Karen and Ben were boat-sitting a Pearson 36, a nice yacht of Sixties or early Seventies vintage. Karen was a German, Ben a West Indian. Their novel stint of living aboard a yacht was interesting, including the boat’s cat, the reason the boat needed someone aboard.
Were I so inclined, that could have been a “Different Boats For Different Folks” article for the Caribbean Compass – perhaps from the cat’s point of view. The so-called owner could leave if he wanted but this was the cat’s home. Ben and Karen were visiting crew.
Ben was real interested in my sailing dinghies and asked me to teach him dinghy sailing. I do that kind of stuff. I’m a retired small-airplane flight instructor and it satisfies my instructing itch.
My dinghy sailing lessons are given from my small yacht, Ambia, because I anchor out where there is plenty of room and where the breeze is sweet. But also so I can sit under shade in the cockpit with a cup of coffee while watching solo practice, including landing practice, when we discuss what I’ve seen so far and what he should try next.
Karen came during lessons and we hung out in the cockpit together watching and talking. Karen felt inspired by my being a Compass writer. She had wanted to do some writing herself and I encouraged her to try a story for Compass. She said that she was going to think about what might be interesting and that she would do it.
Meanwhile, Ben was sailing out and around, practicing tacks, jibes and all points of sail then sailing back to practice landings on the boat and some close-quarters maneuvering that I like to teach. And there were capsize and self-rescue lessons.
There Karen and I sat, under shade in the breeze aboard a yacht floating in the clear, warm tropical waters of a picturesque bay watching Ben zip back and forth in my peculiar little dinghy with its colorful sail.
We did the full set of lessons and Ben got pretty good. I’ve written lots of stories about dinghy sailing, but I didn’t write this one.
Then we got an interruption, an approaching weather system. It was threatening enough that the fleet moved into the storm hole. So, Ben and Karen got the experience of preparing a yacht for a storm and the stress of anticipation. As with most of the storm threats that I’ve experienced and prepared for we didn’t get hit. Over the years I’ve written and sold several articles about storms that didn’t hit me – and two about storms that did. Anyway, we came out of the hole and resumed “normal” life, hanging out aboard our yachts in the tropics. Then their stay aboard ended and they moved ashore.
I ran across them several months later and asked Karen if she had decided on a Compass story yet. She said that she had been thinking and still wanted to do it but couldn’t come up with anything interesting to write about.
Ah, the stories untold. “Messing about in boats.” Life aboard a fine little yacht with a cool cat. Learning to sail a strange little dinghy. A change of pace to deal with a storm threat. Just hanging out on tropical waters among a fleet of like-minded yachties. Karen didn’t write a story about any of it. Neither did I. It’s a choice you know.
This is what I told my high school classmates thirty years on.
“A US Navy destroyer in the Far East got saltwater in my blood. Then I spent eighteen years at the Boulder Airport waiting for my ship to come in. On its failure to arrive, I sold everything, went to Florida, and bought a sailboat. Ambia is small, wind driven, solar powered, and uninsured. My cost of living is low. I have been cruising for six years, mostly in the Bahamas – seventy degrees now feels cool. Bahamas immigration doesn’t want to hear that I’m a bum, so I tell them I’m a writer.”
It began with Jane.