Sea stories: It's summer and the Cape takes to the water
"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” —The Wind in the Willows
Not everyone takes to sailing but for those who do, there’s nothing quite like it. Places look different, seen from offshore. Rhythmically lifted by the waves, you can get into a meditative zone, soaring along. The late afternoon sun lays down a trail of liquid gold.
I grew up sailing, first in the Barnegat Bay, then the Chesapeake, later Buzzards Bay and now Nantucket Sound. I remember as a boy, lying in my bunk and listening to the soft slow slap of the halyards on our pine mast, the stars visible through an open hatch. Things like that can set the hook in deep.
By the time I’d become a man, I noticed that in general, the use a sailboat gets is often the inverse of its size. Beetle Cats and 420s get pulled off the beach more often than not, while the gleaming yachts dot the harbor — idle monuments to the financial potency of their owners. Since being a teacher made me a man of modest means, I went small and slowly learned the arts of wringing the maximum utility from pocket-sized boats.
Messing about on the water becomes intrinsically satisfying — and much of it isn’t sailing. I’ve often thought that being in love is — fundamentally — just wanting to be with someone. Boats can be a little like that. It can be as simple as rigging for sail or even coiling a rope. You feel the wind tugging on your shirt and the water beckons - and you’re not even sailing yet.
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After a few years on Cape, I was invited by a yacht club to be their “Sailing Master,” to run their summer programs and teach the kids. Safety and seamanship were paramount. We discussed what to do in a storm, or how to orient yourself in the fog, how, if you get blown out of sight of land and you’re scared and disoriented, you’ll notice jet contrails converging on Boston to the north. And you’ll have your bearings.
The focus, though, was racing. Don’t get me wrong, competitive sailing is a wonderful sport. It gets you into shape and sharpens your reflexes, and kids can continue it into college and beyond. What it isn't, though, is simply “messing about.” In two summers with the club, I only saw one child, one time, raise sail and take his boat out on the water just for its own sake.
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I worry that too much of young people's time is organized by adults. The whole idea of messing around in boats is that it's done for its own sake. That's how a love for something can be embedded in a child that can last the rest of their lives. It's not organized. They do it because they want to.
If your kids are interested in racing, there are excellent programs in local recreation departments and yacht clubs you can look into. The Cape Cod Maritime Museum runs a Young Mariners program that's non-competitive, and that's another option.
Meanwhile, imagine that you've picked yourself a destination at least half a day's sail away from your launching point. The wind has been brisk all day and it's quieting down just as you slip into a little harbor, find a spot away from the activity and drop your anchor.
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You brought some food in the cooler so now you set up a little camp stove in the cockpit and cook yourself a simple dinner. Salty and a little sunburned, you take your time with dinner, and finally as the sun starts to go down, you ease back against the cabin with a coffee or a cool beer. Maybe you have a radio for some music or a good book. The air turns gold and incandescent. Finally, it's dark and you nestle into your sleeping bag for the night.
It’s maybe 2 in the morning when an insistent bladder tells you you're going to have to go outside where you stored your porta potty for the night. The wind is absolutely still. The deck is cold and dripping with condensation — but you don't mind. The moon leaves a platinum trail across the water that a spirit could walk upon but not a man. The distant shoreline is shrouded in mist. This, you realize, is what God is doing with the universe when no one is looking. This is when your heart cracks open and you fall in love with virtually everything. There are few places in America more suited for moments like this than right here where we live.
Lawrence Brown is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times. E-mail him at columnresponse@gmail.com.
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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Opinion: It's summer on Cape Cod, time to put sailboats in the water
