JUNE 7, 2025 – (Cont.) The next spring brought good fortune on the waterfront. Fred Moore, our friend and neighbor across the street, the inveterate entrepreneur who’d recently sold his successful business, had now become a distributor of “water bikes.” A couple of models were chained to an elm tree in the Moore’s front yard. I don’t know how many water bikes Fred actually sold, but I do know that he sold at least one—on a trade-in.
When the trade-in appeared on Moore’s lawn, I recognized it immediately from the Sears and Roebuck catalog: it was the big brother of the Fleetwind—a longer, wider sailing scow with a lateen rig sail half again larger than the Fleetwind’s. At nearly double the price of the Fleetwind, the “big brother” would have been my preference if I’d been able to raise the capital two summers before. Fred knew about the death of the Fleetwind and offered to sell the “big brother” to me—cheap, with a further discount based on a “trade-in” of the Fleetwind sail and accessories. I had no idea what Fred did with them or of what value they might’ve had. In any event, what made the deal even sweeter was that he gave me an open license to do landscaping work on the Moore’s sprawling river lot. I was all in. Mother even floated me a loan so we could take the boat straight away to the lake. I paid her back with earnings from keeping Moore’s shrubs and lawn in tip-top shape.
Not only was the sail on the new boat bigger than the one that carried the Fleetwind hither and yon, but the hull contained a built-in ice chest with a latched cover. I could now pack a sandwich, cookies and orange and sail immediately after my morning scales and arpeggios instead of having to hang around for lunch on the back porch with Mother and Dad and my younger sister Jenny—and fight over who would have to do wash the dishes . . . Jenny or I.
The Fleetwind’s “big brother” was also well suited for big wind and waves. It had one design defect, however. The end of the wooden tiller that was attached to the rudder contained a lateral bolt. If you pressed down on the opposite end of the tiller, the added stress revealed a split in the wood around the bolt. Too much stress, I could see, would break the wood altogether. I tried to reinforce it the best I could.
One Saturday afternoon my (now ex-) bro-in-law and I took the boat out for a wild ride in a strong breeze. He asked if he could skipper, and I acquiesced. In switching places, however, I neglected to mention the weakened condition of the tiller. Soon after he took over, we turned onto a broad reach and were howling in delight. He had both hands on the tiller and was pulling hard to maintain our heading. Suddenly . . . CRACK! Simultaneously with the sound of wood snapping, the boat swung broadside to the waves and nearly went over. My brother-in-law did go over . . . board. By the time I realized what had happened, his head was just resurfacing as he waved the detached tiller in the air.
“Holy s _ _ _!” I yelled, followed by, “Glad you saved the tiller!” With a few crawl strokes he caught up with the helpless boat and pulled himself aboard. With the sail luffing—snapping loud and loose in the wind—we floated downwind toward the shore. We hadn’t sailed much farther than a 100 meters or so from the rocks in front of the cabin, so soon we were in waist-deep water and could walk the wounded boat back to its mooring anchor.
With his usual ingenuity, Dad ran the repairs to the tiller. Right away he’d noticed the same design flaw I’d seen at the outset of my first voyage. In no time, the good boat was back in business.
After the tiller snafu, I experienced two other mishaps with the boat—before the third, and final one.
The first was in late May the next season. I was out hot-rodding in our corner of the lake on a breezy day. For fun, I tried to see how far I could heel without capsizing. After 10 minutes or so of clowning around, I discovered the tipping point. Righting a light boat of the Sunfish class is not difficult. You swim around to the bottoms-up side of the hull, put your weight on the daggerboard and as the hull turns up, you grab whatever you can and pull. As the sail comes out of the water, the wind and water will reposition the hull so it’s pointed into the wind as it begins to drift downwind. Once stabilized, you climb aboard and pull in the mainsheet as you grab the tiller to turn the rudder. Soon you’re under way again.
