There was a high pressure system that lasted for days. The winds were steady, strong, out of the north-northwest. It was warmer now, but the wind made it sweater weather. We were going sailing on our 1937 vintage Yankee One Design, the ubiquitously named Broomstick.
Standing on the dock, I suggested to my father that he should go. There was an awkwardness to the conversation, his health a recent question, his chances left to sail on a sailors' breeze in play. No, he as much gestured as spoke, you should go; I have to get over this thing first. He watched from the dock as we sailed away, the man we and his yard crew referred to as the Chief. He was 71, I was 21.
On board besides myself were my brother Rick; our friend Rob, still recovering from an automobile accident; Nathan, an engineer in the merchant marines; and a friend of Nathans' who worked for the seaman's union.
The sail down river was swift and clean, a downwind drive before the fresh northerly winds. Three miles on we were sailing the waters of Long Island Sound, following our traditional course of no particular course, sailing just because Broomstick was meant for sailing. And, in the conditions we found that day, strong winds darkening the swells that ran six feet high or more, keeping us rail down and powering through the waves with thoroughbred form. We reached away to the east, tied in a reef and sailed with the small jib. Just for fun, Rob and I hiked off the running backstay, keeping the lee rail just clear of the water during one prolonged blast of pressing wind.
Nathans' friend was turning green from the moment we reached the rougher waters of the Sound. He was a desk worker with the union, and this was his first time sailing for real. We suggested the old sailors' remedy of a few crackers to settle his stomach, which he declined, preferring to test his willpower against the seas while lying nauseously wherever he could be out of the way. We sympathized, but our sympathies were not deep enough to send us back to calmer waters, and to his credit willpower won out that day.
We sailed on. We were young, our boat was strong and in her element, and the day was ours; a rare day for Long Island Sound, which so often waivers between slatting calms and smoky sou'westers. Northerly breezes typically fade as they reach the first mile of the Sound, but not today; this wind carried energy beyond local weather patterns, beyond the cooling and warming of land between night and day, dark and sun. This was energy from the larger land, the larger sea, and we were driving the venerable Broomstick right to her intended limits that day.
Broomstick was the name given to Yankee One Design # 15 by her previous owner, John McVitty; her original name had been Anita. Her lines were published in the Rudder magazine in 1936 or so, and my father often told the story of how, when he opened the magazine to that page, the design just jumped off the page at him. She was to his eye close to the perfect model for a sailors' sailboat, narrow, deep, long waterline, hollow bow, a profile of elegant curves, a design of pure logic and beauty. Officially, the Yankee was the anonymous winner of a juried design contest to form a new one design class for Buzzards Bay and beyond; but it was commonly known, or perhaps simply impossible not to recognize, that this could only be the work of the genius Starling Burgess, unrestrained.
When my father decided some twenty years or so later that he would build a boat for the family, the Yankee One Design was near the top of his list of possible designs. Ultimately he decided on a boat with more accommodations for cruising, but when McVitty brought Broomstick to the boatyard for storage, her spot was always right alongside the boat the Chief was building for his family.
Then the fire of 1964 took the boatyard and the boat under construction. Five years later Broomstick became part of our family; between summers of sailing she was re-constructed and upgraded until she was strong enough again for the kind of vigorous sailing she was intended for.
One of the first improvements to Broomstick was a new tiller and hardware, to eliminate any of the helm-wobble that the Chief found so annoying. In the past he and his father had adorned tillers with dragon figureheads, but Broomstick was all about speed, and the Chief was a big fan of the Peanuts comic strip. And so, Broomstick's tiller featured a carved figurehead of Snoopy, going real fast.
Broomstick was going real fast as we headed back up the river on a close hauled port tack. She always had a slight weather helm when driving to windward, something common, it seems, to boats with a propensity for going to windward. My father said this was because a weather helm forces the helmsman to sail tight on the wind; others say the rudder creates a better foil of the keel when slightly trimmed to lee. What was clear was that the modern boats were never a match when sailing to windward, especially in a breeze like that day; even boats half again her length gave little contest, even the one who revved up his engine to hold us off. On the way we shook the reef out of the mainsail, unwilling to concede even the fraction of a knot.
Our father came out to the dock to greet us as we returned. This had been one of the best sails we ever had on Broomstick, the kind of fresh breeze sailing for the pure joy of fresh breeze sailing that he enjoyed most. We furled the mainsail, stowed the jibs, coiled the halyards, backstays, and mainsheet, as the Chief, leaning on a weathered piling, watched. He was a man of few words for the moment at hand, preferring to tell his stories of younger days, the satisfying hard work, the good sails and old friends that had filled his life so well. We had to reef; it was a good sail. Perhaps that much was said.
Nathan took the photograph of the Chief leaning on his piling. The camera caught him in mid-cough, a remembrance of the cancer in his lung that would close out his life less than ten days later. He did not get out sailing again, and so that Memorial Day sail was in a way the handing off to a new generation, something that has been happening in more or less formal, more or less dramatic fashions, for thousands of years.
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