A cautionary tale of 1959

September 2010

By David Roper

As they rounded the point, the fog came right back. Just then, the young boy caught the first smell of spruce and felt the warmth of the land. Despite the fog, he looked for the entrance to the cove, eager to end that day’s foggy sail into an unrelenting southwest headwind. Soon he could do his favorite things: some rowing in the old skiff and exploring a calm new place.

“The old cruising guide says the entrance is hard to spot, between the cliffs just beyond this point; it says we should look for a bold, pink granite cliff on the eastern side,” the young boy’s father said. The boy watched his dad now. He looked at him only for intent. Not with fear or anxiety. His father would not make a mistake.

“Grab the brass megaphone, behind the port bunk, will you pal?” the man asked his son. “We’ll make our own radar.”

The young boy emerged from the cabin and handed it to his father, who put it to his lips. “Boom….boom….boom,” he shouted through the megaphone at different intervals and in slightly varied directions. He waited and did it again. The young boy watched with intent. “Seems as if the much longer return echo is right about there,” he said, pointing into the fog while looking down at the binnacle. “About 20 degrees.” He let go the staysail sheet and the old wooden cutter slowed appreciably. “We’ll just ease on closer and listen very carefully for surf,” he said. “Why don’t you take your sharp eyes and good ears up to the bow and put them to work.”

And so they ghosted in towards the entrance. The young boy hung to the forestay, his left foot resting on the bowsprit, while he unleashed his full senses of sight and sound. Then he spied it. “There, Dad… there. There’s the pink cliff, just like you said. Just like you said, Dad.”

The man was immensely relieved, though he didn’t show it outwardly. He was nowhere near as certain of himself as his young son was. And there were more worries to come. “Come get the lead line for me, will you pal?” he asked, as they slid through the entrance. The boy came aft, grabbed the lead line from the stern locker, unwound it to three knots, which he knew meant 18 feet, and moved forward dutifully to just aft of the starboard running backstay. “OK, begin your swings,” the man said, and the boy swung the lead forward into the water and let it drop as the cutter moved ahead.

“No bottom,” he said. And he swung again. “Still no bottom.”

“All good,” the man said, as they eased by the bold shore with the pink granite cliff. “We’re almost in. About a hundred yards farther into the deeper water of the cove that the chart shows, and we’ll drop the hook.”

Several hours later, when the fog lifted, they were surprised to find that they were not alone. A large cabin cruiser was anchored not far off. The boy’s father was surprised; since they had left Massachusetts, they’d seen very few big powerboats at anchor in remote coves. It seemed unusual, but the man soon put it out of his mind and began reheating a beef stew they’d had the night before.

The young boy was happy to climb into the rowing skiff and explore the shoreline. On the way back from the other side of the cove, his curiosity got the better of him, and he rowed over near the neighboring boat. A large man was sitting in the stern, his feet propped up on the transom. He was smoking a cigar and drinking a beer. The boy thought the better of getting closer, but as he turned, the man stood up and looked in his direction. “Know where we are here, boy?” he asked. “We kind of stumbled in here as the fog started. Been stuck for a couple of days.”

“It’s called Head Harbor,” the boy said. It’s on the chart. My dad brought us in here right through the fog. He knows the place.”

“Thanks,” the man said, and settled back in his chair.

After dinner, the boy went belowdecks to read, and his father, after cleaning the dishes, sat up on deck with a cup of tea. It was dusk and very quiet. Then came a rustle of small objects and a series of small splashes. The noise came from the direction of the other boat in the cove. The boy’s father turned and watched as the man dumped his trash over the stern of his boat into the still waters of the pristine harbor.

“I’m going for a short row, pal,” the boy’s father said. He put down his tea by the rail, and slid over the side into the skiff.

Very deliberately, the boy’s father rowed toward the other boat in the cove. As he got closer, the man in the stern took notice. He sat up straighter, stopped leaning back in his chair, and then took his feet down from the boat’s transom. He put down his beer. Then he put down his cigar. But the boy’s father slowed the skiff and turned before reaching the cabin cruiser.

He was about 60 feet off, near the slowly spreading pool of garbage. Then he shipped his oars and began to pick the various pieces of the jetsam out of the water. Carefully, slowly, he picked up a tomato soup can with its ragged lid partially attached, a cardboard egg carton, four beer bottles, a coffee can, and numerous Hershey’s candy-bar wrappers. He placed each item in a canvas bucket in the stern of his skiff. The man on the cabin cruiser watched, motionless, at full attention.

Just about then the boy on the old cutter came out of the cabin, looking for, and now watching, his father. The boy’s father now rowed slowly toward the man. In the stillness of the cove, no one said a word. The only sound came from the skiff’s old ash oars as they sliced the water and pulled towards the man’s boat. The boy’s father rounded up the skiff nicely alongside the cabin cruiser’s stern. Then he stood, bucket in hand, and poured its contents at the man’s feet.

“I think you may have dropped this,” was all he said. And then he rowed away.

They say that “character” is what you do when no one else is watching. In this case, a young boy watched. So did an older man. Neither, I venture, has ever been the same since.

Dave Roper sails Elsa, a Bruce King-designed Independence 31, out of Marblehead, Mass., where he lives and works.