Open Writing

Well, the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound to be exact. Not quite a wilderness, but wild enough for me. It’s that time of year again; when we ready ourselves for the drive north to move back aboard our boat for the summer. As I’ve said in previous columns, it’s our reality check after 8 months in the pampered and sanitized world of resort living.

No more private gym, supplied with toiletries and towels, followed by a soak in the hot tub and a swim in the palm tree shaded pool. The commercial Planet Fitness gym will suffice for the 4 months we’re in Connecticut, and the gymsters there are a much more interestingly varied bunch than those at home. The yacht club pool is very nice, even without the palm trees, and the 180sqft of living space on our boat, compared with the 2700sqft of our condo, isn’t the imposition you might imagine.

Not being a willing long distance driver, when first we were faced with the 1350 mile drive from Florida to our boat, I doubted I could endure it twice each year. But now I actually look forward to it. Though the journey is mainly on highly trafficked interstate highways, once we have adjusted to the rhythm, the trucks and the speeders aren’t as troublesome as when we’re less acclimatized.

We break the journey twice, sometimes in hotels, but also stay with friends and relatives. They’re pleased to see us because they know we won’t be staying long and won’t be back for months. We’ll be breaking in a new car this spring, so in place of concerns about the reliability of our old vehicle, which had over 200,000 miles under its belt, we’ll be dealing with the unknown.

After some less than wonderful experiences with hotels and their locations in the past, two years ago my wife started to keep a journal. She logs our times of departure and arrival on each leg of the journey, impressions of restaurants and hotels, and the general tenor of their locations. The journal has become a very useful reference, and an amusing retrospective, with remarks such as “‘The Rest in Peace Hotel.’ No! No! No! Never again!”

Once we’re back in Connecticut, we spend the first two or three days getting Yorkshire Lass ready for us to move aboard. After we remove the winter cover we can open up the hatches and let the fresh air blow through; that is if it isn’t raining, though more often than not it is. Sandra takes charge of the cleaning down below, and soon has the teak glowing with a new coat of oil.

It’s my job to clean and beautify the topsides, but I leave some of the tedious fine detail until we’ve moved aboard, so I can work on it for a short time each day. After a couple of nights in a hotel, we’re almost ready for our summer afloat. I’ll have checked out the batteries and refrigerator, and we’ll have re-provisioned the food lockers and filled the water tanks. We’ll bend the sails on later. So now we can take a breather to reacquaint ourselves with the Club.

One of the curious aspects of belonging to a yacht club, or any other enduring group of adults, is that one becomes attuned to the continuity of many relationships. This is not to say that all those relationships are necessarily close, but throughout the season there is interaction of one sort or another. So one is very conscious of other members’ state of well being.

Many of them are getting on in years, as am I, so there’s always the chance that one or more didn’t make it through the winter. At the start of the season, everyone, whether they admit it or not, is taking inventory. In these days of calamitous economic failure, there also is the very likely possibility that some members will have found it necessary to resign due to job loss or reduced income. Recently, one member resorted to suicide after losing everything.

But on a happier note, it’s always a treat see the oldest of the old showing up as usual each spring. Amazingly, a number of octogenarians are still active sailors; some of them race “Stars,” a physically challenging boat even for young people. Later, once the early season boat chores are taken care of, those who qualify by age are to be found sunning themselves on the “geezer bench” outside the dock office.
The conversation inevitably turns to the difficulties of aging, and the various medical procedures some of us have undertaken to replace or rebuild essential parts of our bodies. Collectively, the “geezers” are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in prosthetics and surgery. When we run out of that topic, talk usually revolves around past sailing experiences, and personalities. We’ve heard most of the stories before, but we pretend we haven’t.

It’s good to be back among people of like mind, who for decades have shared the summer and what nature has to offer. Every new season promises much, and we’re seldom disappointed.

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