Issue 16 : Jan/Feb 2001
I recently wrote a short biography in which I mentioned that I had sailed halfway around the world twice. In all fairness, in the context of this sailing magazine, this does not give me the right to claim even one circumnavigation. The route both times was not a circle, but two half circles. More importantly, the vessel was a fire-breathing dragon of a powerboat boasting 120,000 shaft horsepower, driving four screws. She had what we called masts but no sails at all.
She was a respectable lady when her paint was kept up and was called by various names. On her shield she was called Regina Maris, which translates from Latin as Queen of the Seas. The press occasionally called her the Grey Ghost from the East Coast, and my roommate and lifelong friend, George, called her the Great Grey &*#@%. She was also called the Fastest Gun in the West, and her radio call-sign was Thunder. She earned and deserved all those names and a few more I will not recount here in polite company.
For prolonged periods of time, she was the complete floating world for about 1,000 sailors who came to understand that if she was to take care of them, they must take care of her. This stemmed from pride as well as need. An unkind reference to her in a waterfront bar could quickly bring the need for dental repair. It is possible to have a lot of emotion tied up in 22,000 tons of gray-painted steel. That is an odd thing that I know but may never fully understand.
Pleasure yachts have it all over warships. They are smaller, cheaper and, in almost every way, more fun. Their mission is smiles. Still, the lessons I learned in that first ship have served me well in the several boats that have brightened my life since:
- Take care of your boat, and she will take care of you.
- There is weather out there that can humble any vessel, regardless of her size.
- When there is harmony among the crew of a vessel, life is good.
- After a short time aboard any vessel she will seem to have a personality and be alive. I don’t know why this is so, perhaps it is just easier to understand a ship or a boat in this way. Perhaps it is something about the nature of boats and the way people experience them. Whatever the reason, it is so, and it is one of the great joys of ships and boats.
She’s probably gone for razor blades by now, but I offer here a salute to an old friend, the USS Newport News CA 148 for the lessons she taught me.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
