Cruise Story—Gold: Points of Sail
by Laura Carmen Arena
Running
Wind shifts. Running out the door in the cool morning light, I catch sight of the flowing Chinese calligraphy from the I Ching that hangs as an augur. The characters are fluid and breezy and hint at the ephemeral nature of life. I’m somewhat jolted by this reminder of the unexpected changes these past few weeks and the need to adjust to sudden losses: a life, a friendship, a love have disappeared. Saddened, I want to reflect, to run as far away as I can in order to grieve. Maybe this is why I signed up for this sail to a harbor island with primitive camping conditions. But there’s not much time to dwell on motives as I realize I might just miss the boat. I will soon leave the shore, pushed by the wind and a desire to escape the city, head for the sea and an island at the farthest end of the Boston harbor.
While on the Red Line subway, with tent and sleeping bag and a sleepy mood from a restless night, I realize, half-awake, that I am momentarily to be on one of the boats that have graced many an ad for services, from ESL classes to dental implants. Almost surreally, I will find myself within the nearly quintessential foreground of the frequently photographed bright Boston landscape, with Duck boats quacking nearby. As I get out of the MGH stop and the brisk river air brushes against my face, I recall the fickle nature of the wind in Boston with a reputation of being among the most changeable and unpredictable. Any seasoned member of CBI, Community Boating, Incorporated, will tell you that the Charles River, with its widest point at the Esplanade between the Longfellow and Mass. Ave bridges, is an ideal location to learn sailing and improve technique, despite the lack of natural tidal currents cut off by the locks that separate the river from the harbor. Theories abound as to why the wind is so particular here, but the wind will shift in the blink of an eye and a green flag can turn to a red flag, with the potential of capsizing, in a second. Like a Zen monk returning to the movement of the breath despite distractions, the aspiring navigator quickly learns that one’s sight can’t stray too far from the tell-tales and the waters that mark the wind’s movements, always ready to adjust the sails, and the course, accordingly.
The harbor trip committee has been planning this overnight trip for months and more intensely so this week. Food for the trip has been purchased at Costco and a detailed menu for every meal has been prepared; safety checks on the boats have taken place, the launch motor has been repaired, and each of the Rhodes 19 sailboats has been appointed a skipper. This morning, as containers heavy with frozen berries and eggs and sausages and bread and sodas and juices, and paper towels and knife sets and water, and condiments and gas grills and more water, and cakes and first aid kits and bug spray and sun block, are carried to the dock to be placed in the launch, there is talk of the morning’s scandala body washed ashore just minutes ago. Probably floated in with the current from upstream! Some of us recoil at the thought of the anonymous floating body, a sad ending to an unknown story. For others, trying to make light of the tragedy, this is a fresh though gruesome mystery about the Charles and the city’s underbelly and perhaps a setting for a good story to be told by the campfire later in the evening.
The six skippers, two women and four men, spanning a few generations from college kids to retirees, gather with the launch driver, a computer science major at Northwestern for nine months of the year. The radios, NOAA charts (in oversized zip bags) and daily tide schedules are handed out. The group carefully looks at the map to figure out the best route for the fleet based on the tides and wind conditions. It’s determined that we’ll sail quickly, with a gentle northeasterly wind, at 5 to 8 knots, as well as the benefit of a high tide.
The launch will tow us past the locks to the place where the river meets the sea. There, we’ll unfurl and proceed through the inner harbor, take the President’s Channel and rendezvous by green marker 11, sail under the Long Island Bridge, and take the West Gut to the island. There is some possibility of thunderstorms, so a double check-in with Fraser, the launch driver, seems reasonable. After the bridge, we will check in one last time near day marker 5 before heading out to the fleet’s destination, Bumpkin Island.
Looking at the chart, I see that the island is shaped like a teardrop that has been stretched out on the rounded side to a slight point. It has a long and very shallow tidal area, and slopes upwards in the middle to the highest elevation at 70 feet. It seems a location far away and unknown, which is just where I want to be. Pointing to our destination on the chart, Meryl Jacobson, a high school Spanish teacher and ski instructor, who is the head of the Harbor trip committee, reminds the group that, when anchoring at Bumpkin, we’ll need to stay to the right of the dock, where the small rocks and sandy soil will make a better spot for securing the boats and prevent running aground.
