Sailing, Part 1

I bought a new sailboat last week.  I probably shouldn't have, but I did anyway.  It was my money, and Lola and I don't have to save up for any kid's college tuition, so I bought a fucking sailboat.  That's what people do when they don't have an anchor or a voice of reason to tell them otherwise.  Lola even went out of her way to sanction the whole thing. I gave what I thought to be an only somewhat unbiased argument for/against the purchase. It turns out I didn't have to.  She liked the reasoning. She loves being in a boat--especially a sailboat. She also enjoys a sundowner on the fantail at sunset, so her neutrality may be a bit compromised.

So I bought an O'Day Daysailer and after two sails so far and some tinkering, we still think it was good purchase.  As good a purchase, at least, as any boat can be.  Also notice that I said "it" was a good purchase.  Some people call boats a "she" and that is fine.  I don't unless I'm around other people who do.  I don't usually like to make a big stink; I just want to get out on the water... unless, of course, it's silly windy out there, in which case I'm fine sitting on the couch terra firma watching a movie.

Note:  the following distinctions drawn between dinghies, daysailers and yachts will be written without the help of Wikipedia, daysailer.org, laserforum.org, a dictionary, Robin Knox-Johnston or any other resource.  I am going to hamfist this beast with neither shame nor fear.  Nor the lack of good bourbon.

The Daysailer (the boat model), which happens to be a daysailer (a boat type) is the mid ground between a dinghy and a yacht. Here are the differences:

Dinghies typically run up to about sixteen feet in length. They have daggerboards (centerboards that can be fully removed from the boat, as opposed to centerboards, that are permanently attached but can be raised or lowered) to keep the boat from moving sideways while under sail.  Sometimes they have just a mainsail--the one toward the back--but often they have a jib, or foresail --the one in front.

These tend to be light boats where balance is key, where your weight distribution is a major factor in whether you go fast or slow, whether you capsize or stay upright, whether your drink remains neatly contained within the cup or sadly drains out.  Rarely do dinghies have motors.  If they do, it's usually an outboard clamped to the transom. 'Dinghy' also seems to be a funny word to the acned, virgin, teenager-on-a-Ski-Doo crowd. 

Daysailers run from about sixteen feet to the high twenties.  That's not to say you can't have a 'yacht' in the high twenties.  You can.  The subtlety here between daysailer and yacht is perseverance.  A yacht tends to be more comfortable on a longer, multi-day voyage, whereas a daysailer is pretty much what it sounds like:  a nice tub for a day's adventure.  Most importantly,  your drink is less likely to spill on a daysailer than on a dinghy.  They may or may not have an inboard or outboard motor.

A daysailer is also less likely to capsize than a dinghy, but just like life, there are no guarantees.  Depending on the model, a daysailer may have a centerboard or a fixed keel.  Centerboards are nice because you can adjust them to keep your speed up in various situations--full up for a downwind run...all the way down for a close haul.  They give you the freedom to beach your boat near a restaurant where oysters are being shucked and commercial refrigerators hold beer and tropical drink mixers.

Centerboards suck because they tend not to be very heavy and don't weigh the boat down enough to ensure that you don't capsize. 

Fixed keels, on the other hand, are nice because they are heavy, creating a low center of gravity, and mitigate the capsizing tendency in high winds. Fixed keels suck because, like their name implies, they are fixed--unadjustable--and if you have a four feet deep keel and want to get to a place on land then you need deep water and a long dock, a water taxi, teleportation skills, unfailing flippers or a good friend at least four and a half feet tall willing to give you a piggy back ride to shore.  There are some other options, too, but I am currently only listing ridiculous ones.

Yachts, I think, can be as short as sixteen feet, especially if it's a nice one like an old-school Herreshoff beauty with a keel painted deep red running the length of it.  Usually though when I think 'yacht' I think of something no shorter than twenty five feet.  These can come in the form of coastal cruisers, blue water ocean crossers and larger daysailers.  There must be thousands of variations, but they tend to have dedicated interior spaces for living (the saloon), sleeping (berths), cooking (galley), eating, pooping (the head), bathing (also the head), doing chartwork (chart table), and anchor storage (locker).  Yachts will almost always have an inboard diesel motor.

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A longtime friend of mine, John, who, like me two years ago will hit forty this year, is realizing that he will not be able to kite board for much longer, especially if he continues to let his dog pull him on his skateboard along the sidewalk, then along the sidewalk after falling from said skateboard, then allowing a doctor to tell him that his shoulder needs surgery, then getting the surgery, then not being able to kite for eight to twelve weeks.  I have convinced him that sailing is the most wonderful thing a person can do (aside from philanthropic endeavors, if you're into those kinds of things) so he took some sailing lessons here in Denver from Victoria Sailing School run by a guy named--I shit you not--Captain James Cook.  He got hooked like people often do. 

