The Kindness of Strangers

I have written a fair bit about our current refit on Cambria–all the jobs we’ve been doing. One thing I have neglected to mention is how helpful people have been. In these days of negative online communities, twitter rampages and deep fakes, several times I have been encouraged by how helpful real people can be. From people next to us in the boat yard when we hauled out, to our neighbours in our marina, to the folks at Blackline Marine and UK Sails who gave us lots of advice that went well beyond what we were paying them to do, it’s been amazing. It’s encouraged me that there may be hope for humanity yet. One incident that happened during our haul out was particularly encouraging.

When hauled out, time is key. The boat yard charges for each day that a boat is there so we didn’t want to waste any time. It meant we put in some long days and we tried to work efficiently to make good use of our time. Before our haul out we planned ahead. We made lists of all the tools, parts and materials we anticipated needing and had them all purchased and organized before we hauled out. Even with our advanced planning I still ended up needing to go to the store each day to pick up something we hadn’t anticipated needing. It was on one of these trips that I was surprised by the kindness of a stranger.

I needed grease. Actually, I had grease but I couldn’t get it to work with our grease gun. Our grease gun had belonged to Cambria’s previous owners. It was on the boat when we bought it. I found it buried in the bottom of a locker when we purchased the boat. It was well used but looked serviceable. It was a style of grease gun that I wasn’t familiar with. During our haul out I opened it up and loaded it with some grease but when I put it back together, I couldn’t get the grease to flow. I’d pump it up but I couldn’t seem to get any pressure. Grease guns that I’m familiar with, take a tube of grease but this one wasn’t like that and the grease I had didn’t come in a tube. I fiddled with the gun for a few minutes and then decided to see if the shop next to the boat yard had the grease I needed. I walked over to the shop. It was closed.

The next nearest marine store was a few kilometres away so I went back to the boat, wrestled out of my coveralls, told Sharlene that I’d be back soon, jumped in the car and drove to the next nearest marine store. They didn’t have the grease I needed. On my fourth stop I found a shop that had the grease I needed but they didn’t have it in a tube that would fit my grease gun. I decided to buy it anyway. While I waited in line to pay the customer waiting in the line beside me had obviously overheard my conversation with the salesperson.

“If you have a used empty tube you can fill it up with that grease and suck it into the gun,” he volunteered.

“Ah, thanks. Makes sense,” I replied. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a used empty tube.”

“Too bad I’m in my wife’s truck this morning. I have an empty one in the back of my truck.”

“Yeah, too bad.”

“Where do you live,” he said. “If it’s close you could swing by my place and get it,” he offered.

“I’m working on my boat over at Canoe Cove,” I replied.

“My house is on the way then,” he replied.

And that’s how I found myself doing something completely out of character–following a complete stranger to his house.

He was right. His house was on my way back to the boat. I followed him down the highway, turned off, weaved my way through several blocks of residential housing until he pulled into his driveway. I pulled to a stop at the head of his driveway. His truck was there. He jumped in the back and found the used empty cardboard grease tube.

“Give me a minute. I’ll clean it up a bit,” he said. With that he used his finger to scoop out a bit of residual grease still in the tube and wipe it on the grass of his boulevard.

When he finished, he looked at my car. “Just a second,” he said and he walked to his house and into the open garage.

He reappeared with the tube wrapped in a clean rag and handed it to me.

That was it. I thanked him and was on my way.

Did the technique work to get the grease gun working again? Yes, mostly. It took some persistence and a lot of pumping but I did get it to work. More importantly, I felt a lot better about the world.