You, and a boat, and a wonderful philosophy
Issue 54 : May/Jun 2007
The trouble with being poor is you have to learn so much. You can’t just buy a beautiful boat and sail off into the sunset. First, you need to repair it. By the time you complete what needs to be done, half the summer is spent.
By the time I followed this procedure with a few different boats, I was nearly qualified to work in a boat shop. That’s where I learned how I should have effected all of those repairs. And being more competent every year, I naturally take on larger and more involved projects . . . which take more time and money.
Being the timid, conservative type, I know my limitations. A 26-foot boat is enough for now. I can’t keep up with all her repairs, even though she’s docked behind our shop.
What is it with sailboats, anyway? Why are we dragged away from our homes and forced to take them sailing?
Is it wanderlust, a sense of adventure, or merely dissatisfaction with residing on dry land? The answer is, “Yes.”
But I find that, in addition to these questions, there is something that runs deeper. That same emotion that moves you, when watching the endless surf drag back the shingle or watching the endless stream divide the coppice, also moves you while reaching over the rollers, mile after mile.
A feeling of the infinite. A feeling that life goes on no matter what. A feeling of being a part of this world’s pulse.
Hang on for life
Then the wind picks up and the sea gets snotty and you literally have to hang on for your life. And that is grandiose, too, without pretension. For if you must die — and, Lord only knows, you must — why sit around the living room and watch the Green Bay Packers?
You need a green bay? I know just where to go. You need to float your trusty canoe down a placid stream through the forest? I know just where to go. You need a pond to watch a miracle . . . a dragonfly’s emergence, perhaps? I can take you there.
There’s nothing to keep you from being immersed; there’s nothing to keep you from soothing your troubled soul.
Nothing except your 40 hours. Nothing except the roof to mend. Nothing except that cocktail party with people who bore you silly. I get caught up in all those things myself. You need to make the most of your every hour. Life is a whirl . . . let yourself get caught up in the maelstrom.
What do you mean, you have a boat in a slip but no time to sail? There’s really no time to do much of anything else.
If your spouse doesn’t feel the call, go by yourself. If your marriage can’t stand for each of you to have a separate avocation, you haven’t a marriage but merely inhuman bondage. The stronger your love, the more you can be apart. A part of something larger than yourself. Take your children, take your cat, but go.
If all you can spare is an afternoon on the millpond, spare it. Go. Teach your kids to fl ip the canoe. Teach your cat to cut bait. Something will come of it, be assured . . . if nothing save perspective. Water teaches respect. Forces beyond our control — beyond all reason — teach us humility. Fog and gale and ice will always be with us. Ours is not to change this earth but to learn to accept her ways.
A sail is not for taming the wind but for taking advantage of it. A paddle is not for moving rocks but for steering your boat around them.
With GPS and running lights and radar, one can still be humbled by the sea. With a carbon-fi ber paddle and a Kevlar hull, one can still be rolled and dragged beneath a log and drowned. Smugness has no place upon the water. Long ago, I gave up the urge to race in boats, to compete with other people.
The course I sail has no beginning, no end. I need to lose and find myself, to journey and sojourn.
I used to resist mortality. Now I keep my weather eye on the voyage, not the harbor. Now I steer my frail craft by a light I must believe in. Now I rise on the massive swell that provides a view of eternal continuity. Science and logic provide us charts, the world provides the water, Heaven above provides the wind, but Spirit demands the tiller.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
