After a long hiatus, the first sail is more than sweet.
Issue 138: May/June 2021
Six a.m.
I tiptoe out of the quiet house, pausing only when I reach the water’s edge. Buzzards Bay broadens like the back of a sea god. How can our catboat moored only a hundred yards offshore look so far away?
I blame my nerves, the product of a year of anticipation. My wife’s health had commandeered our lives. We’d never missed so much sailing time, our boat for so long on the hard. “I cannot not sail,” wrote E.B. White. I learned that, even without a boat, I still could not not sail, which relegated rudders and sails to my imagination.
But now Ellen has made a comeback, and I’m about to make a comeback of my own.
I drop my sailing hat—sailing lid, as my father would have called it—and shirt on the small beach and walk into the waves. I dunk in and rise with a gasp.
Will she be shy? I muse as I breaststroke out, our boat at eye level. Will I remember what to do?
I pat her flank before I haul myself aboard. Here I am at last, rocking in bliss aboard Finn.
I scramble to ready her, then check the sky.
Ignore that rain shower closing in, the sea god says.
As I hoist the sail, a puff scoots Finn forward. She comes around, sail shaking, as if to say, “Now that’s more like it.”
We’re off. The mooring ball drops astern, the boat is eager to lean ahead, my body is now warmed from exertion and exhilaration.
I settle into the cockpit. The sense of levitation I longed for returns and Finn clucks in gratitude as she clips through the waves.
My goal for this sail is to spot the lighthouse on Wing’s Neck.
The puffs stiffen and I sit up to handle the helm. The bay widens before us, empty except for a tug, diesels droning, pushing a barge out by Cleveland Ledge light.
We leave the number 5 can behind. A gust forces Finn’s head up.
Turn back? Go on, says the sea god.
We pass Scraggy Neck into the open bay. Then I see it: the lighthouse materializes through a shower, a ghost figure standing watch to the north.
We come about, the cue for the first raindrop to plop onto my head. One, two, three splat on my shoulders, and my skin squirms.
Thunder echoes across the water and my heartbeat reminds me that I’m no fan of sailing in lightning.
The sprinkles turn into a downpour and we race for home, our wake gurgling behind Finn on her best point of sail. With the mooring ball finally in sight, I wonder if I can pull the bit of acrobatics necessary to land. A gust gooses us the moment I round up. The sail flails. I lunge onto the foredeck, strain for the mooring line. I nab it, cleat it, and drop the sail.
I hustle to button up the boat before sliding over Finn’s coaming and lowering myself into the water. I scull shoreward sea-otter style, eyeing the boat and sky beyond. The rain is sprinkles again. Shafts of sunshine slant through the murk.
On the beach, I pull my shirt over skin bristling with gooseflesh and return my hat to my head…and I stop.
So absorbed in sailing, I’d forgotten to think about how grateful I was to be sailing again. I turn to the broad back of the bay, a place that has given me so much, and I exhale in quiet exultation. Then I doff my hat to Neptune—thank you for returning the sea to me, and me to the sea.
Craig Moodie lives with his wife, Ellen, in Massachusetts. His work includes A Sailor’s Valentine and Other Stories and, under the name John Macfarlane, the middle-grade novel Stormstruck!, a Kirkus Best Book.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
