Dans Papers - June 8, 2007 - Quite The Sailor

It is that time of year. The painting and scrubbing is completed. The sails are mended, tended, and ready to slide up the halyards to once again bring motion to a vessel that has spent the winter in a parking lot, or driveway or boatyard. There is a magic to getting all the preparations done, and then the anticipation of seeing the keel sink into the water only to see it again in late October. The winter was long and cold, the spring short but the summer season is now here and the magic of sailing off the sandy coast of the North Fork is at hand. An old sailor once told me the story of the first time he ever saw Greenport. He was a commercial fisherman out of Bristol, Massachusetts; He was on a 79 dragger when a sudden storm caught him and the crew in the midst of one of their best catches. The ocean seemed to swallow the rusty metal fishing boat and then spit it out into wicked winds and rougher seas. The captain refused to go to Montauk because there was an arrest warrant out in East Hampton because he laid out a former police officer with one mighty blow over a remark about fishermen. It was the town dock in Greenport he was hoping to reach to collect his wits, repair the boat and again step safely on the shore.

The captain never made it to Greenport alive. A large metal shaft collapsed and hit him square on the head the only time he had left the bridge to check out the vessel. The storm subsided and the crew voted to bring the captain to Greenport as he had intended. The police were efficient, but understanding the crew sold off the fish and went out to the bars. That night, one of the crew members, an old man, met the woman who became his wife and he never left.

I met this man, Tuttle O'Grady on Preston's dock one summer. By this time his wife had passed on. He said he'd watch my sailboat as I went around town to buy new deck shoes.

He looked at my 23 foot O'Day and asked if I'd mind taking him out for a short while, for some reason I said yes and to this day I am glad I did. Tuttle O'Grady had sailed with his dad in the forties. He made my boat sing a song in the wind I never heard. The sailboat hit true pitch runs and reaches for Tuttle. I never knew it had that in her. Every sail in every direction was in high feather. I was in awe of the magic this old seaman had. He rarely smiled as he read every breeze as if it where the Holy Grail. We shared some rum from a pewter flask I had. He didn't seem to like its quality but said nothing. As the sun began to set he headed back for Greenport.

His wife's soul he said rides the breeze off Greenport. She guides him through every tack and reach. He feels her magic, when the breeze touches him like she touched him that very first day after he walked on land bringing ashore his dead captain. Tuttle was a man of few words but when he spoke he meant it. I am sure what he told me, he believed. And now when I think back to that day I believe.

Last year I could not find Tuttle anywhere in Greenport. I am not sure what has become of him. But every time I sail, I think of him sitting right where I am sitting, making my boat one with the wind, hitting true notes and pitches as only the finest instruments can. I now know his wife knows me too, and when I catch the wind just right, I know she smiles because she knows I know she's out there.