(View the video adjunct to this post at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvaQcRM4W1Y&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL )
I lift the trailer tongue to drag outrigger canoe "Short Dragon" from his December retirement. The cold steel ( a term I usually read about in 'flashing swords' stories) is an immediate temperature vampire. Trailer connected, I rub my bitten hands and head off for Bantam Lake in Connecticut. I've always wanted to crack some ice in a sailboat -- just to say I did it, not from some lofty intellectual ideal. This lake is an appropriate place, since it is famous for its ice-boating. Ha!
The parking lot is empty on this midweek day just after Christmas. Perhaps the rim of ice building up at the edge of the tiny cove is part of the reason. In any event, actually, I am not supposed to be here. The town of Morris voted to let only residents use this launch ramp, left unleased by the State of Connecticut during budget woes, so there is more than sailing adventure involved today -- will the sherriff find my car? Will she or he be in a bad mood? But I am going sailing. At 53 years old, I have never cracked ice in my boat, and something seems very wrong with that. Who dares question my arbitary goal? All goals are arbitary! Humans make up their own truths (except for physics and the ones ingrained into us neurologically through evolution) and certainly valorize their various goals. I hope I will not be a hypocrite the next time I encounter somebody else's seemingly silly one. The danger of writing is to remember what you have written.
Rigging in the cold wind and around the rattling bare branches and shriveled bushes takes longer than usual, partly because of the usual tangles, partly because of the bare mood. Then the drysuit, the sailor's equivalent of a space suit and sometimes it seems as troublesome to put on without all those NASA technicians to help -- pull it on over a full set of PolarFleece, and grunt and curse the heavy waterproof (I hope) zippers closed, now especially irksome in the cold. I had feared being sweaty in the drysuit with fleece top and bottoms on but somewhy I am not. Rig up, wheels wet, boat off and beached, wheels back up to the parking area, PFD on, hat and neoprene gloves on, check that I released the kick-up rudder from its hook, a quick paddle out into the teeth of the wind, drop the leeboard, sheet the mizzen in hard, sheet in the main, it is done!
For a while is is simply sailing. A little cool, maybe, and totally lonely, but no different. I do have the lake to myself, not even a couple of bass-boat fishermen here today, as was the case when I last sailed at the end of November. Then, the loneliness of the 3 mile long lake made us compatriots, which is not often the case between sail-boaters and power-boaters. But I should not perhaps include the fishermen among the pure-powerboater ethnic group. The fishermen (yes, always men in my experience) are people who use their big motors to get someplace, but then they quietly troll for fish with little electric motors, when they are not drifting on the wind. Yes, they represent an in-between mode beteween the extreme quiet of a sailcraft and the extreme noise and irritation of the speed-boater. The fisherfolk (OK, some must be women, somewhere) must meditate in the silences as my clan does. When I ghosted by them last November I waved and called out, "We've got the place to ourselves!" They waved back and added, "No waterskiers for a change!" And so we made our little alliance of philosophy through a shared relief.
Today I look for them, but I truly do have the lake to myself. Not necessarily good or bad, but the interesting structural psychology of a social primate. I have found in my little travels alone that a balance of loneliness and society is what is good. It is the same quality we find in people who use fragrances -- too much is a punch in the nose, just enough is suggestive. Wearing only my own body odor, the skill of fragrancing mystifies me. But the analogy is good. When I go my weeks-long folklore-interviewing bicycle-camping expeditions in Ireland, I love the solitude but will enjoy intensely the chance-met fellow adventure- traveler or the friendly native. And the solitary sailing cruise is just what I need, but if, after a couple of hours, I note an interesting boat drawing near, I am as eager for a gam as the old whalers were, out there for three years.
A couple of years ago I was creeping along on a slow day back from exploring Branford harbor. I saw a traditional sail a few miles off the coast (I was already a couple of miles out), and as it drew closer, I wanted to meet this boat because anyone raising a gaff sail would be worth talking to. Over an hour we drew closer, and by the end it was clear he was aiming for me just as I for him. We crossed our wakes and chatted. His beautiful wooden sailing skiff drew my praise. The fellow, some years older than I, pushed back his hat and said my interesting boat (a single-outrigger sailing canoe, unusual in these waters) had drawn him over. Then we are beyond chatting range in a minute, after an hour of playing the winds to win that half a minute. The social laws of the primate are endlessly fascinating.
