We put our big boat up for sale this spring. Here’s why: owning such a boat was beginning to outweigh the pleasures derived from the cruising life. That’s why, according to Guy. He wanted to do other things than have a boat headache. For someone else, it would be a thrill, not a headache, but he was ready for a change. Plus, our 10-year -old son is sick of being dragged off by his boring parents to yet another island in Penobscot Bay. Can you imagine such torture?
I threw a few covert fits after the proposal to sell, since I truly didn’t want to say goodbye. Think: silent plotting and intent to launch, regardless. I couldn’t imagine life without being “out there”. I live to spend hours staring off at sky and sea meditatively, attempting to ignore the fact that the men around me are trying very hard to look and sound hungry. But, as my evil plan came to light and the “family conference” ensued, I saw that if everyone wasn’t going to be happy, I wasn’t going to feel very good about this whole mutiny I was planning. I finally had to admit that maybe it was time for new adventures. Maybe if I let go and let some of that Great Unknown in, some good stuff would come. The men of the family convinced me. We needed a smaller headache.
And as it happens, they make headaches in light blue, for well under a thousand dollars. You won’t find this one at the marina or your local chandlery, but maybe this is just testament to the fact that if you are willing to allow good things to come to you, they will turn up under your nose. Actually, this good thing turned up in our neighbor’s yard.
A few weeks after the decision to sell the boat, we were driving up our road and there she was, the cutest little blue wooden sailing dinghy you ever saw. Even more serendipitous, she was a British class design called a GP 14, which stands for General Purpose, 14 feet long. My husband’s English. God only knows how she ended up on this side of the pond. There was no question that we were about to buy this dinghy, and I was even more delighted when I noticed she was named Woodwind. I’m a flutist.
We had to have the pillow-talk debate, however. What about no galley? No going below to get out of the weather? We aren’t really the “amenities” type of people, but I couldn’t quite get used to this idea that we were just going to be out there in this little thing. But here is the argument that won me over: We could trailer Woodwind all sorts of places that would take days to sail to, and therefore explore many new places. We could sail in warm lakes, which meant swimming! And, once we figured out some sort of engine arrangement, we could poke up into all kinds of rivers, tidal bays, and gosh, maybe even streams.
After a few shakedown missions on the local lake, we decided the time was right for an all-out assault on the Kennebec. July 20, 2008. The day dawned fine, and we excitedly packed up all our gear in such a way as to be dinghy-compliant. I was feeling very Sacajawea-esque as we pulled away in our little 1981 diesel VW Golf named Rupert, towing Woodwind behind. I am not sure that Sacajawea and our VW Golf have much in common, but I scrutinized our Gazetteer intently, silently repeating words like “portage” and “Columbia Gorge” nonetheless.
Soon our fine skies left us, and a grey somber reality prevailed, about the time we had to stop to fill up our very non-Lewis and Clark gas tank. No one in the car wanted to admit to what was happening. I immediately administered a round of sandwiches. I reminded everyone that a little rain hadn’t stopped the aforementioned explorers, and it wouldn’t stop us. We pressed on.
We had decided to launch in Bath, follow the tide up as far as we could, and then come back when the tide turned. At the launching ramp, we had another moment of faintheartedness when the rain began to fall, and the mood certainly turned sour when we watched a poor fellow lose his outboard into the river after launching his canoe. It did not bode well, though bystanders in a skiff helped him to fish it out. But in we went, and just as we launched, a gentleman came along with a bucket to take a water sample. Delighted with our classic little dinghy, he engaged us and cheered us greatly with a little conversation. Soon he was enthusiastically bantering with Guy about classic British Seagull outboards, naval architecture, and other gear-related topics. His water sample was part of sewage monitoring work that is done by Friends of Merrymeeting Bay. You can read all about this worthy cause at this website: friendsofmerrymeetingbay.org
We couldn’t turn back, now that we had an audience, and when I looked up at the little bluff alongside the river, a woman was standing at her window waving enthusiastically. I think it had been a long time since anyone had seen a sailing dinghy on the Kennebec. We tried to give our fans a show by hoisting sail, but there just wasn’t any wind. We will refuse to turn on an engine to the point of blowing in our sails, but, there not being much room before you run into the land, we conceded, firing up the Seagull with the little string you have to pull that, if you are not careful, hits everybody in the face.
The good thing about having a classic outboard is that the noise from the bloody thing is so intense, no one can be heard whilst complaining about the rain. Guy has modified the Seagull to be less polluting than it would have been originally, but I am still lobbying for some sort of electric motor. But is the manufacture and disposal of batteries of less concern? Perhaps what I should really lobby for is a paddle. Which in fact I was soon using, because though we were determined to sail, and did cut the engine as soon as possible, the sails soon needed an assist. And you might as well keep moving in the rain to stay warm.
