CITY ISLAND LINES
After two years here on City Island, I am beginning to appreciate, from a distance, the four seasons of sailboats. From our living room, we can see multiple moorings in Eastchester Bay, while behind us sits the boat yard for a yacht club. So, we are intimate with boats, surrounded by and immersed in them. They are our neighbours.
In Winter, I pity the poor creatures huddled together in the boat yard. They stand tall but awkward, shoulder to shoulder, swaddled in shiny white jackets. Solemn and somnolent, they look almost like gravestones, or perhaps just ghosts of their former selves. Masts rattle, and the wind whistles through taut lines and furled sails to create an eerie symphony. Then comes Spring, when eager ships emerge like butterflies from their cocoons. Each waits its turn to be released back to its natural environment. Longing to spread their sails and wings, many must content themselves with bobbing tamely beside a buoy and merely dreaming of the open water. They long to break free of their tethers and leave the ball and chain behind. As summer settles, the boats sulk sullenly, hoping that water borne breezes will tempt their owners aboard or even convince them to sally forth. When their sails are finally hoisted, you can feel the delirium as they are released to run with the wind. Of course, Autumn follows, and one by one, each boat is herded to shore and winched laboriously out of the water. Like tadpoles morphing into frogs, these previously slender agile creatures now seem bloated and ungainly, as they squat uncomfortably close to one another. They are mortified to have their private parts, their hulls, their keels, their tender underbellies so exposed. All the more so, since these bits must be scraped, and hosed and scrubbed in public view. Finally, most are tightly wrapped- not like a Christmas gift with ribbons and bows but rather with lurid white plastic that smothers the boat’s beauty and sentences it to involuntary torpor. But we know what phoenixes they are, and these boats will emerge again to claim their places in moorings, marinas and regattas. What goes around comes around, and these salty sailors are accustomed to coming about and taking a new tack. We look forward to wishing them bon voyage come Spring. 19 Nov 2019
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