Part 4

Note: I have worked for days trying to figure out how to make this graphic but it has posponed this posting long enough. You get it as is! Hopefully, time and experience will bring about improvement.

Launch day was late in the summer season and the weather was bright, sunny, and clear. We secured the board and spars on top of the car and mother drove us to Fish Hook State Park on the Snake River. It lies about 10 miles upstream from the convergence of the Snake and Columbia rivers and is part of the reservoir formed behind Ice Harbor Dam. We had picnicked there before and we knew that the wind could, at times, be quite nasty. To a seasoned sailor, that might be the formula for a perfect day but, because of our total lack of experience, we prayed for a docile, gentle breeze and we found the conditions that day to be an answer to our prayers. Another secret prayer that I carried was that we be spared of any onlookers. I didn’t want to be the entertainment of the day… the crowd pleaser or the focus of attention. If things went awry and my little boat tipped over and promptly sank on her virgin voyage, I wanted to enjoy heartbreak, not ridicule. There were a few people there but I was so focused I don’t know if they even looked at us.

We removed the boat from the top of the car and placed it into the water in the swimming area, which approximated the size of a football field. I knew that it was shallow there and if the boat floundered, I had better odds of surviving. So far, so good. To check its buoyancy, I straddled it and paddled myself around a bit, close to shore. It easily supported my weight and again, so far so good, and my reservations began to fade. Next, one of us clipped on the muslin and stepped the mast while the other busied himself with the center board and rudder. There was just enough air to ruffle the sail and I gingerly sat myself on top of the board. I rocked it to and fro to confirm one more time that it had at least some reserve buoyancy then gave a tug on the mainsheet and off I went. I could hardly believe that I was actually moving across the water. As though by magic… with no expenditure of energy on my part (except for the heavy palpitations of my heart) and with complete directional control, I slipped quietly to the other side of the swimming area. When I saw the water begin to shallow, I jumped off to save a grounding of the center board and manually turned the boat around in the opposite direction and repeated the previous performance.

I was elated at the success of this experiment. It was one of those moments in life when you know that you have finally found your purpose… the planets have aligned in your behalf… your confidence builds and the realization sets in that you can, after all, do whatever you set your mind upon. It was like that day in gym class when I stood trembling and doubtful, looking up at the top of the dangling rope suspended from the ceiling of the gym. It looked so far up there. “There’s no way I can climb that high,” I thought to myself. Coach egged me on encouragingly, “You can do it, but you’ll never know until you try.” I’ll never forget the cheers and applause from the other boys in the class when I touched the ceiling. It was nice to have my accomplishment acknowledged but the feeling of pride in my chest of self-worth and triumph came back to me in that moment when I sat spellbound, feeling my creation carrying me under my command quietly and resolutely across the water’s surface. It was poetry in motion. It was the beginning of something big.

As I neared my starting point I began to detect a certain tippiness in the boats attitude and her performance was becoming impaired and sluggish. Thinking that perhaps I had snagged something on the centerboard or rudder, we attempted to lift the boat onto the shore to clear the obstruction. It had become so heavy, we could hardly lift it. Ok. My vision of success and grandeur began to fade. What saved my pride was the fact that this occurrence was somewhat anticipated… almost predicted. It was the one vital contingency of the design that would define the parameters of victory or failure, and it was the one vital element of the construction process that had been the hardest to solve. Our application of tar as a sealant had only slowed, at the very best, the ingress of water. In all likelihood, the buoyancy of the wood was all that was keeping me afloat!

I uttered an exclamation of despair at this new finding but my now 100% supportive, enthused, convinced, and believing friend would not allow his spirits to be dampened by this minor inconvenience. Besides, it was his turn to go sailing so we muscled the stern as far as possible into thin water then together we hefted the bow as high as we could. With the bow pointed up, we laughed when we saw the amount of water that was beginning to escape. We could easily determine the receding level of the internal water as the leaks dried up and stopped one by one down the sides of the boat. In our defense, draining the boat was a slow process and it took a while until we determined that the boat was again light enough to endure another crossing of the swimming area.

We reassembled the rig and I cautioned my friend not to dawdle too long lest he sink and be lost at sea, and off he went. While watching him cross, I again assessed, with swelling satisfaction and pride, the accomplishments of that day. It was the beginning of my destiny and one of those “first days of the rest of my life” kind of days and I knew that I was going to have to make many more trips across until I was quenched… or waterlogged, whichever came first.

As it turned out, I didn’t have the chance to get quenched or waterlogged that day. We got to the point that, after pointing the bow to the clouds so many times, I just didn’t have the strength to do it anymore and we had to quit. My arms ached for days but my enthusiasm and appetite were begging for more.