MAX EBB — I
Page 74 •
Latitude 38
• May, 2021
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ALL PHOTOS MAX EBB
t's been the longest 14 months in memory, but as of today, my yacht club is finally open again. It could have happened months earlier, because my favorite activity is not yucking it up at the bar with a drink in one hand, or crowding in line for a cheap spaghetti dinner. My favorite thing at the club is to sink into a plush chair, take in the view of the Bay, and read the latest Latitude or catch up on 'Lectronic with my tablet. But it didn't last long. "Uncle Max! Uncle Max!" Those voices belonged to my nephews, Bob and Jack Staye, who are ages 7 and 9. "Ahoy there, swabs!" I greeted them as I turned away from the big windows to greet them. "What course has your tutor set for you for today?" It was a weekday, and their parents had hired Martin Gayle, a math teacher and also a yacht club member, to keep their minds occupied during the pandemic. "Martin had an emergency," Jack explained. "We were going to work on today's math assignment here, but kids aren't allowed in the club without a grown-up in charge." "I guess I'm it then," I sighed, just as my cellphone alerted me to a text message asking if I could please look after the kids for a couple of hours. "Roger, I've got the con!" I typed back. There are a lot of things I enjoy less than being put in charge of my nephews. The toy locker at the club had been emptied early in the pandemic and not yet restocked, but a lot of fun can be had with office supplies. We started with paper helicopters dropped down the stairwell, the game being to see whose 'copter could stay up longest. To make this more interesting, when the front door is open and the wind is right, there is a nice updraft. I amazed the kids with paper 'copters that went up instead of down. When this got old we switched to paper planes, especially my favorite design: just a rectangle of paper with exactly the right amount of cellophane tape on the leading edge, carefully placed taped-on fins, and a little bit of reflex in the trailing edge. Jack could make one fly well, but Bob was a little too young for the fine motor control and careful adjustment that this design requires. Next we switched to paper boats. As origami projects go, the basic paper boat has the advantage of not requiring
Paper boatbuilding, step by step: 1) Start by removing the center page from the April Latitude; 2) Fold on the diagonal to define a 10-by-10-inch square; 3) Mark the cut line and cut off the extra rectangle; 4) Fold again on the other diagonal; 5) Unfold and mark the center; 6) Fold all four corners into the center; 7) Fold the corners back out to meet the new sides; 8) Turn it over; 9) Fold one side to the centerline; 10) Fold the other side into the centerline; 11) Fold in all four corners; 12) Fold the corners again to bisect the corner angles; 13) Don't worry about the interference where the folds meet amidships; 14) Fold the sides into the centerline again. You can leave this step out for a boat with more beam and more freeboard, but it won't be self-righting; 15) Now pull the hull open to a boatlike shape by spreading the two parts of the inner keel planks apart, working from the inside; 16) This looks like a boat, but all the folds and extra panels are on the outside. It needs to be turned inside out. This is the hard step; work slowly and be careful not to tear the paper; 17) Pull up the fore and aft cabin tops. Make sure they are round on top, with no flat spots or hard creases. Bend down the inner panels along the gunwales, to lower the center of gravity; 18) Ready for sea trials. Place the boat on the table upside down, and it will roll upright.
a square piece of paper. An 8.5-by-11 rectangle works fine. The two kids were happily building fleets of these when another uninvited guest put the shipyard production on hold. "Like, you call those things boats?" Lee Helm asked with a distinct tone of disapproval. This could only mean she had something up her origami sleeve. "Well, sure," I said. "We're building a navy. Two navies, actually." "Too much deadrise," she announced after she picked up one of the paper boats and eyed the hull shape bow-on. "I've taught them how to spread the
garboard planks apart to make a bottom flat," I explained. "But that leaves a big hole in the bottom," she said. "Not a flat bottom at all. Terrible hydrodynamics. I mean, like, these things make much better hats than boats." She spread one of the boats apart and placed it on her head. "What are you teaching these kids, anyway?" Bob and Jack looked crushed. But Lee had a better plan. "Let me show you how to make a real paper boat. And it's not just, like, any paper boat, it's a working model of a Coast Guard self-righting surf rescue boat. We'll need a big square piece of paper that
