Love at first sight "Conversations II"

Of course we wanted her on first sight. To look at her at the dock, how could we say but yes to her beauty and her mute proposal of nuptials? Simply in her form and fashion there was a promise in her silent whisper “You will love me”.

And so we did. The very next day, I was drowning in the whirlwind of making arrangements to make her ours. It was an intense time. Within a week we had commissioned and completed a professional boat survey, taken her out of the water to check below the waterline, and labored many hours aboard her looking her over from stem to stern. Great sums of savings then changed hands in a blur of escrow paperwork, registered tonnage certificates and insurance. Then, finally I had my first sail. Not the timid sea trial of the pre-purchase survey with her ex-owner onboard, (how could she have every been owned by another!) but the first real sail, in a real blow, with enough sea room and wind to let her run as she can. Enough wind to blow clear the cobwebs of paperwork and to start breaking some gear. It was everything promised ….

……….As the breeze built, and the sun shone that day over the Golden Gate Bridge that day, we set off from the dock. I whispered a silent prayer “Now prove to me, my beauty, that you are what you say you are.” Even in the early morning’s faint whispers, before the real wind came up for the day, I saw she was, indeed, easily driven. She was well balanced, almost sailing herself, needing only the lightest touch on her helm. Then as the day built with the heat of the summer sun, the winds crowded in cold in from the Pacific, bracing, refreshing, and STRONG! I thought, “Now this will test our mettle”

Even In those first few moments, she reminded me what I had forgotten, but so longed for. She reminded me what it is like to be sailing on the wind in a fast boat that hunts with each puff for those few extra boat lengths to weather. She reminded me what it is like sail off the wind in a boat with a strong back and a big, powerful rig. For as the day built, I could feel her only waiting for me to turn her loose and then….. oh gawd…. there she went. So responsive, I could not help but whoop for joy to surf along under the press of her great main sail and jib drawing in the spray. Even though I feared I was holding her so hard to lee her steering cables would fail, she only went faster. And to my enduring exhilaration, we roared along, her bow wave back at the shrouds, chasing down wave after wave…….