Issue 6 : May/Jun 1999
The partnership materialized after three beer-budget boaters — Bill, Bob, and Ann — decided to purchase a yacht. One summer day Bill called Ann up. “Hey, let’s go look at a Grampian 26 that’s for sale on Sodus Bay,” he said. Against her better judgment, she agreed to go. And even though she wasn’t really boat shopping, for some odd reason she just happened to remember hearing of another good old boat for sale parked in somebody’s yard down a little side road in the country.
I think it’s a 35-footer,” she told Bill, “and I heard the seller was down to $12,000.”
“Sure let’s go see it,” said Bill, and they rattled off down Lake Road in his battered half-ton Ford to check out the mid-summer yachting bargains.
Each vessel they examined looked perfectly serviceable to Ann, though Bill wasn’t satisfied with any of them. But when they pulled up to the last bargain, the 35-footer, his eyes lit up. “It’s way too big,” said Ann. “Bigger’s better,” responded Bill who swarmed up the ladder to check out the yacht. “Now this is more like it,” he said gazing about at the teak woodwork and bronze hardware.
To Ann, the yacht looked shabby and neglected. A divorce and general lack of interest on the part of the new blended family had apparently resulted in the vessel being trucked to its owner’s large country yard and deposited next to the flower garden several years ago. The boat’s varnished wood trim was now weathered and gray, and several marginally usefully items, such as the forward hatch and VHF radio, were missing. Down below a distinctive pungence suggested that the sanitary facilities were due an overhaul.
“It’s perfect,” enthused Bill as he opened locker doors and peered into the dank mysteries of the engine compartment. “It’s a mess,” observed Ann who, after seeing the effect of a winter freeze on the not-empty holding tank and the apparent origin of the smell, went back up on deck to sit in the cockpit.
While Bill poked around below, Ann watched a large colony of paper wasps bustling industriously on their nest just inside the yacht’s companionway and studied the view of gently rolling bean fields to the west. She gazed out over the yacht’s deck forward. To her the bow appeared a half mile distant. “This thing is way too big,” she thought. “I’ll stick to my daysailer.”
After 15 minutes or so Bill emerged saying, “Let’s buy it. Let’s offer him $8,000.” “Have you got $8,000?” Ann asked pointedly. Bill didn’t, so they climbed down the ladder and into the truck to search for smaller prey. As they drove away, Ann looked back one last time at the yacht. It was a peculiar sight, looking a bit like a beached whale among the farm sheds and flower beds. Despite her inappropriate and unlikely setting, the old yacht sat upon her cradle with an undeniable, if perhaps slightly worn and weary, dignity. “She surely is a pretty boat,” thought Ann as they drove off.
The next morning Ann awoke as the summer sun streamed into her bedroom. In her mind lingered a picture of a graceful boat beside the dahlias waiting patiently to someday spread its white wings again on the wide lake. “I want that boat,” Ann said to herself. Then she thought, “That’s absurd, I can’t afford a big boat, and I can’t afford a dock for it either. At that point, she recalls, a voice spoke to her from the great unknown: “Then form that co-op boat partnership.”
After breakfast she called Bill up. “Do you still want to go partners on a boat?” she asked. “Sure let’s do it,” he answered. Ann hung up, poured a second cup of coffee and plotted. She said to herself, “Bill’s lots of fun but with his work schedule, he won’t be able to do anything to the boat in the spring. But Bob could.”
Bob was a casual boating friend. “Bob knows how to fix boats,” thought Ann. “He can fix up that big boat; no problem.” She also reflected that, unlike impulsive, fast-talking Bill, Bob was calm, careful, and (she thought) level-headed. “He’s got lots of common sense. He’ll keep everybody in line.” She decided to call Bob even though she figured he was far too smart to get involved with a partnership when he didn’t even know one owner. “He’ll probably say no,” she thought.
He didn’t. So on a summer evening all three would-be yachters drove back out into the country to see the boat again. At Ann’s suggestion, they took Bill’s truck as it was the rattiest looking vehicle. That way, she reasoned, they’d look like proper shoestring yachters.
