They are shipmates of a higher order
Issue 66 : May/Jun 2009
Father-and-son relationships come in as many variations as there are fathers and sons. Looking back at my own father, I remember him as somewhat reserved and not all that demonstrative, something that was characteristic of fathers of his era. But he did give me a gift that has lasted and flourished ever since I was 8 years old: sailing.
My father wasn’t a great sailor, but he wanted to be. On vacations, he would sign on as crew on a Delaware Bay oyster schooner, an occupation far removed from his regular job in finance. I have a picture, taken on one of those vacations in August 1913, of him and the rest of the crew aboard an old wooden schooner, when he was still a bachelor. You can tell which one’s my dad: he’s the only one wearing a tie.
One summer, he decided to learn to sail. He took a book out of the library, pored over its contents for several weeks, then announced to the family that the next weekend he would take my brother and me sailing. He would be the skipper. I was 8 years old.
We lived in Westfield, New Jersey, one of New York City’s many bedroom communities. When that Saturday came around, our mother packed a lunch and made lemonade for us to take on our sailing adventure. The auto trip down to Barnegat Bay, an intracoastal bay on the New Jersey shore, took about two hours on the two-lane highway.
A challenging first sail
At Seaside Park, we rented a small gaff-rigged sneakbox, loaded our lunch on board, and pushed off. The weather promised a challenging sail for neophyte sailors, with winds gusting to 20 knots, but we didn’t know any better. Our father did well for a while, but somewhere in the middle of the bay, sailing reality overwhelmed book learning and we executed — or were executed by — an accidental jibe that turned the boat over. This was not a problem for my brother and me, since we were water rats. But we were concerned about our “old” father; he must have been in his late 30s. Eventually, after we had lost our lunch, thermos, and most of our clothes, a powerboat offered to tow us to shore. We fastened a line to our bow cleat; they took up the slack and increased power. We didn’t move an inch. That was my introduction to the amazing holding power of a properly set anchor — ours. It had fallen out of the cockpit when we turned over.
It was a bedraggled crew of would-be sailors that arrived home that night. Our father saw mother in the kitchen and told us, “If we sneak in the front door, we can get upstairs before your mother sees us.” It didn’t work. But I had been introduced to sailing and I was a goner.
Father to grandson
It wasn’t that many years later when I was the father, and now, decades later, our son, Tom, the younger of our two children, has turned 53 years of age. My wife and I were both 30 when he was born. You do the math; I don’t even want to think about it.
Tom and I have been sailing together since he was about 3 or 4 years old. In those early days, he hung on to the mast of our Sailfish board-boat until, in time, we managed to afford “real” sailboats.
Over the years, we sailed together as the Sailfish gave way to a 17-footer, a Rhodes 22, a 26-foot Essex, and, finally, a 32-foot Ted Brewer-designed schooner (39 feet overall). During that period, Tom and I have sailed together in the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, the Florida Keys, the Carolinas, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Chesapeake Bay, coastal New Jersey, Long Island Sound, and the Hudson River to the head of navigation at Troy, New York.
I could never have asked for a better shipmate. A few times in every lifetime we find someone who is on the same wavelength as we are. In those special relationships, sometimes we find that an economy of talking can be far more eloquent than constant chatter. Tom and I have that sort of relationship.
Let me give you a “for instance.” One day last summer, Tom joined me and two other guests for a sail. As the day progressed, the wind increased. At one point, Tom left the cockpit and went forward up to the foremast and looked my way. I nodded my head and came up into the wind as he dropped the gaff foresail. I then immediately fell off again, continuing under jib and main. The whole maneuver took about 30 seconds, and not a word was said . . . nor was one necessary. “How did you both know when to do that?” one of our guests asked.
Experience earns respect
Tom works in the control room at NBC-TV where “The Nightly News with Brian Williams” originates. A few years ago, he set up a bareboat charter in the BVIs on an Endeavour 51 with several of his NBC colleagues as crew. Some of them had never been sailing before.
As they left Road Town, Tortola, heading for Norman Island, Tom showed the new crew how to raise the mainsail. Of course, it took 10 times longer than normal but, once they had it up, the crew settled back for a leisurely sail. It was at this point that Tom looked up Sir Francis Drake Channel and saw a line of whitecaps several miles away. A squall line was coming down the channel.
“Take the mainsail down. Now!” he said. There were reluctant groans among the crew. “We just got it up,” they protested.
“Now!” Tom said. As soon as the sail was lowered and furled, the squall hit, heeling the 51-footer over about 20 degrees under bare poles. “It was wonderful,” Tom reflected later, “because for the rest of the week they did everything I asked without question.”
Tom is the only other person I would trust to take out our schooner, Delphinus, without me, and he’s my favorite crew to have aboard. But when Tom and I are sailing together, we are more than shipmates, we are father and son.
Don Launer, a Good Old Boat contributing editor, has held a USCG captain’s license for more than 20 years and has sailed the East Coast from Canada to the Caribbean. He built his two-masted schooner, Delphinus, from a bare hull.
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