Judy P's Tickle Trunk

At the Wheel of Ceol Mor

Sailing was not an activity I grew up knowing anything about. Come to think of it, it wasn’t even a sport to us in outport Newfoundland. Sailing was something schooners did to take one where the fish were, and back again. The “Age of Sail” was long past by the time I was old enough to realize that being on the water was my first pick of summer pleasures. The male Newfoundlander of that time  preferred cabin cruisers to sailboats; he could ride out the heavy weather in the comfort of a pilot house and be confident that his engine would punch him through the worst of the chop. (Women of the day didn’t even drive pick-ups, let alone own boats.) Sailboats for me were just decorative images; the subjects of calendar pictures, jigsaw  puzzles; birthday cards, or  those sentimental commercial prints which depict a knobby-kneed lad standing on the shoreline, clutching a toy boat,  with his creaky grandfather’s arm around him as they both gazed at a three masted schooner sailing past a lighthouse, backlit by a brilliant sunset – also a favourite of needlepointers worldwide.  (I first felt validated as a real sailor the year my mother broke tradition and sent me a birthday card which had a picture of a sailboat at sunset in a cozy cove, carefully selected from the “For Him” section of the drugstore card rack – it brought a tear to my eye at the time.)

       I first set rubber boot on a sailboat in the mid eighties – we had loaned out our apartment to friends for the summer so that we could explore the Labrador wilderness but had been chased out of the woods by blood-thirsty mosquitoes who must have been under the tutelage of Genghis Khan. But that’s another story. We were killing time at my mother’s on the way back when we joined my brother for an over-nighter to Long Island on his wooden sailboat, the Royal Blue.

Peter

     Little did I know then that I wasn’t really experiencing real sailing; the weather was calm and because of issues with the keel bolts the sails were used only to steady us in the swells and to assist the outboard. It was pretty tame. What I did realize the instant we pulled away from Peter’s wharf was that I was happily in my element.  I could not have felt more grand than if I was an Egyptian princess being carried in a sedan chair, or better still, being ferried down the nile on a twelve-oar barge. 

My first time on a sailing vessel

My only disappointment was that I was delegated no work – the boys ran the boat and I was vexed that I had to play the role of passenger instead of crew. But that trip served to kindle a spark in my soul which smouldered for many years until I became bold enough to buy my own boat. And that was the real beginning.

Royal Blue at Beaumont

      Over the past year I hadn’t thought much about boating, and even less about sailing, until a  few weeks ago when in a fit of contrariness brought on by the two steps forward, one step back nature of my life, I thought briefly about selling all I owned, sending the kids to boarding school, and sailing away. To the Azores. For starters. Now that’s not as far-fetched as it might sound. When I purchased my own sailboat in 1999, my long term goal for when the kids had grown had been to do a solo circumnavigation of Newfoundland over the course of two summers and then the following year set off for Ireland and then the next year on to Scotland to the area where the boat’s original owner had sailed her. There are many reasons why that plan never came to pass but that too, is a story for another day.

The Bell Buoy off Prospect

 The beginning of the end of my sailing period became clear late one summer as I approached port at the end of a solo sailing trip to Chester and back. I had just rounded the bell buoy off Prospect. The wind had been strong all day and it was still breezing up as I changed course to head in the bay. I had sailed at hull speed with the wind on my beam for the past hour and even though Petrelle virtually sailed herself under those conditions, I was approaching exhaustion. I was sunburnt, chapped, had to pee, and was starving; I wished I had left a few granola bars or at least a jawbreaker or two in the cockpit bag. Every movement required of me now was accompanied by a grunt and a curse-word. As I proceded in the bay with a following sea, I decided to drop the jib early  but the downhaul jammed when it was halfway down. I invented a few new curses (I thought them magnificent at the time but I have since been out-done in cursing by a patient from Cape Breton), engaged the auto-helm and scravelled forward to man-handle the sail into submission. It was then that I experienced a bout of crushing chest pain. Noooo. I was too busy to be frightened and knew that this was serious but here was nothing to do but go on. I took comfort in thinking of my father, who stood at the wheel of The Willing Lass for 24 hours after he had just broken his back, and steered her safely though a gale to home port. I only had twenty minutes to go. My chest pain subsided but for the first time, I questioned whether at my age, I should be doing this alone.

      Last saturday night, in my dreams, I realized the end of my sailing days. I dreamt that I was high-up in my workplace; a room with a continuous bank of windows around three sides like the bridge of a boat. I was late and trying to explain to my colleagues why I was late but they were gathered in a cluster across the room and I couldn’t recall the code I was to use to communicate with them. I was harried and trying to get into my work clothes – a pair of heavily lined nylon ski pants (which in real life I wore on my night watch when sailing to Sable Island on Ceol Mor). The pants were too tight and I was puffing and grunting as I struggled to get them up over my hips. I felt like I was trying to stuff a marshmallow into a drinking straw. My blouse was straining at its buttons and gaping badly and the bright red suspenders I was installing (which I surely didn’t need; the pants were already glued to my backside with the sweat of my labours) were cutting channels into my bosom. In disgust and without having had to undress, as one can do only in dreams, I tossed the clothing into a box for the goodwill. Now wearing only a long t-shirt (do I hear mumu anyone?) I walked into the adjacent cabin. Lying on a rusty metal bunk which had little more than a long yellowed pillow for a mattress, was an old salt who was a conglomeration of all of the people I have ever sailed with. I lay down beside him but felt badly because in my heart I knew I was no longer part of this world. I felt vacant and disconnected. I said that I was hungry and he directed me to some granola bars which were under the bunk – they were caked with grime and dust-bunnies. I said no, thank you, and leaned over and delivered a quick peck of a kiss, completely devoid of emotion. I turned to leave the cabin, saying “I’ll be back” but in my heart I knew that I would never return. I had just kissed sailing good-bye.