A Reminiscence
“If you are a boat that wants to sail in windy weather, you must be more stubborn than the waves!” – Mehmet Murat Ildan
by Marc Lederman
A half-century ago, I became completely hooked on the art and craft of sailing small boats in and around New England. I spent a good portion of my teenage years sailing an older boat called a Beetle Cat.[1] This 12ft-4in wooden gaff-rigged craft was, in my young mind, the penultimate in what I call “small water” craft, and it was the source of hours of joy for me and my father as we learned the ins and outs of sailing our very own first sailboat.
Handling the craft at first was, most likely, too much for us as novice sailors. We rigged it wrong a few times, twisting the mainsail (the only sail), as we “bent” it on its track and tried to figure out how to attach it to the hoops that rode up the mast to spread 140 square feet of “canvas,” in our case Dacron® of some stiff but not unmanageable weight, to unfurl via the spar called a “gaff.” But we were successful and learned that even at anchor a full sail and the density of the boom under the power of that invisible gyre called wind can either hurt you or carry you overboard without a second thought. Mind your head and stand clear matey!
“Cat,” as we unoriginally but humorously referred to her taught us very well how to master the winds, tides, and control of something that seemed to want to tip us over at the first sign of inattention on our part. But we were not without a mentor in a retired Marine Corps Colonel who grew up sailing these craft as a boy and provided great wisdom to the two “boots” who took their first sail with him in this magic craft. That man was also my Great Uncle Lew who had, like my father, seen much action in World War II, and could sound as gruff as any Marine I would later run into in my military career. But Uncle Lew took the tiller and main sheet in hand, revealed a touch and finesse for our feeble craft at which we marveled as he navigated around and among other moored craft and sailed single-handed into the broad water of a very large cove well known on Cape Cod. He was in command and able to show us how to sail and crew our new found past time.
My dad and I took turns that sunny day handling the tiller and sheet as this man watched us, pointing out the finer points of a type of boat he hadn’t sailed in well over 50 years. But you would not have known that. It was as if he had just stepped back on board from the previous day ready to work with a new wind and tide. We listened, we watched, and most importantly we learned how to hear the craft itself tell us what it wanted at any given moment. And over time that boat and those waters became for us an entire world and we couldn’t have been more at home.
The point of our sailing together in the beginning was father and son doing something we both loved together under the guise that I would impart what I had learned in my formal lessons at the local “yacht club” to him. I quickly realized that anything I could impart he had already internalized through reading the many books on sailing, dynamics of winds and tides, and sheer interest in something new and fun. To be sure, we both thoroughly enjoyed our time together sitting in, moving our weight around, and controlling this moving island in the sea. But Dad’s thoughtful and very precise handling of our boat came from his studied perspective as an engineer who knew a thing or two about aerodynamics. A professional Mechanical Engineer with years of experience in the aircraft and jet engine industry, he was very much at home applying the lessons of his vast knowledge to the dynamics of sail, hull, tides, and winds. I watched as he “played the wind” with the 140 square foot sail, me tiller in hand, and brought our tiny craft up on a heel, to glide through the water in what looked like a practiced and adept hand. He didn’t need my formal sailing lessons imparted, yet he was ever adept at making sure that we were a coordinated team working with a serious purpose of having fun at our chosen avocation.
This too is what most of life seems to be about. Looking back after almost 70 years myself I can see that more often than not it takes finesse to approach and navigate life’s turbulent waters. And sometimes those same maneuvers need to be used and adapted to what sailors’ call “becoming becalmed,” seeming to be stationary and wanting to move while the world moves apace around you and you just sit “dead in the water.”
Perhaps at these times it is best to take stock and realize that to keep moving requires that you take that one next step, then the next, and so on. Before you know it you have moved beyond the place where you were “stuck” into a new breeze that allows you to navigate along your journey, or found a new road altogether with new challenges and new adventures. That is what this blog is all about for us, charting a new course to somewhere unfamiliar but decidedly exciting!
[1] The Original Beetle Cat Boat was designed and built in 1921, and immediately began to appear along the shores of New England. Over 4000 of these boats have been built to date. The design of the Original Beetle Cat was taken from the old 20-30 foot catboats that were used for fishing in shallow waters along Cape Cod. In the years since the first boat was built, the design has remained essentially unchanged. The Original Beetle Cat Boat is 12ft-4in long and is a design adaptation of the great Cape Cod Cats. The wide beam, with the rudder not extending below the bottom of the keel, and centerboard that lifts up, are features that lend this boat to shallow waters. It is a boat that can be beached. The six foot wide beam makes it unusually stable and gives it a large carrying capacity. Made entirely of wood, featuring oak frames with cedar planking, with no ballast, it is unsinkable. The large decked area forward on the boat, means spray falls on the deck rather than inside the boat. The rig is similar to that used on the old, large-size Cape Cod catboats, with the mast well forward, and using a single sail. With this type of rig, known as a gaff rig, if you release the tiller, the boat will head into the wind and practically stop. This feature makes it an ideal boat for youngsters. From: Beetle Cat – Beetle Boat Shop