(Not) Looking for a Sign - October 2021

If you haven't already, you should read Jim's "Omens" post for background.

I should have seen the signs. One my first dates with Jim was sailing his Sunfish on the Long Island Sound. It was a cute little green and white lateen rigged boat, 14' long and 4' beam. It was literally designed so that you could fit it in the back of a station wagon if you left the tailgate down. That date ended badly, Jim tried to teach this landlocked Midwestern girl the rudiments of sailing in what was actually a pretty stiff breeze. One accidental jibe later, the cute little boat was turtled with the mast wedged between rocks, there was blood in the water (his) and Jim had landed chest first on top of a big purple jellyfish. I was hooked, though I didn't realize it at the time.

The early years of our marriage didn't give us many opportunities to get out on the water, aside from an occasional paddle on the Cuyahoga River in the venerable Sprague family 17' aluminum Grumman canoe which Jim hauled on his shoulders across the Route 8 overpass to the launch spot above Cuyahoga Falls. The Cuyahoga hadn't caught fire for a couple decades at that point so it was a pleasant and cheap way for a young couple to spend a Saturday.

Once we moved to Michigan and had a couple of kids, the Sunfish migrated west and we joined the Portage Yacht Club on Dexter's Portage Lake so the kids could take lessons and presumably go on to have better luck teaching their dates to sail. I also improved my sailing skills so as not to be showed up by the kids. Frustrated by fickle winds on the inland lakes and distracted by competing kid activities, we finally donated the Sunfish to the Boy Scout Rummage Sale. It was the end of an age...the Age of Sail.

If I thought our boating days were over I would be proven wrong in time. Over the next years it slowly dawned on me that most of our vacation photos included pictures of Jim and the kids looking at boats in harbors, boats on rivers and lakes and oceans. It became such a consistent meme that I began to refer to that pose as "Naval Gazing." Still, I didn't recognize it as a warning sign. I thought it was just the ancestral Swedish longing for the sea.

Even after taking a couple of European boating vacations where Jim and the kids enjoyed learning to handle a large motorboat and I 'enjoyed' a bare bones galley, I thought we were the smart kind of people who let other people do all the boat maintenance and only pay for what we use. So I was absolutely gobsmacked when we ended up owners of a 49' one-of-a-kind steel trawler. It's not exactly the boat most folks would pick as their starter boat but, to be realistic, we just turned 60 and we don't really have time to start small and work our way up.

It seemed pretty impulsive [pandemic induced insanity???] when we made the offer but in retrospect we've been boat owners in denial for a long time. I have enjoyed finally getting my opportunity to handle a big power boat, even though she can snap off a 6" piling 'like a toothpick'. (It makes a much more terrible noise than a toothpick.) I also like the galley which is somewhat more luxurious (full-size fridge!) than the rental boats, though it still enforces a minimalist ethos because there's only room for the most useful items. Best of all...sleep. With the waves gently rocking us in our queen-size berth there's no better place to recharge.

With all we had to learn, the summer just flew by. Before I knew it I WAS seeing signs. Signs that short days and cold weather were on the way. I never realized what a sad place a marina could be in September, but we certainly felt a little melancholy as one by one the familiar boats disappeared and we bade goodbye to our new boating friends. Soon it was our turn to make our final voyage of the season down to Marinette to tuck the Perseverance into a nice heated barn [photos, more story] for the winter. I don't know what boats dream of but we will be dreaming of our 2022 adventures and upgrades. Let us know if you want to join us.