Small Yachts

Did I just sell the wrong boat?

Story by Brooks Towne

Soon after buying the Oldsmobile (that’s what I called my Tayana 37), I stood on her foredeck looking aft along her deck, and then down at my little Chapelle sharpie rafted alongside, a wooden 15-footer with a leg o’ mutton sail. I’d had many fine outings in that sharpie, but I’d just sold her to the commanding officer of the Morro Bay Coast Guard station.

I wondered: Did I just sell the wrong boat? The sense of having erred was strong, a memory still fresh 25 years later.

While gazing at the sharpie, I looked into the future and saw myself below on the big boat, not luxuriating amid teak joinery, not curled up reading while the boat rocked at anchor or charged heeling through a seaway—I was taking apart a clogged head. Then I saw m’self upside down in the lazarette trying to fish old packing out of the stuffing box, back bleeding where the steering quadrant had gouged flesh. Then I envisioned chasing a wiring short in a masthead light, bosun’s chair biting into my legs, and then (this was a long bit of imagining) I was paying for a new depth-finder.

I remembered too all the stuff one has to do to take the bigger boat daysailing or for a simple overnight, and I remembered more than once with previous larger boats just saying the hell with it and staying in the slip. I’d had a couple boats of 40 feet or more—or they’d had me— thoroughbreds of wood, so I knew that last day the sharpie was mine just what I was in for.

The years passed and everything aboard the Tayana I predicted came true. I cruised the Oldsmobile some and definitely had fun with her. She made a good home for eight years, but after that I was some ol’ glad when she became another man’s mistress and taskmaster. Now, again, I own only a small boat, an Adirondack Guide Boat this time, and I’m glad!

My rowboat is a fast thoroughbred for which I designed and whittled a fine pair of spruce spoon-blade oars, and recently I fit a sliding seat in place of her caned cherrywood thwart. For especially long rows and relaxation, I take out the slider and replace the caned seat with a cherry cane backrest. I have no berth rent, no pricey haulouts nor exorbitant taxes. I don’t spend some of the best summer days sanding and varnishing. I won’t likely have to pull and rebuild another Perkins 4-108 anytime soon.

Best of all, I use my boat several times a week (weather permitting). The rest of the time it’s in my garage where I can admire and maintain it at my leisure.

Sometimes I hanker to sail instead of row, but I’ve outgrown the need of a big schooner or even a 30-foot cutter. A handy little sloop will do, something I can trailer, a handsome boat, a thoroughbred, or maybe someday before I’m too creaky, a fast cat.

Like most guys I know on the water, I grew up hankering for a bigger boat. As a little kid sailing prams, then Lightnings in high school, a Rhodes 19, in college, an International 110 after that, and then I leapt at the chance to sail far aboard a 38-foot Augie Nielsen canoe-stern gaff ketch. I shipped on more, ever-bigger boats, most not mine, often but as crew or delivery skipper. I’ve had long runs with ocean boats.

I bought the Oldsmobile, mainly because the designer guessed right when he drew the interior: My wife loved it. It hurt my pride to buy a boat with such clunky lines and questionable build quality, one I couldn’t wholly respect. But I wanted my bride to like living aboard and voyaging. I guessed if I got a boat she liked first, we could trade up to a suitable vessel later. Not necessarily a bigger boat, but better-found.

That gambit failed. I could singlehand with my wife as passenger, or live ashore with my fine woman and I chose the latter, so maybe my belated preference for small and simple craft is tainted, but maybe not. It seems to be for the better at any rate.

They’re practically giving away 35-foot sloops these days, but don’t take one! That’s when the trouble starts. Berth rents are nuts now. Haul-outs break banks. A three day turn-around in a boatyard for a do-it-yourself bottom job, zincs and thru-hull overhaul cost maybe $300 25 years ago. Now most places you have to hire the yard to do the work and you’re lucky to splash again for less than a small fortune!

For a dozen years now I’ve been satisfied with my guide boat. I still am, largely because going small doesn’t mean not going far. In the guide boat I’ve cruised mountain lakes, and for miles and miles along North Carolina’s Outer Banks camping on islands with wild horses. I’ve meandered through shallow estuaries and across Oregon river bars (in fine weather) and now I cruise semi-sheltered parts of Puget Sound. I’ve portaged the boat, slept in it and under it, laughed aboard and wasted perfectly good balmy afternoons simply drifting and napping and reading aboard. There seems more time to marvel at birds and sea life in small boats, and I’m stronger for all that rowing. It only feels like work when I’m hungry, there’s a headwind and a current to buck and it’s starting to get cold and dark, but a day of sunshine and calm water and all’s forgiven.

Others take really small craft across oceans, of course, but that’s as serious business as going in a larger boat. Unless I decide to singlehand the Northwest Passage when I’m 70—in which case I’ll need a wheelhouse with a woodstove in it—I’m sticking with simple small boats easily managed physically and fiscally.

As they’d say in the South, Water Rat’s ma and pa didn’t raise no dummy. •SCA•

First appeared in issue #73