The Romance of my First Overnight Cruise |
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The Romance of my First Overnight Cruise |
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The small sloop shuddered as she braced her shoulder against yet another of the deep swells which marched rhythmically to the steady, southeast wind. Sailing close-hauled on the starboard tack, her momentum was repeatedly interrupted by the rollers, and it took all my concentration to keep her as close as possible to the wind while maintaining enough speed to continue the uphill climb toward the island. If I could just keep from giving up too much leeway, I might still catch the eastern tip. It was hot, very hot. My wife, Shirley, lay curled up in the tiny cabin, trying to hypnotize herself out of the misery she was feeling, enduring once again circumstances for which she would have never volunteered except to share with me in the pursuit of my own illusive dreams. It seemed that we had been out there forever. At least two hours had passed before the island was even visible, then it seemed never to get any closer, as though the best course I could manage was parallel to it's long low silhouette. But, my compass assured me that there was enough southerly component to our progress. and we would reach the latitude of the island before passing it to the east.
The year was 1972, but it could be said that the voyage had originated some three years earlier on the opposite side of the globe. My imagination (having always tended toward things nautical) had been captured by an unobtrusive ad in a tattered copy of Boating magazine, picked up at a USO club in Vietnam. The picture showed an incredibly "shippy" looking little sailing yacht, driving through peaked and foaming seas as if she had been born to them. The salty looking gentleman at the tiller exuded an air of quiet, studied confidence, attesting to the sea worthiness of both him and his small craft. The brief text boasted of a 14-foot mini-cruiser with two six foot bunks in a full cabin. "Extremely stiff", the ad said, "She goes to weather well." Damn! What salty, sea-going verbiage! And the name - "West Wight Potter" - had just the right connotation of stiff British tradition for me to be hopelessly hooked.
I carried the magazine with me for weeks, re-studying the ad at every chance, and becoming in my reveries the man at the tiller, sailing to adventures unknown in my "stiff capable little cruiser". Finally, I carefully cut the ad from its worn page and mailed it home for safekeeping. I still have it, somewhere, complete with the note scrawled to Shirley to keep the ad until I returned home.
My love of boats was anything but new; but, although I had considerable experience with small craft, I had never sailed. Sailing had always fascinated me, but I had considered it to be intangible - something to be done by wealthy people in the northeast. Now, somehow, this West Wight Potter seemed to offer a possible bridge between that world and mine. I was absolutely determined to acquire my own sailboat.
So, when I finally returned home to freedom and a private life, I set out in earnest to find one. Each morning I poured over the "Boats and Motors" column in the classified ads of the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate. Sailboats were not a common item in Baton Rouge in those days, so when an ad for a 12-foot sloop finally appeared, it stood out boldly from those for bass boats, bateaus, and pirogues. I made a bank loan for the $250 asking price and purchased my first sailboat. She was a home built sailing pram, sloop rigged. As I proudly brought her home and practiced rigging her in my back yard, my neighbor wondered aloud whether I'd "be able to fish in that thing."
The pram allowed me to try in practice the wealth of material I had read about in various books and "how to sail" magazine articles. Meanwhile, I had written for information on the West Wight Potter, using the address from the original ad, thumb tacked to the bulletin board in our kitchen since my return. Now, with detailed brochures and promotional literature to fan my fantasies, and with the confidence gained from sailing the pram, I was more committed than ever to owning the Potter. I was ready to make the plunge. I got enough money from the pram for a 25% down payment, and the bank financed the balance. In the early spring of 1971, I placed an order with HMS Marine Corporation, of Inglewood, California, for West Wight Potter Number 426.
The factory was behind schedule due to various supply problems, and an eternity passed during which I was "without boat." I filled the time reading the print off my product brochures, and studying coastal charts and maps, dreaming of voyages I would make. The one that most captured my imagination was to Cat Island, in the Mississippi Sound. Just the thought of sailing to an actual island was as romantic adventure as I could imagine. Studying coastal chart no. 11372, "Dog Keys Pass to Waveland", I resolved upon the basin at Pass Christian as my favored point of departure. I had drawn numerous course lines between Pass Christian Harbor and Cat Island, and penciled their magnetic bearings on the chart. So it was that now, approaching the island at last, with all the preceding events tumbling in my mind, I knew that my course was within a sector which would permit me a landfall.
