Second Wind: A Nantucket Sailor's Odyssey

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  The river meandered and so did we, sailing so slowly across its rain-pelted surface that this final race of the day seemed like it would never end. Finally, at 4:30, Dick Campbell appeared in his motorboat and once again declared us the winner. The only other boat in sight was the sticker-covered one crewed by Malcolm and Sarah.

  Instead of turning back and looking for Mommy and Jennie, Ethan wanted to keep going. By this point he was so cold and bored that the thought of backtracking was more than he could bear. I agreed. While Dick and his compatriots in their smaller boats collected the rest of the fleet, Ethan and I, along with Malcolm and Sarah, were given a tow by the flagship of the River Race, a classic wooden motorboat of close to thirty feet that just happened to be in our vicinity when the race ended.

  Even though the rain was still coming down and the afternoon was already looking like evening, Ethan and I were in pretty good spirits, assuming that Hurd State Park must be just around the bend. We began by telling each other jokes.

  “Why do cows wear bells?”

  “In case their horns don’t work.”

  “What did the cannibal say to the sleeping missionary?”

  “Ah, breakfast in bed.”

  An hour later, the jokes were getting pretty stale and the rain was still coming down. Nothing that even vaguely resembled a campground was anywhere in sight. The only excitement was watching Malcolm and Sarah cuddle underneath their Sunfish sail. Finally, after sitting in the two inches of water at the bottom of the cockpit without saying anything for five or ten minutes, Ethan turned to me and said, “Dad.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know what?”

  “What.”

  “This sucks.”

  “Ethan.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re right.”

  By now it was approaching six in the evening, and I was worried that Ethan was becoming hypothermic. I asked the couple who were running the motor yacht if he might be able to stay with them inside their cabin. That Ethan readily agreed to go on board indicated just how miserable he was feeling.

  As we made the transfer I asked how far we had to go. The man winced. “At least an hour, I’m afraid.”

  They treated Ethan like a prince. They took off his wet socks, put on dry ones, and wrapped him in a blanket. They also gave him something to eat. Ten minutes later he’d fallen asleep.

  Meanwhile, I watched the river go by. If the weather hadn’t been so bad, this would have been an absolute delight. There were fascinating houses built on tree-covered cliffs and on levee-like banks that must have flooded on a fairly regular basis. But there was more to the river than just scenery.

  Ever since the Dutch explorer Adriaen Block sailed up it in 1614, the Connecticut River has played an important part in the economic development of southern New England. In the seventeenth century, Indian-supplied beaver pelts found their way down the river to coastal trading posts. By the nineteenth century, the river itself was powering machine tool and small arms factories in Hartford, Middletown, and other river towns. Today a nuclear power plant in Haddam relies on the Connecticut’s waters to cool its core. Yet despite the commercial uses, it was obvious on that cold, wet evening in June that the Connecticut River still possessed a wild beauty that not even the yellowing and pitted dome of the Connecticut Yankee Power Plant could upstage.

  Sometime after 7:00 p.m. Hurd State Park came into view over on the eastern bank—a grassy clearing fronted by a breakwater of large brown rocks and backed by a hillside whose towering trees cast the campsite in a dank gloom. As the four of us set up our two tents, Melissa and Jennie recounted how they had been so cold and so bored during the two-and-a-half-hour tow that they had come up with a way of playing Stone, Paper, Scissors using a combination of head signals and facial expressions. This enabled them to keep their wet, frozen hands in their pockets. Melissa ultimately lost to Jennie, 49 to 50.

  Even before we had our tents up, it began to rain again. Although the Lions Club had put together a spectacular spread, it was difficult to demonstrate much enthusiasm as the rain drummed on the tarps overhead. In the interests of reducing their baggage, Rip and Catherine had elected not to bring a tent and planned to sleep underneath their outstretched sail, not a fun prospect in this much rain.

