A Brief but Glorious Sailing Career

Our sailboat came out of the water this week, and it may mark the end of our sailing career.

Bubbles - our First - a Halman 20

Sailing came in to our lives unexpectedly. (The sudden and surprising way is one of my favorite Ponczka stories, but it’ll have to wait for another post – or maybe an entire book; I have so many of them!) We started out with little expectation, except that it would be fun. It has absolutely been that, but it’s also offered a different way of seeing and being in the world.

For one, the laws of nature are different when on a small sailing boat. A scientist might not tell you that, but for anyone who has spent their life moving around on solid earth, the distortion and disorientation is undeniable.

Captain Ponczka in Action!

Early on, it was impossible to get myself or Bubbles – our boat – to move as I intended. To start with, how could a vessel that was powered by the wind move into the wind? And how could such a puny and stationary keel have such an effect on the movement of such a large boat? And how could a movable but even tinier rudder cause the boat to dance and spin so wildly? It took weeks and months to begin to figure out the basics of how to position the sails so as to go where we wanted to go, and that was when the water was calm and the wind fairly steady. Stormy weather made it all that much more complicated. Even moving two or three feet across the deck presented huge problems when that deck was continuously lurching and dropping out from under you.

Captain Ponczka says, "Go Forth!"

We counted ourselves as extremely lucky that Bubbles was designed to respond to heavy weather like a life boat, as so was near impossible to capsize. One of the early lessons we learned – which, thankfully, we never had to put into play – was that, when unmanageable weather struck, and when all else failed, it was advisable to surrender all control, go below deck, and let the boat do what she wanted to do. There are countless anecdotes of boats washing ashore intact after a storm, after their erstwhile masters have been lost at sea.

We had some scary moments before we learned this and other lessons. The worst was probably the first. We went out one sunny afternoon, shortly after learning some of the basics, and wondered why all the other boats we saw were coming in. A storm struck, seemingly out of nowhere. We were bounced around like a kernel in a popcorn popper while our sails were yanked loose and whipped about above us. I, like a fool, crawled to the foredeck, determined to rein them in. And if I had perished then, I’d have no one but myself to blame. No life vest, no secure line to hold onto, and crocs on my feet. And there’s no way Ponczka would’ve been able to steer around to get me if I’d been tossed overboard. Only half jokingly, when we made it back to shore I kissed the ground. Needless to say, since that experience we’ve always checked the forecast before leaving the dock, however glorious the weather seemed from shore.

Trickster - Our Second - a Catalina 27

That difference in perspectives from land to lake was one of the best parts of sailing. From just a few yards out, the land we live on – city and suburb – looks and feels so different. But actually, just going to the marina and sitting on the boat, and experiencing the slight rolling buoyancy of the tethered boat, could convey a sense of getting away, of being insulated from the heaviness of daily life. We soon came to understand why so many boaters hardly moved their boats at all, yet loved the boater’s life.

But there are other reasons for actually going out on the water that we’ll miss. It’s quiet. It’s serene. Sailing is a slow way to get from points A to B, but it’s also effortless and unhurried. And it can feel pretty fast, from a perspective of simply moving through space and over moving water. And there’s something uplifting about knowing that whatever power and speed one manages to harness is courtesy of natural forces in play.

On Lake Ontario

The most surprising and rewarding part of the sailing experience however, has been the community. Every marina is a kind of social club, or more accurately, several overlapping social clubs. Since moving to Hamilton, for various reasons we’ve made our home in three different marinas in just four seasons. But before that, while in Seattle, we belonged to the small Navy League Marina in Ashbridge’s Bay for 9 years, and there we had a wonderful community that we’ll remember for the rest or our lives. It contained only about 30 boats so, unlike the larger versions, was pretty intimate. There was no paid staff and all the work, including Spring Launch and Fall Haul Out, were handled by the boaters. Those two days alone – 8 to twelve hours long – led to a lot of bonding and mutual support among us. There were also meetings and work days when we actively supported our shared interests.

Fair Weather Sailor

During the season, there were lots of visits on one another’s boats, and shared meals at the picnic tables. And best of all, our marina happened to include quite a few musicians, including a pianist who made his living giving lessons, and a well-known professional rock and blues drummer. That bounty led to a number of jam sessions and ‘shows’ over the years. These were wide open affairs, where anyone was free to take the mic to share a song. I, with my also sax, wasn’t nearly the musician that most of my fellows were, but I was always made to feel welcome.

These were such good times! But another of the characteristics of marina communities is that they change every year, as boaters come and go. We had about a three year peak of our musical, communal boater community in Ashbridges Bay. We lost some key members after that, and the character of the community changed, as it inevitably had to. Ponczka and I moved to Hamilton then, and our mobility and distraction with other parts of life has kept us from becoming true members of the communities we’ve encountered here. But they exist, and in all of them, there is some sense of ‘alternate lifestyle’ and the ‘call to adventure’ to be found: always one or two whose entire being is centered around boats and life on the watery part of the world, always a few who live aboard their vessels, during the season or even year-round; always someone contemplating a big sail, down the coast or across the ocean.

Serenity

In 13 years of sailing, I’ve come to know for sure that my place is on solid land. I love the opening, the shift, the freshness that sailing offers. And I’m so grateful that it’s been part of my life. But I’ll never feel ‘at home’ or so totally at ease as I know the true sailors do. We don’t want to sell our current boat, Trickster, which we got about halfway through our career, when we wanted a vessel that was roomier below deck and more maneuverable on the water. Trickster is a 27’ Catalina. you might call it the Honda Civic of the seas, as it’s so user friendly that there are more of them than any other sailboat in North America. We’d love to keep her. 

But the other thing about sailing is that it’s expensive. It costs over $4k per year just to keep her docked in summer and stored in winter. So the year when we managed to get out only half a dozen times, sailing set us back almost a thousand bucks per outing. Which is absurd for folks with our income.

So our years of sailing may be done. And it makes us very sad. It was a wonderful, brief career.