Drinking the Wild Air

Our shakedown cruise proved a breakdown cruise. Testing the waters of Narragansett Bay the Leight’s mast broke rather spectacularly. I’d barely launched my muse and all was in ruins.

Text and photos by David Buckman

ABOVE LEFT—Places like Frenchboro, on Miaine’s Long Island, felt an era removed from the moment . ABOVE RIGHT— Landing in Winter Harbor on Vinalhaven Island, Maine.

The Leight’s creamy arc of sail was the only sign of life on the cliff-girded Bay of Fundy, as my homespun cruiser put her shoulder to a fang of sea. Dipping and corkscrewing her way eastward, the 18-foot sloop was set to trembling as the highest tide in the world unleashed its 53-foot head of steam. Singlehanding, acutely aware and possessed of a certain animal tension, I never imagined my dream of discovering the New England and Canadian coast under sail would be possessed of such epic proportions.

Having studiously avoided a real job to work in marketing, family responsibilities, a mortgage, and all the other trappings of life in the slow lane, reduced my sailing ambitions to the fix-a-wreck school of cruising. Racing Lightning Class sloops to distraction in my youth, I was hoping to stick with the Sparkman and Stephens design, and at length stumbled across a derelict of a 40 year old wooden sloop. Afflicted with transom rot, a broken mast, wasted frames and dodgy bottom, she was a perfect candidate for my humble designs, so I bought her for $400 and took to patching and puttying.