Boating season came to an end this week for me with a whimper, as the crew at Harbor Marina lifted Zygote from the water and set it on blocks on shore. The sad truth is that it had been at least a month since I had taken the boat out for a spin in Three Mile Harbor. In the meantime, scum developed along the waterline and seaweed grew from its idle bottom.
In my imagination the year was not going to be like this.
At this time last year, I dwelled in dreams of cruising to Block Island and farther aboard the sailboat I had been restoring. Cerberus was ashore at a yard in Connecticut to await a new diesel engine. The engine did not arrive until August. While I tried to get it ready in time, installation had to wait while a metal shop made a new, custom propeller shaft. It was too late for the 2024 season when the shaft was ready; the yard workers who would have done the work were busy putting shrink wrap on other boats.
In spite of it all, I did manage to get on the water in the early fall. My oldest friend, Mike Light, had come east with sailing in mind, so we dusted off a Force 5 dinghy that last saw heavy action in the 1990s in the Hudson River. The one-person Force 5s are like a slightly larger version of the more familiar Lasers raced in the Olympics. Mike and I launched the thing in Gardiner’s Bay and sailed from the last week of September until the middle of November.
Other than a scant few workboats in the distance, Mike or I would be alone on the bay. Of course we wore lifejackets and wetsuits. Had one of us flipped the boat and been unable to right it, help would have been a long boat ride away, that is, if we were able to alert Marine Patrol. Mike had a cellphone in a pouch around his neck; I did without that precaution.
Fall stayed warm late this year as we took turns tearing across toward the Bell Estate. We were kings of the bay on those days, and I would forget how the year had not turned out at all as I planned.