Sailing

Sailing has been on my mind ever since I learned it as a kid in Senior High. The way this came about is a story in itself.

A school friend, Heinz, and I, in preparation of the approaching summer vacation of somewhere around 1951, developed plans to take our two paddle boats from Basel in Switzerland to Marseille on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in France. You can follow the proposed route on a good map: our starting point was on the Rhine, just upriver from Basel, where  Heinz's parent owned a house. From there, we were to to follow the Rhine north, or downriver, to a point north of Basel where a canal crosses over to the west to connect with the river Doubs. On the map, this is by the town called Niffer, in France. We would follow tfirst this canal and then the Doubs south to its juncture with the Rhone, coming out of the lake Geneva in Switzerland and following the course of that river to Marseilles. It looks like a tremendous stretch to do if you consider that our summer vacation in Switzerland is just four weeks! But we allowed for the possibility to hitch rides with freight barges wherever the going was heavy and slow and there was no doubt in anybody's mind that the thing was doable. Our return home wast to be by train, another option that would not normally enter a native American's mind as feasible for a couple of teenagers.

I shipped my boat - a two-seater Klepper - by train from Zurich to Basel and further preparations were to be made at Heinz's house. The weather was somewhat upset. It would rain, and then the sun would break through for a few hours and we allowed some time for this to settle and enjoyed our time at the starting point. Then the rain began to get serious. We waited days, and more days, and it did not cease. One day, the news reported that the situation on the Rhine had become serious and all shipping was stopped.

You must envision the Rhine not as a placid waterway for pleasure boating and rafting and such amusements. It is a serious means of carrying goods between the sea shore through Holland and Germany and up to Switzerland. North of Basel, some substantial rivers contribute to the size of the Rhine and make traffic with deep draft boats and commercial shipping possible. Indeed, the rhine is rated the busiest shipping route in the world. Thus, when the traffic on this major artery of European Life was shut down, it meant that the situation was, indeed, serious.

We waited some days in the hope that things would clear up and then came a cal from my mother. In an newspaper ad she had discovered the Swiss Sailing School on the lake of Thun, west of the Swiss capital Bern. And she proposed that we could spend our time there more profitably than waiting at the shores of the Rhine for the waters to recede. We accepted happily. Time was running short for our original plan and we had no wish to perform a race against the calendar and wind up with only half the adventure behind us.

We loaded our camping gear on the train together with Heinz's bicycle, my mother shipped my bike to Thun; sailing was exclusively on our minds.

We set up camp on the lake shore, pedaled around the south end of the lake and registered and already on the following day we started our lessons. We liked it enough to stay two weeks, in which time we rose to the level of  'midshipmen'. At that point, Heinz packed up and went home and I staid on for another week and got to 'captain', ten, through active racing during the last week of vacation I achieved the highest grade, 'regatta sailer'. When I left, the school invited me to come back and help teaching. My parents were about to move from Zurich to Bern and I gladly accepted that invitation. Thus, I spent the next two summers on the lake of Thun, sharpening my skills in teaching and almost weekly races, and when school was on I would sometimes play hooky and pedal from Bern to the lake and go sailing. the distance was just a little over twenty miles from the school in the city to the docks at the lake and with sailing on my mind, what distance would have kept me?

On the lake of Thun, I got my 'time before the mast' on a 35 and a 45 design, both gaff rigged and like all boats back then completely mad of wood. That word 'design' signifies that the class designation was derived from a mathematical formula. The designer takes data, such as sail area, draft, displacement, beam etc. into a pot, studs it well and out come designations such as 5.5, 12, 35, 45, and so forth. The 35 was my favorite. She had been named Najade, a variation of the Greek Naida, which means water nymph, and that is what she was. A sleek little boat of about 25 feet, with a small cabin and plenty of sail to thrill the most demanding sailor, even in light winds, and with those heavy cotton sails that were in use back then. While I was there, talk began to sell the boat and I was the first to enter my bid. I was turned down! Rot had begun to show in the keel and the directors of the school said they would not sell this boat 'to one of their own'. The was a whole fleet of Pirates with which we sailed almost weekly regattas in summer, and there was that 45 design which was our major school ship for beginners' classes. The jewel of the fleet was a 12 meter design. It had been brought up from the Mediterranean Sea and converted for the use of the school. That was before the days of the 12 meter yachts used in the America's Cup. It was outfitted as a comfortable touring boat but also a very good racer. It usually went out with a crew of eight, but four could handle it in moderate winds. It's cabin was roomy and comfortable. During my vacation weeks on the lake with the school, I lived on that boat, a concession from the school because I gave my time for free. Another concession was that I could pick any boat for my private cruising unless it was scheduled for school activities or I was scheduled to take students out. In this way, I spent every summer vacation day from early morning to the evening hours on the water - two seasons of total bliss. My mother was very supportive, too. She picked up a newspaper add for a Star boat for sale on the Lake of Constance and she and I drove there to investigate. It was 'just what I always wanted, and, as a matter of fact, I had sailed on it as crew during a regatta series some time ago. I got on the boat, a wooden beauty, and eventually crawled under the fore deck where I found why the owner wanted to sell: rot in the wooden beam. That glimmer of a dream too was over. 

