An enjoyable voyage needs no destination
Issue 84 : May/Jun 2012
For some people, the term “going nowhere” is an oxymoron, impossible to fathom. You’ve seen them, walking along staring at their BlackBerrys or sitting in a lovely restaurant chattering away on their cell phones. Or they hurry down the street, full of intensity, never seeing what’s happening right next to them. I think these folks almost always get where they’re going; I just wonder if they know where they’ve been or how they got there. For them, it’s all about the destination, not about the trip. As a sailor, I can’t understand that at all.
For those of us who own a sailboat and don’t use it to travel great distances, our avocation is all about going nowhere. Anyone in a hurry to get somewhere by water would own a powerboat, perhaps even a cigarette boat for those in a real hurry. Then, except for the time spent at the fuel dock, these boaters could get on with it . . . whatever “it” is.
But sailors purposely choose a method of locomotion outmoded by Robert Fulton in the early 19th century. We weigh anchor or slip our moorings and head into the wind while we haul on halyards, fiddle with sheets, and settle back at the tiller to watch the world slide by. We keep an eye on the windvane and telltales, trim the jib, adjust for the weather helm, and scan the horizon for squall lines just like Joshua Slocum did a hundred years ago. Except he was sailing alone around the world while I, at least, am only circumnavigating the Tappan Zee.
So when I return to the dock, why am I so exhilarated? Why have the stresses of the day slipped away and the mental pictures of crisp (or sloppy) tacks replaced them? I haven’t really done anything very difficult or demanding. I haven’t dealt with the open ocean. I haven’t made a passage. I just noodled around for a while.
Still, I was out on the water. That’s more than I can say for some of the sailors at our marina. It seems that the inclination to take a sailboat out is inversely proportional to its size. When I take people out to my boat, we walk past some really regal and nautical-looking yachts. The thing is, I’ve never seen those big ones out of their slips during the three summers I’ve been there. The owners wave to me from the afterdeck when I walk by, but I never pass them at the harbor mouth as I sail in or out. I guess that’s the real definition of going nowhere.
It’s not like my version of going nowhere is all that easy. I still have to check, fix, and upgrade as if I were setting out on a long voyage. The running rigging, the standing rigging, the battery, the motor . . . it’s like having a family of demanding children and I take care of them all, especially since my own children are grown with children of their own. I guess I always have to have something or someone to take care of.
Even now, as the season draws to a close and the evening sails get shorter or come to a halt entirely, I have a few projects that beckon. I need to replace my fender lines before they chafe through and send my fenders floating down the marina. I think the battery connection is loose, so I’ve taken to running the VHF on dry cells, which is a stopgap. And all the teak needs to be sanded and finished; I think I’ll try Bristol Finish this time. Lots to do.
But for the moment, the breeze has picked up, something that doesn’t always happen here. The flags on the marina wall are tugging at their staffs. The surface of the Hudson has that gray-blue patina that speaks of a brisk run up the river toward the forbidding brick hulk of Sing Sing prison. Or maybe I’ll scoot under the Tappan Zee Bridge — always a strange feeling after driving over it so many times — and head down to Washington Irving’s farmhouse by the river. On the way I’ll pass by Jay Gould’s Art Deco mansion, Lyndhurst.
If the wind holds, I can be out and back, button the boat up, have a beer, and still get home in time to help fix dinner. You might say I didn’t go anywhere and you’d be right, but I think it’s always a trip worth taking.
George Bollenbacher lives on the Hudson River north of New York City, and sails on the Tappan Zee. After owning an Alacrity 19 for five years, George “stepped up” to a Ranger 26, which he singlehands. He came to sailing late in life, which makes him, if anything, even more enthusiastic.
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