Jake built a sailboat. Or as he
humbly put it; "Caused it to be built". Sally is her
name. Sally is also his long suffering wife. Sally the
wife bought Jake the building plans as a present. Sally knew
the boat would be completed. And sailed. Jake is that
kind of guy.
Sally the boat is a pretty twenty-six foot canoe
yawl designed by Albert Strange more than a century ago, equipped
with a modern roller furling jib, an old timey loose footed
main with a couple of reefs, and a healthy portion of mizzen
sail. Sally can be easily balanced for any condition. I
have been sailing in my own boat beside Jake in his Sally around the
Sacramento Delta for a few years now, and I just love how well the
boat maneuvers in the close quarters of the rivers and sloughs found
there. Finally, this past October, I got my turn to go sailing with
Jake on Sally for a weekend. (Many thanks to Sally's -the
wife- boss for scheduling her to work during the planned trip.
The second half of your bribe money's coming, unmarked small bills
as requested.)
Sally can go anywhere Jake wants her to
go. -Except maybe dry land, and she even does that pretty well
on the trailer. You should see the road he has to traverse to
get to his barn!- No need for crew with all lines leading to
the cockpit. Knees or a hip on the heavy, stout tiller;
halyards, vang, and furling lines on the cabin top, jib sheets along
the sides of the cabin to the small bronze winches on the cockpit
cowlings, four to one Main sheet attaching the tip of the boom to
the base of the mizzen mast at the rear of the cockpit, with the
mizzen vang and sheet aft of the mizzen mast. All are within
reach while seated comfortably in the waist deep cockpit.
I wasn't actually needed aboard, but Jake seemed to tolerate
the company. He isn't jealous or selfish with the helm.
But he likes to keep the sail trim for himself. He encourages
letting the helm go free, so that "Sally can take care of things on
her own." I did, and she does... quite well.
On one
Friday afternoon Jake and I set sail from Antioch for Collinsville
to
meet a pal with a motor cruiser for a weekend of sailing,
fishing and messing about. Heading west on the San Joaquin
River, down stream, against the current of the incoming tide from
San Francisco Bay, we were beating into a light breeze from the
west-north-west that was whispering little secrets off the grassy
islands of the side channels and delta marshes.
Jake
and I sat on opposite sides of the cockpit, feet stretched
comfortably forward against the cabin, tacking back and forth down
the river and up the wind. When it came time to tack over,
whichever of us was sitting on the leeward side would reach out
lazily and pull the helm all the way over for a moment and then let
go of the tiller, meanwhile holding the jib to backwind the bow
around in the gentle breeze. Sally would take over and bring
the helm amidship herself as the new leeward man snugged the jib
around. Just about then the mizzen filled and rounded us up
gently until it balanced pressure with the jib. And in the
mean time the healthy loose footed main started powering up slowly
but assuredly, with a laughing gurgle of bubbles running the laps of
the hull.
The leeward man had the helm, but that only meant looking under
the main to watch the tell tales on the jib for optimum air flow and
occasionally touch the knob of the helm with a light fingertip or
two. Not actually moving the tiller, but rather putting a few
grams of intent into it. Sailing Sally in light air is the
most Zen like sailing experience I've ever had in my
life.
Later that afternoon with the wind finally building we
were on a long reach going up Broad Slough, Jake decided it was time
for hot sake. He pushed the sliding hatch all the way forward
and sat in the cabin on the centerboard trunk facing aft with his
head just below the cabin top, attending the camp stove inside the
low cabin to warm sake in a little red cast iron sauce pan with a
pour spout. Once in a while he would sit up and look around,
keeping an eye on things, but never saying anything, just
checking. I sat in the cockpit watching the delta go by with
an elegant celadon green cup steaming with rice wine in the now
freshening breeze on a warm October's day. The boat was
trimmed and balanced to perfection.
Sailing therapy. Better than any psychologist for hire.
Jake kept handing me more hot sake while I was watching the grassy
islands. These glorified sand bars are littered with old
shipwrecks and snags. A snowy egret standing only ankle deep
just out side the thirty-five foot deep shipping channel markers
means a sudden shallow. A simple color change from brackish
green to mud brown could be trouble. Even a stationary riffle
on the water's surface must be read and correlated to the very
precise charts. We needed to know just where we were at all
times so we could avoid the thousands of obstacles and lumpy bits
strewn about in this jumble of rivers and drainage's. Most all
of which are hidden below the surface at high tide.
Sally
takes almost two and one half feet draft with lots of wide
dead wood keel protecting the rudder. The ten inch wide flat
bottom surface of the keel allows Sally to sit on the mud if forced
by a falling tide. She is equipped with a stout three
inch wide swinging centerboard adding three more feet of, shall we
say, casual depth. The centerboard is weighted with lead on
the leading edge to carry it down into position, as well as act as a
nifty skid plate. The lead is just perfect for those moments
when we cut too close to a point or venture too far into a shallow
basin and drag the board across the bottom.
These shallow forays
do not necessarily spell disaster. As alert as Jake is he
sometimes uses a sail by Braille system of delta navigation.
On occasion the boat may seem a little sluggish, leaving a muddy hue
to our wake as the board rises up and over a firm sandy bottom
surface. Other times the mud is so soft it may stop the boat
all together as the board slices like a hot knife in the swamp gunk
until the muck finally sucks the power out of our momentum.
Then he just raises the three hundred pound board with the
twenty-to-one home built worm screw crank, handily located within
reach right there in the cockpit, until it's off the bottom, and
Sally just tacks away from the obstacle.
If your lucky
enough to hit it on a rising tide. Jake spoke about having to
sit it out until the next higher tide a couple of times. I can
just imagine him calmly resting there in shallow water on the mud,
heating sake and reading a book.
Entering Marshall Cut at
Collinsville is a leap of faith. Approaching the seemingly
unbroken bank of Tule reeds we needed to keep up as much momentum as
possible to slide through a wind shadow created by a grove of
cottonwood trees at the entrance, right where the reeds magically
part to reveal a deep channel wide enough to enter, but no room to
turn around until quite a ways in. There was no turning
back.
We left quite a wake in the calm channel as we powered
past our pal Bill with his fifties era twin engine wooden Chris
Craft delta cruiser. It was recently christened Mim after
someone's grandmother. We rolled up the jib and dropped the
main and tacked back down the cut to raft up alongside Mim under
mizzen alone, making good way. With Jake at the helm we sidled
up and I handed off the bowline gentle as you please. Jokes
about "My, what big fenders you have!" and the gamming
began.
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