Holiday Newsletter

Dear Friends:
It’s snowing up north and almost everyone’s boat is stored away. It’s hot and sunny down here and all of us are getting our boats ready for a summer of sailing. But Northern hemisphere or Southern hemisphere, one thing we have in common is, it’s holiday time – time to celebrate with friends and family.

 I am sure most of you are getting a lot of cards and emails from folks you only hear from once a year, each containing a “what we did all year” note. I enjoy these catch-ups but doubt you need yet another one from us.  So instead Larry and I decided to share a light hearted story I wrote just for the fun of it, one that never made its way out to my regular readers. I hope you enjoy this reflection on my very worst sailing day.

Rescue in Los Angeles Harbor

This was the big one. I’d spent the previous evening preparing a sumptuous picnic meal; grilled chicken, three salads, apple crumble. I’d packed a basket with wine glasses, tablecloth, and good napkins. Now my very own boat, the first I had ever owned, was being lifted out of our pickup truck and carried down the docks at Flytes Marine in San Pedro, California by willing dockside loungers.
            Larry had helped me buy and outfit this 6’8”fiberglass sailing pram. His goal, to encourage me to learn to sail with confidence so I would have the skills to work beside him when we finished building our first cruising boat, 24’4” Seraffyn, and set off for a six month cruise to Mexico. For the previous two months I’d sailed my new dinghy in the quiet waters of Newport Beach, gaining confidence and pleasure as I learned to feel wind shifts by the way my hair tickled my cheek, to gibe without fearing a capsize. Larry felt it was time I graduated to the wider, windier waters of Los Angeles Harbor.
            Now as we prepared to sail five miles to picnic at Cabrillo Beach on the far side of the harbor, I was too excited to notice Larry removing his wallet and stashing it under the truck seat just before we packed the last bit of gear into Rabicon. (According to Greek mythology, Rabicon was Rinaldo’s horse, the mightiest and swiftest of steeds, one that ate only of the wind.)
            As we prepared to shove off down the channel, aka. Hurricane Gulch, past the commercial fish boats, tugs and odd assortment of yachts that graced the rough-and-ready boatyards of 1966 San Pedro, I was a bit intimidated by the 16 to 18 knot gusts that rattled my 40 square foot sail. But I hid my concerns as we skimmed free in our eventual cruising boat’s tender. I was already dreaming of farther shores as I reminded myself our goal was almost dead downwind on this warm spring day.
            “Better gibe,” Larry suggested, interrupting my reverie.
            I was awed by our speed, by the bow wave Rabicon was shoving, by the 2-1/2 foot high waves that now surrounded us. I did the worlds most controlled gibe and as the mainsail gave a single snap then filled on this new tack, I heard one extra thump. I gave a shout as I saw our solid teak leeboard crest the wave astern of us. A quick glance at its original location showed the bronze leeboard fitting had snapped in half.
            “Better head back,” Larry said as he inspected the obviously flawed casting. “Let’s see if we can find that board. It’s a really expensive piece of timber.”
            But no matter what we tried, without the added lateral resistance of the lee board our tiny pram couldn’t tack back into the wind. In desperation I tried wearing ship, hoping that by gibing around onto a more favorable tack, we would gain the shelter of the nearby cargo shipping docks. I steered dead downwind to gain speed. I watched in horror as I drove that dink right into the back of the wrong wave. She filled to the brim, and then slowly capsized. I started to cry as my carefully packed picnic floated into separate parcels. Larry began swimming around retrieving stray gear, amid the flotilla of chicken, salads and desert.
            A 30-foot long commercial fishing boat pulled alongside and its crew willingly grabbed our floating mast and sail, our 68-pound dinghy, our floatation cushions and oars. Finally, two strong arms reached down to grab my extended hands. I literally flew over the battered, fish-gut stained stern rail and to the horror of this city-raised neophyte, I was released unceremoniously on top of a huge pile of slimy, slipper just caught fish for an ignominious ride back to face the Flytes Marine dock side loungers.
            As soon as we landed, Larry rushed to the truck to retrieve his wallet and found enough money to buy beer for our rescuers and tack-away burgers for me as slight consolation for our lost meal. Then we loaded our soaked sailing gear into the back of the truck, our salt-covered bodies into the front and dejectedly headed south to the quiet airs of Newport Beach.
            Strangely, though I love eating seafood, that first encounter with fish fresh from the wilds has never left me. Right to this day I cannot bring myself to touch the slimy slipper skin of a newly caught fish. Time and again friendly fishermen all around the world have come alongside and offered us a taste of their catch. Each time I say, “Larry, you take it. I don’t want to touch it until it is filleted.
And each time I recall my worst ever day of sailing. As I do so I think of the sailing adventure books Larry strategically placed on my night stand soon after our mini-disaster. His ploy to re-whet my appetite for the dreams he lived on definitely worked. For forty-five years during our sailing life, every time things got tough, wet or wild, it was Larry who kept me going by spinning tales of the unknown pleasures that lay just beyond the next horizon.

Post script – The 6’8”pram was built by Arthur Marine and later by Montgomery Marine. Larry modified ours a few days after this incident by removing the leeboard fitting and adding a dagger board case. Then he added two sets of reefs to the sail or the tender whose name slowly metemorphized from Rabicon into Rinky Dink as she served us adequately for the eleven years we spent circumnavigating on board Seraffyn.
            For Taleisin we chose an 8-foot stem type lapstrake fiberglass dinghy designed for us by Lyle C. Hess. It is called the Fatty Knees Class.  It has proved to be an exceptional dinghy, one we call Cheeky.

Happy Holidays and may you always have new horizons to sail toward.

Lin and Larry

Cheeky has been a wonderful tender for Taleisin. A delight to row, she sails well, moves along nicely with just a 2 horsepower outboard and fits perfectly on the cabin top.