Word: skiff
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...journey at the mercies of the elements and fate. In his second novel -- twelve years after his critically praised An American Romance -- John Casey makes it plain on the opening page that some large issues are going to be entertained. He introduces his hero, Dick Pierce, in a skiff, floating among the creeks and inlets of coastal Rhode Island. In paragraph two, Pierce ponders the marsh grass around him and has an insight: "Only the spartinas thrived in the salt flood, shut themselves against the salt but drank the water. Smart grass. If he ever got his big boat built...
...scrub," where he lives in a ramshackle house with his wife May and two teenage sons and scrabbles a living as a fisherman. "He'd had a plan: by age 40 he would be master of a ship. Here he was at age 40-plus in an 18-foot skiff...
...boat was a snub-nosed skiff whose bow lowered to become a landing bridge. When we got in we had to sign a release for any damage we did ourselves on the "hazardous facilities" on the island. Casting off, we thumped out across the bay, our wake rocking lobster buoys which spread out around us as far as we could see. On the horizon rose up the two towers of the Eyes of Cape Ann; below them, in the early light, the island looked like a smear of mist...
...dawn one day not long after the sale, a heron flipped a fish at the end of the spit where the mangroves are still growing. A skiff headed out to sea, a Labrador standing in the bow. The mast of the Adams' boat was moving: they were up. "We'll probably go anchor out, all alone somewhere. That's nice. It's a different way of life," he says. The night before, everyone had gathered for the last party, an "End of an Era" cocktail hour. They gave Steve Coe $301 they collected as a thank-you present, and Bobbi...
...three-week class on the theory and practice of boatbuilding, divides his eight students into two teams of four each, then puts them right to work building a pair of 11-ft. boats. Designed by Day as a cross between a traditional down-East dory and a flat-bottomed skiff, the boats are teaching tools. They feature three types of planking and require students to go through almost all the procedures involved in the craft of building a boat. "Boatbuilding is nothing if not practical," says Day. "You do things because they work...