Sailing Seabird
Fresh off a sunrise Katahdin ascent just two days before—under-slept and sore—I hopped on a skiff at a yacht club in Gloucester, Mass and watched the Seabird come into view, bobbing gently with her crew and guests atop the deck eating their dinner. I tossed my bag to Captain Emma, climbed up and thus began five days aboard a decommissioned 1990 Navy 44 MKI racing boat. Auctioned off by the US Naval Academy and previously named Flirt, Emma and her Dad painstakingly restored and revamped the Navy 44 into a trek-worthy sailboat for multi-day trips with paying guests. Emma offers instructional sailing vacation packages, and I was tagging along to document the fun. I’d missed the first two days of the trip while climbing Katahdin—Martha’s Vineyard, Buzzard’s Bay, the Cape Cod Canal, and Provincetown—but guests and crew alike were instantly friendly. Which was good, because we’d all be sleeping about 6” apart in a matter of hours. Over the course of the next five days, we saw quite the array of adventures: we sailed through a nasty thunderstorm, huddled below deck doing our best to ride out the large waves with our bow tipped into the wind, the mainsail eased, and the rudder pointing 90º opposite the sail, pushing the boat in a straight line (a technique called “heaving-to”). That night, with better conditions and easy seas, we motored into a mooring field behind a breakwater at the Isles of Shoals, five miles off the mainland where the New Hampshire and Maine border meets the sea. After dinner, swimming, and quiet reading time with wine, we made our plan for the next day of sailing and realized our best weather pocket was exceedingly early. After a few hours of sleep, we set sail under a clear, starry sky—dodging lobster buoys via headlamp—and watched the sun crest over the shimmering ocean with its first light.
