Following your hero’s wake

When my dad gave “Sea Gypsy” back to me, he wrote on the inside cover page: “The Bible as Translated for David Roper.” It’s true, I did want to follow in the author’s wake. Even as a teenager, Peter Tangvald’s sailing vagabond lifestyle appealed to me greatly. In the 1960s he had sailed around the world, mostly alone, in a 32-foot wooden engineless cutter. His extraordinary sailing adventures were rivaled only by his extraordinary conjugal adventures with women he met along the way. Many sailed with him. At least three married him. The women, the romance of the sea, his uncanny navigational and sailing skills, and especially his South Seas adventures comprised my young life’s sacred dreamer package.

So I had to have a boat. For this I needed money. The best money around was summer work in a shoe factory in Salem, Massachusetts, where I toiled with a handcart, stacking boxes of women’s shoes as they came down the conveyor belt from they second floor. After one summer I had $1,500, enough to purchase Sea Star, a 23-foot sloop with a small cabin. It was called a True Rocket, a cedar-planked centerboard boat not the least bit right for any offshore sailing. Still, the plan, at the end of junior year in high school, was to “set out and head south.” South didn’t mean the South Seas, however, only the South Shore of Massachusetts. And of course I, like Peter Tangvald, had to go it alone, maybe meeting a girl or two or three along the way to make the package complete.

Along the first leg from Marblehead to the Cape Cod Canal, I sailed in company with my parents who were cruising on their larger, very seaworthy Atkin cutter. Then we parted ways, as they headed back to their real world. But I had a whole summer ahead and a different itinerary in mind. I promised my parents that I’d find a phone ashore (pre-cell phone world) every several days and call home with my whereabouts.

Never happened.

I got hopelessly lost in the fog in Vineyard Sound and followed a dragger to wherever it was going. And that’s where I ended up. Probably should have found that phone right then and called. Didn’t. Did Tangvald have to call his parents? Of course not. But still, I should call at some point, I mused.

Then I met the girl. She was 22 and had just finished college as a psychology major. I was 17, not yet a senior in high school. But I was a dauntless. I asked her to go sailing, and we had a lovely day sail. Then we anchored in a remote cove off a sandy stretch of beach along some conservation land. We talked. The sun began to set. It lit up her long blond hair. She ran her fingers through it and said she thought what I was doing was so unusual and, well, yes, so “romantic” for a young boy. The “boy” part bothered me. I moved on, steadfast about my dream. I told her about Tangvald and my “religion.” My dream. She listened intently. Then she spoke of Freud and of his proposal that latent dream content is comprised of three elements, including the id’s instinctive drive. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I rubbed the peach fuzz on my chin and nodded thoughtfully.

From there, well . . . column length just won’t permit the rest, gentle reader. But here’s the short version: the romance part didn’t work out too well; I never phoned my parents; they called the Coast Guard, who launched an air search for me; and, of course, I was found. Lost. But not at sea.

For those who want to know what happened after the lady on board spoke of Freud off the romantic beach under the setting sun, you’ll find it in detail in the story, “Behind Her Mona Lisa Smile” within a book entitled “Watching for Mermaids.” I can’t speak for the veracity of mermaids, but I wish that night off the beach had ended differently.

Dave Roper’s new novel, “Rounding the bend: The Life and Times of Big Red,” was released in mid-June and is available from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.