Domestic bliss returns after a short-lived middle-aged fling
Issue 50 : Sept/Oct 2006
If you are, or were ever, married or even a long-term relationship, you will know what I mean when I admit to having had a fling with another boat.
I didn’t set out to get into trouble this way. It began when I took a six-month consulting assignment in San Francisco, which entailed renting a furnished apartment in the South Beach neighborhood, a few blocks from the Embarcadero and literally in the shadow of the Bay Bridge. I would only be returning to New York every other weekend, so my wife worried that I might have a middle-aged fling with another woman (which only goes to show that she doesn’t understand the heart of a sailor).
As soon as I had moved into my little apartment and started my project, I went on the prowl . . . not for a woman but for a boat to crew on. The mecca for crew, as it is for singles, is the Internet, and it was there that I found the South Beach Yacht Club (SBYC) just down the Embarcadero.
By some industrious poking around I located the club’s membership chairwoman, and she hooked me up with the owner of “the other boat,” a J/105. SBYC has a series of winter races, one every month from November through March, and Dick Smith proved to be the perfect boatowner for someone looking to crew. He was congenial, adaptable, and not overly focused on winning every race.
I joined Dick and his crew on LunaSea for the next race. For sailors and for racers, in particular, winter on the bay has pluses and minuses: it is seldom cold enough to make sailing really uncomfortable, but the wind can be fluky.
On this mid-January day, we got the plus and the minus. The temperature was mid-50s. The wind took the day off. Coupled with a 3-knot ebb tide, that meant that we motored out to the course, hung there next to the committee boat until the race was canceled, and motored back to the slip. A little disappointing, perhaps, but better than hanging around my apartment.
She was captivating
Even under those conditions, LunaSea was captivating. J/Boats are really one-design racers with bunks and a galley, and LunaSea in her berth was like Seabiscuit in his stall: all athlete and ready to run. The retracted bowsprit was just waiting to be extended, the asymmetrical spinnaker was lying at the ready, and the big Harken two-speeds gave off that unmistakable purr. Just boarding her made you feel like a sailor.
A few weeks later, Dick and I took her out for an afternoon romp, and I got to see her with the bit in her teeth. Not a howling wind, mind you, but enough for her to kick up her heels. We sailed around Yerba Buena Island, under the Bay Bridge twice, and were home in time for tea. Two of us could handle her very well, if you made allowances for my unfamiliar fumbling, and I came away from the dock all smiles.
In many ways, LunaSea was everything that Greyhound, my Alacrity 19, is not. She was big, almost twice as big, and fast. She was much newer. Greyhound was almost twice as old. And she was impressive, while Greyhound was simple and, you might say, adequate.
But mostly, she belonged to someone else. Dick paid for her, her slip, and the small amount of diesel fuel she used. He bought her new canvas when the old sails wore out and fixed her winches when the pawls stopped working. He even had a spare PFD on board for crewmembers who showed up unprepared.
Being someone else’s boat made LunaSea all the more attractive.
And it wasn’t just to me, either. One of the crewmembers I met owned his own sloop, but he manned the helm for Dick instead of the helm of his own boat. Maybe it was the camaraderie of the crew on LunaSea, but I think she appealed to his senses the same way she appealed to mine. Everyone wants to spend time with the prettiest girl at the party.
End of a fling
But someone else’s boat is still not yours, and all flings must come to an end. In fact, Dick had put LunaSea up for sale long before I came to San Francisco. Shortly before I was due to return to the East Coast, Dick found a buyer and announced that she was gone. After having her on the market for many months, the departure was pretty sudden, with no time even for a final race or a sail around the bay.
So I came back home to Greyhound and appreciated her more than before I left. While I was playing with another, she had huddled patiently under her tarp biding her time until I came back. No hard feelings.
As I reclaimed her, I realized that she was just right for me: not too big and not too small. Her tiller fit right in my hand, while LunaSea’s wheel always felt a bit foreign to me. I knew every inch of Greyhound, above and below the waterline, and I’d fixed or replaced many of her parts. Oddly, as I got her ready for launch the following spring, she seemed almost like a new boat. I had a ball on LunaSea, but I know where my heart is.
Oh, and my wife was glad I came home from the West Coast too.
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