Now, you might wonder how our ten-year-old son is doing at this point, considering he was bored by the islands of Penobscot Bay, bored by his parents, and now is sitting in the rain with his stupid parents on a stupid river. Did I have to pull out a Nintendo DS? Never once, which is a good thing, since we don’t own one. Truly, I don’t think we have ever had such a fun family outing. We came around a headland into Merrymeeting Bay, and soon were startled by leaping creatures seemingly the size of dolphins. I asked Guy if he knew what kind of fish we were dealing with, but, he assured me that the only fish names he knew were the ones on ice at Hannaford’s. Later, we learned that we were watching sturgeon. Egrets and heron lifted off from the misty marshes, and we ghosted along in what seemed like a wilderness devoid of human intervention, thanks to most people staying away from river sports due to rain. A good thing, considering a sunny day might have brought out many cowboys swamping us in their wake. We should make a point of always sailing rivers in the rain!
The Kennebec isn’t as wide or as famous as the Mississippi, but there is a majesty in all such rivers: perhaps it’s the echo of bird, fish, and plant, whose survival has depended upon such waters, or the blood memory of the humans who came before me, leaving some spirit of their mortal struggle to reach up into unknown interior lands in my own adventurer’s bones. But today, sitting in our little dinghy in the rain, drifting upriver with the tide, I can feel the excitement in our family as we let the soul of Merrymeeting Bay seep into us, and we peer ahead, wondering where the river will lead us.
As it happens, we were lead to Richmond, Maine, which was as far as a family of three in an open dinghy with one raincoat between them could be reasonably expected to travel without an infusion of tea, the romance of adventure notwithstanding. Guy had photocopied a section of our Maine Gazetteer, and pseudo-laminated it with wide sticky tape, and so we were guided into a little bow in the river alongside a little Maine river town, complete with the ghost of a mill along her shores. We tied up at an excellent public facility- no “facilities” per se, but I am always very appreciative of a town that manages to have a dock that has space to tie up at, and that allows you a few hours to meander off for a good explore.
As seems to be the case, Woodwind always attracts admirers, and soon we were telling a couple passersby about our little dinghy. That’s the cool thing about being willing to travel with flair and eccentricity: your ride is always a source of interest, and you soon make new friends as a result. It’s a fair tradeoff for the lack of creature comfort that comes with the territory. We met a nice family who was traveling in style themselves: a tugboat worthy of an English children’s story.
But the call of tea was resounding on high, so we left our new acquaintance to do pursuit. Plus, we needed gas.
If I had to pick a funky on the down-lo place to up and move to, I think it would be Richmond, Maine. Living here in Rockland, on the coast of Maine, I have watched my little city change from a dry goods sort of place to a land of fantasy. To each their own, but I prefer hardware stores to art galleries. Richmond has on its Main Street an emporium humbly titled “Main Street Fuel”, but do not let the title mislead you. You will find every dry good you will ever need here. And right on Main Street! Perhaps there was a Walmart lurking five miles out of town, but for the moment I truly wanted to believe that the presence of such an establishment indicated that small town America was still alive and well.
Richmond isn’t gussified, she’s a little rough around the edges, but she’s a charming little town and the people are warm and friendly. We retired to the Trackside Café for tea, and our son tucked into a cheeseburger and fries. The menu had a good selection of salads and other items a vegetarian would find of interest, very reasonably priced, and we dried out with our hot tea and the soothing burble of local gossip.
I suddenly realized that our return journey would be made all the merrier with the addition of a couple more raincoats, so I dashed over to Main Street Fuel to see if they had any cheap plastic ponchos. The salesperson and I dug around in the department “under the moose head” for a few moments, and soon I had three ponchos for $3.16 each. The ponchos were a bold stroke. Rory was delighted, spending the rest of his time in Richmond pretending to be a ghost. (Who needs a Nintendo Wii?) We were now warm, dry, and could care less if it rained all day, strolling around town to get gas and to see the sights. I think we were the only tourists, which sure was refreshing, considering we have to fight our way down the sidewalks at home these days.
We journeyed back to Bath in the rain, still completely immersed in the natural world outside our cheap plastic unnatural rain ponchos. Rory occasionally would stand in the dinghy to sing, and the engine quit a couple times, but for the most part we were silenced by the roar of our outboard, and sometimes just by the quiet of the gray-green cathedral of river and marsh enveloping us and beckoning to us, asking us to leave the engine off for a time and to drift without schedule.
We may happen to be the sort of people who will search out the deals in boats and cars, and tinker with them until they are running, and be willing to deal with it when they die, but maybe that’s the spirit of just being willing to get out there in whatever you can get out there in, and be ready to let the adventure be the main attraction rather than to get hung up in the material details of how you got to the adventure. Really, a rowboat would have sufficed. For only a few hundred dollars, we are out on the water, and most importantly, spending time together, having fun even in seemingly dreary conditions. Truly, this is yachting on a grand scale.
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