A crew of one…
The 4 guest suites were midship, below deck with a gourgeous winding staircase leading to them. Midship above deck was the galley/bar and forward that was the dining room. Its about 50’x20′ with beautiful arched, beveled windows encased in brass. All the brass on the ship was customed poured. Even the large tie off cleats had the ships name imbedded in the pour. In the dining room, there is a all mohagany china closet and cabinet with a custom set of "Limoge" famous china, the same type that the Queen of England has, with the "Avany" logo of a seahorse on all the pieces.
In the center of the polished ironwood floor was a custom hand crafted mahogany dining table. Get this, its 20′ long, 4′ wide and 3" thick and not a glue up! One solid piece of mohagany! Unheard of!!! Also the deck has a slight slope to it so the table was built to be level. So in order to have you 8 chairs on each side, level, the chairs were custom made with different length legs so as to be level. So each chair had to be in its right place and right side of the table. There was a serving window that opened to the galley also. OK, I could go on and on about this ship, but Im going to focus on the life on it.
If it wasnt for the "black water trips", her keel would have probably grown roots to the bottom of the slip. We took her twice to Savannah for evangelistic trips for a weekend and gave tours and had a donation box at the end. There was about a dozen of us disciples giving the tours which took about 15 minutes and we had a line of people waiting to get on board. When you finshed one, you’d do another one and this went on all day and into the evening. We made about $1000 dollars which covered for fuel and grocerys. It cost about $50 in fuel to just to dump black water. Savannah was about 75 miles away and took us 12 hours to get there. Slow…
After our second trip we recieved notice from the coast gaurd that what we were doing was illegal if we asked for donations. We would have to get the vessel inspected, lots of money in added safety features and also would have to plan our trips a month in advance and be inspected everytime we’d pull into port. The Twelve Tribes never did ANYTHING a month in advance. Everything usually was at a moments notice and "shot from the hip".
When I was ‘sent" to the Avany, I thought that I was going to a boat with a full seasoned crew. They had owned the ship for nearly 2 years and thought by then they had people who knew what they were doing and there time was spent on the upkeep and restoration of the boat. When Yoneq sent Anak looking for a boat to buy, they found her in the Merril Stevens A a world reknown ship builder)shipyard in Savannah. She was on dry dock and had been sitting there for 4 or more years. The owner had a contract drawn up on her to be fitted with airconditioning, larger engines, and the mast to be installed and rigged. It was a multi-million dollar contract. Then his business went bust and he returned to Brazil to salvage what was left of it. His busines that is. In the contract it was added that he would pay no storage fees. So he let it sit there as the sun ate away at its finish and boat yard workers snatched things here and there. The engines had been pulled out and left laying on the deck when all the work stopped. So they got it for a steal. $300,000.00 .If and when its fully functional, it will be worth 4-5 million dollars. The Tribes had the engines rebuilt, fabricated a new exhaust system and painted the hull theirselves which is unheard of also(they sent a large crew from all over the east coast to do a "push")and put her in the water. And off she went. Theres a larger story than this but I wont go into it right now.
I found that when I arrived there was one old black man who’d been with the Tribes since the beginning (Ebed Melech, "servant of the king" but he doesnt like that name because it was a eunich character in the Old Testament). So he went by Yowceph. He was the ship steward and did all the cleaning. He served in the Tents of Shem. The curse of Canaan.There were 2 other single brothers at the time, ones now married and the other has been in jail for over ayear awaiting trail on child molestation charges in Arcadia Fl. http://www.religionnewsblog.com/7559-Protect_the_Abuser.html
They both were pretty sharp engineers and electricians but knew nothing of boats or being out at sea. The Capt, Anak was a sail boater and engineer but was rarely there except to take her out to dump. He was one of the community heads and had alot of other duties. He was also the designer and builder of the Oseh Shalom. Their double decker bus they would use to evangelize rock concert scenes like the Grateful dead, Phil lesh, CSN, Dylan and others. http://www.twelvetribes.com/pdf/freepapers/grateful2.pdf
So, here I am on a 125′ all wood boat which is ALL varnished except the hull that was painted a ugly dark blue. At least it was varnished when it was frist built in 1989 but had no attention since then. Anything varnished thats in the weather needs work on it at LEAST once a year and this tug had most of its varnished burnt off by the hot Ga. sun and the wood had greyed really deep. You would never guess there was a stick on mahogany on it from the outside. All the brass was green. If you had a full crew working on the bright work, by the time you finished it would be time to do it all over again. So here I am, the lone deck hand with a list as long as my arm with things to fix and sort and that didnt include the complete stripping, sanding and varnishing the whole upper outside superstructure. Also it was my task to "reef" the whole hull(pull out the old caulking/corking and re cork (pound in by hand) it with a synthetic okum and caulk all the seams in the hull. What a job! I sanded the whole wheel house which like the rest of the boat except the hull and deck, was tounge and groove mohagany with deep grooves that were almost impossible to scrap and sand. Then I put 5 coats of expensive marine varnish(which still only last a year in the sun) Then the I suggested instead of stripping, sanding and varnishing once a year, to sand it smoothly and tung oil it! Then all you had to do was re-oil it once in awhile. Cheap and quick and less intrusive on the wood, actually waterproofing it and protecting it. You could also put a uv additive in it! So, there still was the initial stripping and sanding. Were talking thousands of square feet of fine wood.
