Saturday, October 27, 2012

Dina-Sailboat



She was Papa’s one true love. 

Beyond the 11 novels, through three wives, the big-game safaris in Africa, the bullfights in Spain, and the drinking, carousing and his swaggering public image, Ernest Hemingway’s beloved Pilar was the one constant of his life.


At age 71, Pilar is still waiting. Beached on concrete blocks on a hillside overlooking Havana and the blue sea, Hemingway’s 38-foot fishing cruiser sits under a corrugated metal awning on display at the author’s former Cuban estate, Finca Vigio.


Quite a bit of Hemingway’s inner and outer life transpired on the boat he owned for 27 years. It is where he wrote, read, slept, chased giant marlin, tuna and German u-boats in the Gulf Stream off of Cuba. Here he entertained celebrities, authors, navy brass, seduced women and spent time with his three sons. On her decks he also hurled hostile curses at his critics, punched out once good friends and eventually realized his writing skills were fading away. He killed himself in July 1961.


“Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved and Lost, 1934-1961” (Knopf),  Paul Hendrickson



Well here she is, finished at long last,  Dina, a 12' 6" boat for sail or row... May she have fair winds and following seas.







 















 

1 comment: