A father’s illness, a promise and trip to uncharted waters
THE SAILBOAT glided through the Tortola harbor, and I was at the helm, weaving around docks, mooring balls and yachts at rest, en route to open water. Dinghies buzzed around me, running errands for the larger vessels. And then it happened. A wheezing cough. A resigned sigh. Silence. The motor ceased to putter.
Typically, when faced with a nautical challenge, I would turn to my father for help. A seasoned sailor, he could resolve any issue at sea.
He would try to coach me to safety, though in most cases I would just hand the captain’s hat back to him like an impatient child.
But this time was different. My father was at home, in Massachusetts. And even if he were reachable, he could not have assisted. His mind no longer remembers how to operate a boat, and he has lost the ability to shape the ideas and speak the words required to rescue me.
More than three years ago, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, which eventually forced him to stop sailing and sell Kaila, the 40-foot Tartan he and my mother had owned for more than a quarter century.
It is also the disease that landed me in the British Virgin Islands, on a vessel with a phlegmatic engine, swirling in a vortex of wind, waves and emotion.
My mother never tires of telling the story of how my father, a product of the Bronx, fell into seafaring. When they were dating, she told him that she would consider him a serious suitor only if he shared her affections for dogs and sailing. Smitten, he started taking lessons on the Charles River in Boston. Over 55 years of marriage, my parents have cared for eight dogs and five sailboats. (Oh yeah, and two daughters.)
My father embraced sailing with a sportsman’s dedication and a devotee’s fervour. He spent summers zipping around Long Island Sound, clocking anywhere from hours to several days on Kaila.
During colder months, he and my mother would travel to other climates and hemispheres to get their fix. They chartered boats in New Zealand, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Sardinia and Tonga. Instead of winter breaks in alpine mountains, we spent the holidays sailing around the Caribbean, surrounded by palm trees strung with Christmas lights. For my father, throwing off the lines did more than free the sailboat from its tethers; it released him, too.
“He never took anything for granted,” my mum recently told me. “He loved to chart the course, trim the sails, and sail as fast and as efficiently as possible.”
Some parents hope their offspring attend their college alma mater or tread in the same professional footsteps; my father just wanted his daughters to master the art of sailing. But I was a typical teenager, caring more about the immediate satisfactions (tanning, napping, listening to my Walkman) than the longer vision.
Still, as a devoted daughter, I have always wanted to make my father proud, and more so now that the cranks and wheels of his mind are winding down. So on a wintry afternoon in Massachusetts, I presented him with a surprise.
“Dad, I am going to earn my captain’s certification in the British Virgin Islands,” I told him.
He looked at me with a bewildered expression. I explained that once I passed the test, I could take him sailing. For the first time in our family’s history, I would be in charge.
He often speaks in fragments separated by long pauses, but when I asked him for advice, he responded in a clear voice. “Be humble,” he said. Matt Holt found me lounging atthe marina pool - old habits die hard. The manual “Sailing Made Easy” rested on the chaise, cracked open to Chapter One: “The What, the How, and the Where.” I could answer at least one of those questions without stepping on deck. The “where” was the Mariner Inn and Marina on Tortola, the training base for Sunsail.
Matt was the chief instructor at Sunsail and an architect of the company’s sailing school, which he helped establish in 2004. ( The company also charters boats.) He was going to cover the Basic Keelboat Sailing course, the first part of the 10- day program and the gateway to more advanced training: Basic Coastal Cruising and Bareboat Chartering.
The lessons would consist of on-water drills and written exams. If I passed all three, I would earn an American Sailing Association certification, joining half a million sailors licensed to charter a sailboat at any ASA affiliated company around the world.
Though in my case, my primary goal was to borrow a sailboat for a few hours.
“We will give you enough knowledge to begin your
He looked at me with a bewildered expression. I explained that once I passed the test, I could take him sailing. For the first time in our family’s history, I would be in charge.
journey,” Matt said.
“We are big on situational awareness. Did you bring enough supplies? What do you do in a thunderstorm or if there is a rock in the way?” ( Foreshadowing of the dead motor incident, perhaps. After a failed attempt to sail the 26-foot Opal Bella and her stalled motor back to the slip, we had to hail a dinghy to tow us in.)
I followed Matt past tight rows of boats to our temporary digs, a brand-new Jeanneau Sun Odyssey. I leaped over the small gap between the dock and the boat in my flip-flops. I descended the stairs with care, remembering the time my mother slipped on Kaila’s steps and fractured three ribs. I surveyed the main salon, which seemed at once strange and familiar. There was the navigation desk, with its knobs, switches and lights, and the galley, with its grab-bag-style cooler and propane stove.