  What made the miserable conditions worse was the thought of how much fun the race could have been in decent weather. We heard tales of the campfires and sing-alongs of previous years and stared moodily into the wet darkness. Before he and Catherine entered their sleeping bags for a soggy night’s sleep, Rip and I talked a little bit. He was working for Goldman Sachs; his territory was Canada. He now had three children and his plan was to give each one of them a chance to sail in the River Race.

  At nine we decided to turn in—Ethan and Jennie in one tent, Melissa and I in the other. We were all exhausted and cold and a sleeping bag was our only hope of keeping warm.

  As I lay there on the cold wet ground in my cold wet sleeping bag with a busted zipper and listened to the rain pound on the tent roof, I asked myself the inevitable question: Why? Why in a world of Jacuzzis and central heating were we submitting ourselves and our children to this kind of discomfort, all in the name of sport?

  Melissa adjusted the bag of clothes that served as her pillow.

  “I guess this wasn’t such a good idea,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This weather—what could be worse?”

  “But the kids are having a good time.”

  “Think so?”

  “You should have heard Ethan bragging to his sister about winning three races.”

  “How about Jennie, what’s she think?”

  Melissa reached for my hand and squeezed it. “We’re having fun,” she assured me before drifting off to sleep.

  Sail to the Sea

  AT 6:10 A.M., I woke to hear Jennie and Ethan talking next door, their words indecipherable above the thrumming of raindrops on our tents. After rising, we had a breakfast to end all breakfasts served beneath the tarps. Then we had to pack up all our wet stuff into garbage bags, and, yes, the rain continued. But there was hope. The wind, although light, was now out of the north. The forecast was for sun in the afternoon. Things could only improve.

  The wretched weather had taken its toll. Soon after yet another surprise start, we found ourselves beside a father-and-son team in the midst of a fight. The teenage son apparently had little faith in his father’s tactical judgment. They were bickering about which jibe they should be on when the father finally erupted: “Look, I’ve had it up to here with all this male bonding bullshit. Will you please SHUT UP?” Ethan and I couldn’t help but snicker, even though I realized that in ten years we might very well be in the same position.

  If yesterday’s racing had at times felt like a slow crawl up a cliff, now it seemed as if we had reached the summit and were finally sliding down the mountain—our sails out and the wind hastening us along in ever strengthening gusts. The river was also changing, widening until it contained some quite sizable islands. At one point we reached a crisis. There was an island up ahead, and for the life of us, Ethan and I couldn’t figure out which way to go: Should we leave the island to port or starboard? As it turned out, half the fleet went one way, the other half went the other way. After about twenty minutes of nail biting, it became clear that it hadn’t made much difference either way.

  Gradually, ever so gradually, the breeze began to build and the rain began to lessen until it was blowing close to fifteen knots and the sun was peeking through the clouds. Initially, Malcolm and Sarah were out in front, but soon it was a virtual dead heat with them and us and Rip and Catherine sailing side by side. The proximity of the competition and the building wind made it an extremely exciting race. Ethan was my play-by-play man.

  “Dad, we’re catching the sticker boat. We’ve got their wind!”
/>   “Think so?”

  “Look!”

  “But how about Rip and Catherine, don’t they have ours?”

  “Maybe . . .”

  After about a half hour of trading places back and forth, we’d worked our way into a marginal lead. It was then, in full view of the fleet, that Ethan was hit with an overpowering urge to urinate. Experience had long since taught us that when Ethan has to pee, Ethan has to pee. Unfortunately, we were in the midst of a fight for first, and worst of all, Ethan had his lifejacket and wet suit on.

  But not to worry. The lifejacket came off in a flash. The shorty-style wet suit was not so easy, however. I pulled down the back zipper and then, standing on the aft deck, with his legs straddling the tiller, Ethan frantically pulled down the suit and let her fly to leeward.

  “Hey!” Rip shouted. “What’s going on up there?” If Ethan was mortified, he didn’t show it. Soon he’d put himself back together and we were crossing the finish line with another first. We slapped each other five.

