OPPOSITE— Looking over the bow in calm conditions. ABOVE— Sunset on the North Channel with Mt. McBean visible. BELOW LEFT— My Force 5 resting in a reed bed.


carbon-fibre paddle strapped to the deck with a quick release bungee; a watertight container with spare tools and parts such as extra titanium goosenecks and wrenches to enable fixing a broken rig on the water. I thought of the possibility of success and the recklessness of failure. Although I push hard, it was too much to ask of my boat.


I hesitated that day and pushed the hull back onto the sand. Down came the mast and the promise of a brilliant day’s sail- ing. I peeled off my neoprene socks, shoes, jacket and pants and spent another night on the beach, listening to the wind tear into the treetops, stone, and water that I am mad to be in contact with. With the wind in my ears, it was all I could think about and as I driſted into sleep I recalled seeing strange and beautiful photographs of large stones moved by the wind in the desert. Alone in my dome tent that night and nursing my small


disappointments, I also thought of my father, a tough octoge- narian and still sailing. From a single blue-covered book, my father taught himself how to sail in the early 1960s. Perhaps, because he built his own wooden boats in the small garage behind our house, he treated them as fragile objects. Later he passed along his sailing knowledge and attitudes to me. In heavy winds, he didn’t push himself or his boats too much on the small, inland lakes. His last boat, a flaming orange scow called a Flipper, planed well in heavy air. On the windiest days, though, despite my pleading, the Flipper was always led back to the safety of the sand beach in front of our cottage before we had a chance to see what we and the boat could really do. Later, as a young teen, I attended sailing school in Hamil-


ton, Ontario with my older sister and experienced a similar philosophy of prudent retreat in the face of rising winds and choppy water. As a consequence, I never did find out what any


SMALL CRAFT ADVISOR 13


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