Whether for babies or boats, it’s the human condition
Issue 126: May/June 2019
When my first daughter was a newborn, I’d have jumped in front of a car to save her life, not because she was my daughter, but because it was the right thing to do. I hope I’d do the same thing for any infant.
It wasn’t the same for my wife, Windy. She’d have jumped in front of the car because she was bonded to that particular infant and loved her with an intensity I couldn’t express or understand at the time. I felt unsettled by the disparity in our emotional attachment. Was there something wrong with me?
Windy put me at ease, explaining that, in addition to the 24/7 knowledge that this little person was growing inside her, it was the months of hardship that created her attachment. (The last two trimesters of her pregnancy were hell, and I saw firsthand that giving birth was no picnic.) I may have held Windy’s hair back on a couple of occasions while she threw up, but I otherwise enjoyed a carefree 40 weeks. Then there was a baby.
I found it odd that the nights that followed didn’t breed resentment. For sleepless hours I paced the room with my daughter in my arms, aching for her to let me put her down so I could return to bed and be somewhat coherent at work the next day. In the months that followed, I changed revolting diapers and read the same little story books until I felt like I was in an insane asylum. This little being was really intruding on my lifestyle. And all the while I grew more and more attached. And that’s still happening, 15 years later.
And it’s the same with boats.
When we took ownership of our 1978 Fuji 40, I’d have risked life and limb leaping onto a wobbly dock to save her gelcoat from the slightest scratch. But I know that I’d do that for almost any boat, because it’s the right thing to do.
On the day the former owner came aboard to hand off the keys and fill us in on some of our boat’s quirks, he spoke slowly and his eyes were a little damp. Every detail he pointed out to us had a story behind it; memories still hung heavy in the cabin for him. I could see that he loved this old boat, certainly more than I did . . . at the time.
Then I spent the first of many sleepless nights on anchor watch, eager for just a little shut-eye, but anxious over this boat’s well-being. I cleaned revolting sludge from her bilges and read and sorted through all the manuals and paperwork left aboard until I was cross-eyed.
In the months and years that followed, I sliced open my finger working on the bilge pump. I suffered a mild sprain in my ankle jumping onto a wobbly dock during a too-fast approach. I dripped sweat as I patched a sail down below on passage, and burned the skin on my hands trying to hang on to a snubber that broke free. I split my head open on the propeller while cleaning the bottom. I choked on diesel I’d sucked out of a clogged fuel line, and twisted my neck trying to reach a bolt I’d dropped someplace inaccessible. I bloodied countless knuckles over the years, and in the middle of it all, attended a wedding with my hands covered in two-part polyurethane paint that no amount of acetone would remove.
I love our 40-year-old boat, surely by now more than the guy we bought her from did. And sailing aboard her with Windy and my daughters on a warm, windy day? I love that feeling with an intensity that’s hard to express.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
