The real happiest days

December 2024

By Jack Farrell

As the old adage goes, the two happiest days of a sailor’s life are the day he buys a boat and the day he sells it. While I have been pretty darn happy to part with a boat or two over the years, sale day for me has more often been one of reflection, full of memories and a strong dose of mixed emotions. The really happiest days are the ones when the wind is on the beam at 15 knots, when the spinnaker goes up without a wrap, when the cockpit is full of family and friends, when the boat loses all way at the perfect moment when grabbing a mooring under sail, when friends gather in the cockpit at sunset to make music, and when you emerge from the fog at the finish line to discover that you actually weren’t lost – and that you’ve won the race after all.

Those who have followed this column have heard me sing the praises of my wooden sloop, Aloft. For nearly a quarter of a century the boat has brought me great joy and many of those happiest days. But for the past three seasons she has been laid up in the barn. I’ve just been too busy to spend the three weeks it takes to get her ready for the water. Earlier this year I resolved to break the spell and get her launched. But on a hot day in early July, crouched on the boathouse floor, covered in dust from sanding her bottom with arthritic shoulders aching from hours behind the sander, I began to realize that the whole enterprise had become too much for me to manage. My older son who used to be a boat hauler tried to talk me out of it. He came over to the boathouse with a fresh dust mask and sanding discs, sanding a quarter of the bottom for me while I was gone. But it was too late.

Owning a classic yacht comes with the obligation of good care and good seamanship. When I bought the boat, with the energy and drive of early middle age, I took on this obligation with enthusiasm and hope. I stripped and sanded, painted and stripped with gusto. I had access to the advice of people who knew what the boat needed and who showed me how to provide it. I paid professionals to take on what I could not do myself. I sailed her hard and kept her off the bottom (except for those two times when I was lucky enough to get away with it). And Aloft paid me back with so many of those happiest days.

It would be possible, of course, to send the boat off to one of the yards who really know how to care for a wooden classic and just let them take care of it. But the costs of that care would be unsustainable for very long for us. Lacking the time, energy and money that she needs, I put Aloft up for sale at the end of the summer, and I feel really badly about it. It’s not so much a feeling of failure as it is a recognition that, in spite of my protestations to the contrary, at just shy of 70 I am actually beginning to grow old. So, I’m about to walk away from an old faithful friend, feeling sad and a little guilty.

The guilt comes in part from the fact that I just bought a fiberglass sailboat, a gorgeous older Hinckley yawl. The new boat is two tons smaller with a fixed keel, and a much more modest rig – all the easier for single-handing by an old guy. She will require annual systems maintenance and a bit of varnish, but a few weekends will get her ready to launch. And gone will be the worry of the first week after launching a wooden boat – the anxious waiting for the planks to swell and the leaking to stop.

I’ve been a wooden boat guy for a long time. I owned a 35-foot wooden Hinckley sloop for 10 years before moving on to Aloft. I have nearly every issue of “WoodenBoat Magazine” on my bookshelf. I love how wooden boats look and how they smell and how they sail. And I always will. In my earlier life, when sailing was popular and prices were high, buying a wooden boat and doing much of the work myself was the only way for me to afford a beautiful classic. But today the sailboat market is almost dead. Only one U.S. company still produces a line of sailboats. Hinckley hasn’t built a new sailboat in over a decade. And thus, it’s a buyer’s market: we bought this new sailboat for about eight percent of its replacement value. That sounds like a good value to me. With reasonable care, she will easily last me until I’m too old to sail at all. What energy I still have for it will be spent sailing, instead of sanding and painting and worrying about the bilge pump.

When going over the papers that came with the new boat, I came across a letter from Henry Hinckley, founder of the company, and builder of hundreds of wooden boats and yachts, beginning in 1932. In 1959 the company began the switch to fiberglass. Beneath the logic of his letter, I detect some of the same conflicts I’m feeling as I make my own switch to “that other material.”

“We love fine sailboats. We cruise in them, we race in them, and we understand them . . . . In 1959 we began building sailboats in fiberglass. We recognized its superiority as a boatbuilding material. Fiberglass eliminates a number of problems inherent in wood. First, and most important, fiberglass doesn’t absorb appreciable amounts of water; it won’t shrink, swell, check, warp or rot. Nor is fiberglass affected by marine organisms or electrolysis. And fiberglass, properly used, has tremendous impact resistance . . . . This firm builds superior boats because we build with superior material, more than 30 years of experience, and the skills won from this experience.”

The recent survey of Mr. Hinckley’s 57-year-old “superior boat” reported a hull in fine condition ready for another decade or more of sailing with little more than routine maintenance. I wonder now how long I will be sailing her.

When I was first thrashing around in our cove in my little O’Day Daysailer in the early ’80s, there was a classic 37-foot fiberglass sloop from the drawing board of Carl Alberg moored just off the town landing. Thisbe was smartly sailed by a young man who spent a good deal of time at the Isles of Shoals. I admired that guy and his beautiful big sailboat very much. I have since come to know him well in my time at Star Island. I respect and admire him even more, and he remains an inspiration. At 81, he regularly sails Thisbe single-handed. He launches her early and hauls her out late. He also cuts his own firewood to heat his antique house and manages the solar electric system for Star Island, among many other things. He recently asked me what I thought about roller-furling jibs (his boat has always had a hanked-on headsail). I told him I thought they were terrific. I asked him if he was thinking about getting one after all this time.

“Well,” he said in his calm and understated manner, “my wife says she thinks I’m getting too old to sail alone without one, so I guess I better get one.” There are surely some happiest days still to come on Thisbe.

Meanwhile, out at Star Island, the unofficial capital of the Isles of Shoals, the northwesterly autumn gales have already begun in earnest – in spite of the warm temperatures. The hotel crew left a few weeks ago, and with the breakwater rebuild project complete as of this week, that crew has shut down the big machines and removed them from the islands as well – this time for good. I’ll miss those guys.

On a still clear November morning, the place feels timeless and apart from the uncertain times ashore. The silence is at once beautiful and lonesome, broken only by the occasional call of an unseen loon from somewhere across the empty harbor, and the sudden flurry of schooling mackerel breaking the surface just off the pier by the thousands.

When he learned that I had bought the new sailboat, Catboat Bob called me on his cellular telephone from high in the fog-shrouded peaks of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Having been aboard with us on many of these happiest days on Aloft along with Mrs. Crabby (crafter of canvas and cushion), Bob knew this change was going to be a big deal. He was calling to say that he wanted me to have the wooden Nutshell pram he had built a few years ago – as a gift- to use as a tender for the new boat. That’s another happiest day right there.

Jack was the manager at Star Island for many years. He currently manages major construction and utility projects there and provides all-season boat service to the island (average 250 trips per year) for luggage, food, employees, supplies and guests. He also runs Seacoast Maritime Charters, LLC providing year-round private charter boat service and marine logistics to the general public, now in the Shining Star.

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