After one last check of their radio frequencies, the skippers go to meet their crews, and start to prepare the specially equipped Rhodes, now tied one behind the other to the dock. The Rhodes 19 was designed by Philip L. Rhodes, a major figure in sailboat design from 1920 to 1970. The craft is known for its stability, speed, and relative comfort. A current advertisement for the boat extols its popularity for both cruising and racing, the two main uses for boats at CBI, through its educational mission:
“The classically styled Rhodes 19, available in fixed keel and fully retractable centerboard models, is the ideal family daysailer and spirited one-design class racer. She’s an accomplished heavy-weather performer built upon a fast and forgiving hull. Forty years and 3500 hulls have proven her design, construction, and sailing character to beginning and experienced sailors alike.”
The Rhodes is very hard to capsize, and ideal for the 3 to 5 passengers that will make up the crew of each boat. Most importantly for the CBI fleet, the mast can be custom designed. With a mast height of 27 feet and 10 inches, it cannot clear the low arches of the Longfellow Bridge. The club’s maintenance crew cuts across the mast and places a hinge so that it can be angled downwards temporarily to clear the bridge, and then fully upright again, sturdily locked for sailing.
We join Thomas, our skipper, who is in a good mood as he asks us to help ready the boat, tossing our gear (sleeping bags, tents, water and food for lunch en route, dry sacks, bags wrapped in heavy duty plastic bags, life jackets, first aid kits, mainsail and jib, sheets and bridles, anchor and tool bags), and figuring out how we will divide the tasks of taking down the 27 foot mast. There are four of us, with Thomas. He takes the forestay, which requires the most strength; I am at the mast, making sure it stays in place as it drops down; Boris goes below deck first to loosen the base, and Margaret prepares to catch the mast with Boris, placing it in the holder and taking care that the shrouds are not tangled and the loosened mainstay remains in the boat.
Among all the crews, there’s still some buzz over the quickly spreading rumor of the body that washed ashore (”there was blood flowing into the water; the face was covered in gauze; it had to have washed up from another part of the river; the police quickly came to the scene; it was out by the Esplanade.”) But we have little time for talking, and need to get the boats ready for the tow to the locks.
***
Reaching
CBI’s Emersonian mission, to “use sailing as a vehicle to empower its members to develop independence and self-confidence, improve communication, foster teamwork, and acquire a deeper understanding of community spirit and the power of volunteerism” seems already to be at practice. With the skipper’s careful directions (it helps he’s a German engineer!), the mast comes down fairly easily. I am impressed by everyone’s ability to work together: Boris’s agility at loosening the bolts under the deck, Margaret’s overall knowledge of the parts of the sailboat, and my own strength in balancing the mast by counterbalancing with my body’s weight until it is lowered to Boris, using more arm strength than I estimated I had.
Once the other boats are ready, and all are tied in tow, the launch slowly begins to ferry us away from the CBI dock. We greet the Duck tour boats passing in the opposite direction under the Longfellow Bridge. We will be in the harbor once we pass through the locks.
We get a privileged view few ever see. As we signal to the lockkeeper, we circle as we wait, under Boston’s own Calatrava marvel, the Zakim Bridge, viewing the slick cement and steel exoskeleton construction from below. Drivers in cars zoom above us, oblivious to the play of the bridge’s form on the water, with carefully designed diamond openings letting light through the shadow to the rippling water’s surface.
We continue past the old cement locks towards the new ones, supposedly more efficient and under constant surveillance from the overpass above. The launch sounds the horn again. We wait for the lockkeeper’s signal to enter. In a few minutes, the first set of heavy iron gates slowly opens and we enter the narrow channel, carefully preparing the boats with fenders to prevent denting the hulls. We use hooks and our hands to catch the large soggy ropes that drape from the sides of the canal in order to pull ourselves slowly forward. Coordinated teamwork will prevent a mishap, such as a shroud caught in the rails above the locks, or the walls of the canal scraping the mast. Whoever is at the tiller will also need to be careful to steer the boat close enough to the ropes but not too close so as to endanger the masts, or the other boats still tied to us, that might also become entangled.
