Everybody's sweetheart

[The best-laid plans and all that ... I wrote this a while back, and a lot has changed. Still ... it was fun while it lasted.]

It was sometime around week four in the boatyard when it occurred to me: “You know, I really need to put her name back on the transom.”

I called an old sailing buddy who also happens to be a local printer and sign maker, and “EQUANIMITY” was ready the following day.

It wasn’t the name on the boat when I bought her, and it wasn’t the name I had chosen, but the name she had borne for most of her life.

Amazing what $50 worth of vinyl and 30 minutes careful work did for my morale. My boat had a name again – her original name – and suddenly she was less a “thing” and more a living creature.

And boats with names – bright, new, shiny names -- I reasoned, don’t end up in the salvage yard.

You see, somewhere between week three and week five on the hard, I had begun to resent the old girl who was stubbornly resisting my attention. Halfway through filling and fairing 74 gel coat blisters, I was getting downright frustrated. The boatyard blues had set in, and my budding relationship with a 1964 Columbia 29 was not going quite as I had imagined it would.

Chalk part of that up to unrealistic expectations: when I responded to the brokerage ad on the Internet, I saw what I wanted to see: the classic Sparkman & Stephens lines and long, graceful overhangs; the sturdy, over-sized spar; the salty-looking, round opening port facing the bow.

Heck, I didn’t even have her hauled. She was floating when I signed the check, and that was good enough. I figured that, for the price of the survey, I could fix anything I found later.

What I discovered later was that of the six bags of sails I had cursorily examined, one was the original, 40-year-old mainsail; one was a Thistle-class main, one was a Catalina 27 main. None were in very good repair.

I discovered a suspiciously springy spot on the foredeck, and the aforementioned blisters. I found backing plates corroded beyond salvation and bulkhead doors literally falling apart.

As my work on the boat progressed I found a phone number for her next-to-last previous owner. As we began talking, I discovered a few more things.

For instance, when I had Equanimity trucked the 500 miles from Lake Texoma to Rockport, on the Texas Gulf Coast, I was bringing her home to the same boatyard that had hauled her out for the trip north three years ago.

At a cruisers’ rendezvous and party at Bahia Marina in Ingleside, the marina owner showed me my boat’s old slip and put me on the list for a new one. At the same party, a gentleman who was a member of my childhood sailing club sat down, asked me what I was sailing these days.

I told him, and he slapped his knee and said: “Doggone it, the original owner of your boat was one of my best friends!”

“George?” I asked, naming the last-but-one previous owner. “No,” he said, and named the fellow who bought my boat new and christened her, on Lake Lewisville, by the name she again carries.

It was on Lake Lewisville that the late Guy “Doc” Denton took his friend Richard Worstell sailing. Rich enjoyed the experience so much, the story goes, he became a sailor himself, opened a dealership and – later – bought Valiant Yachts.

Today a “Texas-built” Valiant is a desirable world cruiser.

Rich’s son Randy was the broker on the deal when I bought Equanimity.

After six weeks on the hard, splash day arrived and I sailed Equanimity a dozen or so miles south on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway to Ingleside. On the way, I was passed by a water-skier who waved and shouted: “Love your boat!”

Later, the same water-skier, with his wife, idled up behind us, held a hushed conversation, and then came alongside.

“We’ve known your boat for 15 years!” one exclaimed. “George is a very good friend of ours,” said the other.

As I rounded Ingleside Point, on the north shore of Corpus Christi Bay, the VHF sparked to life: “Equanimity, Equanimity, Equanimity …. This is Phoenix at Bahia Marina.”

“Where are you?” Scott, Phoenix’s skipper, asked. When I told him, he replied: “You’re about 15 minutes out ….” And gave me explicit instructions for piloting the channel into the marina.

It was the first time I’d ever heard of either Scott or Phoenix.
On the way in, another voice called from the dark channel bulkhead: “Ever been in here before?”

“The boat has, the skipper has, but never together,” I replied, laughing.

Once at our assigned slip, a crowd of sailors were on-hand to catch dock lines and make Equanimity fast.

Not too long ago, a long-time Bahia Marina resident stopped by and introduced himself. He, too, had sailed on my boat in years past. I invited him on board and showed him the work in progress. I told him of my early frustrations in the boatyard – the unpleasant surprises along the way.

Then I told him it was okay, I felt like I was earning the right to own my boat – earning my Equanimity.

“She’s everybody’s sweetheart,” he said. “Everyone around here loves this boat.”

Good old boats are like that, I guess. One person signs the check and holds the title, but that only gives the erstwhile captain the privilege of having the primary relationship; there are others, a whole network of sailors and dock walkers and friends and family.

Honestly, I feel like I belong to the boat rather than vice-versa. Around the marina I’m known as “the guy who bought Equanimity,” “the fellow who bought George’s old boat,” and – probably – “the youngest owner ever” of this 40-year-old plastic classic.

Already she has gained for me frequent admiring looks, several party invitations and more than one new friend.

George, who held Equanimity in trust for more than half her life, is one of the nicest guys you’d ever care to talk to.

That’s what everyone says and, judging by the number of friends and the kinds of stories they tell over adult beverages at dockside, I believe it.

Approaching 90, his very first words to me – in a gravelly cadence -- were: “So, I hear you have my mistress. She’ll steal your heart and pick your pocket …”

How long a properly maintained fiberglass boat can last is still an open question. As Equanimity approaches the half-century mark, I’m pretty sure she’ll outlast me.

Someday my trusteeship of the old girl will pass into someone else’s hands.

I can only hope it will be with half as many fond memories and as much goodwill as when I first came to know the boat that – around here at least – is everybody’s sweetheart.