For much of my life, sailing has been my escape and much of it has been in my imagination only. To escape a bit each day from the terrible news and world wide suffering, I try to accomplish small things, like repairing my nearly fifty year-old sailboat.

I first encountered Baby Ruth as I was driving home from work–a beautiful stretch of Georgia Highway 108 through the foothills of the Appalachians. I had done this thousands of times and was unprepared for the mirage that appeared ahead. She was standing beside the road with two guys holding a sign. It was not a tempting sight, but -what the heck. When I got out to check her out, I realized she was the genuine article, a real classic.

Baby Ruth was born in 1971 in Bangor, Maine. Her lines were lovely and her makeup, while a bit washed out by too much sunlight, was a striking contrast of red and cream confection. She was sitting on a trailer that had likely been her daily home for most of her years. But when I checked her luggage, I discovered her sails were in great shape. That’s right, she is a sailboat and I bought her twenty years ago. She is a twelve-footer and her class of baots was dubbed “Widgeon” (after the duck) by the O’Day Company that built her and another three or four thousand just like her.

Even when I bought her on the roadside in 2000, it had been almost twenty years since I had sailed. It was an impulsive thing to do. But there is art and science, a need for something like perfection in the building and sailing of boats, and it little matters her length or how many square feet of sail she carries. “Pretty is as pretty does,” my mother always said, and Baby Ruth is just that – pretty.

I confess that I have begun her restoration several times over the past twenty years. But, work always seemed to override my romantic hopes. She waited patiently for those rare spring days when she drew me back to her and I would haul her out onto the driveway and clean her up, maybe even set up her rigging, mast, sails, rudder, the works. Now that I am retired, I will try again–in fact I spent yesterday and today scrubbing and bleaching away years of mildew stains and siphoning the rainwater out of her bilge. She came surprisingly clean, her finish a bit faded, but still an ardent red.

I have owned a far bigger boat and sailed even those that qualify as yachts. You know, those that have sleeping accommodations for six and require a small crew to sail them. I suppose most of us learn to sail by crewing for acquaintances who are wealthy or crazy enough to buy a boat that cost more than a starter home. My first sailing was done on an Irwin 23, one of the earliest and most popular of the fiberglass-hulled sail boats. Preston had named his boat “Snookie,” a not-so nautical name, but such is the whim of the average yacht owner: “keep ‘em guessing” seems to be the intent of name choice.  Preston was the nephew of Ty Cobb (yes, the famous baseball player).  Preston was a knowledgeable and cautious sailor and taught me much about sailing, as well as all the ways gin can be diluted and used as a stimulant, rain or shine.

My main job was to jump overboard and get the boat off the  mudflats when it got stuck in shallow water. Lake sailing can be like that. My first opportunity to do this came on the coldest day anyone would dream of going out in a boat. We ran aground and I striped down to my underwear and jumped in. Only my nose was above water as I stood pushing against the transom of the boat (that is the back end of the boat for you land lubbers). Gradually the boat slid away and was under sail again, while I was standing on the bottom recalling that after having seen a few alligators around this big lake, Preston had told me they hibernate on the bottom of the lake where temperatures are warmer. 

Preston for some reason did not haul in the sails and motor over, but “jibbed” several times (that means switching the sails and reversing course, again for the unenlightened). Finally, he struck the sails, motored to about seventy five feet away and tossed me a life preserver tied to the boat by a line (for some reason, sailors do not like the word rope, perhaps because then everyone would understand their secret lingo). I had to swim about fifty feet to grasp the white, horseshoe- shaped life preserver, after which Preston dropped a rope ladder over the stern (this word also means the back end of the boat)  and helped me climb aboard. He was wearing a smart windbreaker over a wool sweater, while I was stark naked. It was all I could do to creep down into the cabin and try to dry myself off with anything I could lay my hands on. Paper towels were deployed along with a pair of athletic socks. Did I mention, yachts seldom have heaters. It would be a sign of weakness for these hearty men of the sea.

Preston anchored and filled a paper cup almost to the brim with gin and I drank without protest-although words were beginning to form in my mind, words that might have reframed our friendship. But I was too darn cold to do more than shiver and grunt. Preston with his usual sangfroid, simply headed “Snookie”” back toward the marina. We had been the only boat out that day.

During the outings that followed , which continued despite the apparent disregard in which Preston held the safety and health of his crew, my skills grew and I was allowed to scrub the bottom (using a stiff long- handle brush standing in five feet of water), raise the sails (235 square feet of them as I recall), carry gas cans to and fro, and occasionally steer the boat when there was not enough wind to make way against the current, wash the deck at the end of each sail and  practice my dockside etiquette on the other members of the yachting set. Then came summer.

Sailing in one-hundred-degree weather is only fun if the wind is piping up or there is a light rain shower. So as soon as the usual morning sun turned angrily hot, everyone from the marina would tie up together so the kids could swim, the adults could sunbathe or crack open a beer and Preston could spend his time appreciating the latest swimsuit fashions. Entranced as I was by the rapture of the deep (actually the term comes from the euphoria accompanying the onset of the bends if a sailor dives too deep and comes up too fast), I spent my time memorizing the ads and romantic adventures that graced the pages of Yachting and Sail Magazines.  I knew by heart every boat building firm and the dimensions and brand names of each model. This might be called retrogression-I had compiled a similar mental catalog of automobiles as a teenager.

But that was then. Now I have my very own collection of Good Old Boat Magazines. I treasure my old editions as if they were comic books or Playboy Magazines from my adolescent years. The editors are dedicated to the principle that plastic never dies–or in their terms, “fiberglass is forever.” They tell of derelict yachts resurrected by inveterate do-it-yourself yachtsmen and yachtswomen who often replace everything on the boat except the hull.  Boats that were new forty or fifty years ago live again, are new again, thanks to the loving devotion of determined enthusiasts, many of whom seem to be retired yacht designers. Their names once graced the sporting pages of New England or Great Lakes newspapers or the latest yachting magazines. Now they spend their time explaining all the ratios and formulas that determine a boat’s speed, describing the perfect flow of water and wind over the hearts and souls of sailors, enticing anyone who has ever held a tiller in their hand or sheeted in a mainsail at the start of a race to bring the sailing dreams of their youth back to life.

So where does Baby Ruth get her name? In her red-and-white paint, she looks like my favorite candy bar which is also the name of my favorite baseball legend. And, it keeps ‘em guessing.

We are all homebound and hopefully with at least a few loved ones nearby. Watching the news only makes you crazy and enough with the Netflix binging. Its not difficult to maintain social distancing when you are outside so there are neighbors to speak to—loudly, if necessary. Start that journal you often said you would start-your grandkids will treasure your memories.

My coping device is texting family members photos of nature, usually flowers from our spring garden. But this is going to be a long stop/pause in our lives, so take on a project you have always hoped to or wanted to accomplish. The resurrection of Baby Ruth has been my choice. It is something positive to think about and that I can accomplish. If it is nighttime  or raining I am learning new ways to get at the historical documentation for my study of newspaper editor and publisher Thomas W. Loyless, a fearless enemy of bigotry who took on the Ku Klux Klan and helped to inspire and create the Warm Springs polio rehabilitation center in the last two years of an already full life. It’s the kind of story that John F. Kennedy labeled “Profiles in Courage.” Kennedy was a sailor-in fact a naval war hero-and always seemed happiest when out sailing his old Friendship type sailboat, gaff -rigged and  antique in appearance, it betrayed, I thought as did many photojournalists, Kennedy’s love for life and the sea.