The next years brought college and some loss of the freedom I had enjoyed in the prior years. However, I did find entry into a sailing school in Zurich, where I attended college, so on some weekends I taught, and dating back to the days of the lake of Thun I had enough connections in the sailing world to always have more invitations than I could accept to crew in this or another regatta almost every weekend. 

The end of college brought all of my sailing to a halt. My first job, and then three years later my emigration to the US did not leave much time to even think about sailing.

When I settled in New York and later met Tiiu, I tried to interest her in my hobby, but after a couple of outings on Long Island Sound she announced with grave determination: Rich, I'll follow you anywhere, as long as the ground under my feet is solid and level.

That was the end of sailing for me for fifty years. The longing never stopped. But the alternative, to make Tiiu a sailer's widow, was no alternative to me

Well, towards the end of my 50 years exclusion from the sailing world I began to itch for getting my hand again on a tiller and the mainsail sheets. I started looking at ads everywhere I could find them and scoured Craigs lists up and down the coast. Some offers I went to look at, many I passed over, but I found that sail boats were not expensive after they had acquired some age. With Kaarin living at the North Carolina Coast, my dream was to keep the boat down there and when we went visiting we all could go for a cruise for a few hours and Tiiu could come with us or would not left alone at the shore. But the search dragged on and several interesting opportunities had to be abandoned for one reason or another.

At last, this summer of 2013, I hit the bait. I bought a 22 foot MacGregor in New Hampshire. I did not much research, but the idea was to get a boat ready to sail, bring it to the Harriman Reservoir by Wilmington in Vermont, and anchor it for the summer in the cove where the local sailing club moored their boats.

I found the boat on Craigs List, went to look at it, found it clean and apparently well kept, and bought it. Mr. B had never sailed it. He had bought it the year before from Mr. A, tried to put it in the water once but found that he had left some essential components at home and had to back with a dry boat. Shortly after that he was hospitalized for multiple bypass surgery and when he came home he decided that he would no longer be able to handle the boat. There are no lakes close and convenient where that boat was located, so I bought it sitting on its trailer and on his say-so that it was good to go. I towed it home and started to work on it. I wanted to be able to step the mast alone in my driveway before I took the boat down to the public boat launch. 

On first try, I decided that the method Mr. A supposedly had developed and used was totally impractical. He built an A-frame with two 10' 2x4 which were supposed to be resting on the safety line posts and the mast would be raised by a come-along using two single blocks, or pulleys. It was not a one-man job to handle this rig. I decided to design and build my own. The first actual attempt to raise the mast came on second iteration of my rig. It ended with a crash. Fortunately there were no injuries nor any damage. But the mast had come out of the cradle and the theory behind the design was proven feasible.

I started to do some research on the web and found that many sailers had taken the same approach to raise their masts. These boats, like the MacGregor 22 are called trailer boats because they can be hauled around on trailers, having a retractable keel. There are many of those all over the nation, many similar designs, all with the same idea and it is just a puzzle to me why there are no ready made, proven mast raising systems on the market. Of course, if you never sail one of those boats alone, you don't need one. The mas can be raised and lowered by two strong men.

That's s exactly what happened. Iivo came visiting with his family and he and Philip stepped that mast in no time. The boat was still in the driveway because I wanted to see it first rigged up completely. I'm glad we did it this way.

The boat had a jib furler which, when we got the mast up, proved to have never been fitted right. Besides, the rigid sections of the system broke at some of the intersections and I believe the thing would never have worked anyway. There were other things wrong with the standing and running gear. Mr. A apparently wanted to improve the boat, but obviously lacking the background and/or capabilities and means made a mess of it.

We took the mast down. Philip was not of the party and we had another crash. I am no longer a strong man. But nobody got hurt and there was no damage done, the mast came down in a somewhat soft landing.

Nevertheless, we decided we would take her sailing. We hooked up and also loaded Iivo's trailer with some essential water fun stuff in case not all of would fit on the boat and took off to the Wilmington launch. About halfway there, the trailer axle on the boat broke. Obviously it had seen much salt water and corrosion had given it what saltwater does to iron. So we had to have the whole rig towed off and waited for the new axel and by that time, Iivo's vacation was already over. We'll have to plan on a cruise on the Chesapeake Bay, come fall and I migrate south again. 

When Iivo's family left, I went back to work on my mast raising system. Yesterday, exactly eight weeks after I brought her home, I had the mast up and rigged somewhat properly. There is more detail work to be done, but I feel like she is ready to sail now.

I wanted to re-name her Najade, but she is no water nymph. She is plump and has a square stern, more like a motorboat than a sleek sailer. I will get her to the water first, after I took the mast down again, of course, and put her through a full days's testing if she will stand for it and then, perhaps, a new name will crop out of her character.