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Eddie Jones 's column that's sort of about boats...

February, 2007

Lindy hauled her tools to the Marsh Harbour Marina in the bow of a gray inflatable. Her husband, Howard, guided the dinghy down a row of boats berthed bow in, stern out, and slowed when he reached the floating dinghy dock in front of the Jib Room. Our crew, the men from the Bones Away, waved and then hurried to help. I followed, rolling the damaged headsail up the dock in a green plastic cart that was too small for the large headsail. I was trying not to walk off the dock. The water in the Abacos is inviting, even in a marina. It’s especially inviting when you’ve been away ten years.

Lindy was blond, early forties, trim in the right places, robust in others. She had the good Brit accent of a cultured lady from Mayfair, her face the dark brown tan of a full time cruiser. Cheeks and neck smooth. She wore a white cotton, tank top, wide straw hat and knee length khaki shorts. She draped a jacket across her knees to keep the bow spray off her legs. The dinghy docked.

A female cruiser seems to get even more free advice

The men of the Bones Away crowded around, arms extended, hands thrust forward, anxious to help Lindy lift her tool from the dinghy. It was a few days before Christmas, the time for doing good deeds. A season for helping old ladies across the street, giving to charity, reaching out to those in need. Lindy would have needed octopus arms to accept all the helping hands reaching down to pull her up.

She set her tool on the dock and stepped ashore. Howard, her husband, promised not to leave her too long with the pack of males. He warned he’d return in a few minutes. Then he motored back to their sailboat that was anchored a couple hundred yards off the fuel docks.

Lindy and that important cruiser’s tool – the sewing machine.

I rolled the sail inside the Jib Room, bumping a pair of rubber wheels over a cement threshold. Jason, the dock master and bar tender, told me to turn around and take it back out. That lunch was about to be served and he didn’t want us performing surgery on his dining room tables. I said I was sorry and that, you know, it being called the Jib Room and all that I thought this is where they wanted the sail. That I was just driving the dock cart and doing as I’d been told. I’d been told a lot of things lately.

I’d been told to pack lots of warm clothes for our December passage from Beaufort to the Bahamas. I’d been told to plan for a rough ride and long, cold watches at the helm. I’d been told that only a fool sails offshore in December and that the five of us probably wouldn’t be friends when we made landfall.

I told Jason I was sorry. Then I backed my rig out of his restaurant and rolled it around the corner. I parked it beside the picnic table Jason and his staff had used the night before to cook ribs. Lindy went to work.

It was a minor operation, a small tear in the leach or luff or clew—I can never keep the sides of a sail straight. The injured edge was on the part of the sail that slaps the spreaders. It had spanked the spreader too hard.

I’d noticed the rip our second night out, Sunday, as we entered the Gulf Stream. The constant rolling and light winds caused the sail to catch on the spreader every few waves. We motor sailed, trying to get across the Stream. We were a little east and south of Frying Pan Shoals, moving along at 7 knots under clear skies. The dull smudge of light pollution over the Brunswick beaches began to fade. The forecast called for the wind to go out of the northeast on Tuesday, 20 to 25 knots. By Wednesday it would grow into a gale. We needed to be tucked in safe and tight by then and so a little after noon on Tuesday we sailed passed the Whale and found a berth in Marsh Harbour Marina.

Now we were boat mending. Fixing a two feet tear in the headsail. Disassembling a faulty steaming light before ordering a part. Mopping up oil in the engine room. Performing a post mortem on our passage as strong winds rattled the halyards.

Lindy didn’t need any help lifting her tool onto the picnic table. She was strong and competent and anxious to test her new sewing machine on a live patient. Howard had given her the Sailrite Professional as an early Christmas present. She threaded the bobber and went to work.

Back home, in the caustic culture of America with its constant battles over stereotypes and changing roles and equality among genders, a woman might take offense at such a ‘50’s gift, but in the cruising climate where mending a sail can be a crucial repair, a sewing machine is the perfect present. Howard and Lindy needed a new tool for their boat home, needed each other and needed the seamless spirit of communion that comes when a couple cruises as one. Lindy didn’t want jewels and dresses, she wanted Howard’s heart. And she wanted to keep cruising. Howard had said; “I Love You” the best way he knew how. He’d given Lindy a sewing machine.

I bought Bennie a tee shirt from Nipper’s Bar on Guana Cay and wished I could have given her the whole beach.

This month marks the beginning of a new year, a time for renewed commitments and resolutions. My resolution this year is to be the kind of husband to my wife that Howard is to Lindy. To kiss Bennie’s cheek more often, to hold her hand as we walk down the dock and to say “I Love You” with something other than the dull indifference of a bedtime exchange. To be the husband I’m not, but should be. Perhaps, if I’d been that sort of husband the first 25 years of our marriage I could have watched with pride as Bennie stitched the leech of a head sail on an island in the Bahamas.

Perhaps I will, yet.