Man and Boat A Lovely Pair

[R.W.Landau]

Singer Island.......Wow.........!What memories!I enjoyed your site. My Grandfather lived on Singer Island back in the 60's.I used to love to go fishing on the Blue Herron drift boats.I rode out hurricane Cleo on Singer Island at my Grandfather's house on Manor Drive.Remember the Amerilis? I do not know if I spelled it right but that was the ship that was aground for a few years on Singer Island.Paragraph 6 says it all for me. r.w.landau

[Brent Headberg]

My father gave this to me one day, dug it out of his old sailboat files. A very appropriate description of the feeling a man has for sailing:MAN AND BOAT A LOVELY PAIRA man finds it difficult to tell why he likes sailing. He knows but the telling can be embarrassing.Like all great and genuine love, this is a solemn and private affair, springing from inner need and desire, which could be profaned by specific explanation.To begin with, most of the cliches are true. There is, in sailing a poetry, a purity, a serenity, an affinity with the elements. The wind does whistle in the rigging and the boat does creak at anchor and, from a dead calm, a gentle breeze does come up with a whisper and, with sails filling, your boat does lift up and surge and go forth in a holy communion between boat and wind, between man and universe.You see what I mean? Grown men don't speak aloud of such things. Nor can they tell you, without blushing, about the terribly private relationship between man and boat, that a boat is to a man what the first bicycle or dog is to a boy.How does one man tell another man that for him sailing becomes an antidote to the vulgarity in the world, to cynicism, greed, nihilism, faithlessness, to driving ambition, his own as well as that of others?Would he believe that a man can leave the dock feeling debased and return two hours later in his sailboat feeling exalted? The nonbeliever would insist on knowing why this is so, what ingredents of psyche and chemistry make this possible, and there is no way of telling him.There is no way of telling him why you feel the way you do thrashing homeward in a heavy sea, with wind and water in your face, and your precious boat bending in the fury and the tiller crying to you to hold me strong and striaght and true.And you bring her home and turn suddenly and shoot up to your mooring, and race forward to tie her up and, amid the thrashing and flapping of sails, like a huge bird still wanting to fly, you lower the sails and suddenly there is silence and peace and both are very real and abiding.And that feeling you have then of being so worthwhile, of having achieved an achievement worth achieving that transcends all ambition and personal gain, that deep satisfaction that you have brought her in and she has brought you in.

[Scott Blahnik]

It's not so much that it's embarrasing talking this way, it's just that most of us couldn't put it so well.

[Peter Suah]

That's one of the most vivid pieces of sailing literature I've ever read.PeterH23 "Raven"

[Chuck]

Brent,Very few passages/poems capture our collective feelings about sailing like yours. Thanks for sharing it..BTW: do you know where it's from or who wrote it?/ChuckS/V WindsongsH23

[Sam Morris]

To publish Man and Boat A Lovely Pair in a scrolling applet at the related site.Sam Morris

[Brent Headberg]

Hello Sam,Very nice presentation of the Man and Boat passage on your web page.I have no idea who the author is for these fine words...my Dad found this somewhere in a magazine way back in the 60's and passed it on to me.

[Tom Ehmke]

Thanks to both of you.Tom

[Gary Wyngarden]

That is a really terrific piece of writing, and beautifully presented. Thanks for sharing it with us.Gary WyngardenS/V Shibumi H335