Retired from newspapers and television, currently sailing Thelonious II, a 1984 Ericson 381.
With some astonishment I realize that my early family sailing experiences with an 8mm video camera in hand now constitute a museum show of ancient American yachting.
We were members of the Raritan Yacht Club, in Perth Amboy, N.J. The club occupies high ground across from Staten Island, with Sandy Hook due east and the Atlantic beyond. In those days the water had a lovely sheen of oil, which made brilliant colors in the sunlight as we dived in. Tugboats occasionally smashed into the yachts of the anchorage. Frequently, tankers blew their bilges in the bay and oil slicks washed through the moorings, coating every hull with grime.
Everything at the club was done by members. They hauled their own heavy cruising boats up the marine railway, and then gangs of sons jacked and pried the skids laterally through the yard on greased planks. In fall we scraped thick layers of barnacles that fell into our hair, in spring we sanded toxic bottom paint and slapped new coats on. There was still galvanized rigging, which rusted to get your attention. Sails were Nylon, cotton on the way out. We heard about new boats being manufactured of fiberglass, and began to see a few. The material looked promising. Say, is it true you don't need to varnish an aluminum mast? Varnishing masts, with all the gear and prep, was a nightmare for me, and literally kept me awake nights hoping I wouldn't be asked to do it.
And eventually, we didn't do it anymore. And although the new boats were better in every way, they required fewer skills to maintain, and so we became better sailors but less useful boat mechanics. And it seemed to me that sailboats and their owners underwent a subtle change. More money was spent. The additional money meant longer job hours or higher-paying professions. Some of the old crowd had been quite rich, and maintained lovely schooners and yawls. The new bunch took delivery of mass-produced boats, sailed and raced them with pleasure, then hurried back to work. I was just a kid, but as I grew older it became less common to see boys at work, and more usual to see professionals doing the tasks once relegated to sons.
The chandleries used to smell of manila rope, and now they no longer did. And everything seemed suddenly shiny and expensive. By the time I moved away the Raritan Yacht Club had doubled the number of moorings, the pretty girls who raced the Blue Jay dinghies their fathers had built for them with their own hands were married and gone, and when there were oil discharges the new club fathers rose up in a cloud of lawyers and raised holy hell. Racing became more serious, as if winning mattered more.
Nostalgia usually gets it wrong, and no doubt everything I remember of those days is better now, safer, cleaner, more organized, more expensive.
There is one aspect of sailboat life and racing in those days that I doubt we will ever return to, and that I will forever miss, even though my companions in dinghy racing over the next 20 years would laugh out loud to hear me claim as my own: Something gone forever, a cultural artifact bulldozed out of the way by progress. I'll tell it as an anecdote about Runyon Colie, who in that era was the unbeatable champion of Penguin-class frostbite dinghies.
Colie was leading a fleet of Penguins to the windward mark, and was so far ahead of all the other competitors they could hardly see him. After rounding the mark he sailed off the course and returned to the dock.
What happened out there? everyone asked him afterwards, nobody being close enough to see.
Colie had touched the mark with his boom while rounding. He immediately disqualified himself.
We were members of the Raritan Yacht Club, in Perth Amboy, N.J. The club occupies high ground across from Staten Island, with Sandy Hook due east and the Atlantic beyond. In those days the water had a lovely sheen of oil, which made brilliant colors in the sunlight as we dived in. Tugboats occasionally smashed into the yachts of the anchorage. Frequently, tankers blew their bilges in the bay and oil slicks washed through the moorings, coating every hull with grime.
Everything at the club was done by members. They hauled their own heavy cruising boats up the marine railway, and then gangs of sons jacked and pried the skids laterally through the yard on greased planks. In fall we scraped thick layers of barnacles that fell into our hair, in spring we sanded toxic bottom paint and slapped new coats on. There was still galvanized rigging, which rusted to get your attention. Sails were Nylon, cotton on the way out. We heard about new boats being manufactured of fiberglass, and began to see a few. The material looked promising. Say, is it true you don't need to varnish an aluminum mast? Varnishing masts, with all the gear and prep, was a nightmare for me, and literally kept me awake nights hoping I wouldn't be asked to do it.
And eventually, we didn't do it anymore. And although the new boats were better in every way, they required fewer skills to maintain, and so we became better sailors but less useful boat mechanics. And it seemed to me that sailboats and their owners underwent a subtle change. More money was spent. The additional money meant longer job hours or higher-paying professions. Some of the old crowd had been quite rich, and maintained lovely schooners and yawls. The new bunch took delivery of mass-produced boats, sailed and raced them with pleasure, then hurried back to work. I was just a kid, but as I grew older it became less common to see boys at work, and more usual to see professionals doing the tasks once relegated to sons.
The chandleries used to smell of manila rope, and now they no longer did. And everything seemed suddenly shiny and expensive. By the time I moved away the Raritan Yacht Club had doubled the number of moorings, the pretty girls who raced the Blue Jay dinghies their fathers had built for them with their own hands were married and gone, and when there were oil discharges the new club fathers rose up in a cloud of lawyers and raised holy hell. Racing became more serious, as if winning mattered more.
Nostalgia usually gets it wrong, and no doubt everything I remember of those days is better now, safer, cleaner, more organized, more expensive.
There is one aspect of sailboat life and racing in those days that I doubt we will ever return to, and that I will forever miss, even though my companions in dinghy racing over the next 20 years would laugh out loud to hear me claim as my own: Something gone forever, a cultural artifact bulldozed out of the way by progress. I'll tell it as an anecdote about Runyon Colie, who in that era was the unbeatable champion of Penguin-class frostbite dinghies.
Colie was leading a fleet of Penguins to the windward mark, and was so far ahead of all the other competitors they could hardly see him. After rounding the mark he sailed off the course and returned to the dock.
What happened out there? everyone asked him afterwards, nobody being close enough to see.
Colie had touched the mark with his boom while rounding. He immediately disqualified himself.
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