The Patch at the Boat Ramp

The fairing

In the afternoon I sanded the high spots down with the grinder and a soft pad, and then I mixed up the fairing filler. It is a gray paste, about like cake frosting, and it fills in the little low places so the hull is smooth again under the water.

That is what I was doing at two o’clock on Friday, on my knees at the top of the ramp in my tan canvas work jacket and Dad’s faded red cap, with my braid down my back and latex gloves on, a can of resin and a roll of cloth sitting on the concrete beside me.

The sun was bright and warm on my back, the way October sun is in the Ozarks, warm in the light and cold in the shade. The lake behind me was as blue as I have ever seen it. The bluff across the cove was all red and gold.

Tobin had walked down from the bait shop with a woman from the next trailer to see for himself, and the two of them stood a few feet behind me with their hands in their pockets, watching and not saying much. I let them watch.

I smoothed the filler over the patch with a putty knife, one long, slow pull at a time. You don’t want to fuss with it. You lay it on, pull it smooth, and leave it alone. Dad used to say filler is like gravy. The more you stir it, the worse it gets.

When I stood up and looked at it, it was raw and gray against all that white hull, and it would never win a prize at a boat show. But it was smooth. It was solid. And it was mine.

I let the filler set in the sun for two hours. Then at five o’clock, with the light starting to go long and gold over the water, I hooked the trailer to my truck and backed the boat down the ramp into Bull Shoals Lake.

I let her float off, tied her to the courtesy dock, and opened the front compartment.

Then I sat on the dock with my feet hanging over the water and watched the inside of that patch for one hour by my watch.

It stayed bone dry.

I didn’t trust it. I ran the boat out across the cove and back, slow and then fast, and slapped her through a couple of wakes from a pontoon going by. I came back in and checked again.

Dry.

I loaded her back on the trailer just as the sun touched the bluff. I said thank you out loud, to God and to Dad, and to nobody in particular, and I drove her home.