The absence of fellow primates draws your attention to other life. I will always remember Joshua Slocum on this. He is of course the olde-timey sea captain who, having nothing better to do as the age of sail waned, became the first to sail a small boat around the world alone and write a book about it. He hated sharks as many sailors did, and for sport he shot them with a rifle when he could. One day he reaches an especially distant, quiet, and dismal part of ocean, and he stops shooting sharks. My two or three hours of an afternoon cruise will not transform any of my philosophies like this, but it is good to see a group of ducks and a few seagulls (bright white gems in a crowd of greys and browns) floating at ease on the icy water. And it is icy, the cold now seeping through a thick waterboot, merino wool hiking socks, and the rubber booties of the drysuit. I have my feet on a block of ice.
Tack, reach, run downwind. I see a couple of walkers on the path in White Memorial campground. Cutting close to the shore I hope I might pass a word or two -- only 15 feet of water, rocks, and saplings between us now -- but no, they are as quiet as people making way around a leper. It is possible that sailing in this season seems so strange that the sailor wears an impenetrable bubble of the odd?
But now I see it, the sheet of ice growing from the shore! My goal is complete as the ama (outrigger float) knifes into the ice and I hear it groan and break -- ah, the sounds of the arctic here at home! I am delighted and laugh as I video the moment, making suitable goofy remarks. The ice stops my progress, and I grab a glass sheet to examine and of course smash, because you can't take the little boy out of the man.
The deep goal of the day is attained. The light is waning. I measure the sun's distance over the hills with my outstretched hand -- 20 degrees between thumb and pinky finger, my astronomy manual tells me. About an hour and a half of light left. I have only about two and half miles to sail back, but already I know it is going to be a long two and half miles. The Murphy's Law of sailing breaks down into several sub-sayings: one of them is called "the mooring wind" -- that wind from the wrong direction just when you are trying to creep up on your mooring buoy (sometimes it is the wind that suddenly becomes exciting after a long day of creeping around, and after you have decided to end the cruise). Another is called the header -- though the NOAA weather report said you can trust to west winds (a fast reach back the ramp!), it will of course be altered by local geography into a south west wind. At 5 knots I would have a half hour ride home in a light west wind. But now I will have to tack and triple the distance, since my boat can sail only about 60 degrees into the wind at best.
No matter on another day, but it has come to my attention that I am freezing. The neoprene gloves are not good enough for winter. The spray from the bow has frozen, and all around me, even on my suit, a thin layer of ice grows. The mainsheet (sailortalk for line controlling the mainsail) has gotten wet and it is frozen too. And though I was thinking the waterproof-breathable drysuit would be very warm with my fleece, in fact it seems to suck the heat from me. I have not been this cold even during some winter skiing. Only where my PFD presses against chest and back am I warm.
Well, what did I come here for? Shivering I make my tacks, hope for a stiffer breeze, and get it only when I am near the ramp (of course). The consolation prize is almost good enough -- that quality of even light that seems sent from the land of Faerie, toning the empty summer mansions of the wealthy into abodes of mystery. There's a guy digging one vast lawn up with a backhoe, but his day is at an end, he is cold too, his motor clicking and snapping as it radiates away its heat. I squeeze just enough angle from the wind to silently parallel the shore, now most like a ghost, with quiet pale sails a paradoxically bright shadow on the darker water.
But here is the ramp, and the next 30 minutes of chores warm me up a little as I take down the rig and strap the boat down. I leave all the lines cleated, frozen into their solid knots and no use putting away right now. Thirty minute drive home, and the boat in the garage where it can thaw out. I pat its side as I would a horse; I am as full of silly rituals as the next person. I guess I have validated the end of the sailing season. With clear conscience I can take the outrigger apart for winter maintenance and another round of modification -- the boat was made as one endless experiment, and version 1.4 is about to begin.
But the next few days are unseasonably warm, reaching into the 40s again. My hands pause as I start to unlash the crossbeams. Should I wait, try for another cruise, maybe even launch at New Haven now that gale warnings are past? Yes....no. Sometimes the line must be drawn. Our society's arbitary line will soon be drawn -- New Year's Day, that fairly dumb choice for the start of the new year. Caught up in the spirit, I continue taking the boat apart for the winter.
The cycle will start again, but first the old one must be closed. Cracking ice in a boat is just as reasonable a start to the next cycle as January 1st -- which is neither a clear social transition such as the end of the harvest, nor some useful astronomical moment such as an equinox or a solstice. So, happy new year. The groan, shatter, and ring of a prow beaking ice will be this sailor's festival sounds, and if the last year was good, may the next be better for all of us.
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