This was to be done with palm sanders and I got them to purchase a DA sander(air) which made things alot easier. Now were talking hot. 98 degrees and 95% humidity, no A/C and the 1000s of agressive Asian Tiger mosquitoes brought over in old recycling tires on container ships. You could have a swarm of them eating you up and sprint full out for a block and theyd still be with you like a swarm of bees on the cartoons. So as soon as the sun went down, Brunswick is surrounded by wetlands, they would come out. They would party with Avons"skin so soft" and laugh at deep woods off! LOL. So what do you do? Close the windows of the ship and cut off whatever cool night air there was, if any, and cook or leave them open and be eaten alive?
It was going to take at least a half million dollars to set the masts and rig them out with sails, and THAT is if we manufactured most the parts and sails ourselves! Then you need a ships architect to research just how to rig it being it wasnt made to have 100′ masts and 100,000 square foot of sail. Would she hold them? Would she even sail? The boat itself weighed 400 tons! 800,000 lbs! And the big question was who the hell was going to sail it? There arent many people in the world who have experience in sailing a triple masted tall ship, and they would have to be hired to teach whoever they honored to live on the ship! Nun, pronounced noon, meaning "shine", is a elder (the one who established Australia) and apostle with delusions of granduer. He signed up the Avany to appear in full sail at tall ship event in 2004. Anak had sailed 40 footers and I never sailed at all! Only power driven vessels. You would have to have at least a 6 man crew on at all times and a 6 more for the relief crew. This tank still sits in Brunswick and I never see it sailing and I see them selling it. They sold a prime peice of property with buildings to pay off the loan whom they got from a rich relative of a single brother. But they could get at least a couple million for it right now as she sits.
I spoke alot(squeaked alot, and got the grease!) about my desire for a wife. I was just plain old horney, and they secretly arranged for this woman named Deborah to come down from the Boston community under the guise of childcare. She was a nice enough moman but she reminded me of an ugly Catholic nun. She was also brash at times. I figured out what they were doing and expressed my lack of feelings for her and asked if I could correspond with a single sister in Fl. I met who stayed on the ship one night on her way to the Boneroo event(a big rock concert in Tenn. they took the mobile cafe to, to evangelize). Very often, the ship was used as a hotel for Disciples traveling to or from the communitys in Florida.Her name was Nishma(vital breath). Her shepherd said she wasnt ready and was "young in the Body"(community). She ended up leaving when she was not allowed to get married to a single brother/ ex roomate andgood friend of mine who had beev there for 18 years. He left after her and was told not to come back without her. They got married in the world and a year later he relapsed, he was a drunk and speed freak when he came in, and now they are seperated and getting divorced. He will most likely return to the tribes. Its the only place he can stay sober. It taught me how to overcome my addictions but now I dont have the guilt and self loathing that drove me to my self medication. I can actualy enjoy a beer now and then….
So, after my not being able to write her, I started to consider Deborah(bee in hebrew, and she could sting!). I bought into the crap that she might be the one God intended for me. The elders thought it would be a good match so I trusted them and asked to try a waiting period. It was announced and so we started spending time together. She’s wonderful with children, the problem was that I could see she would be a mother to me also, and not a wife. Usually waiting periods go from 3 months to a year. After a week, I asked to end it. It was Yohannan Abraham who I spoke to and he was the one who had her brought down. He said" no problem" then he called Nun to tell him and Nun said "No! Take some more time!". OK, I went another week and asked again to stop it. Gebar talked me into sticking with it a little longer. The 3rd week I said STOP! And it was over…She went back to Boston a week later.
About 6 months later I was talking to Nun and told him I had never seen a Cafe and he asked me if Id like to go work in one for a month in Vermont and spy out the land (TT speak for look for a wife)of the Tribe of Yehuda(New England area, oldest and biggest tribe with the most communitys). I said "YES!!!". Hell, just to get out of this heat for a month! So it was off to Rutland, Vermont and the "Back Home Again Cafe". That one month turned into six and would have been years. I’ll tell you about this in my next entry… http://www.matefactor.com/Cafe_Rutland.htm Heres something I was interviewed for recently… http://www.thedailystar.com/news/stories/2005/05/14/cafe1.html
Scrape that brightwork you scurvy dog!
Next: Life in Rut-Land and the dishwashers blues…