fall

Those of you who live in perpetually warm places will not understand, but this is the bittersweet time in more northern latitudes. Our days get short and the weather becomes unpredictable--or maybe I should say, _good_ weather becomes unpredictable and rare. I haven't sailed the Cal 20 in maybe 10 days by reason of rain and high winds (except, of course, when I am at work). So last night I decided that the clouds were not serious and went sailing. It was a lovely evening with perhaps a 10-12 knot breeze from the NW, which let me reach back and forth across our bay. The air temp was warm enough for shorts but I had a long-sleeved T shirt and a fleece on top. There were two schooners out and three yachts. After an hour, it was me and the two schooners. I was sailing faster than the traditional schooner that I crew on, and had to alter course under the gross tonnage rule to yield to the steel tourist schooner that I teach on in the spring. By the time I headed back in, just after the sun dropped behind the Leelanau Peninsula, the sky had its common fall look--mostly low clouds, some patches of clear sky, and the sun was reflecting off the clouds' sides as it set in the west. In short, it was a perfect evening, marred only by the nagging awareness that I'll be hauling the boat for the season in a week or two. It's hard to avoid sadness. The traditional schooner was sailing along under main, fore, staysail, and jib, but--horrors!--she had a fender overboard. One of my first boating lessons from Dad was that you _never_ proceed with fenders hanging overboard. It was almost as important as keeping the water outside the boat. I sailed over, demonstrating my little boat's speed, and advised the captain that things were awry. But after an hour the sun was going down, the other schooner had her running lights on, and it was time to pick up the mooring. This is always fun, because the mooring lies right off a popular local waterfront restaurant. I'm never sure if sailors are sitting there, but the chances are good, so it is a challenge to hit the mooring just right and get the mainsail down before the boat or her captain do something embarrassing. We did it right. I had court today. The judge said he has a mooring near mine that sits unused and boats that he does not sail for lack of time. I am so grateful to have my cool boat and the time to sail her regularly. Thanks to Google and Wikipedia, I know that "Ars longa, vita brevis" is from Hippocrates (art is long, life is short). When you finally discover that you have become mature, a fancy word for old, the shortness concept is comprehensible in a way it was not when I was 30. It's a good reason to make time for sailing a cool boat on lovely fall evenings. Chris Campbell