Cruising: Old Sailors Never Die

“Old sailors never die, they just get a little dinghy.” It may be a hoary old joke, but one of my problems at age 79 is I can no longer get easily in and out of a little dinghy, and neither can my (several years younger than me) wife. For this, and various other reasons I will list in excruciating detail below, a few years ago we finally sold Dolphin Spirit, our lovely, cutter rigged, Mason 53.

I had owned her since 1992, and she had taken my wife, son and me around the world safely, comfortably and serenely, in the face of my many mistakes and general ineptitude. How many of us have friends, family or even spouses who can suffer such indignities and still stay silent and forgiving?

To be clear, I am a cruising sailor, not a racing sailor. I do not tack more than once a day, and then only after hours of contemplation. Having said that, many years ago, I loaded Dolphin Spirit up with 15 people (just two of whom had actually sailed before) and more snacks and drinks than should be legal, and we finished third in our division in the Newport-to-Ensenada race. The next year we bettered our previous time by more than six hours and did not place—as good a reason as any to never race again.

During our six-and-a-half-year circumnavigation, I did all the maintenance and fixed everything that broke. To do that, I carried an extensive inventory of spare parts, with tools and operating manuals for almost everything. However, all that would have been useless without some flexibility—mine!

I found early on that many absolutely essential maintenance tasks can be carried out only by a contortionist who has the ability to ignore pain. There has to be a special place in hell for those designers who know jobs like changing the raw water impeller, replacing the drive belts and changing fuel filters have to be regularly done, but still place these items at the extreme limits of human reach…

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