  The race committee directed us to a nearby sandbar where the fleet assembled before the start of our final leg. A whole different attitude prevailed. People were smiling; we were almost home.

  For the final start, the committee gave us a traditional three-minute sequence. Soon we were once again neck and neck with Rip and Catherine and Malcolm and Sarah, and once again we were able to establish a narrow lead. The cool northerly breeze scrubbed away the clouds and roughed up the water into a white-flecked craze of blue silver. Even the shoreline seemed transformed by the freshening wind, the once rolling hills giving way to craggy cliffs, where majestic houses shared space with soaring eagles. By the time we passed the incongruous medieval bulk of Gillette Castle in Hadlyme, the gusts were up to twenty knots. The wind was shifting back and forth as much as 30 degrees, requiring that we jibe frequently if we were to use the shifts to our tactical advantage.

  Jibing a Sunfish with two people and garbage bags on the deck is not easy. It’s difficult to position both people so that the mainsheet doesn’t catch one of them when the sail comes across. Although we eventually worked out a system, our first heavy-air jibe caught Ethan’s fingers in the mainsheet. With two boats breathing down our necks, I had little attention left for the crew, and Ethan seemed fine.

  Ever since the kids were very young, I’ve been telling them the story of the Spartan boy who, rather than admit that he had a fox hidden underneath his shirt, allowed the animal to savagely attack him. The Spartan boy was so stoically tough that he didn’t let out a single peep as the fox gnawed out his vitals. It wasn’t until the Spartan boy fell over dead that anyone had any idea of what was going on. So whenever my kids get hurt, they can count on me to mention the Spartan boy, an admittedly insensitive and maybe even cruel stratagem to put their pain in perspective.

  It took a few moments after we had finished our jibe for me to realize that Ethan had been hurt. He was clutching his finger and muttering to himself. At first I couldn’t figure out what it was he was saying, and then I heard him. He was saying “Spartan boy” over and over again, trying to fight back tears. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by my own responsibility in placing my seven-year-old son in such a demanding and intense situation. The unexpected fortitude he was displaying undid me. I wanted to weep with him.

  Ethan ultimately shook off the pain, and we increased our lead until we were by ourselves and not sure of where we were going. By this stage, the river had widened to the extent that it looked less like a flowing river and more like a tidal, inland sea. On the western shore we saw a group of moored boats, one of which was a Beetle Cat that could have been a dead ringer for the one we had back home on Nantucket. After two days of sailing down a river, we were back on familiar territory.

  Eventually Dick Campbell caught up with us in his motorboat and directed us toward a giant stone piling near the western shore where a man was standing with a clipboard. A half hour later we were back at the Deep River Marina for another great spread of food and an awards ceremony. Melissa and Jennie had finished fifth overall and third in the Odd Couple division. Ethan and I had finished first in both our division and overall, earning us the Rubber Ducky. Best of all, though, was that Ethan won the Youngest Participant Award.

  During the drive back to Hyannis, I thought about the last two days of sailing. I now realized that the Zone—at least the “old” Zone—had so far eluded me. Although I had had my moments, the sense of cosmic connection I had felt was more on the order of sniffing the flowers instead of goring the matador, which, given the context of this regatta, was just as well. It was Ethan I found myself thinking about as we drove up I-95.

  Inevitably, I began to compare our relationship on the water to how it had been between my father and me. Even though sailing was common to both relationships, I marveled at how different it was for Ethan. When it came to sailing, my father had always stayed in the background. Even though the sport had been central to his own youth, he had never thrust it upon my brother and me. He let us discover it on our terms. Only after I had begged and pleaded for a Sunfish did he buy us one; only after Sam and I had established ourselves as Sunfish racers had he bought one for himself. He had given us space.