On that memorable occasion everything went according to the textbook (and instruction I’d received at Interlochen)—except for one critical thing: the water temperature. Because I was on my own, it had taken me more than a minute or two to right the boat. By the time I was back on board, I felt as if I’d been in Arctic seas. My hands and feet were numb, and my lower jaw chattered uncontrollably. Single-minded focus directed my actions: sail back to port ASAP.
Once there, I the mooring anchor chain to the bow, and not bothering with lowering the sail, I scrambled out of the water and dashed straight away for the cabin. After removing my swimming trunks, I dried off, donned dry clothes and tucked myself into a sleeping bag on Grandpa’s big bed out on the front porch. There I shook and shivered until . . . it seemed safe to face the outside world again. Note to self (observed ever after): unless you’re wearing a wet suit, don’t go sailing too early in the season.
The second “mishap” started out as one, technically, but was transformed into the opposite. Ironically, this outcome was the result of a desire to elude yet further trouble. The occasion was in June 1982. Again, I was showing off in our corner of the lake during a stiff breeze—testing, then finding the tipping point. Over she went. Except . . . this time, in righting the hull I’d managed to uncleat the halyard and as the boom crashed to the deck, the mainsheet whipped around entangling itself with both the boom and the tiller. Things were a mess, as the boat bobbed violently in the waves. In frustration, I decided simply to drift with the boat until I reached the shallows, where with a solid footing, I could set things straight.
By this time what looked like a shipwreck and a shipwrecked sailor were only about 50 meters out from the cabin at the end of a string of places along the beach in the northwest corner of the lake just beyond the west end of Björnholm. A couple of guys a little older than I shouted hard into the wind to ask if I needed help. The last thing I wanted to admit was that as Captain Cook of one of only two or three sailboats on Grindstone Lake, I would require “help” with a Sunfish class vessel. I politely declined, shouting back, “Thanks, but I think I can handle it!” I waved, and they waved back.
About an hour later, I was inside the cabin fixing myself something to eat. As I finished putting a sandwich together, I heard unfamiliar voices coming from just outside the front of the cabin. Given our seclusion, we never had visitors, so my curiosity was piqued.
As it turned out, my future spouse—unbeknownst to me at the time—was with her sister-in-law and nieces on a long trek to a bar (now long gone) another quarter mile to the east. That was the stated reason at the time, but later disclosure revealed that what had prompted the expedition was my earlier escapade in front of the visitors’ cabin. My future brothers-in-law were the ones who’d witnessed the “mishap.” My future spouse and her fellow “expeditioners” happened to be furtive witnesses.
Cutting through the long wind . . . at what I thought was a strategic moment in the conversation that I’d joined in front of the cabin, I asked the pretty woman named Beth if she wanted to go out in the sailboat. The wind was still blowing hard, and of course, she’d earlier witnessed my nautical skills. “No, I don’t think so,” she said, having judged my skills unfairly but understandably.
Undaunted, I continued the conversation as if no “No” had been uttered. I was familiar enough with the lake and its habits to know that the wind doesn’t blow forever. All I had to do was ensure that the conversation was long-winded enough for the Anemoi to quiet down. In time, that’s exactly what happened. Having the better vantage point—the lakeview–while Beth was facing me and the cabin, I could see when the white caps had disappeared and the trees on the bank were swaying less. I repeated the earlier question.
Beth swung her head around to see calmer trees and water . “Okay,” she said. And the rest is history.
The boat endured for another few seasons before it met the same rock-dashed fate that had turned the Fleetwind into fiberglass flotsam. Back in Anoka, Fred had accepted no further sailboats as trade-ins for his water bikes. By this time, however, I’d graduated to other interests and diversions, even before Beth entered the scene. An obsession with marathon running had displaced my interest in sailing. Then came summer travel abroad, followed by the summer when I had to study for (and take and pass, thankfully) the bar exam; the summer after that, I was on my Grand Odyssey around the globe—but not on a sailboat. By the time I was back to the cabin on a regular basis, I’d lost interest in buying another sailboat. My halcyon days sailing the ocean blue were over—at least for the time being. (Cont.)
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
