After a brisk autumn catboat sail, a catnap invokes memories.
Issue 146: Sept/Oct 2022
The sail luffs as I round up into the wind, our mooring ball dead ahead. I stretch over the foredeck for the line. We coast up to the ball and I pluck it out of the water, cleat it, and step back to the cockpit to ease the flogging sail down. With the sail ties gripped cutlassfashion between my teeth, I set to furling the sail, the boat swaying beneath my shoeless feet.
The long sail I’ve just returned from redoubles my sense of accomplishment: Stiff hands, sore arms, scraped knees and elbows testify to the sporty conditions in the open waters that the boat and I handled with aplomb. The late-September sun feels warmer here in the mooring field than out in Buzzards Bay, and when I finish buttoning up all but the cockpit cover, I wonder, why rush back ashore? Why not commune with Finn and savor that aprés-sail glow?
So, I shed my shirt and crawl onto the foredeck to loll on my back, the deck toasty against my skin. I lace my fingers behind my head and peer up at the masthead describing arcs around the few puffs of cloud passing on a southerly course through the blue. The boat dips and yaws beneath me, and the waves cluck and whisper, and a gull skims high above, chuckling, and soon I’m gone, rocked to sleep in the cradle of my boat.
When I wake from my catnap, I stretch and slide into the cockpit. Even in the short time I dozed, the air has cooled and the colors of the sky and water have deepened to cobalt and peach-tinged navy. I pull on my shirt and set to snapping on the cockpit cover. As I finish, I eye the low tent-like hideaway it forms. An urge hits. Sleeping on a boat can be one of the grand pleasures of life—barring skeeters, no-see-ums, or dirty weather.
I climb into the dinghy and shove off, glancing again at the little tent on the deck of my little yacht. I could do it; all I need is bug juice, flashlight, and sleeping bag. The cedar deck would be good for my achy back, wouldn’t it? I would feel the boat bob and nod and hear her talking in her sleep—creaks and raps and sighs. I would remove the cover and lie out beneath the stars the way I did aboard my father’s yawl when I slept topside on the cockpit cushions or curled up in the folds of the jenny, watching the fleets of stars shift and sweep as the boat sleepwalked on her anchor line. Draped dozing over the boom, I was buccaneer tuckered out from swashbuckling.
I could imagine myself back aboard the fishing boats I crewed on, released from the cold and wet and exhaustion on deck to burrow away in the cocoon of an Army surplus sleeping bag, the diesel a rumbling lullaby. I could once again feel myself lift and levitate as we made the long steam home over rounded swells. I could press my ear against the hull and hear the trickle and lap of the shallows below me and let the memory of the fathoms upon fathoms of darkened deeps that lay below when I fished offshore send a trickle of pleasurable dread through me.
I swivel around to see that I am approaching the beach. I ship my oars. Yes, I needed more than a catnap aboard my little catboat.
I promise myself that I’ll do it—right after taking a long, hot shower.
The dinghy crunches on the sand, and I climb out and gaze back at the boat.
All I need to do is check the weather to make sure conditions are right—after having a leisurely dinner with my wife—and put on some warmer clothes.
Then I’ll row right back out there.
I promise—as soon as I take a few minutes to stretch out on the couch, just to rest my eyes.
Craig Moodie lives with his wife, Ellen, in Massachusetts. His work includes A Sailor’s Valentine and Other Stories and, under the name John Macfarlane, the middle-grade novel Stormstruck!, a Kirkus Best Book.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