  At times, I remember, it had seemed like too much space. When I qualified at sixteen for the Sunfish Worlds in Martinique, my parents had said, yes, I could go, but I’d have to do it without them. So Sam, who was fourteen, and I (the youngest participant in the regatta) went by ourselves. A Caribbean resort proved a bit much for the two of us. While most of my competitors partied late into the night, Sam and I spent our evenings holed up in our room in numb seclusion.

  Looking back, I wondered whether I was now overcompensating for my parents’ shadowy presence along the peripheries of my sailing life. Poor Ethan and Jennie. Every weekend dedicated to yet another episode in the miniseries Daddy Sails the Ponds. I could see now that I was making it difficult for them to take up sailing with the passion and persistence that had ruled my adolescence. They would, most probably, search out other avenues. For now, Ethan had his flute and Jennie had her swimming. I only hoped that I hadn’t robbed them of something they might have found precious.

  But you never know. Later that night, after we’d taken the late boat back to Nantucket and Ethan had fallen asleep, at last in his own bed, the trophy was still in his hands.

  PART V

  Showtime

  We are like the whalers who have been on a long chase. We have at last got the harpoon into the monster, but we must now look how we steer, or with one flop of his tail he will send us all into eternity.

  —ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  In Limbo

  THE SUNDAY OF FOURTH of July weekend found Team Philbrick on Coatue, the sand spit on the northern edge of Nantucket Harbor. In the four weeks since the River Race, I had sailed my Sunfish only twice. My duties at the Nantucket Yacht Club had resumed, making it all but impossible to find time for my own sailing. I’d make plans to practice and then something would always seem to come up. Here I was, showing promise with a month to go but unable to find the sailing time when it really counted. By Fourth of July weekend I had resigned myself to whatever the future held. Since I had less than a week before the North Americans, I told myself that I might as well relax; it was too late to do much of anything else.

  Adding to this sense of ineluctable fate was the appearance of Marc, the same old friend who had witnessed the beginning of my training program back on Columbus Day. With Marc’s arrival, a circle (perhaps a little lopsided and with a few wobbles in it) had been turned, and it was only right that we all go for a sail. So on a cloudless, almost windless Sunday afternoon, we headed for one of the scalloped beaches on the harbor side of Coatue. Jennie sailed with me on old Rosebud, while Melissa, Ethan, and Marc delivered the cooler and beach towels in the Beetle Cat.

  After throwing out the Beetle’s anchor and pulling the Sunfish onto the beach, we
broke out the sandwiches. We soon discovered that we were surrounded by nesting gulls, some of whose eggs had already hatched. At one point a mother and her three downy babies ambled down to the water’s edge, then paddled out and back like a family of ducks.

  Taking my cue from the gulls, I cajoled Jennie into making her first solo in the Beetle Cat while I sailed the Sunfish. We headed for two buoys that mark the harbor channel running beside the Coatue shore. The breeze was perfect for Jennie; it was also perfect for my last sail before the North Americans since these were, in all likelihood, just the kind of conditions I would encounter in Springfield.

  It worked out to be a beat up to one buoy, then a run down to the other. With almost no help from me, Jennie tacked and jibed her way around our little course as I sailed circles around her, using the Beetle as a kind of moving target. Jennie talked the whole time, commenting on the fact that my bathing suit was revealing far too much of my backside (“Dad, you’re mooning me!”), daring me to go swimming amid the red jellyfish floating past us, and finally throwing a bailer full of bilgewater in my direction. It was a wonderful sail.

  But by the time we returned to the beach, a sudden and unexpected lassitude had taken over me. After pulling up the Sunfish, I collapsed onto a blanket and felt myself almost immediately drifting toward sleep.

  Melissa went out in the Sunfish. Marc, also soloing for the first time in his life, took out the Beetle. As Jennie and Ethan swam, I lay there on my blanket, my eyes almost precisely at water level. Sailboats lurched across water chopped up by Jet Skis and motorboats. With my preparation (such as it was) behind me, and with less than a week until the North Americans in Springfield, I lay there, adrift in a limbo of waiting, and faded off to sleep.