How sailors measure accomplishments
Issue 100: Jan/Feb 2015
Nearby dock neighbors and friends spent a summer with a new-to-them sailboat after being boatless a few years due to health issues. The reintroduction had to go slowly . . . as if they were learning to sail for the first time. As a result, they will approach and achieve each sailing milestone all over again but with the unique perspective of prior experience, not unlike being given the chance to be a kid again but with the experience of having passed that way before. It should be a marvelous journey if they take joy in each small accomplishment and don’t rush ahead motivated instead by frustration at the time-consuming nature of starting afresh.
Toward the end of the season, I got this note from Liz Towers: “For years, whenever Michael and I visited Duluth’s Canal Park we’d gaze wistfully at the sailboats setting out and say, ‘Someday that will be us.’” A bit of background here: tourists and locals alike line up along the shore at Canal Park to watch large freighters and other boats go out through a narrow canal, under a lift bridge, and past a lighthouse when heading out to the open lake of Lake Superior from Duluth, Minnesota. A protected bay inside allows for plenty of sailing without having to go out into the open lake. Therefore, passing through this portal is a significant milestone for new sailors.
The joy in having passed a milestone such as this is evident in the rest of Liz’s note: “Dozens of people lining the canal were waving to us. No suave, experienced sailors, us. Shameless first-timers, we laughed heartily and I waved back with all my might. It was as if the people on shore and the two of us in the boat were all sharing one merry moment . . . a red-carpet moment to a brain injury patient who’s relearning sailing!”
Each milestone for each sailor is a limiting frontier until we cross it . . . and the one after that . . . and the one after that. We can all list the boundaries we crossed over the years that freed us for the next one: we sailed at night, we sailed overnight, we went through a lock, we went out of sight of land, we skippered the boat, we picked up a mooring, we brought our boat home safely and made the docking look easy, we anchored under sail, we sailed off the anchor the next morning, we went aground but got off without incident. Sometimes it was reaching the next island or the one after that or sailing across the bay. You will be able to name infinitely more from your own experience.
Other sailors’ milestones include crossing the lake where they sail, crossing an ocean, completing a circumnavigation, or even rounding Cape Horn or threading the Northwest Passage. For trailer-sailers, the milestones might include raising and lowering the mast without incident (one should never say “dropping the mast”), launching and recovering the boat at a ramp, towing it somewhere nearby or far, far away. The list goes on . . . and perhaps includes that first bareboat charter in the Virgin Islands as an escape from winter.
There is even a list of milestones for those do-it-your-selfers among us who maintain our own boats: the first time we drilled a hole in the boat, the first time we made a successful fiberglass repair, the first time we installed a new gadget, the first time we did any plumbing or wiring aboard, the first time we went to the top of the mast, the first time our knowledge was so useful that we were able to advise someone else starting a similar project, and on it goes.
All these milestones are deeply satisfying. No matter the level of the sailing experience, the challenges that are there to become accomplishments are part of the reason we sail. Whether those accomplishments are about expanding our horizons or expanding our knowledge base matters not. What keeps us energized is the joy we take in achieving those milestones and the understanding that we are now able to move to the next challenge. We are motivated, each in our own way and using our own set of priorities. Whether newbies, experienced coastal cruisers, world travelers, or sailors starting all over again for any number of reasons, the sailing hobby we all have in common is best if we take joy in every small milestone as we reach and accomplish it.
And speaking of milestones . . . this is the 100th issue of Good Old Boat!
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
