February awakens nostalgia and a yen for the scend of the sea
Issue 71 : Mar/Apr 2010
There was a time — perhaps a half century ago last Tuesday morning — when all seemed right with the world, even though I had glimmerings of what I might become. And because I was fool and idiot enough not to drown myself in the brook out back of the barn, I went on to become what maybe I am today.
It was also the day that I got my first real boat. The two-oil-drum raft that I kept on the cow pond never quite, quite qualified as a really, truly boat. I mean, it floated, and it didn’t tip too awfully much when I stood my 60 pounds of scrawn on any of the corners, and it never capsized completely when I shoved on my punting pole — me, Mike Fink, ascending the mighty Ohio back to Pittsburgh.
My first real boat was an 8-foot pram that resembled an Opti or a Sea Shell, except it hadn’t a mast or sail or rudder or daggerboard, and how would I have known what to do with all of that arcane and explicit and wonderful paraphernalia, anyhow?
Now that the hair that I haven’t got left is a beautiful badger grey, I’ve finally figured out some of what is meant to be done with some, if not all, of the gear and rigging and rags and rods that came with my current love, MoonWind.
You mustn’t let on to MoonWind that I’m a novice at this sport. She’s confident that I know how to sail, even when I use the tiller to fend off giggling mermaids, use the lazy-jacks to hold up my trousers. Not everyone needs 50 years to discover the subtle intricacies of the boom vang. Not everyone spends months wondering what those little turning blocks by the fantail signify.
The reason me and MoonWind get along so well is neither of us much cares that the mainsail’s flying upside down. Neither of us can be bothered to count how many reefs I’ve taken in the keel. Neither of us is much impressed with how her anchor never drags until I go ashore.
MoonWind is much like other gals I’ve dated: she knows I ain’t too bright but loves me for my gaiety, my wit, and my choice of coffee.
Innocence lost
And I didn’t write this to impress you with my knowledge of seamanship. I wrote this ’cause I was pining for an innocent world when water and air and ice and sky were a part of me not prone to faded grandeur. When I traced the track of the moon upon the river with my canoe. When taxes, insurance, and mooring fees had nothing to do with rollicking upon the water, knowing one’s self to be sufficient to make it home, perhaps in time for supper. It’s what I intend to enjoy again before Lord Neptune demands I give up the helm forever and deep-six my dreams in that dreariest of havens.
So here, during a February deep, the temperature at 18, MoonWind propped up by the shore, I ponder that inevitability scarfed to the stem of my mortal vessel. For, while I have the will to wet my keel, I would run before this world’s wind to learn the creed of the wave, warm my soul at the molten sun while yet I have flesh to feel, take the helm in my willful fist while yet my arm responds. There are not many, nay, not many fair days left to the likes of me, an old waterman, to roil and glide and lean to the sensuous sea. And my joy of MoonWind will be my chantey all the while I scrape and paint her bottom, all the while I reeve her running rigging, all the while I stow her bushel of rode.
And when I’m away upon the wind, don’t look for me on your calm fetch of this world. I’ll be, perhaps, in the lee of that island, yonder; be, perhaps, on the far side of that billow; be, perhaps, behind that faintest of stars that lifts from the sea.
Matthew Goldman writes as Constant Waterman in Messing About in Boats. He lives with his wife, Paula, in Stonington, Connecticut, and keeps his 26-foot Chris-Craft sloop, MoonWind, in nearby Noank, where he works repairing boats.
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