Topic: Sailing

Author: Chris Dunn

I’ve had lessons, several lessons, and once or twice I piloted a sunfish under the supervision of the Boy Scouts, but I wouldn’t arguably call myself a legitimate sailor. Sometimes I wish for a catastrophe or an emergency that would put be to the test. “We’ve got to get this medicine through, but the hospitals on the other side of this narrow stretch of river. Can anyone pilot this already-outfitted, fairly small watercraft?!” I bet I could make it, or at least I could do better than most people. Sure we’d end up several miles downstream and have to walk the serum home, but that still counts.

I’ve never been on a powerboat, nothing greater than a rowboat with an outboard motor anyway. I have no stories involving water skis, but I’ve been sailing – dozens of times. Growing up, my family owned a sailboat – a twenty footer we stored at one of the local lakes. Two or three times a summer we toss the family into the car with a cooler full of sodas and sandwiches and labor down to the dock. The tricky bit was to make sure we didn’t forget the winch handle. Now where did we leave that last time…? The whole enterprise failed without the winch handle. It controlled the mechanism which lowered the boat into the water, and raised it back out when were done – a huge monstrosity of wood and steel that we had constructed at the water’s edge before pitching off the dock into our assigned mooring space. I remember wondering why somebody wouldn’t just come by and steal our boat once we were gone. Of course, they couldn’t do squat without the winch handle.

I don’t know how to speak in the appropriate glowing terms to describe my father as a boat captain without risking defaming him onshore, in comparison. Let me try by first saying, I love my father above all men and would ask for no other father on land or sea, but that being said, on the water he’s a different guy – confident, authoritative, knowledgeable and quick. For the few hours we were on the water, my mother would take a rare back seat and leave everything in his capable hands. Under his command, no one was ever struck by the boom, no sailor shirked their life jacket, and even still, not one child was ever lost overboard. Back and forth and around the lake, as the sun baked our skins and the sandwiches got soggy from cooler condensation, we would sail for hours. We each took our turn at the tiller or controlling the boom. I learned how to measure the wind and spot a luffing sail.

Eventually the wind would die, or our flesh would lobster, and still as excited as the moment we raised sail, we’d be forced to make for the dock. The downside to sailing – outside of a day with zero wind – is that when you’re done sailing, your day is FAR from done. Dock the boat, winch it out of the water (make sure you don’t misplace that handle!), stow the ropes, tie down the mainsail, haul out the cooler, and numerous other little chores and duties your suddenly exhausted limbs scream at. I think I slept through every car ride home, only to awaken to the resumption of old roles and family structures.

In time the dock fees took their toll, and other activities pressed out the weekends available to make paying said fees worthwhile. The boat was sold and the winch handle passed to new owners. I wonder if that boat still sails, spraying some other amazed youngster with its wake as it glides along atop the water, propelled by wind alone.

It was probably the early 90s, the last time my father and I were on the water together. It was either a Father’s Day gift or a treat for his birthday. We went out to the lake, and I rented us a Sunfish for a couple of hours. The winds were light and the boat was small, but still he managed to find enough wind to skip it along the water for our allotted time. We had some laughs, and we made a promise to do it again – maybe next year, or sooner. But like many such Harry Chapin promises, seasons passed with only the occasional, “remember that time we…” to mark their passing.

But still, at the rare times when the question arises, I like to call myself a sailor – son of a sailor anyway…