“Days, precious days, they roll in and out like waves”

-Guy Clark, Boats to Build

Date: 29 April 2008 / Depart: 1430 PI Fingers / Arrive 1600 PI Fingers / Wind S, 10-12mph /Temp: 75 deg F / Tide: High / Water: Stained / Sky: Achingly Blue

I could not have imagined staying cooped up in my phony-baloney administrators cubicle all day yesterday. It was one of those precious days. You know the kind I’m talking about. One that in the end, if you missed it you’d pay all of the money you ever earned just to have another chance at. I am sure that in the end, if one’s proverbial life flashes before their eyes, there will be great regret about missing days such as this. For sure, it’s far better to regret something you have done, than something you haven’t done….

I was riding around Isla Blanca Park yesterday morning around 1000 in my phony-baloney administrators truck, windows down, IPOD tuned to a little “down south” music, watching the beautiful blue water in Brazos Santiago Pass pulse rhythmically along the granite jetties, surveying the offshore which was flattening out after a very late, very strong…but very short lived norther that the idea of bailing to go sailing overtook me like a narcotic.

Keeping myself contained (just barely), I drove back to the office, and called the commander, who was just hanging out over at the University, waiting for students to show up for some last minute tutoring before the finals. As he explains; “It’s the loneliest time in a professors life…..no one ever comes.” He continued in disgust, “and then they can’t understand why their grades are so low”. The commander’s altruistic limit had been reached, and so it didn’t take any convincing for him to appreciate the fact that it was a precious day.  He said he was on his way over as soon as he could get here. I offered my own administration a thin excuse, piled my stuff in the Caddy and roared off across the causeway in a cloud of sand and taillights…

In Port Isabel, we stopped for lunch and I called Island Time Jim to see if he wanted to go too. He said he’d check his schedule, and a moment later declared that since he is retired, he could probably make time to go out for awhile.

He just has to rub it in…..

The commander and I arrived at the boat, hurriedly making preparations, uncovering sails, hanking on the headsail, securing sheets, checking fluids and then in record time, I had the Universal purring as I hoisted the mizzen sail. Oh crap! I forgot to clip the stupid halyard to the headboard, and up goes the stupid thing halfway up the mast. A bit of creative boat hook brings it right down, and I go through the drill again. Only this time I the stupid halyard is outside one of the mizzen mast stays and the sail fouls half way up. Down it comes again, and this time I finally get it right.

It’s not a shameful thing at all. This is what happens when one lets matters as trivial as work come between them and sailing.

Jim arrives and we are immediately underway, chugging out into a beautiful afternoon. Outside the marker, I slow the engine head into the wind as he and the commander hoist the sails. And of course that’s when the litany of things that happen whenever one trades work for sailing began…..the cutter stay needed to be taken off and secured to the mast so that the jib would go through the triangle without having to be walked through, the port jib sheet car needed adjustment, the starboard jib sheet had a chingaso and so forth. And then of course, the sails needed to be trimmed.

By this time I am at my administrative, phony-baloney best, a true public servant, letting others do things for me, as the sun warms my shoulders and I hold the boat into the wind. Jim scoots aft and adjusts the tension on the port jib sheet, wryly commenting on this, and I agree, straight faced.

If you have followed this journey, you know that my background is large commercial fishing vessels, and all of my sailboats to this point have been tiller operated. Olivia is my first wheel- steered sailboat. So for the longest time, I have applied the big power boat mentality to the wheel on ‘Div, often fighting the sails as the boat oscillates back and forth, until finally I have incrementally gotten it on a course. It is particularly bad at low speeds, light winds, when there is slow and sloppy rudder response.

I just figured that’s the way it is.

Island Time Jim noticed me fighting the wheel, and corrected this action, telling me to just let the boat go where it wants, make small corrections from there, and I’d be surprised with the results. Let the boat just head up. Well, I did, and I was. Something new learned, and of course it makes perfect sense, thinking about it in terms of a tiller especially. It was just a habit. Yesterday I became a better sailor thanks to my friends. And that’s what it’s about too.

Feeling even more administratively lazy, I turned the helm over to Jim, got myself a cold Tecate and settled back in the cockpit as we tacked back and forth east to west, only making good a little south. But, getting somewhere yesterday was not the point. No, we were already somewhere. I would not have traded that afternoon with anybody at that point. It was of course, precious. Good friends, a little wind, an ice cold beer…..how could that be topped?

We heard the exhalation of a couple of dolphins and turned to see a pair crossing astern, heading out toward the intracoastal where others were pounding the water, obviously feeding along the edge of the ditch.

It was getting close to 1600, and the commander had to get going in order to pick up his daughter, Savannah, so reluctantly we spun around and sailed almost all the way to the entrance before starting the iron genny sliding towards the slip, gently nosing in and tying off. All chores were accomplished within about 15 minutes, I closed down the companionway hatch, bidding Olivia farewell for a little while. It was a precious day.