Issue 29 : Mar/Apr 2003
The Slate Islands are a place of beginnings. The concept for Good Old Boat magazine was born there. Five years later, we were back looking for more inspiration. Once the hooks were down, we retired for a mid-afternoon nap to recover the sleep we’d lost from a wee-small-hours departure.
When we awoke, we found we were not alone in Pikes Bay. Go Gently had anchored in the shallower end of the very small, all-weather storm hole. The next morning I watched the lone sailor of the smart-looking little boat diving on his anchor rode, which was wrapped around a piece of the ubiquitous slash. Even the fish in Lake Superior think the 46-degree water is cold, but Henk Vanderhulst swam and dove for several minutes without a wetsuit. This guy was tough.
The weather had been “freshening” throughout our crossing, and by the time we arrived, we were glad to get off the lake. Henk had come in several hours of “freshening” later in a much smaller boat. That told me some things about Henk, too. In fact, his credentials were rather thoroughly established by his mere presence at that moment. Navigation is not easy in the Slates. There are no really detailed charts, and the price of a grounding is a meeting with a “ship-eating rock” of which there are many. It took both of us to navigate in that group of islands. Henk was singlehanding.
We invited Henk to dinner that night and he, in turn, invited us the next night. We learned of his interesting life. He’d volunteered in the Dutch air force as soon as his part of Holland had been liberated. He’d served in the Pacific as a flight engineer, built airfields, and moved from one job to another in one country after another. He’d seized opportunity where there was one and made opportunity where there was none. He finally retired in Sarnia, Ontario. To explain his varied career, he’d said he was a “quick study.”
I kept studying the smart-looking Precision 23 he’d been cruising in for a month around Lake Superior. Though smaller than our 30-footer, she was good enough to cross through weather that had made us glad to be off the lake. At one point, Henk said, the small kayak he was towing started trying to come into the cockpit with him, so he had pulled it aboard and thrown it down below.
When we went aboard for dinner Henk proudly showed us the modifications and improvements he’d made. He’d converted her from a fractional rig to a masthead rig, provided her with some very interesting canvas-work, and done some nice interior modifications that showed off his design and woodworking skills. By the time we got to that point, I did not expect less.
But still the basic boat intrigued me. She was a little short on hull speed compared to our boat, but she could travel at over 10 times hull speed on her trailer. She could cross the land to sail in one interesting cruising area after another. In fact she had. She and Henk had cruised more than 10,000 sea miles since he traded his 27-footer for her. She was the archetypical trailersailer. An amphibious cruiser of the land and the sea. Go Gently was 16 years old. Henk was 76 years old, but the idea behind their union is hundreds or perhaps thousands of years old. A portable craft that can serve the needs of her owner in a variety of locations. The coracle, the canoe, the kayak, and, in modern form, the trailersailer.
With this issue we are introducing a new series about these valiant and versatile boats. We see them as members
of the family of good old boats.
Thanks, Henk.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
