Open Writing

My aching joints wake me while it is still dark outside. Damn! I must have left the hatch open. The cold has seeped into my bones, and the discomfort is made worse by lying too long in one position. I turn over, pulling the sheet around my shoulders, hoping I will sink back into sleep. But instead, I slowly and unwillingly emerge from slumber, and my mind gradually begins to process what my senses are telling it.

But wait a minute. Don’t I usually bang my knees and elbows when I turn over in my restricted bunk? I didn’t just now, so what’s different? I open one eye and immediately a flood of thoughts assails me. I’m not in the cramped forward bunk on my boat; I’m in the large bed in my house. The boat has gone; sold these several weeks ago now. I’m at home, and the cold is not from an open hatch, but from the air conditioning!

The clock by my bed tells me it’s 5.20 am – too early to start my day, and too late to hope I’ll get back to sleep again. So I lie quietly, thinking over the events of the past few weeks and the prospects of this new phase of my life; a life without the sailboat that has been a part of it for the past 22 years. No more the challenge of pitting my wits against nature that only a sailboat, or perhaps a glider can provide. No more rocking gently at anchor as the sun sets and the stars take over the sky.

My boat, Yorkshire Lass, sold quickly. There was hardly time to feel anything but relief that ownership had passed so easily in times when such transactions can take months, or even years. I waited for the pangs of separation to begin – perhaps akin to the postpartum depression that some new mothers experience after their child is born. I was relieved when no such feelings came over me.

Perhaps it was because I have the prospect of still being on the water, at a yacht club where I live in Florida, but in the scaled-down mode that my little power boat will provide. No longer will I have to worry how Yorkshire Lass is faring in the frozen-over marina in the depths of the Connecticut winter, and wonder if the cover will survive the fifty mile an hour winds that are common from November through April.

Nor will I have the chore of taking the sails off and putting them on again every fall and spring, or hauling supplies and equipment back and forth on the steep ramp at low tide. My little boat, the Sandra Fey, will get me out on the Caloosahatchee River, and perhaps connect me with a few fish: maybe a Striped Bass or two, or some Yellowtail and Snapper. And the new yacht club will provide the social camaraderie that I enjoy. It will be enough.

But the question remains about whether my wife and I will tolerate the Florida summer, with no escape to the theoretically cooler Connecticut climate. I say “theoretically,” because this year the temperatures there have been close to Florida’s summer norms. I suppose, like native Floridians, we will deal with the summers like northerners handle their winters. It’s a time to hunker down and stay indoors.

Even constant air conditioning is, in reality, no worse than the effects of the ultra-dry air that sub-zero temperatures bring in the northern winter – dry, prickly skin and electrostatic charges on every surface you touch. At least we won’t have to worry about whether the heating oil will last, as we have in past years. The effort of exerting one’s self in 95˚F (35˚C) temperatures is surely no more exhausting than shoveling a foot of snow off the driveway for a couple of hours before leaving for work.

Also on the positive side is the decrease in our local population after the snowbirds fly north in the Spring. Traffic flows at manageable levels, and restaurant reservations are easy to come by, promptly at the time you prefer. In the early morning cool, the community pool is deserted, and only the diehards frequent the gym, so we have both facilities to ourselves more often than not. The daily afternoon thunderstorms that bring torrential rain, leave the grass and shrubbery lushly green, and tropical flowers abound.

So all in all, there’ll be no backward glances from us as we settle in to being year round residents. Except perhaps once in a while, when there’s a fresh breeze, and I spot a boat with its sails well-trimmed, spanking along to who knows where.

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