Meanderings: SAILING 101

I don't want to come across as a know-it-all but I have been sailing for over fifty five years and have picked up a few things along the way.

I first started out at my first Navy duty station. I joined the Navy to see the world and after attending various guided missile schools I was finally dispatched to Southern Indiana, NAD Crane. Crane is 110 sq. miles of high explosives quietly tucked away in Indiana farm country. Most all of the sailors at Crane hated the place. We were a small bunch of young, horny sailors and there just wasn't much to do there. The was Lake Greenwood on the base and there was a 17 foot Rebel sailboat for recreational use. We would take the boat out in the afternoons without lessons or experience. For better or worse, we were self-taught. Two years later, while stationed for new construction at Todd Shipyard in Seattle I used to rent a 22 footer and sail it in Lake Washington.

Later on while home ported in Long Beach I used to rent Sabots at Naples. When we went aground at Midway Island I checked out an 18 footer from special services and circumnavigated Midway Island.

After getting out of the Navy in 1972 I bought a brand new Venture 222, a 22 foot trailerable sloop with a Mercury outboard motor. I named her Tumwater.

We sailed that little craft to Catalina Island many times and towed the boat all over SoCal, Arizona and Nevada and sailed in the many lakes, mostly manmade. In 1975 I graduated up to a used Columbia 28 that I lived aboard at Port Royal marina in Redondo Beach. Due to my lack of imagination, I named her Tumwater 2.

Tumwater 2 had an inboard engine, wheel steering, a real galley and a private stateroom for the owner. With two quarter berths, a convertible dining table and the stateroom, she would sleep six people.

By now I viewed myself as an old sailing hand. It was easy peasy. Hoist the mainsail and motor into the wind. When clear of very hard objects such as rocks and oil tankers hoist the jib and kill the engine.

In 1977 we bought a brand new 41 foot Taiwan built Garden ketch which we christened Bianco, which means white in Italian.

Bianco was beyond big, she was huge. She had a diesel engine and a separate shower in the head. She even had a crew's quarters up in the forecastle with a separate hatch to gain access.

Being a Ketch, she also had a second, mizzen, mast. You could actually trim up on a point of sail, lock the wheel and use the mizzen sail as a sort of autopilot. She would track for hours if trimmed up properly.

Back in 1974, when sailing back from Catalina on Tumwater, a vision of beauty sailed by us. She was an old wooden schooner and her name was Diosa Del Mar, Goddess Of The Sea.

Since that very day, I was smitten by schooners. In 1979, we sold Bianco for very personal reasons and I started shopping for a schooner. All we could find was old, pre 1920, wooden boats. I had neither the time or inclination to make the care and feeding of a geriatric wooden boat my life's work. We finally found a boat that fit all of our parameters. She was a Downeaster 38 Schooner.

This is Merrymaid under "normal" sail. Normal sail consisted of five sails. From fore to aft: Yankee Jib, Fore Staysail, Main Stailsail, above it is the Fisherman and lastly is the Mainsail.

To say that I loved this boat would be an extreme understatement. I owned her for thirty five years. Lived aboard her for thirty two of those years and went through three of my four wives with her.