Email This Page to a FriendPreview: The Closest Thing to Magic, Of Boats and Boathouses

– After we sold our Cruising Catch, we had planned to sell it after our trip, and we did that. Not boatless, for sure, but I had my fiddlehead and a little 12 foot sailboat, to the first Daisy, the prototype, and those were our only boats for a number of years. I’d just been doodling around on the drawing board and came up with an 18 foot using a centreboard, and presented that to my wife as an option we might build. I said, well, if you’re gonna do that, why don’t you make it a little bit longer so we can spend the night in it, and I would’ve loved to do that, but didn’t think that was gonna fly, so I jumped back to the drawing board again. The original 18 has never been built, but we’ve designed a 20 footer with a little higher freeboard, and a small trunk cabin on that centreboard. We put that together, and were gonna name it after a common name of my wife’s ancestors, and my ancestors, Edith which we thought was a nice name, but it, it was just chosen as something that was common to both of us, and a nice sound. But very unfortunately, my daughter-in-law died suddenly at that time. Her name Katie, and it was a terrible blow to all of us, and in fact, she was there at the launching of what was to be the Edith, and died a few days later. And we asked her parents if they would mind if we named the boat after her. It’s meant so much to me to have this boat be a memory of her, and we put the first year she was hauled out of the water on a little railway we built covered with a canvas tarp. And that winter I went to work to build a boat house over her, and it was a very therapeutic experience to be able to build this cover to protect the boat. And it’s turned out to be a wonderful boat. We absolutely love that boat. The two of us can cruise comfortably in it. And every time I leave under sail, and feel that first puff of wind start to move that boat, it is the closest thing to magic that I can possibly imagine. You feel that slight acceleration, and absolute quiet, and off you go. I never get tired of that. Using the unseen wind, and feeling somewhat closer to the seabirds in looking for that change in the wind, that little lift of change under a headland that helps you get along. It’s such great fun. And also being at one with the boat. I really feel that the boat is more than a bunch of pieces of wood stuck together with pins. Yes, there is a real presence there. I often talk to the boat, and I know darn well that I’m not the only sailor who does that. I sense a real communication, one way or the other, that I get by sailing that boat, and maintaining her, that’s really special.