One lonely sail

As I sit here on this beautiful October day on the beach in Puerto Vallarta, I see a single lonely sailboat on the horizon. It is mesmerizing to watch. Sails have always been hypnotic to me. I grew up in a small town in Ohio but early on I learned to love the ocean. It started with family trips to Florida. The love affair has continued to this day. I am a beach bum at heart. It is the same with sailing. I have always been fascinated with sailboats. I love watching sailboats on the water. They transport me to thoughts of high adventure and romance. They also cause me to reflect on decisions I have made. And decisions I’ve yet to make. Sipping on my beer, on this Mexican beach, all I can think when I see that single sail is that could be me. I laughed as I motioned to the bartender to bring me another round. I have a story to tell, and it will go better with beer.

I need to go back fifty years to a time when I had just reached my 21st birthday. It was almost the summer of 1975. It was a beautiful May in New England. At the time I was living on Bonnet Shores in Narragansett, Rhode Island. My wife and I had just spent two months getting my former mother in law’s beach house ready for the summer season. Rita owned a beautiful brick house set midway between Narragansett Bay, which opened up into the Atlantic Ocean and the Wesquage Pond Wildlife Refuge. Wesquage Pond is a coastal barrier lagoon, about 60 acres in size, and it is home to a variety of diverse species, including fish, muskrats and wildfowl. At the time I lived there, it was yet to be designated a refuge, but it was a beautiful place to explore. It was also home to several families of swans. We will talk about them a bit later. The house itself was prime real estate and my mother-in-law was able to pay the bulk of her mortgage by her summer rentals alone. That was where my wife and I came in. We were sprucing up the house so she could rent it for another season. We were living a somewhat bohemian life at the time, so we got free rent for our labors. To be honest, I have always lived a bohemian life and that May in Rhode Island was no exception. It was good deal for all of the parties concerned. She got her house prepped and we got a place to live. Rent free. It was also a great time to be at the beach. The weather was beautiful, and the crowds were thin, as we went through the process of preparation. There was also plenty of free time to explore the area. And there was an old sailboat in the back yard.

Under an old raggedy tarp, someone had left a beat-up sunfish sailboat. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it had all of the component parts and it was ready to sail. At least the boat was. The sail was bit faded, but it was serviceable. The boat sat on a two wheeled trailer which also meant it could be easily moved to a launch point. That sunfish was a daily temptation for me. I would lift the tarp and check it out whenever I got a free moment. Because I had been sailing once before with a friend, I figured I knew a little bit about getting around on the water. Let’s put it this way. I knew as much as a boy from a small town in Ohio who read books about sailing could know without getting wet. I was intrigued by the whole concept of sailing. I read books about Joshua Slocum and other famous sailors. I had recently read a book about Robin Lee Graham’s round the world adventure on Dove. I figured if a fifteen-year-old kid could sail around the world, by himself, I could certainly take a spin around Bonnet Shores. I even knew some of the nautical terms from books I had read. Besides, I convinced myself, I had been on motorcycles, tractors, trucks and cars. How hard could sailing be? And, of course, I was living right next to the ocean. That sunfish was like a siren’s call to me. I looked at that sailboat every day for over a month until one day, when the weather was just right, I decided to go for a sail.

