October 2008
By Tom Snyder
So, to recap, I bought my first boat in Hingham, Mass., 11 years, ago right after I sold my company – something I said I would never do (sell my company or buy a boat). She changed just about everything about my life. Today, I dropped off the lovely Blue Moon back in Hingham to sell it with no plan to buy another boat. Something I said I would never do. Liar, liar.
To recap, by the age of 14, I had decided to never set foot on a sailboat again. I had grown up on, lived aboard, and cruised all over hell and back with my family, but by the time bad skin had set in, I was thoroughly, existentially done with boats. A cold, wet bilge, bad weather at night or brightwork could stimulate in me dark and lonely thoughts. I swore off the whole project.
Poor Dad heard me announce one morning that I was reducing his crew by one for an overnight race. I should have given him more notice. Standing next to me at the time was little Richie Wilson who signed on for the race immediately. Richie was different from me in that he liked to be cold, tired, wet and around metal things that break suddenly. (He still loves all of this at 58, racing as he does, alone around the world, his next race leaving France in a few weeks.) I could almost hear dad thinking, “Now that’s what I’m talking about!”
I stuck to my no-boat guns through three careers, marriage, kids, and partial hair loss. Without dramatizing one iota (but to borrow shamelessly from Woody Allen), I was sitting in the office of my little, tiny, weensy, adorable software company in Cambridge when I got a call from some investment bankers who asked if I wanted to sell the company. I explained that I was an artist, that I would never sell, and that this company was a passion, not a commodity. They said that was too bad because they were offering several million dollars. I said, “Let me put Mr. Snyder on the phone.” (That, by the way, is me.) And of course I sold.
That same week, my wife was in Vermont skiing with kids and friends. I called her and she answered the phone, “Hi, Tom, husband of mine who hates boats and will never step aboard one…” To be honest, she just said, “Hi, Tom.” I told her the marvelous and true story that I had happened to drive by the boat show in Boston, went in alone with but half a brain, met a wonderful broker named Shep, and I bought a boat – a big, sailing, cruising, have to paint the bottom every year, have to love installing raw water impellors, have to buy a mooring, have to read three to five magazines a month … boat.
I had gone to a dark side and could not explain it, but I was overwhelmed by little-boy joie de vivre I had not felt since Twizzlers became available in family-sized bags. Several months later, I was in that same mood, sitting in the cockpit of spanking new Blue Moon, when a guy named Bernie walked by and noticed something vaguely nuclear leaking from my being. Bernie, who was one of the founders of this very magazine, asked if I would be interested in writing a sailing column for the new magazine.
Nothing could have been less appropriate. I said, “Of course I would,” as long as I could make fun of boaters who take themselves too seriously. I mean, honestly, is there anything funnier?
Then, when I discovered that Dodge Morgan would be writing on the opposite page from me, I jumped at the chance to teach Dodge everything I knew about bravery, seamanship, and how to speak about boats via metaphors about spectacular women. Look, I said to Dodge, I may not have sailed around the world alone; I may not have designed my own boat and set a world record; but I have just read an article in “Cruising World” about how to anchor in a calm cove. That, sir, is what I bring to the party.
Dodge and I have become very, very, very close – sort of a teacher-student relationship that he may one day come to appreciate.
Finally, to recap, 11 years later I have decided to sell Blue Moon. I have spent at least 45 nights aboard every summer, I have dropped the hook alone in hundreds of coves from Eastport to Manhattan, and this summer I spent 30 blissful days cruising with my wife. And all of a sudden I realize I am done. What’s more, I have discovered that, after all of this, a cold wet bilge, bad weather at night and brightwork can stimulate the same hard thoughts. Don’t tell Dodge.
So now I sit in Shep’s Hingham office and have to admit to myself that maybe the entire reason I bought that boat on a strange February night in 1997 was because this broker was such a decent, honest guy and a true lover of boats. Hey, a few years ago, I told him I wanted a new, bigger and more expensive boat and he talked me out of it. How’s that for decent?
So I guess what I’m really saying is, I’m a cheap date. Be kind to me and I will reconsider doing anything I once found to be an unhappy undertaking. I took up sailing, was never fully in love with it, but I did love it, and I found out firsthand who and what was really great about it.
Tom Snyder divides his time between Peaks Island, Maine and Cambridge, Mass.
