“The boat’s name is Perseverance.”
I wrinkle my nose. What kind of name is that for a boat? I grew up around boats with clever names like Liquid Joy which had so many different meanings one could get endless amusement out of guessing which the owner meant. But Perseverance? Sounds like a goal someone was striving towards rather than a pleasure boat.
But Geoffrey refuses to let me change the boat’s name. “It’s bad luck.” I beg to disagree. Pirates changed the name of their boats all the time. So I insist on calling in Percy.
But stories should start at the beginning rather than in the middle where I’m standing on a dock fighting 60 mph winds to tie up the boat. The only question is, where does this story begin? Back when Geoffrey and I were first dating and he planned a whole date around taking me to learn to sail that was canceled due to weather? Or does it begin with our decision to go sailing for our honeymoon…somewhere?
I think it begins in the afternoon in late September, with me sitting in the middle of a lake, trying to sail. Geoffrey decided that the best way for me to learn to sail was, after taking me out in the boat twice and explaining it to me, to turn me loose in the middle of the lake in a sunfish and tell me to get back to the dock. Which was working just fine until the wind died.
I sat there, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, while the boat sat there, doing nothing. A redneck in a big powerboat (two motors) drives by me laughing and asks if I need a tow. No, I’ve got to learn to do this. Geoffrey is calling encouragement from the dock, “You’re doing great!” How do you figure? I’m not moving.
The wake from the powerboat knocks my little sunfish to the side enough for it to catch a small puff of wind. I proceed with my attempt at sailing back to the dock. This involves a rather tedious business where I have to sail at an angle towards one shore of the lake, then quickly turn to sail towards the other shore, slowly making my way towards the dock. Tacking – the reason you have to really enjoy sailing and not be in a hurry. There, are you happy honey? I learned to sail. Or at least made it back to the dock.
Shortly after this, Geoffrey found a Victoria 18 for sale in my hometown. Instead of renting a boat for the honeymoon, we could have our own boat to sail every weekend and everywhere we wanted. It was in good condition and we could keep it in my parent’s backyard. (Or rather, dad volunteered we could keep it there and even thought it was a pretty sight out the window until we put a bright blue tarp over it.) We could go over in the evenings and Geoffrey could work on the boat while I played with mom.
“We can’t take it on a blue water crossing, it’s too small,” Geoffrey insisted. I had my heart set on the Virgin Islands. “But we can take it down to the Keys. That’s Caribbean sailing but safer.” I’m game, especially for the idea of getting a boat where we can sail lots of different places.
So we buy the boat. And like excited new boat owners, we take it to the lake our very first weekend to sail. Which was a great plan, but there was absolutely no wind. Geoffrey made me rig the sails anyways for practice. We took it out again the next weekend and again, there was no wind. It was starting to look like we would be going on our honeymoon having never sailed the boat.
Our last free weekend before the honeymoon, we took the boat down to Edisto since we figured there would always be some kind of wind at the beach. Saturday was beautiful and we cleaned the boat, put on a new coat of bottom paint, waxed all the metal parts and oiled the wood. It was really starting to look like a pretty boat (it already was a pretty boat, but the bottom paint was see-through and the wood was parched, it needed some attention). Sunday, we took the boat to the landing and stood there with some park rangers looking at the giant waves and listening to NOAA weather radio call out a small craft advisory. For a change, it was blowing too much to sail.
So the next week, when we hooked the boat up to the truck to tow it down to Florida, we hadn’t gotten to actually sail it. Still, Geoffrey was confident we were going to have fun and I was looking forward to the honeymoon, the warm weather and going someplace new. Geoff, of course, would undoubtedly go into a long, detailed discussion at this point about oiling the hubcaps of the boat trailer for the trip down or the specifics of tying down the mast so it doesn’t bounce loose or how it isn’t safe to park the boat anywhere because someone might back into it and chip the gel coat. But I was the happy, carefree, head-out-the-window passenger who wasn’t worried about all the problems between SC and Florida. We were going sailing! Finally!
And sure enough, the water was beautiful. Perhaps not as clear as Geoffrey remembered, but wonderfully warm and delightfully salty. We were staying off Marathon at Valhalla Point Resort, an absolute jewel of a small beach shack hotel. Clean sand, hammocks, a dock out back for the boat, the grill out front, other friendly guests, a spoiled lobster-eating dog – it could have been the set of a 1920s/30s movie. We trekked sand in and out of our room, forgot to turn the AC on for most of the stay, cooked lobster, fish and shrimp on the grill and, oh yes, sailed.
Geoffrey started calling me his deck lemur, “no matter how much we’re bouncing around, she gets up on the front of the boat, wraps her prehensile tail around the mast and rigs the sails.” I loved bouncing over the waves on the bow of the boat, helping Geoffrey navigate through the shallow water. If we were at anchor while he fished, I stretched out along the deck, enjoying the sun and salt and a good book.
Then, Friday, the weather hit. The water had been choppy Thursday and the weather radio had been predicting bad weather since Tuesday, but what we got was a downpour. We went shopping in Key West rather than even thinking about sailing. Why ruin something fun by going into miserable conditions when you don’t have to?
“We’ve had hurricanes with less rain than this,” one lady told us. The people of the Keys seem to have a very interesting view of hurricanes. The caretaker of our hotel had just told us a story about trying to drive into town during a hurricane to get cigarettes and having a wave of refrigerators come down the road at him. But hey, its just a hurricane, lets go into town.
When we got back to Marathon that evening, the wind had picked up enough that Geoffrey wanted to move our boat to the other side of the dock. It was dark and crazy windy and the last thing I wanted to do was stand out on the dock while he fidgeted with the boat. I’d been doing a lot of that all week. I would much rather be inside.
But instead I helped with the hard part of owning a boat – dealing with the bad weather. Trying to move it against the wind and current, tying it down when its wet and dark without hurting myself. Not slipping off the boat’s wet deck (yay Sperry!).
Finally, curled up in our room, the boat safely tucked away from the worst of the danger, we were listening to the VHF radio (which goes almost everywhere with Geoffrey) to a boat no one could get out to rescue. Geoffrey likes to tell this story in disgusting detail also, but I really don’t think it necessary. It just graphically illustrated the valuable lesson of not taking a small boat out in big seas. Something will go wrong. And when that something goes wrong and you don’t have the right emergency equipment, well, at best you’re in for a rough night.
We went back to SC. The boat, parked in a hotel parking lot overnight, got backed into and had its gel coat cracked. Something for Geoffrey to repair. I didn’t want to go home and neither did Geoff. We only lacked a slightly bigger boat and we could just keep going. Past the Keys, down the Caribbean to Trinidad. And from there, who knows. There are an endless number of sailing adventures to be had and we’re only getting started. And I still have much learning to do. But its fun, not work. I don’t have to stick with sailing, there’s no need to persevere. Sailing is just fun and the next boat is going to be named something fun.