Ever considered the reasons why you sail?
Issue 59 : Mar/Apr 2008
Ask people why they sail and you’ll unknowingly peel back layers that are rarely exposed in their everyday lives. And you’ll likely not get an answer to your question, but instead provoke a poetic rambling — a sonnet of sorts — sung deep within them about a great many things, and so much more than mere recreational boating.
People say we boat “to get away.” But is that what we’re doing? Is boating a form of escapism? Or is it, in fact, a return to ourselves? When I’m on the water, I break free. I abound with simple pleasure.
The sailor inhales the breeze as breath. The water exudes unparalleled aromatic qualities, awakening the senses. The sailor’s eyes on the horizon see the colors and images that have inspired the most brilliant artistic renderings in history. Sailors are willingly held captive by nature’s boundless beauty. And they repeatedly return to it for these moments because, for a sailor, transcendence is always available.
I have been sailing since childhood. I inherited my first boat from my older brother, who had himself received it as a gift from a friend. A sort of twice handed down hand-me-down, the boat was an old 1960s-model catamaran, about 14 feet in length, then called an Aqua Cat. It was an inferior vessel in quality and had lacked consistent care. I took proud ownership of her and spent every summer day crawling her canvas trampoline and wandering Lake Huron’s waters along Bois Blanc Island. I cared little for the fact that her pontoons were mismatched (one white, one yellow), that the sails were now polka-dotted with repair tape, or that innumerable repair jobs had left her hulls looking more like papier-mâché than fiberglass. None of these things mattered. Sailing, I discovered, wasn’t an exercise of the esthetic, it was a deep and profound experience. It still is.
In all conditions
I’ve been on all types of vessels from Sunfish to schooner. I’ve sailed in all conditions and on various bodies of water, Great Lakes and not-so-great lakes. Throughout it all I’ve continued . . . returning to satisfy my sailor’s longing.
Sailing is not something I do — it is something I am. We all sail. We all long to return and reconnect to ourselves, to others, and to our world. Sailing reminds me of who I am and where I am.
It minimizes the authority of man-made mandates and corporate deadlines that drown out our lives. It provides a sense of freedom where once we felt paralyzed. It puts our egos in check through bouts of insignificance and it puts our names back on the pages of a book filled with beauty, possibility, and significance. Sailing reminds me that we are all connected and far more similar than we are different.
Last summer, I was chartering — an evening sail with a couple of families — and just as we came about, the setting sun tossed its reflection off the water and distantly lapped at the sandy shoreline where Chicago meets Lake Michigan. I watched as the first-time sailors aboard realized what I already knew: we are all sailors; we all chart life’s unknown waterways.
Staring off in the distance, one of the women aboard admitted, “I’m not one for religion, and I don’t believe in much . . . but there is something beautiful about this moment.”
This is why we sail.
If you’re not a sailor, consider it. If you are a sailor, know that you are not alone in the waking dream you discovered the day you first stepped out on the waters.
Dave Fischer grew up sailing on the Great Lakes, running small boats around the Straits of Mackinac. He has instructed youth sailing in Chicago and chartered evening sails on Lake Michigan. Dave currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