Sailing is great not only for the excitement it provides and the hyper-specialized skills it requires, but also for the elitism it evokes:  I sail, ergo I am better than you--not just because it is an elegant, often frightening thing to do, but because it takes years of dedicated practice--maybe a lifetime--to make it look effortless.  I love that part of it because I am a pompous asshole. Not so pompous that I will ever take up polo or other rich people pursuits like that, but just enough to irritate those around me most of the time.  I may not be rich but I'll do my best to recreate like them.  At least in this one area.  Fly fishing too, I guess. Rich people enjoy fly fishing and so do I. 

I would have made a great rich guy. 

John's an elitist asshole, too.  That may be why we get along so well.  He's not rich either, but he's certainly closer than I am.  He wants to be a competent sailor, for many of the same reasons I'm sure.

I have had my Laser parked on the powdered sugar beach of Cherry Creek Reservoir for four years now.  It's a one-man dinghy--less than fourteen feet long--so I can't take anybody comfortably sailing with me.  But now that John has had some instruction and desire we were talking about getting a slightly larger boat that we could both go out on.  We looked on Craigslist, Ebay and all the usual online suspects for boats within our price point.  We found one that looked terrible, one that looked dangerous, one about which the owner described as "looking pretty rough when you get up close."   Most were racing dinghies--tender, capsizey machines on which you would rarely be able to sit back and relax with a Dark and Stormy.  Then, one Sunday, I found the boat on Craigslist. 

An O'Day DaySailer.  A 1982.  Here is one that looks like it.

And here are the important details.

Years produced Number produced Overall length Waterline length Beam Draft minimum Draft maximum Sail area Recommended H.P. Mast length Mast weight Boom length Boom weight Centerboard - Keel material Centerboard - Keel weight (approx) Rudder type Rudder material Seating Weight complete (approx)

1959 - present 13,000 + 16' 9" 16' 6'3" 7" 3' 9" 145 sq. ft. 3 - 7 24' 9" 27 lb. 10' 4" 10 lb. FG 20 lb. Kick up Fiberglass 5 580 lb.

John drove over to our house while Lola and I put the top down on the Jeep. We all got in and hustled over to Littleton to inspect the boat.  It was more than twice our bullshit budget but looked to be in really nice condition, despite its thirty years of existence.  I asked the owners if they would come down in price to something we could swallow. They could.  We thanked them for showing us the boat on such short notice and then had lunch at a hipster Tiki bar on Broadway where we ate delicious roasted pork and drank Mai Tais and Singapore Slings.  I didn't talk much about the boat because I wanted it really badly and didn't want to ruin it by obsessing over it.

John left town the next day for a week-long road trip to see his daughter off to college.  Over a series of texts, he said he would think about going in on the purchase of the boat.  That wasn't good enough for me.  If John bailed and/or somebody else bought the boat I would have been incensed. I researched past sales of similarly aged and conditioned boats and discovered that this one was a good deal, especially because the trailer was included.  Lola and I talked it over and because I want desperately for her to go sailing with me, which she can't do on my Laser, and because, as I mentioned earlier we have no children who need college tuitions, we pulled the trigger.

It was seven long days of working at the hotel, pushing banquet after soulless banquet, until my weekend arrived.  I say "my" weekend because I rarely get Saturdays and Sundays off like a normal human.  Usually it's a Sunday/Monday combo or something in the middle of the week because nineteen years ago I made the bold and non-regrettable decision not to go to graduate school for English and American Literature and become a college professor, instead deciding that a sweaty and unrelenting career in the culinary arts would be a reasonable choice. 

We maneuvered the trailer onto the hitch, checked the lights (note to self:  right light on trailer not working.   Got to stick my arm out and up when making a right--don't forget!!!), double checked the webbing that secured the boat to the right-lightless trailer and slinked the back way to the rez.  Our state park admittance sticker on the windshield still had another good month of priority entrances, so we buzzed past the suckers in line waiting to buy their one day passes, observing that the whole process looked a lot like a scene at a McDonald's drive-thru.  I hate McDonald's and their food and their commercials that deliberately lure in the poor and everything they represent and I hate one day passes, although I guess in the modern commercial world they are all necessary evils. 

Boat inspection passed, no invasive New Zealand Mud Snail refugees hitching a ride, we pulled into the parking lot and rigged the boat up:  We raised the mast, bent on the mainsail and jib, attached the boom then the rudder, tightened the stays, plugged the bung and eventually backed the boat up to the launch ramp.  Overall, a fairly smooth operation, except that I forgot the battery for the electric motor, which Lola happily drove back to the house to get.  (I owe you one, baby!)

Finally electrified, I eased the boat down into the water as Lola guided the boat off trailer, snugging it up to the dock, showing off her best cleat hitches and Flemish coils to me and the mosquito-like third world Ski-Doo crowd.  I love her so much.