The first in a series of occasional stories told by Ted Brewer about his life and times. Curl up in a chair and enjoy
Issue 21 : Nov/Dec 2001
I was a very lucky boy in 1946. Dad stayed in the reserve navy after his discharge from active service. His position as Chief Petty Officer at HMCS Star in Hamilton, Ontario, enabled me, at age 13, to get sailing lessons aboard the Canadian Navy base whaleboats from grizzled veteran petty officers and chiefs. By the time I was 15, I was proficient at rigging, rowing, and sailing these, so I was allowed free run of the navy’s 14-foot dinghies as well as the 26-foot whaleboats. In effect, I could take a boat out whenever I wanted. On a pleasant Saturday or Sunday I would often gather my crew, rig a whaler, and head out for a sail on Hamilton Bay.
The crew usually consisted of friends, Bruce and Norm, and my buddy, Ken Byrne, along with our girlfriends of the moment. The latter were allowed to bring large picnic lunches as payment for the day’s sail, but those were simpler times, and I don’t think that little ploy would work today. The girls also had the privilege of rowing the boat home, using 8-foot sweeps, when the breeze failed . . . which it did with regularity. We told them the exercise was good for their figures, but we were always prepared for a mutiny on a hot, muggy, windless day.
The whalers were unrigged at the end of each sail, so there was a lot of work to get one ready to head out. The masts had to be hauled out of the spar shop, stepped, and rigged. Sails had to be bent on, the sweeps gathered from wherever they had been hidden, the rudder fitted, life jackets found, and so on. It took quite a while but we enjoyed the work, and it was well worth the effort if there was a good breeze and the girls were pretty; and the girls were always pretty!
Still, Ken and I had the dream of owning our own boat someday, and we finally found one we could afford . . . barely. I was 15 that spring and Ken a year older when we discovered our bargain boat and coughed up $55 for it. Quest, as we called her (her name is still tattooed below an anchor on my left arm), was a 16-foot ship’s gig that someone had put a long wood fin on and an overly heavy gaff rig. The boat needed a lot of work (what $55-boat wouldn’t?), so we sailed the whalers that summer and worked on Quest, scraping her down and painting her, replacing one rotted plank, varnishing the mast and spars, and generally giving her lots of TLC.
Quest was ready for launching the next spring, and she sparkled like a debutante. Unfortunately, we found that she was a very tender debutante indeed due to the weight of that heavy gaff rig. There was no way we could raise sail until we ballasted her. Well, sandbags were cheap, and sand was free. We put about 400 pounds of sand in her bilges, and off we went for a trial sail. After our experience with the heavy whaleboats, the little sloop seemed lively indeed and, even if she didn’t move out like a 6-Meter, we were two very happy young sailors.
We had a lot of fun and our share of excitement with Quest that summer. One day, with Bruce aboard, her drain plug popped out like a cork (actually, it was a cork). So Bruce sailed around Hamilton Bay with his finger in the dike, so to speak, while Ken and I treated the incident as if it was perfectly normal and laughed at poor Bruce’s fears.
Another incident resulted in Ken and I getting our photos in the paper. But it was not the kind of publicity we particularly wanted. We’d gone out for a sail one evening late in the season and were hit by a brief squall and knocked down. As the water came over the lee rail, I realized that our sand ballast would take her to the bottom and that the shore was a long way off. I still don’t know how we did it, but we got those sandbags up and over the side before she went down. The bags were heavy with rain and bilge water and must have weighed close to 100 pounds each, but we flung them out as if they were filled with feathers. Adrenaline certainly works wonders!
Quest floated quietly on her side while we clung to the rail with plenty of time to decide what to do next. We did manage to lower the sails and turn her upright again. As we were contemplating how to bail her out, a boat came out to tow us in since our capsize had been seen from shore. Once we were on the beach, a news photographer got a shot of us morosely contemplating our poor little “yacht.” That photo appeared in the paper the next day, much to our embarrassment, and is probably the reason why my high school yearbook predicted my future as one with “a watery grave.” (Not yet, kiddos!)
We made only one more sail aboard Quest. With newly filled sandbags in her bilges, we sailed her up the bay to HMCS Star, where I had arranged to have her hauled out for the winter. There she was lifted out with the derrick and stored upside down while we made great plans for her, including a deck, a lighter rig, and other improvements. Then one day Dad came home from the base with sad news. The derrick had let go while they were hauling a whaler, and the boom had fallen across the poor old Quest, flattening her like a pancake. It broke our hearts, and I was mad enough to sue the navy until Dad talked me out of it. Ken still wonders if Dad didn’t arrange the “accident” just to save our lives!
As for my tattoo: I’d gone to a carnival with my girlfriend, Pat, one evening that summer and, by gosh, there was a real live “tattoo artiste” there. “How much for an anchor with the name Quest under it?” I asked. “Two dollars,” was the reply. I didn’t have the money, but my girl did. I borrowed it from her and winced while the man did his work. Then when it was time to head home, I found I didn’t have even the two dimes needed for streetcar fare, and I’d used my girl’s mad money on the tattoo. So we walked home, hand in hand, for five long miles. Isn’t young love wonderful!
The next day my folks were somewhat upset about the tattoo, to put it mildly, and I was the recipient of a few harsh words about it. Things did ease up, however, when I pointed out that Dad also had a tattoo on his left arm, a souvenir of his merchant navy days. The big difference was that Dad’s tattoo, a basket of flowers, had a girl’s name below it. And that name was not Mom’s. At least I was intelligent enough, I told them, not to have my girl’s name tattooed on my arm. That ended the discussion!
Ted is a Good Old Boat contributing editor with some great tales to tell. His formal bio is on Page 21.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
