Dorothy Elizabeth : building a traditional wooden schooner by Duncan Roger F

Author:Duncan, Roger F
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Dorothy Elizabeth (Schooner), Dorothy Elizabeth (Schooner), Schooners, Ships, Wooden, Schooners, Ships, Wooden
Publisher: New York : W.W. Norton
Published: 2000-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Roger S. Duncan

EASTWARD

Eastward

DOROTHY ELIZABETH

was stately. She was regal. She was magnificent. A photograph, even a movie, cannot convey the whole scene: the feel of the wind, the smell of rockweed, the vessel moving, alive, through living water in a living world of trees, rocks, islands, among gulls and seals and terns. The bone in her teeth is not a frozen patch of white on paper but a foaming wave ever renewed under her bow, ever flowing back along her side. I choked down the thrill to coach Alec soundlessly as he brought her alongside the float.

“Too fast! Too fast! Swing her off and try again.” Alec agreed, I guess, because that is what he did.

“Again too fast.” But this time, as she swung by close to the float, the mainsheet, hanging slack, caught the bitt on the corner of the float and fetched her up all standing. Bob on the foredeck got a line ashore. Nothing parted and all was well. Thus we learn at every age.

I had other chances to watch Eastward under way during the summer, but never again was I so moved. In August, when my medical advisor allowed me to sail at last, I made my walker way determinedly down the steep path to the wharf without even thinking how I was to get up again; and helped by Bob and Alec, got aboard. Everything was just as it always had been. The reef points pattered on the mainsail; the jaws of the boom squeaked on the mast. We cast off. Bob hoisted the staysail as he always had. But it was different, for I was a passenger. I was watching, not doing. Alec at the wheel trimmed the mainsheet and bore off, intent on not running down the peapod bobbing at the mooring. I was soon given the wheel, and again it felt perfecdy natural, just as it always had. The littlest tremble in the luff of the mainsail flattening out into a full sail, bubbles going by the lee rail, sound of wind in taut wire, taut rope, taut canvas. It was breathlessly familiar, yet so different. I had been ashore so long. It wasn’t my boat. I didn’t even have a boat except the idea of a

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