The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about . . . or does it?
Issue 81 : Nov/Dec 2011
Our friend Harold has always hated powerboats. Now pushing 70, he’s been a sailor his entire life and has distinct opinions about all things that float. When my wife, Jennifer, and I caught up with Harold and his wife, Carol, in a remote anchorage last summer, they invited us over for cocktails on their beloved mid-1970s ketch. We had just tied off our dinghy and climbed into their cockpit when a powerboat plowed through the anchorage, pushing its wake toward us. “Jeezum, hold on,” he warned. Beer cans landed on the cockpit floor and salsa splashed on the cushions. Knowing what was sure to follow, Carol retreated to the cabin for paper towels.
As Harold cleaned up the mess, he muttered, “Look what that Piranha 26 did to the anchorage. Everyone’s rocking.” His words were swallowed by a thrumming beat from speakers on another passing powerboat. “And the racket from that Shark 28. I wish I could get my hands on him.”
The few remaining hairs on the back of his head stood straight up as he pointed with his beer can to the open water beyond the anchorage. “Look at those three Big Boys out there. The two 30s are following that 33 Mark II like trained elephants. Why do they always travel in packs?”
His face was now flushed as he thundered on. “What really bugs me is they get to an anchorage by 10 in the morning and then take up all the good spots. Or they drop their anchors in a row and raft up in bunches. Or they tie off to shore like landing barges at Normandy. When I drag in at six or seven, there’s nothing left.”
Jennifer gently asked him about the time his anchor dragged as he tried to take a stern line ashore when his rudder began banging on the rocks. Didn’t three power-boaters jump into the water and hoist him off until he could get reorganized?
He consigned that incident to his deleted inbox file and kept on talking. “They do the same thing in marinas. They get there so early they take all the good slips.”
I admitted that was true but reminded him about last spring when he waited too long for an evening breeze to get him home and came into his slip after dark. His shifter cable was broken and he needed two guys to fend him off forward and four more to haul on his mooring lines. Weren’t they all powerboaters? Carol barely suppressed a giggle down below and I made a mental note to nominate her for sainthood. Harold didn’t respond as he absentmindedly picked flecks of peeling varnish from the cockpit coaming.
Just then Channel 16 blared out: “Billy Bob’s Big Boat, Billy Bob’s Big Boat, this is Jumpin’ Jackfish lookin’ for ya again.” Bad timing. Harold’s defibrillator pacemaker kicked in, sitting him upright and briefly slowing him down.
“Oh my Gawd,” he sighed, pulling his Tilley hat even further over his eyes. He leaned into the companionway, breaking one of the door hinges in the process. “Carol, do we have any cold beer? Did you hear those guys? They’ve been yakking on 16 all afternoon. I listened in on ’em and they’re sitting in the same bay over there trying to figure out who has the worms. Or ‘I love your new flag.’ Or ‘When do cocktails start?’ The Coast Guard reprimanded ’em twice already.”
I asked him about the time his VHF went out last summer and he needed to call a marina about getting it repaired. The skipper on a neighboring trawler not only offered his radio, he let Harold use his satellite phone.
Harold grunted. “Oh yeah, the Wavebuster 34. I had forgotten that. No wait, it was the new 36.5. It was pretty cool using that sat phone. Made my VHF sound like a tin can on a string. But look, here’s my point. Those powerboat guys don’t know jack about radio etiquette. Yesterday I heard one of ’em sign off by saying ‘10-4.’ Have you ever talked to a powerboater? They shout all the time. Between their engines and their generators, I don’t know how they carry on a normal conversation. I wonder if hearing aid coupons come with their boat registration.”
He was on a roll now and his own volume was rising. “Look at that dinghy racing past the point out there, the one with the pirate flag and a new Yokohama 25 on it. He’s from that Bombast 38, the one with the TV antenna on its flying bridge. He leaves his flat screen TV on so late he uses it for an anchor light.”
I thought about reminding him he had accepted an invitation to watch his beloved Cubbies on a powerboat’s TV last month when he started up again. “When we bought this boat we called her Gentle Wind. That guy chose Breaking Wind. What a . . .” Carol shot him a glance from down below and he cut himself short.
Another powerboat (Harold said it was a Peerless 39, a 2008 model, you could tell by how they had changed the shape of the windows) worked its way through the anchorage, the skipper going slowly as he steered well clear of Harold’s anchor marker. Harold shook his head slowly. “That guy must burn 20 gallons of diesel an hour. I pulled into the fuel dock last week and watched one of those beasts take on 400 gallons. That’s five years of diesel for me.”
Jennifer tried arguing that marinas couldn’t stay afloat on the piddling amount of fuel sailors bought and that, if powerboats weren’t buying diesel and taking slips, those marinas would all be broke . . . and then sailors would be affected too.
Harold paused to consider her logic and for a moment we thought he was done. Nope. “One of those brand-new Rhapsody 40s, you know the one with the retractable bow thruster? Went by me the other day over in West Channel. Nearly swamped us.”
I hadn’t heard about that one, but I recalled the time Gentle Wind broke an engine mount and was towed 16 miles back home by a cigarette boat. I asked Harold what make it was. “An Ecstasy 42. I have to admit she moved sweet through those swells. Didn’t stink as much as I thought and towed me like I was a dinghy.”
The sun was setting and the anchorage had quieted down. Carol offered us each another beer, apologizing that it wasn’t cold because they were out of ice again. Harold took one but it was time for us to head back to our boat. “You know,” he said as he popped it open, “I bet that couple over on that Utopian 44 have it pretty good. Big grill on the back, freezer full of steaks, air conditioning, ball game on the flat screen, king-sized bed. I wonder if they’re happy?”
Before I could respond, he asked, “By the way, you guys going to the boat show next month?”
I replied I didn’t know there was a sailboat show next month.
“There isn’t,” he said. “I’m going to the powerboat show. There’s a new Reverie 46 I want to look at.”
Fred Bagley and his wife, Jennifer, live in Vermont but sail the upper Great Lakes out of Penetanguishene, Ontario, in southern Georgian Bay. They primarily cruise Georgian Bay, the North Channel, and Lake Superior on their Caliber 38, Catamount.
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