Before I got onto the water, I had a dilemma. Our house was located an equal distance between the ocean and the salt pond, so I had to make a decision. Should I launch into the ocean? Or into the pond? It was a beautiful day, so weather wasn’t an issue. There were no small craft warnings and there were several other boats sailing off the shore. On the one hand, the ocean opened up a million possibilities. I could sail to Jamestown Island or even over to Newport. Then again, I didn’t intend to make a day of it. I just wanted to get my feet wet. Plus, the pond was a direct shot down the hill from the house. I decided on the pond. It was a wise choice. I had already examined the boat several times to make sure it was prepared. All I needed to do was take off the tarp and drag it down to the pond. I put on some shorts and headed to the boat. With the trailer, it was an easy march down to the water. It only took me about ten minutes to get there. As I approached the pond, I started to get excited. Standing on the edge, it was time to set the mast. I had been sailing once before, so I had a rough idea of what to do. If you know anything about the sunfish, it is a sailor’s dream. Simplicity on the water. There is a small dagger board to provide stability. A single sail attached to a short mast and a simple wooden rudder. It was time to hit the water. Setting the mast was simple enough. It fits into a hole in the center of the boat in front of the cockpit. It took me a few minutes to figure out where the halyard and bridle attached to secure the mast, but the rudder was a piece of cake. All I needed to do was drop the daggerboard once the water was deep enough. As I sat and examined the setup, I figured I was ready to go. I pushed the boat onto the water and jumped aboard. As soon as I had cleared the shore, I dropped the daggerboard and the rudder into the water. It was time to sail. I didn’t have long to wait. Almost immediately, I caught the wind in my sails, and I was off. Lucky for me, I had the wind at my back, and I was able to get up to speed quickly. It was everything I had hope it would be.

I had enjoyed the water before, but in that instant I fell in love with sailing. It was only a humble sunfish, but I was the master of my domain. Shiver me timbers. I was sailing a boat. By myself. There is something magical about sailing a boat with nothing more than the wind to move you forward. I was feeling the magic. The spray was splashing me in the face, and I was zipping along. I experimented a little bit with turning from side to side, but mostly I was just running with the wind. Nothing could stop me. That is nothing could stop me until I got to the other side of the pond, which didn’t take very long. The pond was only 60 acres, remember? I was about to realize that there is a lot more to sailing than just running with the wind. I soon realized that my previous sailing education was lacking in one important detail. I didn’t know how to sail against the wind. I didn’t know how to tack. While any fool can run with the wind, it takes a bit of skill to navigate against the wind. You have to travel from side to side, using the force of the wind, the sails and the boat to move yourself forward. It is sort of like squeezing a grape between your fingers. As the wind (finger one) pushes against the sails, the dagger board acts as the other finger to squeeze the boat forward. At least that is what should have happened, if I had known what I was doing. Unfortunately, I had been having so much fun on my previous sailing adventure, that I hadn’t noticed the details of what my friend had been doing. I tried a few vain attempts to sail back to my launching point, but I couldn’t make any headway. I made up my mind right there that I would learn how to sail, in earnest. When I got back, that is. Lesson one.

I still had to get the boat back to the other side of the pond. Fortunately, I had a short line attached to the bow handle of the boat. I could use the line to drag the boat back to the waiting trailer. The downside was that the line was designed to tie the boat to a dock. It wasn’t long enough to stretch from the dry part of the shore to where the boat needed to be to float on the water. When I say dry part of the shore, I mean the part a person could walk on without sinking knee deep into the brackish muck. In retrospect, I could have gone back and gotten the trailer, but I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. And I wanted to get the boat back before anyone could see how bad of a sailor I was. I ended up wading through the mud as I towed the boat back to the trailer. This is when the swans came into play and when I learned my second important lesson. Stay away from nesting swans. Swans are beautiful creatures. I know there are different types of swans. They are all beautiful. I don’t know what genus these particular swans were. Let’s just call them the nasty kind. All swans are extremely aggressive when their young are being threatened. These particular swans were sitting on a nest of eggs and they weren’t too thrilled about me invading their space. They made a horrible clatter and they repeatedly hissed and struck at me with their beaks as I tried to get around them. I had no choice but to move out into the deeper water and kick my feet to propel the boat around the nest. I barely survived without being bitten. Eventually, I got back to my launching point an hour or so later. I was covered in muck and a much wiser sailor. I dragged the boat back to the house, covered it with the tarp and took a shower from the outside hose.

Back in the house, as I drank a beer to unwind, the reality of my experience hit me full force. I imagined what would have happened if I had chosen to take the sunfish into the open ocean. I imagined myself running with the wind with no clue of how to get back home. I imagined myself somewhere out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean running with the wind, until I eventually hit the coast of Europe. Or worse. It changed my whole perspective on sailing. It also changed me. That’s why, now, whenever I see one lonely sail on the ocean horizon, I have to laugh. I remember the days of my ignorant youth and I remind myself, that could be me.