Being lightweight

I recently helped a friend launching his boat in Buzzards Bay during a nice but chilly afternoon. I just finished to roll up a coat of primer on Tranquillity’s deck so I abandoned the yard works to join Freddie for the launch of Destinada.

Once in the slip and afloat  he tried to back up but the notorious poor reverse manoeuvrability of the long keeled boat forced him to an audacious turn around in the slip. The manoeuvre in close quarters happened with myself hangin from the boat life lines and pushing with my legs against the dock, making the boat spin.

Pushing Destinada was like pushing any decent size tender. We moored on a floating dock with ease: from the dock it was easy to move Destinada just pulling the mooring lines. When I asked Freddie what was the displacement of his boat he answered 7400lbs. Same as Tranquillity!

I noticed for the first time that a boat can be lightweight! I assumed they were not because I never really sailed a boat that weigh less than 20 tons. For this class of weight human power can’t do much. You better have big lines and powerful engine and motors. Everything has to be powerful and heavy duty. This seems pretty obvious but this last experience had the effect of an epistemological revolution on my boating experience.

Now my boat is a 29ft. and displace 7400ft. The cleats and the deck hardware look like toys to my eyes but they were there when the boat sailed offshore to Canada, Bermuda and the Caribbean. They were there facing Hurricane Hugo in 1989. When I consider the refit of the boat I have to let down my previous experience on big boats and learn a completely new way. What do I need?

I have to look at different examples. Like Jeff that sails his Bristol 29 singlehanded in and out of the mooring without an engine. The engine simply doesn’t work but it’s not necessary, he says. And when there’s no wind all he does is sculling with the rudder. It takes some time but it works.

It looks like that the more I go into this refit the closer it gets to the essential. It scares me but maybe I don’t need all the fancy equipment I planned to install. I thought I was being an extremist already but I feel now I am acting in a very consumistic way. I am starting to feel that being lightweight is good attitude towards boating and perhaps life.