With their confined space, water soaked wood barriers, overhanging ropes, mossy and somewhat briny walls, the locks have an anachronistic, mythical quality. A weathered white mosaic panel marks the water level changes in feet. We watch the level quickly drop as the second set of gates is opened for our entry into the sea. With a light jolt, the launch takes us out of the river to the inner harbor. We quickly untie the boats, unfurl the sails and head out with a pleasant sturdy wind.
“Your jib is backwards!” Boat 3’s skipper yells to us. We are incredulous but Daniel’s’ sharp eye is right, it is upside down. We may be powered and empowered by the wind but we are still learning. Margaret jumps to the front to remedy our mishap. Soon we are sailing again with the rest of the fleet, and viewing Boston from the water as thousands of navigators and immigrants who first set eyes on the city might have seen it. Ships from various centuries of marine activity are docked in the inner harbor, and we glimpse the way Charlestown, Boston, Cambridge and East Boston are connected via waterways. There is much activity on the water: large ships, small vessels, motorboats, yawls and yachts, the coast guard and harbor police, as well as an occasional intrepid kayaker. Swiftly advancing, we adhere carefully to right of way rules, following the nautical chart, looking for markers to keep to our course.
Close Hauled (beating)
“On the Charles, you can learn a lot but you are still in a confined areathe harbor trips are a great opportunity to feel a little more adventure, look across the horizon and just see water!” Charlie Zeckel, the affable and enthusiastic Executive Director of CBI sees Harbor trips as critical parts of the learning curve for both the children’s and the adult’s programs. While the programs could exist solely as sailing classes on the Charlesand the wind is challenging enough for good sailing to be honed in the riverthere’s a sense of the spirit of adventure that can only take place on the harbor, where there is definitely more risk. By the Charles, if there’s a thunderstorm, the boats can quickly be pulled in by a launch. Out on the harbor there is more uncertainty “and that’s the definition of adventure. If you eliminate all risk, you might as well stay home and go on the internet!” At the same time, the trips on the harbor encourage thinking more carefully about safety, one’s own and the group’s. And there’s the need to learn to get along, since you will be sharing many hours on a boat with your crewmates, and perhaps a few days on an overnight trip.
Still, Charlie explains, by having the launch accompany the fleet, there’s always a safety net of sorts, a kind of managed risk-taking. It’s an opportunity to face issues unique to navigation: the possibility of running aground, the traffic in the channels, interpreting charts and identifying markers and buoys. Since CBI has both an adult’s and a children’s program, for the children, “there’s the excitement for a Huck Finn-type adventure: capsizing, finding hidden treasure, finding a secret cave, getting out of a close call with another ship.” Charlie’s own excitement in describing the details with a child’s glee explains perhaps why he is so devoted to the club. Notably, a child from 10 to 18 years of age can have sailing lessons, and a highly enriching summer activity, for $1 for the entire summer, fulfilling the clear goal of providing “the advancement of sailing for all and minimizing economic and physical obstacles to sailing.” It is clear from talking to Charlie that he believes adventures, too, should be available for all. “Boats have run aground for thousands of centuries!” he tells me with an excitedly optimistic outlook at a seeming disaster that is, in his eyes, an opportunity for a memorable connection to history and community spirit.
One of the curious aspects of CBI harbor trips is the way random strangers are placed in a small boat together and soon share much about their lives. Although unknown to each other when we boarded our boat, as Thomas, Margaret, Boris and I make our way through the inner harbor, our personalities start to become apparent at least on the immediate surface. Boris, a Russian post doc doing research in hematology, is taciturn, with an occasional sardonic smile, and sharp humor. Margaret, from Poland, also a post doc in biomedical research, is outgoing and talkative. Thomas, the engineer, is our skipper and succeeds in communicating effectively; I am more quiet than usual (especially for an Argentinean!), enjoying the movement on the waves and the growing distance from the city. I recall a friend wistfully saying one day he will sail past all markers in the harbor. I don’t think I want that yet, so I am happy to be watching the water and land views, feeling the saltwater occasionally spraying our boat, and listening to the sounds of this marginal space: gulls, motorboats and their wake, announcements from docks, bells in buoys, the crash of a wave against a boat, jets overhead, the humming from the high speed catamarans.
