The Mooring

There's a lot to say about yesterday, which turned into an all-day affair. A happy affair, really. But I don't feel like talking about it just now; I think I need to turn things over a bit more.

We held the reception following the service at the yacht club, and relatives and friends of the family kept asking me to point out my boat. I did so again and again but I was distracted by something. There was an eyesore of a boat, a bit, ugly, graceless powerboat with clumsy lines and a thick clunky canvas dodger, sitting on my grandparent's mooring. I'd noticed it on Tuesday night. Nobody knew whose it was. It bothered me to see it there. You just don't tie up to an empty mooring without asking. And this boat, well, it was really the ugliest one in the harbor.

As I watched I saw someone on board. They put out some fenders, one hanging too high, the other dangling too low. A woman poked haphazardly with a boathook at the mooring. And after some fooling around I was relieved to see them depart. It wasn't right to have a boat like that on that mooring. And I'd been planning to move my boat to that mooring; I'd told my grandfather I would, and had been looking forward to it both for sentimental and practical reasons. The reception felt better to me once I could look out at the anchorage without being distracted by that thing.

So a little later I went down to the dock in my dark suit and took off my fancy shoes, accompanied by some curious non-sailing guests, and we took the launch out to my boat and brought it over to my grandparents' mooring. And just as we approached who did we discover returning through the anchorage, approaching the mooring, but the Ugly Motorboat. I was sort of hoping they would come over and force an altercation, but the launch drivers waved them away and they skulked off to take someone else's unoccupied mooring instead. I tied up to the Fowler mooring.

I love seeing my boat there. It's a little thing but the geography of the anchorage has a meaning to me I probably can't explain. As a kid I grew up sailing little dinghies through a maze of moored boats, and the names on the moorings and the locations of the boats there literally gave me my bearings in the fog or the rain. I loved going past my grandparents' mooring, seeing Cadenza or Counterpoint or Firebird there, or seeing it empty or occupied by a visiting yacht and knowing my grandparents were off on a trip. When you know the boats within an anchorage, and the families who use those boats, each mooring has a story and a meaning attached to it.

I guess that's why some interloper in an ugly boat choosing to tie up to this mooring upset me. If they had asked us we probably would have said yes. Or I could have let him use the mooring I have further out. But they didn't ask, they don't know us. They have a really stupidly ugly boat. I want to step into that mooring space, to be the Fowler that people note is out sailing if they pass the mooring and it is empty. It's not just a place to tie up; to me it represents the legacy in my family of loving the water.

I expect this all sounds stupid. And I imagine it sounds impossibly yacht-y and snooty.

Comments

This entry reminds me that there is one more world that is entirely foreign to me, boating. Sailing, yachts, powerboats...these things make no sense to me. It's kind of interesting to hear about something so different, but something practiced by so many people. Skiing is another similar sport, but that's not quite as foreign to me.

[Alex]

I enjoyed your post about moorings. I had never really given much thought to their significance before, but having grown up sailing Optis and Bluejays through a similar mooring field at a yacht club on Long Island, I know exactly what you mean. I still remember the names of the boats--which often served as landmarks--and the locations of my uncle's Sonar and my grandparents' little motorboat. And of course there was the occasional really, really ugly boat too. :)

Anyway, I am relatively new to your blog--I discovered it through a link from my friend Jeremy Blachman's blog. As a fellow attorney, I have enjoyed reading it so far and look forward to future entries!

[pjm]

My family aren't really bumper-sticker people.

However, my parents' truck has one. It says, "Life is too short to own an ugly boat."

I wonder if boats are the primary reason so many people have massive SUVs, the bigger to tug them around with? I've noticed so many professional-looking urban dwellers who have giant vehicles, maybe boats is the reason why?

[Erik]

This is a brilliant little meditation - a version of conversations we've had on numerous occasions ourselves as we've sailed our old Pearson Triton around this part of Maine. Go U Bears.