Barbershop quartets and sailboat racing were two loves I shared with Sandy Douglass. Who’s Sandy Douglass? Sandy was a famous judge of barbershop singing because he advanced the Buffalo Bills to the national barbershop harmony championship. Then the Bills turned professional. They sang “Lila Rose” in the movie “Music Man.” Sandy was even more famous as the designer, builder, and perennial champion of the Flying Scot, an 18-foot sloop sailboat. I owned and skippered a Scot
Category: Sailing
Christening Makaleka
Old 1985 photo documents when the ship’s dinghy was launched and manned by two grandsons. Britt is the red-headed ten-year-old with his cousin ‘dinghy captain’ Travis, age eight. Dinghy was afloat before we launched and Margaret christened our new sailboat Makaleka. In another old photo, she pours champagne on the bow. She didn’t break the bottle on the bow. We didn’t want to damage our Pearson 36-foot sloop we had finally launched into Rhode Island
Naming the Boat
Next to arguing what to name your baby, I rank naming your boat most stressful. Talking about a sailboat’s name because those ‘stink-potters’ tend to choose fish-catching, wife-joking, cash-spending titles. One rookie skipper in a sailboat fleet named his sloop Kathy’s Mink, but other skippers frowned and he found something more seaworthy. The oldest naming tradition warned that anything more, or less, than seven letters would bring bad fortune. That’s why I named my Snipe
Christmas in Hopetown
How do you celebrate Christmas Day in Hopetown, a Bahamian paradise among the Abaco Islands? You bring your sloop Makaleka alongside the city pier and moor. Margaret ties green ribbons on the starboard shroud. Donna ties red ribbons on the port side shroud. We go ashore. The children gather in the schoolyard. Santa comes. He drives a golf cart. His beard doesn’t reach to his Bermuda short pants. He “ho..ho..hos” and gives the children ice cream.
The ‘Phantom Lady’
She was weathered, in need of more than cosmetic repair, a 18-foot sloop that we Abilene Sea Scouts received as a gift from her owner. Year 1945. We sanded, repaired, painted the old lady. While she was upside down the owner, a builder, came and inspected her bottom. With his finger he compressed our smooth white lead filling between the bottom wood. We found out why when we launched the ‘Phantom Lady.’ For the launching
Foreign Waters
Basketball. Whatever comes in second at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill, I’m not sure. I remember UNC timed spring break to coincide with the conference basketball conference. That’s when being from ‘Communist Hill’ wasn’t a good idea if you met someone from Durham (Duke) or Raleigh (NC State ) or from up-north Virginia. Those people fussed a bunch about the basketball players Chapel Hill recruited. Atlantic Coast Conference basketball tournament time was a good
Captain Jack
Our crew didn’t win the sailboat race, but we recuperated on the grassy slope outside the New Berne community center, drank a few ‘Daddy Cokes,’ visited with our competitors. We had flown our orange spinnaker…decorated with the dark skull, a blackened rose in her teeth…from the Oriental, North Carolina harbor to New Berne, twenty-some miles down the Neuse River. Captain Jack had sailed his first regatta aboard the 30-foot sloop “Anne Bonny”, named for the
Water Fight at Okie Lake
East of Tulsa, some sixty 15-foot long sailboats bobbed on Fort Gipson Lake. Skippers and crews competing in the Snipe class national championships sweated and waited for the wind to blow. No wind, no sailboat race. Race Committee Chairman Steve told the skippers to quit griping about the lack of wind. “There’s plenty of air out there—it’s just not moving.” This skipper and his Sweet Sixteen daughter waited in the cockpit of “TexFite”, our orange
Chatterbox Falls
If you are willing to shoot the Malibu Rapids in my sailboat, drop an anchor off the bow, row the dinghy ashore and carry a stern line ashore you lash to a tree, and can go to sleep with the sound of water rushing all night, then I’ll sign you on to crew on a voyage to one of the world’s prettiest places: Chatterbox Falls Princess Louisa Inlet British Columbia, Canada Or
Bosun Mate, the cat
Our sea-going cat was named Bosun Mate. Boatswain Mate is correct spelling for the Navy rank, but our Bosun Mate wasn’t always correct. When Bosun was a kitten, we took him aboard the Makaleka, our 36-foot Pearson sloop. Bosun shared the boat with Captain Jack, our 85-pound golden retriever, who also sailed the North Carolina waterways with us. Bosun must have thought he was a dog. We found that out on his first summer voyage