Margaret and Thomas seem to be developing a special rapport, perhaps because Margaret can speak German, too. They decide that we should try to go “wing on wing” which they translate from the German as “butterfly.” It is an apt description for the look of the boat with the sails in opposite direction, which can be done with the wind behind us. We take turns holding the jib against the sidestay, trying to catch as much of the wind as possible. Boris seems amused and finds a way to hold the jib with his feet so that he can lie back and still soak some sun.
We stay our course through the busy channel between the city and the airport, leaving the tall honey and brick colored commercial buildings of the downtown Boston skyline. Reaching past the hundreds of multicolored shipping containers and huge blue cranes that mark the peripheral edges of the city, we chart our way towards the Long Island Bridge and the gently sloping hills of the islands that rise out of the ruffled sea in the outer harbor.
***
In Stays
The harbor islands have a rather understated though significant history in the colonialization of Boston. Now grouped together with the somewhat uncoordinated and contested oversight of the Friends of the Harbor Islands, and the Department of Conservation and Recreation, they have in turn served as seasonal habitats for native Americans, leased farm land for early colonial settlers, remote homes for squatters, hospitals for veterans and children, prisons during the civil war, WWI and WW2, and training grounds for the U.S. Navy. They never figured in the tourism and recreational industry that burgeoned in New England with the rise of the industrial revolution. A map of 1882 shows recreational ferryboat passages throughout the harbor, but the islands are merely obstacles on the routes to developing tourist spots such as the Vineyard and Nantasket beach. Another map from the 1800s, commissioned for the Hull Yacht Club, one of the first sporting clubs formed when sailing became a pastime for the newly prosperous, shows four major regatta routes from Hull. The ships were to travel around the islands, which served merely as part of a seafaring obstacle course, and return to the mainland.
There has been little awareness of the islands as a part of Boston’s history and the harbor’s natural resources. No longer used for institutional purposes, with little state funding for site and program development, they remain an underutilized recreational set of jewels.
***
Like its close neighbor Grape Island, Bumpkin is made up of a drumlin, with slate and shell beaches and native berries. Unlike Grape, the island figures in the earliest mappings of the Boston Harbor, with the spelling alternating between Pumpkin and Bumpkin. Much like its closest neighbor, it is covered with sumac and berry bushes (raspberries, blackberries, dewberries and bay berries predominate) but also with fragrant flowers: honeysuckle, jewel weed, milkweed, and salt-spray rose. Unlike Grape, it is also dotted with tall trees, yew, birch and red cedar, as well pear and apple trees, most likely planted when the hospital was built by the philanthropist who leased the island from Harvard University for 500 years (it is unclear how Harvard got the island in the first place). The tidal flats on the western side can be walked across to the mainland under the right lunar conditions.
Bumpkin is lush, fragrant, and with a gentle breeze butterflies make their away around the various flower and berry bushes. The CBI fleet is assigned the large picnic area, with excellent views of Boston and Quincy harbors, and sailboats swishing by in the buoyant blue waters. The group forms a circle of tents at the site. I set up my tent in some dry puffy grass, thinking that this might make a soft ground cover. Boris sets his next to mine, and Thomas and Margaret choose another spot downhill. This is primitive camping and there are no frills. But the views are spectacular and one can see the city in the hazy distance, a small collection of recognizable skyline shapes in the distant horizon. Our crew prepares the early evening snack. Most soon take the main island walkway to find the island’s one amenity: the self-composting port-o-potty. A rather stylish pagoda shaped structure; it is equipped with a solar panel for the ventilation system.
