I've written before about living on a boat, something we've
done now for the past 13 summers in their entirety and before that, on weekends
and summer vacations. In spite of traveling
on the boat, much of the time has been spent at the dock, either getting ready
to go out, returning and cleaning up, or in bad weather, just staying there,
rain, wind, lightning and all. How many
days of our lives have been at the dock? Probably, in the aggregate, it measures
several years. A brief video of awaiting
a storm at the dock is here:
Dock life is unlike any other. It's close living and on weekends, when we were
younger, it was a party atmosphere, someone was always hosting cocktails or
sometimes there would be a dock party, everyone putting out something and dock
mates strolling past, and filling up on finger food, libations. and good cheer.
When we were younger, it was a family affair, the kids running up and down the
dock under the watchful eye of the community.
Of course, our boating life has been defined by the fact
that we are "Long Island Sounders," berthed in Norwalk, CT. Over the
years, we have cruised to most of the ports in Connecticut, to the north shore
of Long Island and as far east as Newport, Block Island, Martha's Vineyard, and
Nantucket. As we grew older, the amount
of cruising and distances traveled diminished to the point of now spending most
of our time at the dock or the occasional short cruise to the Norwalk
Islands.
Our boating is also different because we live in Florida,
and our boat in Connecticut is now our home up north.
That changes everything.
When we had a home in Connecticut, jumping on and off the
boat was easier and the boat was less cluttered. Taking the boat out now means stowing much
more and unplugging all of the umbilical cords to the dock for power and water. Easy when younger, but more challenging now.
We also have a small boat in Florida. Boating is different here,
primarily because many in Florida have their boats, as we do, behind their
homes. There frequently is no marina or
dock life. Of course, there are people
from up north who bring their boats to Florida for the winter. I see lots of Canadian flags coming down the
Intracoastal. Many of those boats,
though, wait out cold fronts to make a crossing to the Bahamas.
So, my comments are more "northern boat" centric,
not Florida or Bahamas focused. I could
divide the boaters at the two docks we've lived at into several categories:
fishermen (rarely saw much of them, they were up early and off to Montauk),
cruisers (we fell into that category until I retired), liveaboards or people
who rarely took their boats out (that's us now), and, strangely, people who
have boats but never seem to use them.
For a long time we thought we wanted to live on a boat 24 x
7 x 365, selling our house and ties to land.
Our good friends Ray and Sue felt the same way and when towards the end
of the 1990s it looked like, coincidentally, both Ray and I would be out of
jobs, we fantasized about pooling our resources and buying a big yacht,
something that would be comfortable for all, a ship that four experienced
boaters could handle. We looked at large
Hatteras motor yachts, and some high maintenance ships such as the welded aluminum
Burgers.
In our mutual excitement, we went to boat shows searching, thinking up names for our
fabled new home such as 'Moments to Remember,' 'Four Happy Hoboes,' Four Seasons,'
Summer of our Lives, 'As Time Goes By,' and the overly cutesy 'Home Sea Home.' But things have a way of taking care of
themselves. Ray and Sue were gravitating
toward a sport fish style boat and we were also looking at homes in
Florida. It seems we both came upon our
own individual dream places for our next phase of life simultaneously, wisely
abandoning the idea of sharing a yacht, they buying a 56' Ocean sport-fish and
we our current Florida home. It worked
out better this way, and we remain close friends.
They are still to this day true liveaboards on 'Last Dance,'
having no other home, spending part of the year in Norwalk and the other part
in the Abacos, Bahamas (usually stopping at our dock in Florida before heading
out to the Abacos, and we've joined them a couple of times, stayed for awhile
and then flying home from Marsh Harbor to West Palm). Thus, we still have our own independent
boating lives in Norwalk during the summers on our 'Swept Away' and that is when
we try to catch up with all of our former boating friends.
Our dock life has changed as we ourselves have become summer
liveaboards. Aside from Ray and Sue, we know few people who are year-round liveaboards. But one such person was our friend, Lindy,
who I referred to a couple of entries ago when he was entering a hospice. Lindy succumbed to cancer shortly after I
wrote that entry.
It occurred to me that we shared the same dock for 26
years, first at Norwalk Cove Marina, and then at the South Norwalk Boat
Club. We knew each other well and relied
upon one another, checking the other's boat if one of us was away, picking up
something at the store if we were going there, having a quick bite at the Club
and sharing the same table at regularly scheduled boat meetings. Lindy was somewhat of an enigma, typical
though for a man who lived alone on a boat, even through the harsh winters in
Connecticut, shoveling snow off the dock to get to his car.
To Lindy, his boat was a sacred refuge and as much as he
talked about leaving it behind for the winter, staying with one of his sons, or
renting a place in Florida, he stuck with his boats, in the northeast, through
blizzards and ice, awaiting the thaw of summer, until the following Fall when
he would talk about not living another winter on the boat and then just do it
again.
Lindy was an optometrist during his working years. His boats were appropriately named 'The
Optimist,' and if a sign of optimism is to have a joke du jour, he was the
supreme optimist. He always had me
laughing and for most of the time I knew him as a live aboard, he had but two
boats, a 42' Post, a beamy boat which I think he later regretted selling, and
then a 42' Bertram. Both are classic sport fishes and, indeed, in the earlier
years that I knew him, he would plan one big trip to Montauk each summer with
some friends or his sons to "fish the canyon." But as he aged, his
boating stayed more local until he rarely took the boat out as well.
