One of those times to think of seasons and cycles
Issue 57 : Nov/Dec 2007
It’s a funny thing, the way we decide that certain days are unlike other days. I thought about this as I began powering my O’Day 30 away from her mooring. I was following everyday routine: always motor out at first, just in case the breeze wants to push you into a mooring ball or lobster pot. It was morning, bright and crisp. The breeze was just a hint of what it would be within an hour. It would have been a perfect sailing day.
Would have been. But on this day I had the sails stripped, running rigging stowed, boom on the floor of the main saloon, freshwater tanks empty, and rigger’s tape wadded in the trash can. And I wasn’t coming back. This date in November had been looming in my mind for weeks. Here it was, and it felt, well, different.
Not sad, exactly. Not sad at all, come to think of it. Pretty soon, the wind filled in, and Buzzards Bay was doing its famous impersonation of a washing machine. How hard was it blowing? Beats me — I had disconnected the masthead unit the day before. Who cares? The boat was frolicking and plunging like a tipsy porpoise. That diamond-bright morning crispness had turned sharp and cold, but to one who was bundled up in foul weather gear as I was, it was good. Landmarks slipped astern, just as they had on a hundred other days, but this day, a fugitive idea pushed to the surface.
“Sail on!” Maybe it was the ducks. Flocks of mergansers or buffleheads were all over the bay. They’d erupt out of the water and launch themselves south whenever I approached. Either the ducks were talking to me or the boat was. “Follow! Migrate!”
Why not?
Why was I thinking this way? I had sailed all summer without giving much thought at all to making a break for it. And now today, despite the fact that I was driving a boat stripped and readied for winter embalming, the idea of sailing over the horizon was suddenly so real I could almost touch it. Why not?
Well, because Slo’Day is not really an offshore boat. And because I didn’t want to singlehand it that long. Besides, there were no sandwiches aboard. So I turned into Mattapoisett Harbor. But I promise you, making that turn required self-discipline.
I drove the boat onto the trailer, the poppets grabbed her, and all her life drained away. Strange. Today it felt unnatural to walk on a deck that wasn’t moving. Today I knew I wouldn’t like the look of a dismasted sailboat on a trailer. So I pitched in to help the yardmen finish up quickly. And when they drove away, I felt . . . what?
Well, no time to figure that out. A moon low tide was coming in about an hour — a good time to pull my mooring ball and drop in the winter stick. Tools to gather. Chains and shackles. Death-defying gymnastics in a dinghy. And that pungent smell of algae and limpets and barnacles and all-purpose marine slime. Back at the launching ramp, there were the rituals of deflating and rolling up the dink, scraping the mooring ball with a quahog shell, and the huffing and puffing and muttering and knuckle-busting, and finally it was all over. And I felt . . . I felt like walking down to the end of the ramp and just standing there for a while, watching the afternoon fade away. Way out in the cove, there was a forlorn and empty spot where my boat used to ride her mooring. It looks toward trees that had recently looked like fireworks, now past their peak. The water, once warm and cloudy, was getting cold and clear . . . and tending toward gray. For some reason, it was a day, unlike other days, to think about seasons and cycles and endings and beginnings. It was one of those waypoint days, on which some people end up feeling a little sad, a little resigned, and maybe a little old.
But not me. Not this year. Not yet.
Yet another apostate lawyer, Robert Hlady eked out sailing opportunities for years in the upper Rio Grande Valley, before relocating unexpectedly to the shores of Buzzards Bay. Life is good. He sails a 1979 O’Day 30, and if you ever see him out there, you’ll know him by the deeply satisfied smile he wears whenever he’s on the water.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
