Small Boat, Big Dreams

She needed some attention, but when I looked hard, I could see the tall ship hiding just beneath the gelcoat.

by David Clarke

Too many years ago, before I started school, or learned about loss or economic downturns, I used to climb the old pine tree in my front yard and stare out to the horizon. 

I can remember squinting into the afternoon sun and trying to imagine the Dutch East Indies. The world was huge; the August breezes were “the trades” and there was an air of mystery and discovery to life. Upside down in the rafters in the garage,  as far back as I can remember, was a small Styrofoam sailboat.

In the summer months, my Dad would take it down, hose it off and air out the sail in the backyard, ready for summer holidays on Georgian Bay. I still remember the sweet smell of dry cut grass, water from the garden hose and plywood warmed by the sun.

 He always dreamed of owning something bigger, but to me that little boat was a Ship of the Line, or a China Tea Clipper. The rock garden was a deserted island, always just out of reach beyond thundering breakers only I could hear.  

Alone in the garden, I’d raise the sail into a perfect summer afternoon and sail around the world, heading for whatever waited just over the horizon. At the time I had no idea it was only another city. I’d trim the mainsheet—take hold of the tiller—and cast off. If I lay down in the bottom and looked up, the whole world disappeared, leaving only the sail, the sky and my daydreams. 

 Nothing can stir the imagination like a sailboat—even a small, Styrofoam Sea Snark.

 Eventually I made it to that horizon, but somewhere along the way I lost the urge to just keep going. A couple of decades later, give or take a summer, my phone rang. 

“Hey, do you want Dad’s old boat?” my brother Steven quietly inquired.

 I was stunned that it still existed. My Dad had been gone for years, so was the big pine on our old front lawn. Apparently, there are some things you can hold on to.  

 I hadn’t thought about my old friend in years. As I helped my brother take it off the roof of his car some weeks later, I caught a familiar smell—Styrofoam, old grass clippings, ropes now grey with age, and the musty blue and white sail, torn and patched a dozen times.

At my brother’s suggestion, we covered the hull with epoxy, and rebuilt the aging wooden rudder, daggerboard and thwart. As he talked about boats and sailing, I knew he wasn’t giving it away because he didn’t want it. He was giving me something back from our past.

With some white and blue paint, I think the boat probably looked something like it did when Dad got it, a gift from his brother. 

While I spent that summer learning to tack and gibe in Dad’s forgiving old boat, I found myself wondering now and again if he was watching me from somewhere along the shore.

While Dad never did get a bigger sailboat, dragging his Snark out of the past and into the sun for a while rekindled an old passion. Eventually, I did find a new set of daydreams in the form of a well-worn 1975 Siren 17.  

She needed some attention, but when I looked hard, I could see the tall ship hiding just beneath the gelcoat.  I spent months restoring what eventually became Sparrow.

While it may not be obvious to the casual observer, I will probably be at the tiller at some point this year, looking at fiberglass and aluminum but seeing oak and canvas. For an afternoon, Sparrow will become the Hispaniola. As I sit in my “new” cabin one otherwise unremarkable summer night, I’ll really be resting below deck on the We’re Here from Captain’s Courageous, after a hard day on the Grand Banks.

At the moment, the little Snark that started it all sits out back beside the cottage, waiting patiently for the next young adventurer. Who knows? My nephew Zach seems to have a pretty fair imagination.

It’s amazing when you stop to think of the things that human hands create—how they can echo through the years, and how a few feet of Styrofoam and plywood can become part of your  life. Thirty years later, almost forgotten, it can suddenly take you back where you started and give you back something you didn’t know you’d lost. 

What else can do that but a sailboat? Except maybe a brother. •SCA•

First published in issue #63