Ruminations on sailing in years past drive home a fundamental truth
Issue 151: July/Aug 2023
I’m climbing down the ladder from the stern of Affinity and pulling the tarp zipper as I descend, perhaps for the last time. She’s on the hard after another sparse and difficult season, and the thought comes to me that it may be someone else who climbs this ladder in the spring and opens her up again. I shake that thought out of my head but concede that it’s been a rough few years.
First it was high water, a foot or more over the docks that kept us from venturing out. Then it was Covid-19 that closed most of the yacht clubs to visitors and confined us to daysails instead of weeklong trips across and around Lake Ontario to visit old friends and make new ones. More recently it’s been low water that’s made getting out of the narrow gap from the harbor to the lake a challenge, and personal health issues that have kept me at the dock for most of the all-too-short sailing season. It’s been a long time since the way it was, and I can’t help but wonder, Will it ever be that way again?
The way it was? Then, it was a lot of elated people meeting to plan the spring launch of our boats. We were joyful and energetic, anticipating having our boats in the water. We worked together and partied together without a mask in sight. We planned cruises and races and social events that we’d share with family, friends, and visitors. A beautiful, eventful, glorious sailing season beckoned us into the warm weather, sunny skies, and blue waters.
We’d book two weeks of personal time in the middle of summer and provision the boat. Then we’d sail out a few miles toward the middle of the lake and come head to wind. The plan was simple — we’d head for the nearest port that we could get to that day, sailing on a beam reach. Then we’d trim the sails for that course, set the ever-faithful Autohelm, and relax with a snack and a beverage to enjoy the quiet pleasure of slicing silently through the water, heading for adventures that would no doubt unfold as they should.
A mile out from our destination, we would call in on channel 68 and announce that we were approaching and needed a slip for a day or two. No reservation was ever necessary, and we were always welcomed, usually with a member or two from the marina’s club to help us tie up.
After we put the boat to bed, it was off to the clubhouse to meet friends old and new and share conversations over a beverage. Then we’d head back to the boat to prepare a meal on board or on shore. The evenings were always quiet, with brilliant stars overhead and gentle conversations about where we should go next and how long we should stay. That’s not to say that sailing trips were not without their challenges. There were storms and fog and shallows and all the things every sailor has experienced, but once you got through it, it was just one more story to be exaggerated for the folks at the next club you visited.
Today that kind of spontaneity seems gone. You need to reserve slips online weeks in advance if you want to visit a reciprocal club. You use a cell phone to call ahead as you approach instead of a VHF. The clubhouses are quieter, with people nervously sitting farther apart. It just isn’t the same, and you wonder if it ever will be the same again — and in your heart you know the answer. Things always change, sometimes for the better and sometimes not. But they always change.
And as you think about those past trips, you remember running out of ice between ports and worrying about food going bad and drinking warm beverages. You remember slipping forward in foul weather gear to a treacherous foredeck in a driving rain and gusting wind to wrestle a reluctant hanked-on headsail down the forestay and struggle to jam it through a hatch or tie it to the lifeline. You remember paper charts, planning your trip, setting your course, and then having to do your own recalculating when the wind direction changed. You may even remember your panic as a dense fog set in and refused to dissipate, and you lost your bearings without coastal landmarks or a sunny horizon to guide you. That was before GPS came along to make even the most inexperienced sailor an expert navigator.
Yes, things have changed, some for the better and others for the worse. Because that is the one constant — change. And so the sailor’s most valuable skill set remains the same: anticipate, accommodate, innovate, and adapt.
I close the tarp’s zipper, secure the stern tiedowns, and gently pat the boat’s hull. Next season, my beauty … next season.
Don Davies is a writer with film scripts, stage plays, novels, articles, and grandchildren to his credit. He lives in Toronto with his wife, Jacqueline, and sails his good old Grampian 30, Affinity, on Lake Ontario.
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