It had been at least three hours since the two separate grey blurs on the horizon revealed themselves to be in fact a single "L" shaped mass with a discernible lower edge of white sand and an upper band of green trees. Now, at last in the relatively sheltered waters of a bay formed by the "L", the small boat moved much more comforably, no longer having to struggle against the long, rolling swells of the open gulf. Features along the shore which had been indistinguishable, or which had been the subjects of curiosity, fantasy, or conjecture began to reveal themselves in their true identity. The head of a dragon was now actually three rotting pilings and a bent pipe. A giant cowboy boot was actually a cluster of pine trees on a knollwhich tappered to an elogated sand bar.
The boat glided ever more smoothly and quietly in the deminishing wind, shadowed now by the island and the trees. The water became shallower and clearer, the sandy bottom easily visible as it rapidly rose closer and closer from below, the beach and the trees now rushing toward the bow of the tiny boat. The boat staggered momentarily as the centerboard found bottom, then resumed her smooth glide as the board was lifted into its trunk. Small clouds of disturbed sand lifted in the diminishing water beneath the white hull. Suddenly and abruptly the boat slowed, its bottom crunching in wet sand. A crab darted out of the way as the bow finally came to rest against the white beach.
We had departed the municipal harbor at Pass Christian at noon on this hot Saturday in July. Now it was 6:00 p.m., and I had made my first landfall of my first cruise. The excitement of the moment was highlighted by the tranquillity and beauty of the pristine beach on which our vessel had come to rest, but it was also mixed with the feeling of relief to be able to stand again and walk on firm ground. The mainland, though clearly visible on the northern horizon, seemed an eternity away - not only in physical distance, but in time and space. It was the world we'd left behind, like the earth when seen from the moon by the Apollo astronauts. Their umbilical cord had been the Apollo spaceship. Ours was a diminutive sailboat resting on the beach, and seeming now incredibly small in comparison to the expanse of water it had just crossed. In years to come, I would visit Cat Island (and other barrier islands along the central gulf coast) many times in many boats, alone and with many other people. Like pages read and turned as one progresses through a thick novel, sailing experiences would accumulate in an ever thickening collection of memories. I could not know it then, but none of the sailing adventures would ever overshadow this moment of satisfaction and fulfillment.
Later, we were treated to a magnificent crimson sunset over shimmering gulf waters. After a supper cooked over a camp fire on the beach, we set the anchor as the full moon cast a soft light over the cove. Our rest was somewhat fitful, amidst the fragrance of naugahyde and insect repellant and punctuated by the occasional hum of a mosquito and subsequent slap. But what the hell? We were living aboard - we were cruising sailors!
We waked to loud "blowing" sounds, and I stuck my head out of the companion way to see that we were surrounded by porpoises, lazily sounding the feeding in the shallows. Sunrise was a mirror of the previous evening's panorama. Soon the morning breeze began to ripple the waters in the cove. Anxious to be under way again, I decided to sail on the morning wind, even though it meant another long beat. The anchor was lifted, the sails were raised, and soon the Potter was dancing again to the roll of the open waters. First the cove and then the island quickly began to recede astern as the morning wore on and the sun climbed higher and higher in the sky.
Eventually, and anticlimactically, the concrete breakwaters of the harbor gave relief from the swells, as had the island on the previous day. Silently, unnoticed, we ghosted between tethered yachts and shrimp boats in the still quietness of the basin, the relentless midday sun having driven virtually all forms of life to shelter. The heat mirrored from the glassy calm water of the inner harbor as the Potter's cheek gently kissed the finger pier at the boat launching ramp. It seemed a lifetime of experiences had elapsed since we'd left our compact car and the boat trailer, now waiting for us only yards away, familiar symbols of the land based world to which we were returning. Quickly, I started the car and, as Shirley rested gratefully in the blast of the air conditioner, I made the final checks to see that the boat was secure on the trailer. A fellow nautical fellow walked up to admire the Potter's lines. "She sure looks stout for her size," he complemented, "Have you had her out on the Gulf?"
In a flash, my mind raced over the events of the past 24 hours - the lump in my throat as we had cleared the breakwaters and confronted the infinity before us; the hours in the sun while the island appeared to resist our feeble efforts to approach her; the sense of doubt and vulnerability as the mainland slipped farther and farther astern; and finally, the tremendous feeling of pride and contentment I felt at this moment for having answered the beckoning which had teased at my imagination for so long. I tried to camouflage my pride by appearing preoccupied with the buckle of the nylon tie-down strap.
"Yeah. We spent the night on Cat Island."
[Henry Barousse bought what may have been the first West Wight Potter on the Central Gulf Coast almost 20 years ago and since that time has had many memorable sailing experiences. -Editor, Mid-Gulf Sailing, September 1990]
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