“There’s money in the bank to pay for it, but what’s your plan?”
“I figure dat you’ve always wanted a yacht.” He pronounced it with the “ch” sound left in. “You never said nuttin about it, but everybody else wants one, and you always looked pretty normal. So. Did you know dat you can buy da materials for da hull of a one-hundred-foot-long yacht for around ten tousand dollars, if you build it out of ferrocrete?”
“Now wait a minute. A hundred footer, new, has to go for something like a couple of million bucks, at least, and the hull has to be the major expense item of any ship. There has to be a catch, somewhere!”
“Dere is! Ferrocrete is pretty labor intensive to make, but keeping people busy is exactly what you want to do just now.”
“Even so, the gap between ten thousand and two million is still too fantastic.”
“You got to look at da economics of da yacht-makin business. Dose tings are built for people who got too much money an’ don’t know what else to do wit it. Did you know dat half da production cost of one of dose big babies goes into teak wood decking an’ cherry cabinet work on da insides? You’re talkin a coupla hundred bucks a board foot for some of dat stuff! Now, you don’t own no teak in your office or your car or your house, so why should you want any on your boat?”
“Okay, so we keep it sensible and Spartan, but you’re still a long way from saving two million bucks.”
“You got to look at deir sales expenses too, boss. All dose fancy showrooms. All dose magazines wit all dose slick photos, an’ all dose good-lookin girls in dose string bikinis, or dose better-lookin girls not in dose string bikinis. I’ve heard dat da total weight of all da books an’ magazines about yachting produced each year outweighs da actual boats produced each year by a factor of more den tree to one.”
“That’s hard to believe. But anyway, say we get our best people involved in building this boat. Why, a hundred footer will absolutely fill the big assembly bay. If a customer walks in and sees it, he’ll know that we don’t have any serious work under way, and he’ll drive the price down to the point where we couldn’t make a profit, knowing how hard up we are. And when we do get a real job in, what do we do with the half finished boat? Scrap it?”
“Not to worry. I got dat all figured out. We rent da warehouse across da alley from da shop. It’s been empty for a year an should oughta come cheap. Den if a customer comes over unexpected, you or Shirley holds him up in da front office for a few minutes while da rest of us runs back to da shop and looks busy. An’ when we get real work in, we just leave da boat sittin dere until we hit another slow spot. I figure dat just having it dere will make da guys an’ girls feel a lot more secure.”
“Okay, say we do this thing. Just what am I going to do with a yacht once we get it done? I haven’t had time to work out with my Karate master for months. I haven’t had time for a vacation in eight years!”
“So dat’s da udder beauty of my plan, boss. Once we get it done, when we hit a slow spot like now, we all go for a boat ride! Wit a boat dat big, we got room for all our people an’ deir wives an’ kids an’ husbands. Or, if da season’s wrong, from what I hear, dere’s always more work you can do on a boat. Like dey say, `a boat is a hole in da water dat you pours your money into.’ Or in our case, our man-hours.”
“I doubt if they say it quite the way you do, but okay, okay. You’ve sold me to the extent that I’ll seriously explore the idea with you.”
“I figured dat you’d come around.” Adam turned to the open door past which our accountant-secretary-receptionist sat. “Hey, Shirley! It’s a go!”
“Dammit! I didn’t say that!”
“Yeah, but you will.”
Shirley brought in a roll of drawings, smiled and left. I gritted my teeth. Among my best people, I believe in running a loose ship, but I also believe in getting a little respect now and then, too.
“So this is something you’ve designed, Adam?”
“Nah, da Coast Guard dey wouldn’t let me do it. Seems dat you got to be a la-ti-da Naval Architect before you can draw a rowboat, an’ us lowly Professional Engineers just ain’t good enough. Dis is a standard plan, wit maybe a dozen built like it in da last ten years or so. I got maybe forty or fifty little changes I want to make in it, but I figure I can sell da brass on ’em okay.”
What he showed me were the plans for a huge sloop, with a single mast reaching to a hundred and forty feet above the water line. Her beam was twenty- eight feet. Drawing eighteen feet, she displaced over a hundred tons of water. The ballast alone weighed almost forty-five tons, and she carried over five thousand square feet of Dacron in her two sails.
“Big.”
“Look, boss, we gotta have room for forty people. If da guys an’ girls tought dat dey was buildin dis ting just for you, well, deir hearts wouldn’t be in it and dey’d start tinkin dat gettin back into da machinery business somewheres else wasn’t such a bad idea. Even like it is, dere ain’t much spare space. Half da people will be sleeping in a bunk room, and da married couples only get an enclosed half of a queen- sized bunk bed. You, however, get a spacious owner’s cabin in da stern.”
“It doesn’t look very spacious. What’s more, it’s right above the engines. It’ll be as noisy as hell in there.”
“It won’t be dat bad, boss. Lots of soundproofin. Anyway, we won’t be using da engines except when we’re going in or out of port, or in an emergency, and you’d want to be on deck dose times anyway.”
“Grumble. I take it that you plan on getting this big cabin in the front of the boat for yourself?”
“And give myself a bigger stateroom dan my boss’s? Never would I be so crass! No, dat’s for nobody in particular. It’s just sort of a social room. I mean, you know, sometimes a guy has to spend a little time alone wit his girl, an’ I figure dat if we don’t give ’em someplace to do it, dey’ll be sneakin around an’ messin up da sail locker all da time.”
“Oh. Here you had me thinking that you’d finally found the right woman to settle down with. I still say you ought to try married life. I mean, we all joke about it, and a bachelor like you only hears about the down side of marriage, when your friends are in the doghouse, but use your couch instead. But I can testify that a wife and maybe someday kids are what really makes life worth while.”
“Yeah? Well, if your home life is so great, why don’t you spend more of your life in your home? As often as you get dere, I’m surprised dat your wife remembers who you are. I saw you sleep in your office for a week straight, when we was late gettin dat Chevy Tonawanda job out.”
“A necessary temporary expedient. Find yourself a good woman, Adam.”
“Lookit, boss. I got restaurants to do my cookin, customers to bitch at me, and a government to take away all my money. What da hell do I need wit a wife?”
“If you say so,” I sighed. “Another thing. These are damn big sails. Putting them up and taking them down will be a hell of a job.”
“You’re way behind da times, boss. We got hydraulic roller reefin’ on bote da sails, and hydraulic winches on everyting else. Dere’s an onboard computer dat can keep her on course no matter what, an’ a satellite navigation an’ guidance system dat knows where it is to witin ten meters, anywheres on Eart. Dis baby can be sailed by one person alone, an’ even den you only got to check on tings every so ofen.”
“We both know just how unreliable automatic machines can be. Murphy’s Law rules the universe.”
“Right. An’ when tings do get screwed up, like you know dey will, we’ll have plenty of manpower on board to set tings right.”
“This boat’s going to be fast, huh?”
“Fast enough. It won’t win no races, but where’s da sense in buildin a superfast boat? You want to get somewheres in a hurry, you book a flight on a jet. Dis boat’s for gettin dere wit style!”