Free Spirit, hoisting the main and jib and cutting the engine to hear that glorious sound of wind and water. It was your typical North Idaho spring day complete with sunshine, rain and a sudden squall that blew 20+ knots from Hope that forced us to douse the sails quickly and motor for the barn. The smiles on our faces proved that all the time and effort was worth it, even after just one sail across the lake and back. We still have a lot of work to do, but it’s the good kind of work that keeps us coming back.