Without much discussion, the men set about the task of looking for wood for the evening’s bonfire. The women gather around the gas grill and picnic tables, beginning to prepare the evening’s meals. These divisions seem to happen unplanned, as if somehow the primitive conditions have us return to basic ancient choices in activity: men hunt, women prepare food. Thomas and Margaret head out for a sunset kayak run with the boats the launch driver, Fraser, had tied to the roof of the launch. A couple of groups form to walk around the island, touring the shore and the vistas available from every direction. We are all hungry and anxious for dinner.
I walk on my own to the ruins in the middle of the island. There are somewhere Native American middens and the oldest New England remains have been found on nearby Peddocks Island. There is a huge pile of yellow and red bricks with a plaque that marks the children’s hospital built in 1899 by Albert Cameron Burrage, a wealthy lawyer and copper magnate. The philanthropic founder’s desire was for crippled children to escape the foul inner city conditions and be healed by the clean air in this remote area. Burrage planned a series of paved walkways so that children in metal wheelchairs could be easily moved around the island hospital. Some years later, the government utilized the hospital as training camp for the Navy, and later a sick bay, until all was destroyed by fire in 1946. The original paths remain, and make their way to the shore. I descend to the beach and see an unusual black, rounded igneous-type rock among the grey and sandy shale. It is heavy for its size and quite unlike every other flat rock on the shore.
I make my way back to the camp in the twilight. Meryl placed bug repellent sticks by every tent, but we notice that there are no mosquitoesa rare situation by the water at this time of July. The dinner crew has prepared a feast and the scent is enticing: grilled chicken and peppers, sausage and onions and salad and some vegetarian food, too. The rangers come by to talk with us. There is discussion about the sea tow that had to be called in when one of the anchored boats drifted in the current and ran aground. It’s a tricky balance anchoring at just the right distance and with anticipation of the tides.
I ask the rangers about the rock I found on the stony beach. It is round and puckered like a meteorite. Could it be from outer space? One ranger thinks it might be volcanic, since the Blue Hills Reservation, not far on the mainland, was an active volcano thousands of years ago, and would have spewed this type of thing. The other ranger has a more recent explanation: the rock is actually a mineralized form of carbon that was used for heat by the island residents, probably soldiers or prisoners sixty to a hundred years ago. In any case, what I found was a remnant of the past, probably from deep in the earth. I had come to the island to escape a past, or at least to temporarily escape the ties to my own, and I had encountered another’s.
We stay talking at the campsite until it is quite dark, then walk with our flashlights on the paths to the beach, where the bonfire has been started. The tide is low and in the near darkness one could try to walk across to the mainland. Above us, the stars are a myriad of different intensities, fully alive and present. In the city, it is easy to forget the immensity that is out there above us, or the history that is beneath our feet. We have found both on the island.
***
How I wish
How I wish you were here now
We can see the red lights of the tower in Hull reflected like soft pastels on the still water, a mirror with a soft focus coating. Boris stares intently at the fire and I think he’s practicing a kind of esoteric meditation with his cross legged posture and fixed pupils. Thomas begins to play Pink Floyd with nuanced precision, singing softly in his slight German accented English.
We are all quiet as we listen to Thomas, gazing out at the sky with our backs on the shells that form the crescent beach and the water so calm in front of us. It has been quite a dayCharlie would be right calling it an adventure: a body in the Charles, a boat run aground, an upside down jib, an exhausting sail, an island found in New England in July with no mosquitoes.
So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
The familiar lyrics resonated in a fresh manner, as if I had heard them tonight for the first time. Was it Thomas’ s accent? Or the brush with so many layers of history on the island?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Had we found comfort in the dance of the butterflies, the talk over dinner with the crickets’ pulsating song in the background, in the sounds of the harbor or the walk among the ruins?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
There was a lot still to reconcile.
Wish you were here. With the soft glow of the harbor lights not far away, on this island once a haven for sick children, war veterans, and before that farmers and native Americans, all looking for food and maybe respite and pleasure among the shallow sea and the gentle vegetation, the quiet of memories like the subtle summer haze envelopes us, the way the sound of the crickets fills the warm night air. When Thomas finishes singing, we continue to linger with the flickering embers, our eyes touching upon the water between us and the mainland, breathing out to the remote stillness of the evening, our night on the island before we pack up to return to land.
