JUNE 5, 2025 – (Cont.) At the cabin, Dad used the cabin mower in the same fashion he’d deployed the home mower: as a jerry-rigged dolly. Together we maneuvered the Fleetwind hull from the trailer to the west side of the cabin. He then attached an extended painter to the bow, and while he controlled the line, I tugged on the stern, and together we let gravity do most of the work of sliding the boat down the slope to the dock.
Dad then rigged up a makeshift mooring anchor out of another rope tied to a collection of spare cast iron dock brackets. Once I’d placed the anchor 10 yards or so beyond the end of the dock, we were ready to launch the Fleetwind. No champagne was involved, but standing nearby to watch the event, Mother congratulated me. I would’ve offered right then to make the first dividend distribution on her preferred stock, but the air barely stirred. The inaugural voyage would have to wait until a breeze picked up.
The next morning brought a bit of wind, and I couldn’t wait to set sail. Since the basic design of the Fleetwind mimicked an actual Alcort Sunfish quite closely, I had no trouble adapting to the minor differences of my new boat. After a successful test run, I returned to port and gave Mother her first ride. It was the first of many that she would enjoy aboard Fleetwind and its successor vessels, including the 14.2 Catalina Capri I bought 20 years later. Though decades had passed since she’d sailed with her cousin back in Connecticut, she took to crewing and skippering quite naturally. What impressed me further was her command of nautical terms—and insistence on using them, a trait I seem to have inherited, always saying “line,” never “rope”; “port” for “left,” “starboard” for “right,” and “aft” (or “astern”) and “forward” (or “bow”) for “back” and “front.”
Dad never expressed an interest in sailing. Whenever I offered to take him out, he’d reach for his lower back with one hand and say “I’m a little concerned about my back.” At some point, however, I managed to coax him aboard the Capri, as revealed by an old photograph tucked away in a photo album assembled long before the advent of digital photographs.
The Fleetwind turned out to be a sporty vessel. I soon learned that I could sail it in the heaviest winds that blew on Grindstone. I was convinced she’d delight in the winds of a hurricane. In time I took her on voyages to all places around the lake, in and out of Williams Bay and between the islands in the distant corner of the lake. Inevitably, I pretended to be some famous mariner, such as Erik the Red or Captain Cook or, occasionally, Captain Hook.
Late that first summer in a breeze of perfect velocity and direction, I decided to sail around the entire perimeter of the lake, a distance of around 12 miles. I imagined that it was my solo circumnavigation of the earth—inspired by the journey of The Dove by Robin Lee Graham from 1965 to 1970. I’d followed the National Geographic installments about the kid’s (he was just 16 years old at the outset) fantastic voyage and naively tried to imagine myself doing the same thing.
The next day, I went a league farther. I sailed/paddled the Fleetwind into and through the channel into Little Grindstone Lake, then on into Lac Courte d’Oreilles, the 5100-acre (compared to Grindstone’s 3100-acre surface area) downstream from Grindstone. On that voyage, I was no longer merely sailing around the earth. I was circumnavigating an earthlike planet in a parallel universe. I was absent from home port for many hours, and had my parents looked out around the lake for my boat, they wouldn’t have seen her for the hours I wasn’t to be seen. In retrospect, I’m amazed that neither they nor I thought to worry about my half-day disappearance. But such were the times back then—and such are the times we live in now.
What might’ve given Mother far greater worry was the “show” I put on one afternoon just a few hundred feet out from the cabin. The wind was howling out of the south and producing enormous white caps. Rigging the Fleetwind in those conditions was like saddling a bronc before the big rodeo. Once it was ready to ride, I quickly unclipped the painter, climbed aboard, hauled in the sail, grabbed the tiller and headed out on a port tack, just above a beam reach. Now I was riding a bucking bronco.
I worked my way out into the surly waves until I was straight out from the cabin. Snatching a view over the stern, I saw Mother watching—anxiously, I hoped—at the railing along the retaining wall 50 feet above the shore. Now was my chance to show off. I came about, then set course on a broad reach to build momentum. The flat-bottom hull was now planning over the waves, and in a flash-glance behind me, I saw a rooster tail in my wake. I was flying. Before I reached the point where the wind would bounce off the steep slope along the shore and confuse the sail, I pushed the tiller hard away and turned the boat back into the wind. In another quick look astern I saw Mother wave. Now the fun could begin.
I pointed the boat as far upwind as I could, which is the most inefficient point of sail, meaning, in the fierce wind that was blowing, the boat’s momentum slowed and she heeled way over. The boat was small enough and sufficiently responsive to allow me to control the angle until I was stationery and the sail was centimeters off the cresting waves. The deck was pointing skyward, and with one foot pressed against the side of the cockpit and my other foot on the daggerboard as the hull was balanced perpendicular to the water, I managed to hold the boat in a position that was all but capsized. I stole a glance at Mother, who waved one hand helplessly in the air and used the other to cup her mouth as she shouted something unintelligible.
After I’d exhausted (I imagined) my spectator, I headed back to port, then scrambled up to the cabin to gather Mother’s reaction to my nautical antics.
“I thought you’d capsize,” she said calmly. “But I assumed you’d know what to do if you had. It was fun to watch, though.”
So I hadn’t scared her out of her wits. Over the years I’d learn that Mother had Grandpa’s nerves of steel. She could be plenty anxious about all sorts of things, but one thing she never showed was fright. (Cont.)
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