His social life on the dock was spent visiting us and a few
other couples, but mostly with a couple of guys who no longer married, ones who
were on their boats a lot, particularly Harold, who remarkably boated into his 90s, having a 42' Bertram as well. Harold predeceased Lindy by only a little
more than a month. I think it was one of
the final straws for Lindy, who had been struggling with esophageal cancer
during the last year.
Lindy's closest companion for many happy years was his
beloved black Labrador, Charlie, a large dog to have in the confines of a
boat. I am convinced that no one knew
the man better than Charlie, an exceptional dog, keenly intelligent, and
extraordinarily well trained by Lindy.
That dog would sit in the cockpit of the boat and NEVER leave it until
commanded by Lindy. There could be a litter
of cats parading by and Charlie would stay fast. If Lindy was walking down the dock, Charlie
would follow him with his eyes. He did not pace or whine like so many dogs
missing their owners. He waited patiently as the photograph below
attests (ironically, I have no photos of Lindy as he usually vanished when he
saw my camera out).
Once Lindy said watch this:
he walked down the dock, Charlie keeping his eyes on him. At the end of the dock, Lindy turned and just
stood there, looking at Charlie. He raised
a finger and his eye brows, and Charlie came bounding out of the boat towards
his master. That was the sign. Otherwise, Charlie would have stayed put.
It is strange, all those years on the same dock, knowing the
man well, but not closely, and having to acknowledge that his dog knew him
best. But that is the way Lindy wanted
it. During the last few years I urged him
to spend more time with his son, John, and family during the winters rather
than the hard life on the dock in the winter.
He was the ultimate maverick, though, and felt that would be an
imposition. This summer, when we saw him
for the last time in early September, we had a prescient feeling that that
would be the last time, even though, as the perpetual optimist, he felt he
would get better.
But the operation to remove the cancerous tumor from his esophagus
had taken its toll. He wasn't able to eat,
and had lost a lot of weight. He was
unsteady on his feet and we worried. Ann
had sent over quite a few meals and we had been shopping for him, but we were
then going back to Florida. Lindy, I
said, why don't you make arrangements to go to New Hampshire to your son,
establish doctors up there, the winter here will be impossible for you. We'll see he said. I spoke to him in early December and he said
he was going to go to his son's for Christmas.
Great, I said, you are staying there, right? Make arrangements with local Doctors? He said that he'd like to get back to the
boat.
I called him on Christmas Day and I could tell he was in bad
shape. The cancer had metastasized in
his lungs and the plan was for him to start chemotherapy after he had hoped to
put some weight on. He said he would like to see the boat one more time. On Dec 26, though, John had to call an
ambulance, over Lindy's protestations.
He had pneumonia and it was then, according to his son, that he "realized
that to continue to try to fight the cancer would only extend his life a short
while but at the cost of his dignity and his quality of life. He decided to
discontinue nutrition and enter hospice." And so finally at the end he was
with family for a compassionate, comfortable passing.
I remember getting up on Jan. 4 and looking at the
clock. It was 6.00 am. I didn't think anything of it -- about 15
minutes earlier than I normally wake up now. Later that day I got an email from John,
about Lindy's passing at approximately 6.00 am. Indeed, Bon Voyage, Lindy.
His death has had a big impact on us, not only because of
the years we spent on the dock together but because it reminds me, and anyone
connected with him, of our own mortality.
I wish I was a religious person and could say with conviction that there
is some sort of heaven, but I believe in the here and now and, when dead,
especially after such a horrible disease, one is indeed in another better
place. As Susan Jacoby quoted 19th century Robert Green Ingersoll in her article in last week's New York Times on atheism -- when Ingersoll
had delivered the eulogy for a child who had died -- “they who stand with
breaking hearts around this little grave, need have no fear. The larger and the
nobler faith in all that is, and is to be, tells us that death, even at its
worst, is only perfect rest ... The dead do not suffer.”
Many years ago when I used to go down to our boat to check
on it during the winter, the boatyard which during the summer was such a bustling
place, became one of stark desolation.
Most boats were up on land for storage and the early morning winter sun
and wind made it an eerie place (I think of Emily's Dickinson's poem that
begins, "There's a certain slant of light, / On winter afternoons, / That
oppresses, like the weight. / Of cathedral tunes."). On one such day I felt
compelled to write my own poem about the experience, not a very good one, I'm
not a poet, but it expressed my feelings.
I include it here in memory of Lindy.
Wintry Moorings
Halyards slap
in the winter morning’s
northwest wind.
The boat yard
is a lonely place.
Hulls are awkward hulks
beached on parking lots,
stringers and fiberglass
settled on blocks and cradles.
Some boats still endure the water,
lines urging
finger slips to test pilings;
ice-eaters drone in the briny dark.
On land they are shrink-sealed in plastic
or framed under bulky tarpaulins,
riding out the wintry bombardment,
awaiting next summer’s voyages.
Others lay abandoned
by Captains who are no more
