Dolphins, a boat, and a pretty woman make the heart beat faster
Issue 33 : Nov/Dec 2003
“They are curious creatures,” I try to explain. “It’s not just the boat that will bring them. They need more than a bow wave to surf or a new face smiling down to really get them going.” She looks at me, unsure as to whether or not I’m serious. We haven’t said much to each other yet, and without more to go on, this lady isn’t sure just how to take me. She turns and looks out from the cockpit and sighs, shoulders relaxing a little. I enjoy the lovely profile and pretty aura of the sun spilling through her hair. She shines.
I begin rapping gently on the cockpit coaming boards. In the tapping, I purposefully avoid the steady rhythm coming from the stereo in the cabin below. Mischievous dark eyes look back toward me with a question, a shrug of her shoulders, and a gesture. I can imagine her thoughts: “What in the world are you doing?” I smile as I sense a joke giggling up from inside her: “Why can’t you keep the beat?”
I smile and say, “I’m not keeping time with music, I’m calling them. It needs to be just a bit off with a few stray notes.” The tapping continues out of beat with the strains of the angelic orchestrations wafting up from the main cabin stereo. No, I’m not ignoring the music, rather I’m annoyingly not quite in syncopation with it. “You see, they’re intelligent,” I continue, “and very curious. They can hear it for miles. Don’t worry. They will come.”
I reach over to move the wheel a nudge to windward. I’ve come to know my boat so well now. She is 32 feet of dark-blue hull with the pure white swollen sails above her, full of curves in this afternoon wind. She has seen 27 years of time across her deck. I have lovingly restored with oil some boards that had stood on their last legs during a few years of neglect. Slowly and with great joy, I have come to appreciate this old boat. I am not alone; old sailors admire her from near and far, commenting on her character, good looks, and the fine line of traditional design. But I feel lucky, for I not only see her, but I’ve come to know the feel of her deep down.
Oversheeted
I sheet in the jib a trifle too much to create a counterbalance against the wheel and the heel I’ve put her into. There’s but a moment before I can feel the slight whirling vibration from the rudder rising back through the post and wheel shaft to my hand. I can imagine the swirling sound in the water beneath me now that the struggle is played out between the overly heady foresail and the vortex I’m forcing on the scene below. A shudder passes through the entire boat now, with the almost imperceptible complaints played out in the cattywompus balance of the feel in her. I look up to my standing rigging, and I can see a slight vibration in the main shrouds, like a gigantic double bass string being gently plucked. I am sure of a tone there so low that it is beneath my ability to hear. But they can hear it.
Miss Shiny Hair tells me she has never really seen dolphins up close in the wild before. Another moment passes in silence. Then she gets warm with talk, describing her boating past with a small laugh and a sad story of how some idiot jibed a boom into her head and knocked her completely off the boat. It sounds like one of those Hollywood moments that you swear don’t really happen, but it certainly must have been that way. It was a small boat, and she didn’t even like him.
I shake my head incredulously, sympathetic, and I can imagine the scene she describes. We both chuckle a bit as she admits how she was gullible enough to go again later with the same lamebrain (nothing can explain to me why) and how she was knocked overboard yet again. As the young woman tells of her adventure, she is still looking about anxiously awaiting the arrival of the dolphins I’ve predicted. Of course, I didn’t go so far as to promise, for you can’t tell for sure what blue kittens are going to do. They are just independent enough to confound you on principle, if they can tell you are calling them.
Wonderful design
More tapping, but the vibration on the wheel is becoming more regular. What a wonderfully designed ketch — she just can’t stay off balance, even a little, without settling in somehow. My praise goes out to designer Tom Gillmer for a boat that requires effort to destabilize. I smile, then wonder if the blue kittens are ticklish today. Oh, how like cats they are. Just when you say you don’t care to pet them ever again, they jump in your lap or rub against your leg. Another distraction comes as my disbelieving passenger asks me what music this is. I tell her she might recall the theme from the movie, City of Angels. I smile, thinking how it is affecting her. She is curious — couldn’t help but ask. I like how the tapping and the tiniest of off-kilter shivers running through the spine of the boat are forgotten now as the music has aroused her interest. It’s a feline thing. Slowly, I’m less of a weirdo and more of a romantic anomaly.
I take the wheel abruptly to port then back to starboard, zigzagging the boat’s course for a moment. The turns are heavy on my arms, as the huge barn-door rudder diverts giant swaths of water back and forth. I have a vision of a corkscrew of vortexes behind us as my beloved Wind Ketcher makes nearly 7 knots. I can feel the work of my forearms knotting my muscles as I swash about back and forth and back again. And I can visualize the horizontal water tornadoes being sprouted.
Just when the boat is getting into the swing of things and starting to rock on her own wave action, I stop. She slops across the top of a bow wave. I let go of the wheel and let the sails and the heel and the wash of the water beneath us underway find their harmony. Quickly the boat falls off a point to leeward, then the cockpit heels over a bit, and she heads back upwind a nudge. It is such a compliment to her how, in only a moment of being left to herself, this fine old ketch finds balance. All is in harmony now: an engraved invitation I feel certain they can no longer resist.
Here they are
The blowholes sound. The blue kittens have arrived to play with the silly man bouncing the ball of string, making all of this thumping, and swishing, and squishing, and the low hum. There are more than 10 of them, with several youngsters. A few roll high with a breath and even go so far as to slap the water with their tails. Some are spinning around in the vortex playground I created. More than just passing by, they are reaching out. I can hear them squeaking. It almost sounds as if they are complaining and fussing about my annoying tapping and my vibrating rig set. I yell out to them, “Yeah, I know, everybody’s a critic. So what if I can’t keep a beat?”
My passenger leans over the railing to see them swimming alongside, stretching out her hand with a finger reaching. The reflection of her touching her own hand reminds me of a watercolor. The twist of her body is appealing as she enjoys our visitors. I take a deep breath, absorbing a vision of her being a little girl playing with frisky kittens. For their part, they are really putting on a show. These creatures that can swim for minutes and miles without a breath are blowing and snorting like madmen, making a racket that sounds like hundreds now.
Suddenly playtime ends, and the blowholes and squeaking are silent. I look at the beaming and flushed cheeks of the smiling lady. Her eyes are bright with wonder and joy. I’m glad the kittens came. Without her noticing, I put my foot gently on the wheel and draw comfort from the feeling of balance and conversation with my boat there. Looking up at the rigging I see shroud telltales at their proper angle and stream, and the leech tapes are riding straight out in perfect contentment. And there is a slight roll of the boat as she gently outpaces the 3 1⁄2-knot wave we are carving up. “That was so cool. Golly, they’re beautiful,” she blurts with a genuine sigh, sounding out of breath.
I take a long look down our wake and see in the distance a hump appear with a spray of exhalation, silent in its distance. A relaxation born of the balance, the sunshine, the kittens, the lady, and the wind spreads from the spine of the boat and eases through me. The blue kittens fall astern, and I catch another view of the shiny hair, the olive athletic legs, and the bare shoulders of the lady who enjoyed this with me. She smiles and lets go a husky victorious laugh at my appreciative glance, knowing as do I that we just shared something.
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