January 2019 – Max Liberson and the Vegetables
Max held us spellbound with his saga of the 5-week delivery trip of CNYC member Barnaby’s Danish-built Greek sponge fishing boat Eleni from a mud berth in Maldon, where she’d spent 2 years being re-rigged and re-fitted, to Greece, via Biscay and the Med. Eleni is stylish, attracts admiration wherever she docks, and proved an extremely competent boat.
Was Max skipper, sailing-master, crew? At the start he called the shots, but as the voyage progressed Barnaby was promoted and by the finish Max was “just a deck hand”. As had been intended.
They had B’s son, and a friend of his, crewing. Both were called Arthur so to avoid confusion they renamed one Dell. Dell, however, is not a carnivore, whereas Max most definitely is, and a small boat galley in a seaway does not lend itself to multiple-choice menus. They ate vegetables. Small things often come into exaggeratedly sharp focus on passage. We saw endless cockpit pictures of them eating vegetables; the consumption, provisioning, cooking and running out of which was a constantly recurring theme of his talk. Getting bigger laughs each time. Choice of crew is always fraught.
Congratulations to Barnaby for completing the project!
RB