Sailing

When I was very small, my dad and I used to go sailing on Lake Simcoe in our 15ft "Lazy E" a variation on the popular Enterprise dinghy designed by Jack Holt in the 50's.

My parents liked to tell stories about how they took me on the boat when I was a month old -- could be bullshit, I don't know -- but I do know that by the time I was four or five I could helm the boat while supervised, and was very good at sail trimming and squeezing every last inch of thrust from the sails.

When my dad was club racing he'd take another adult out (he wanted to win, and as he was only 150 lbs soaking wet, he needed another adult to balance the boat properly, even if the crew was dumber than a box of hammers when it came to crewing a dinghy. Basicly the guy was moveable ballast.) I'd spend the hot summer days ashore, bored, with my mom who slept in the camper-van -- her health was already in decline back then: I just never noticed it because I was a kid and that was how it had always been; Mom slept lots -- watching the boats on the water racing back and forth, waiting...

The morning races over, I'd watch the boats reach in from the course for lunch, our boat easily recognizable from it's red-tipped sails. Sometimes my brother would be sailing in too, on his boat. He was much older than I was and was in that reckless teen phase that meant he had a rocketship of a boat, an International Contender that he and my father had built from scratch, like our Lazy E.

Lunch was a fast, boisterous affair. No one had much time for a four (then five, six, seven) year old boy who wasn't crewing any of the boats. The sailors mostly spent their time shoving sandwiches in their faces, laughing about the near misses, triumphs and gaffs that cost them the lead. Then they'd gather around as the Commodore, a kindy old Brit name Geoff, would lay out the instructions for the afternoon races. I'd go down to the docks to watch the mayhem when as many as 25 boats vied to get off the docks and on to the course as quickly as they could.

It was magic.

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By the time I was old enough to crew regularly the club had already started to break apart. The hard-core sailors, in faster boats, wanted to race other hard-core, fast-boat sailors. The other hodge-podge of mixed class boats (which we were in) were recreational guys with families that would show up some weeks but not others.

You'd show up for a race expecting a dozen boats, but then only three would show up. This after an hour's drive from Toronto...

It started getting pathetic after awhile.

Dad started sleeping in on Saturdays.

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When we moved to the Okanagan Valley in the 80's, my dad, now in his fifties, decided that he didn't really like sailing anymore: he was more interested in fishing. We made deals though: I'd go fishing with him if he'd go sailing with me. In essence, we punished each other. I was still a speed freak: I wanted big wind, big waves, on the edge sailing. That was the first time I started noticing that my Dad was afraid of that kind of sailing, which was weird, because he was the one who taught me to love it. Just as it was starting to get fun, Dad would call the day because it was getting too rough.

Fishing wasn't that much better. Sitting in a slow-moving boat, for hours on end, sun beating down, slowing burning to lobster-boy hues wasn't my idea of fun. I hated the fish we caught, too: bony little bastards. I think the fish sensed it too. When I went along, Dad was lucky to catch one or two fish. When I wasn't there, he and whatever septuagenarian neighbour who hadn't broken his hip or who wasn't going to quote the Bible at my Dad would catch the limit (about a dozen Kokanees each.) I hated fishing.

So why didn't this mopey teenager join the local dinghy club? Well two reasons actually. My parents being of that WW2-surviving European stock (ie. cheap) actively discouraged any activity of mine that would actually cost money (ie. Club fees and potential costs involved in one-class Club boat racing.) Secondly, it felt like cheating and that it wouldn't be right to go sailing without my dad. This last one I came to realize later in life. For the longest time my brain raged at the cheapness of my parents and couldn't understand why I was feeling so cheated. If I really wanted to go sailing without my dad I could have found a way: The agony that sons put themselves through over their parents without forming the conscious thought.

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You look at the past, things that you took for granted in your life, and the little threads that stand out you pull on, and the past unravels itself in front of you. This post was originally supposed to be about something else, but it has taken on a life of its own, mutated into something else, something that needs to breathe, to be released.

I realized that I watched my Dad grow old when I started my teens, much younger than when most young men are confronted with the decline of their parents. I felt cheated that my brother, who is 16 years older than I am, got to do so much more with him when he was younger. By the time I was old enough, and one of the few times he wasn't too busy to play catch, I threw the ball a little too high, he jumped to reach the ball, came down too hard and wrong and snapped his ankle. Tough old bastard that he was, he drove us to the hospital on the busted ankle. I felt too guilty afterward to ever suggest throwing the ball around afterwards...and he never did either...

I realized that my mother was starting her slow health decline back then, when I was little. Maybe right after she had me at the advanced age of 38 (hey it was 1970, remember.) Would she still be alive if she'd made the choice the doctor had given her then? Was it really my life for hers? You know, dear reader, that little thread didn't really click in my brain until I was well into this post, because life isn't an after-school family special where all the choices your parents make are carefully laid-out for you and full-disclosure is made to everyone. I was told that the Doctor had suggested an abortion. I was never really told why, except that he suspected my mom was "too old." I didn't really suspect until now that my mother was making a choice about her own life and health, rather than it just being about me...And I'll never know for sure. If your parents are of that generation you'll know what I mean. They're pretty damned tight-lipped about stuff like this.

She hated sailing, hated the boredom of being left onshore. She didn't much like it once we actually got on the boat after the races were over: day wasted, a bone being thrown to those of us not racing, a small jaunt to one of the smaller islands in the middle of the lake to take a swim and cool off.

I hated the trapped feeling of having to stay with her. No sailboat racing, but no beach or park either: I had to stay with Mom while she rested, childhood energy burning a hole in my chest with no obvious outlet. slow torture for a kid that wanted to go go go! Would I have felt any differently if I'd known that cancer would claim her life before I was 23? That it would claim her spirit much sooner than that so that her death was actually a relief to us all, herself included? Or would I have been the same bored selfish brat I was then?

Am I worth the price that I now suspect has been paid? Will I ever be?

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It's funny the way the brain sparks. The inspiration for this post was this story in the Telegraph about British sailor Ellen MacArthur setting a new single-handed round the world sailing record:



I was originally going to post about how incredible this acheivement is, what a testament to the technology involved and the fortitude of people who attempt this sort of thing, how when I was a kid, the "girls" minded the kids at the beach and made the lunches for "the men": how freakin' wonderful it is that she is the record holder; not the woman's record holder.

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But in the end I could only hold onto the thought that I hate sailing alone...