Refining the art of the drift-cruise

August 2003

By Tom Snyder

I went sailing in early June, and I know this sounds like bragging, but I got lucky. You never think it’s gonna happen and then, bang, all the stars line up, and there you are thinking, “I can’t wait to tell all the guys I got lucky.”

Here’s how lucky.

I should warn you that this piece of writing will sound dangerously like idyllic, bucolic, cruising travel prose. I can’t help it, because on this cruise I just plain had the magic.

I was about 14 days into my lovely June cruise, bouncing around Maine’s mid-coast. One morning I woke in a beautiful cove on Cross River called, for lack of a better expression, Oven Mouth. The current was just beginning to flow west from my cove back out to the Sheepscot River, so I simply lifted my anchor and floated with the tide – no sails, no motor. The passage to the main river is spectacular, deep and none too wide, but my boat just decided to stay in the middle. Occasionally, the boat floated stern-first, but there was no one there to laugh at me.

Well, not entirely true. There was a sweet old guy sitting on a rock patting a golden retriever, and he laughed.

Eventually I spilled out into the Sheepscot River, which was draining, but there was a 5-knot breeze that allowed me to sail ever so slowly upstream. How incredibly satisfying it was to be moving over the land at .5 knots – everything keeps changing, but at a pace almost unheard of today. After a while I even doused the mainsail, because I got tired of jibing it in the fluky winds. So now I was down to a jib, a whisker pole and about a third of a knot. What a relief .3 knots was after the hectic pace of .5 knots.

I went on this way until I ran out of navigable river. The current abruptly became multi-directional, but by this time not starting the engine had become strangely important to me. I drifted past a field of moorings, one of which was labeled “Guest”. I grabbed the pennant ungracefully, since this was a last minute thought. Incidentally, I have often heard and used the phrase “guest mooring” but never, ever have I seen one marked as such. More likely, a guest mooring will be marked “BL 7 Mek,” for reasons that I don’t have time to explain here.

I rowed to the dock that was associated with the mooring. It boasted a good old-fashioned yacht club, not the kind with Martinis and people who can comfortably say, “Isn’t that just a neat, neat sweater!” Rather, this “yacht club” was the kind that made you proud to be an American. It was a rectangular, single room made of wood or wood product. I peered through the front glass at the darkened interior until I found the stacked folding chairs. They are always there. Though the room looked deserted and forgotten, I just knew that it was ready to spring into life if hot dogs, soda and locals suddenly occurred. There was no one to whom to pay a mooring fee, so I swung the night free as an uninvited guest moorer.

In the early morning, I slipped the mooring, still avoiding the diesel, which, don’t get me wrong, I love. In fact I worship my diesel and even talk to it each time before I turn the key. But I was on this goofy-happy floating jag, so no motor. Down river I drifted as slowly as I had come up, this time in a river fog.

That dream was followed by a slow sail across Booth Bay and on to the mouth of the next river. Some may describe this as perverse, but up the Damariscotta I sailed, averaging somewhere between .3 and .5 knots. Time was slowing to a crawl in my head, and if you knew me personally you would deem this unlikely. Usually I get relaxed by going from high strung to partially strung.

So very, very softly the coves passed – Fitch Point, Wiley Point, Dodge Point (which I believe was named after Dodge Morgan in 1620 when he landed at this spot, announcing to the natives that he was the true inventor of the fish drying rack as we know it today.)

So soft a ride up so sweet a river. The quiet was broken only by the sound of the painter of my dingy leaving a ripple, and by the occasional sounds of fishing boats, loud and deep, not unpleasant, maybe reminiscent of the voice of Bea Arthur.

There are two spots where the river narrows and begs the sailor to turn on his or her engine. I have named both of these spots “Point Sphincter” in honor of freshman biology and the only word I remember from it. I passed through these spots like a … well, that’s not the point.

At the navigable limit of this river (for my boat) I slowly spun and sidled up to a dock where a nice fellow lassoed me in. He kindly told me his plan to give me a couple free beers at the dock bar. Nice. Then, a real marching band started playing and marching across the little bridge connecting Damariscotta to Newcastle. I told the dockmaster/bartender that this was awkward, that there was no need to go to these lengths, that I was beginning to feel embarrassed. He told me that Newcastle was celebrating its 250th birthday, which was a lovely little white lie he conjured to make me feel better about all of the attention. That evening the town went so far as to provide spectacular fireworks right over my boat. These are very welcoming souls.

In the morning, as I was cleaning the ash off my deck, an elderly man said to me from the dock, “You are Tom Snyder. I am Mr. Clapp.” This was the father of my dear best friend from third grade in Boston. I had not seen this wonderful dad/Congregational minister/poet in too many decades. We sat in my cockpit (that smelled a bit cordite-ish) and talked about the same stuff we had talked about 40 years ago – God, nature and music. What a great dad he was and still is, I’m sure.

How about that! Mr. Clapp lives in Maine now. He invited me, almost shyly, to join him and his new wife at a little informal supper get-together. We jumped into his VW and drove ever so slowly to the very “yacht club” where I had been a freeloader the night before. But this time I got to go inside. The folding chairs were out, and plastic cups were everywhere in the hands of local folks who were mostly 30 years my senior and all of them friends of Mr. Clapp. We ate comfy foods. We sang happy birthday to one grandmother. I got to pay my overdue mooring rent right after we restacked the chairs.

I was in love with this slow tangle of life I was drifting in. In bed by 8. I think it’s easier to get lucky when you are living life at under 1 knot.

Tom Snyder sails out of Peaks Island, Maine.