Photo by John MacBeath Watkins

All I Ask is a
Small Ship...
by John MacBeath Watkins
Owning a boat, especially a wooden boat, is at least as much about your dreams as it is about your

needs. All right, it's a case of your needs being dictated by your dreams.
 You dream of standing on the quarterdeck, braced against the roll of the ocean's swell, keeping

a sharp eye out for the Spanish as you bring your booty home to Jamaica, or sailing your gaffer alone

into the lagoon while scantily-clad, brown-skinned natives swim out to meet you.

In reality, you rather like going to work each day, wouldn't dream of burning down peoples

homes and stealing their belongings, and would really miss your friends and family if you were by

yourself long enough to sail to Tahiti.

So you make the dream more practical. You want the boat that can cruise the San Juan Islands,

or make the trip to Alaska, or sail around the world. You want your first one to be big enough to stand

up in, and have an enclosed head, and a galley, and berths for you and all your family, and separate

cabins for privacy. In fact, a home away from home. What could make life better?

Keeping it small. Small boats are more responsive, put you closer to the water, and take less

money and time to maintain. In many ways, they are just more fun than the bigger boats. And if you

look around your moorage, you'll probably notice that the bigger the boat is, the more time it spends at

the dock.

It's a strange thing, but in the Northwest, there appear to be more cruising sailboats than

daysailers. And how are most of those cruising boats used most of the time? For daysailing.

Meanwhile, they sit at a slip costing hundreds a month, patiently waiting to be put to their intended

use.

When the tall ships are in town, they attract much bigger crowds than the smaller boats,

because they embody a fantasy that everyone understands. The fantasy is to skipper the queen of the

seas. The private yachts that embody the fantasy tend to be either pampered princesses of the mooring,

or worse, Cinderellas forlornly awaiting their prince.

What's the alternative? How about banging around in a little cockleshell of a boat, something

that doesn't require an engine or an expensive mooring?

Consider the lowly El Toro. The idea for this boat came up at a bull session in San Francisco,
which is why its ensignia is a shovel. It's a boxy little thing eight feet long with one little sail. You sit

in the bottom, handle the single sheet and the tiller, and that's all the controls. When the wind hits, the

boat is in motion in an instant. When you put over the helm, the boat turns right away, and when you

head into the wind to stop the boat it stops right away. When you do something wrong, you know that

right away, too, and since mistakes are a vital part of the learning process, you learn more quickly in

such a boat.

Granted, the hull speed – the maximum speed the boat can go – is a little under four knots,

which is not quite clipper-ship speed, and the boat looks like the box some parts for your boat might

come in, and you'd look a bit of a fool wearing a yachting blazer while sailing the wee vessel, but

you're sitting practically in the water while sailing it (okay, if it leaks, you are sitting in the water) and

the responsiveness of such a small boat is great fun.

I have a friend who once owned an MG TC, a late 1940s sports car with a not very powerful

engine, skinny tires and drum brakes that sort of suggested stopping when the time came. It had side

curtains instead of windows, a horribly impractical canvas top, and was not quite the most reliable or

safe car on the road. He tells me it was more fun than any other car he owned. It was the way driving

it felt that he enjoyed, not the comfort of the seats or the power of the engine.

Small boats are like that. Just as a $150,000 motor home isn't necessarily the vehicle to take for

a pleasant drive on a winding road, a boat with all the comforts of home isn't the best thing for

daysailing. And that is often the most enjoyable use the boat is put to by its owners. The mental

adjustment required is simple: You just have to realize that once you are on the boat, you are where

you want to be.

I admit that not everyone will be satisfied with an eight-foot boat. It will really only carry one

person (once I sailed with three aboard one, but I was slimmer then and the passengers were my

nephews when they were small.) One way to think about how much boat you need is how many

people you plan to put in the cockpit. I've owned boats from eight to 30 feet long. The one with the
biggest cockpit was an 18-foot sharpie skiff. The cockpit was 18 feet long. Well, maybe subtract a

couple inches for the thickness of the transom and the stem, but you get the idea. I could take more

people sailing on that boat than any other I've owned, and I could also easily single hand it. I even

cruised it, using a sheet of black plastic as a boom tent and an air mattress as a bed.

You may think the feeling of freedom you want from sailing will come with a boat that can take

you to exotic ports. But you don't gain freedom by taking everything with you. Most people have

more fun with boats exploring the pretty bits of water along the shore. Gunkholing, it's called. A

gunkhole might not sound attractive, but think about taking a little boat into a little inlet, with just

enough wind to move the boat, or perhaps moving slowly under oars, branches reaching out to you,

blossoms settling from tree to water, no engine noises or smells...now, doesn't that sound nice? When

you've tried it, perhaps you'll understand this conversation from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the

Willows:

`Is it so nice as all that?’ asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he

leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings,

and felt the boat sway lightly under him.

`Nice? It’s the only thing,’ said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. `Believe me,

my young friend, there is nothing — absolute nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing

about in boats. Simply messing,’ he went on dreamily: `messing — about — in — boats; messing — '

finis