They offered the big boat’s owner $8,000 dollars cash. He accepted. Afterward Ann tried to figure out what made her change her mind about getting a good old boat. “I think the boat just wanted to get out of that yard really badly, so it spoke to me,” she decided.
After a week of work to get their boat functional — which included a fair amount of Bill’s time spent in close communion with the three-cylinder long-dormant diesel — launch day arrived, and the three partners motored their new yacht to its slip. Then a day later they went sailing.
The first sail was a revelation to Ann. To her surprise the yacht that seemed so huge and unwieldy at the dock proved surprisingly responsive under sail. She reached along in 10 knots with as light a helm as Ann’s little daysailer. She tacked and jibed easily and even maneuvered in and out of the dock quite readily. Ann, who had been intimidated by the yacht’s size, began thinking big boats are fun.
The partnership had been launched in late August, and the three owners soon fell into a pattern. On his rare day off, Bill took his wife and kids out into the bay. There he dropped anchor and everyone went swimming. Bob and Ann, who were both single (and considerably keener on sailing), employed each other as crew while their daysailers languished neglected at the dock. The three partners split up the month according to usage and after less than three months had logged over 500 miles with their new boat. At least 400 of those miles had been with Bob or Ann in command.
After about six weeks of sailing together, a strange thing happened. It may have been the Friday evening TGIFs that did it: those evenings on Lake Ontario when, with a good sweet west wind the PartnerShip reached 10 miles offshore at 6 knots, swinging strong and free over four-foot swells while a hot red sun dipped below the horizon and one by one the stars turned on overhead before she tacked and headed back to her home port in the gathering dusk. Or perhaps it was that brisk Saturday morning in September when with the whole lake to herself, the PartnerShip put her rail down and sang a lake serenade with her bow wave lifting and diving into the waves joyous and free.
Anyway, however it happened, it’s an old story, as old as mankind itself, though played out in endlessly new variations through the millennia. Bob and Ann, sitting on their boat one fall evening after such a sunset sail, looked at each other and fell in love.
The following spring the three partners launched their big boat. (Or more accurately Bob and Ann did, as Bill was back to 80-hour work weeks.) Bob and Ann took a cruise and did some daysailing and talked about taking their fine new boat south that fall. Then along about July, Bill showed up with his family to use the boat. He had called to notify the couple, so they were prepared. They packed up their bedding, cleared out the icebox, and gave Bill the key. “We want her back Sunday afternoon, so we can get out for a little while,” Ann said.
At 4 p.m. Bob and Ann arrived at the dock eagerly anticipating an evening sail. To their chagrin, Bill’s family, several friends, and a dog were still lounging about the boat. The mainsail hung unfurled, the genoa was splotched with mud, and there were paw prints all over the cabintop. As Bill and company slowly bestirred themselves under Ann’s baleful gaze, the wind began to die.
An hour later, Bob was still smoothing Ann’s ruffled feathers as she picked soggy dog food from the bilge and cleared potato chips out of the cockpit scuppers. Ann found a rip in the jib, and Bob found a new fishhook on the main halyard cable when they raised sail. As Ann eyed his lacerated finger she declared, “Bill has gotta’ go.”
But though Ann wanted Bill out of the deal so she and her husband-to-be could sail the PartnerShip off into the sunset on the sea of matrimony, Bob felt differently. He enjoyed using a boat that someone else helped maintain and was in no hurry to dissolve the partnership. One morning in late August, Bob and Ann arrived to install a new anchor roller on the boat only to discover an empty slip. Bill had gone off on an overnighter without warning them. After considerable prodding, Bob agreed to propose a buyout to Bill and much to the couple’s surprise, a few days later Bill’s wife called and commanded in an uncharacteristically firm tone of voice, “Bring your checkbook over.”
At last word, Bob and Ann were back on speaking terms with now boatless Bill. They even offered to take him sailing and invited him to their wedding. They also agreed as they all drank champagne toasts after the ceremony that boats and wide water can be a potent combination with strange and unpredictable powers over those who are bold enough to go a-voyaging.
A (mostly) true story adapted from Sweet Waters, Stories of Lake Ontario, by Susan Peterson Gateley, featuring tales of sailing, fishing, work, and adventure on Lake Ontario.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
