Florida Keys’ Watercolor Kapers
by Bob Kranich
The Cayman Turtle Schooner, (Part 10, Excerpt 75)
This is a story, titled The Cayman Turtle Schooner. This story will tell about the forming and history of the Cayman Islands, the green sea turtle’s habits and life style, the building of a dugout canoe, and then a schooner, and lastly about the historic two-masted turtle schooner, A. M. Adams. Parker has designed a boat he calls the Turtle Boat and they are going to build it. It will be made from boards and not a log like their dugout canoe.
The Cayman Turtle Schooner
“Yes, Grandpa, I was wondering when we we’re going to check on it.”
“Sonny, you know, first things first! Grandma had to have her house, and we needed our shed for our tools. We were fortunate it only took two weeks. Now let’s go see what we can see.”
The lagoon was as calm as usual. There were fallen trees, broken mangrove bushes, and lots of driftwood floating about.
“Look, Grandpa, the turtle crawl is gone!”
There were a few posts protruding at many different angles, and over in a mangrove was one of the gates.
“Do you think Sebastian is gone, Grandpa?”
“Well Sonny, it sure looks like it. You know you shouldn’t feel bad. Your turtle is in his environment. He is a sea turtle, and turtles love the sea and live in it. It’s their home. He is pretty big now and he doesn’t have many enemies. After all, what fish would like to eat a big turtle shell? You know he has that unusual marking, a cross on his shell. If we ever catch him, we’ll take care of him.”
“I know Grandpa, but I’m sad.”
“Let’s go check on our canoe. We tied it up about here. But the tree has been knocked over!”
“Look over there, Grandpa. It’s our sail!”
“It sure is. It’s on the other side of those mangroves.”
They went around and worked their way up to the sail. There it was. The sail had come loose from the mast and boom and was draped over the mangroves. Below it was their canoe.
“Oh look Grandpa, one side of our canoe is broken in!”
“I see it, Parker. We may be able to fix I, but we’ll need John and Dynamite to drag it out of here. We can trim out a path but we’ll need mule power to move it! Let’s head back to the house, and take a break. We’ll see if we can help Grandma and ‘morrow we’ll go down to John’s. First thought, I want to roll up the sail. We can patch it with the extra sail cloth John gave us. Look, we’re in luck, there’s our two oars!”
“That was a nice dinner, Grandma.”
“Thankee kindly, Parker.”
“Grandpa, I need some paper and a pen. I have an idea I want to draw, and I’ll show it to you when I get finished.”
“Sure, Parker, on that shelf over there.”
“Thanks, Grandpa.”
“Now just what do you think has gotten into that young’un, Sir?” Grandma asked.
“Don’t rightly know, Hon, but I guess we’ll see shortly.”
Later on that evening…
“Here it is Grandpa!”
“Let’s see what you have here. Why it appears to be a boat. But it’s not a dugout canoe. Parker, what a good drawing! Where did you get this idea? You’ve drawn it very well. What are we going to do with this?”
“Grandpa, I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Ever since I saw that long boat on Captain James's sloop in Channel Bay. Grandpa, this boat will be lighter, faster, and maybe easier to build! I’m going to call it a Turtle boat.”
“Parker, I’m interested. First, we’ll need a scale model. We can carve it out of cedar, because it's softwood. Now for our scale model we’ll make it at a one to twelve scale. You know twelve inches on the real boat will equal one inch on the model. Since your boat is fourteen feet we’ll need a fourteen-inch wood block.”
Grandpa started carving, “How does this look Parker?”
“Good, Grandpa, just like my drawing. How did you know about a scale model, Grandpa?”
“Remember I sailed on a schooner when I was in my twenties. I was around when some were built here in the Caymans. Now see we can cut this model crossways to get the station curves.* We’re going to need some flat wood boards to build this boat.”
“How will we get those, Grandpa?”
“Parker, I think it’s about time we found some of those gold coins.”
John took the three gold coins in his hand, “You say that you found these on the beach? Must have washed up from the storm, or been uncovered by it. You say you need some mahogany planks...do you? You know just what we should do, go to Channel Bay, convert these three coins to some Cayman money, and then we’ll find you those planks.”
They went down to Channel Bay in John’s sail’n canoe, converted the coins, bought the planks, and transported them to Grandpa’s house.
Parker and Grandpa waved to John as he sailed off.
“Well, Parker, here we have our pile of planks. John was sure right, those three gold coins would buy us what we needed. He pointed to the pile of mahogany boards they had unloaded from John’s dugout canoe.
“We’ll move these planks up to the shed and stack them. Then tomorrow morning we have to go out to the swamp. We will need to find some naturally curved roots of the mahogany tree. Those roots will work for our front and rear wood timbers for the stem and stern. Of course we’ll have to carve them some to fit our needs.”
Next morning…
“Parker, prepare to get moist. We’ll have to dig around this root and then dam around it so we can chop it out. It looks like it will be perfect.”
“I see another one over there!” Parker exclaimed.
“Hold your excitement, Parker. Let’s get this one cut, and then we’ll get yours over there. These two curved mahogany roots will work real fine. Of course we will have to use the draw shave* to flatten them out and form them.”
On their way back to the house Grandpa continued planning. “We’ll use that thicker plank for the keel.* The planks we have are real wide. We’ll be able to cut out the ribs and then splice them together at the keel. We’re going to have twelve stations plus the stem and stern will equal fourteen feet.”
They carved down both front stem and rear stern posts to be flat with a smooth curve and slightly pointed on the outsides of the curves. Everything was spliced, fitted, glued with animal glue,* drilled out, and held together with tree nails.*
“Grandpa, now our boat looks like a skeleton.”
“Well, Parker, the next step is to bend these thinner planks around the ribs from stem to stern. It will take a lot of fitting but we will have it done in less than one fourth the time it took us to build the dugout canoe. You had a great idea.”
From the Author:
My second full-length book , Florida Keys’ Watercolor Kapers is composed of 336 pages. There are 12 stories running from 6 pages to as many as 72 pages. It is fully illustrated with 88 watercolors and sketches. The watercolors I made roaming around Key West after I finished my 750 mile hike from Georgia to Key West. (See book or Don Browne’s SouthWest Florida Online News records, A Walk Across Florida.) As you read these stories you will experience Key West, the Keys, and the Caribbean. These stories span the time of the early 1800’s to 1969.
bkranich.wixsite.com/bobkranich
