Chapter 4

They, the International, mailed back; MM is millimeters, designated mm. 4mm equals 0.15748031 inch. You used 1/4 inch. 1/4inch is 0.250in thick. Your boat is almost twice as heavy as it should be ... had you used one eighth (1/8 or 0.125in) your boat would be light. It is easier to add weight than it is to subtract it.

Then came the 64 thousand dollar question.

Does your association have a measurement committee?

And I, like the idiot my sister says I am, mailed back... What is a measurement committee?

The International ... at this particular time ... resided in London ... England ... not London, Ontario, Canada. Mail ... regular mail ... mail with a 2 cent stamp ... went by boat. AirMail was far too expensive. By boat usually meant a Liner like the Queen Mary but sometimes it meant steamship ... as in tramp freighter. Tramp freighters have no set schedule ... they are opportunists ... they go where the freight is.

Mail by Liner was five days ... steamship might be five weeks ... and that's after getting to New York or Boston by rail.

A day spent being "sorted" in the local Post Office ... another day on the train, yet another day at the New York or Boston Post Office ... being sorted again, five to thirty-five days en route by water, a day in "receiving Southampton" or "receiving Liverpool," a day by train to London, a day or even two ... depending ... at the London PO ... a day in the International mail room. Reading by a flunky who may or may not decide to kick it upstairs, if it goes upstairs, the next reader might be answering, mailing it back ... waiting for my response ... get the idea?

I built the boat when I was going on nine. The correspondence was final by the time I was 10.

It was realized that the kit boats were shipped bulk to the United States Optimist National and distributed as needed and they were cut from European plywood in Germany and 4mm was 4mm was 4mm.

Our association lost its certification until there was a measurement committee.

I still got to race ... heavy is no disqualification.

I was still stuck with the pram for five years. Eight years to 15 is the class age. I vowed then and there to follow the directions when I built my Lightning.

Yeah. Right.

My airplane models propellers never turned. The landing gear was always up. There were glue fingerprints on the canopy.

Not like my brother ... his Gillow balsa giant scale rubber band powered models always flew. His F4U Corsair won the local hobby show ... painted the exactly correct Navy Blue ... it looked like the illustration on the box ... real. The decals were perfectly placed and the pilot was grinning!

God! I hated my brother!

Oops ... sorry. Let my temper get away from me ... again.

I had managed to construct my gawdawful heavy pram and kept my fingers ... undamaged except for a couple of nasty gouges and several stitches ... several dozen stitches... 56 on one finger ... and all my fingers on my left hand work ... unless I try and grab something to hold on to it. I am forever dropping my pain pills.

I took a paper route so I could buy the Lightning kit ... it had the right size plywood. A year later the fiberglas kit came out ... and cheaper.

Anyway ... I was hooked by sail. I never finished better than last place in the prams but I loved it. The silence ... no brother ... no sisters ... no mom yelling ... until daddy bought the yacht ... then she could power along beside me and tell me what I was doing wrong ... loud enough to chase the gulls off the lighthouse at the far end of the pier.

But now, I was old enough for my dad to solicit captains and owners on my behalf; either he had faith in me, or, he put the "spare child clause" in effect; Four children: one to replace me, one to replace my wife, one for the general increase in population, and one in case of accidents.