Today, I took my Dad on an afternoon sailing trip in St. Augustine, Florida. My Dad is 89 this year, and he is in amazing physical shape for someone his age. His memory is not what it used to be, but he’s still pretty sharp. We sailed on the Schooner Freedom (http://www.schoonerfreedom.com/) and I really like this ship for two reasons: a) I personally know the owners, John and Sara, and they make memorable voyages on a truly majestic ship and b) the Schooner Freedom is a virtual clone of the Alacrity, only bigger.
The Alacrity is the ship that my father owned when I was a teenager, and he and I were together on the last voyage of the Alacrity when we shipwrecked in the Bahamas (I cover the shipwreck in detail as a part of my book Grounded). Like the Freedom, Alacrity was a gaff-rigged, two-masted schooner, with very similar sail and rigging. The only difference is that the Freedom is about half again bigger than the Alacrity.
Much of my family accompanied us on this blustery and cold February afternoon sail. We didn’t make it out to the Atlantic, due to the conditions, but had a great sail up the inter-coastal waterway. My dad mentioned several times that “we used to own a sailboat” and as I questioned him about certain elements of the sailboat and sailing, his memory of those things was clear: the rigging, the hoops that run up the mast, and how the lines were organized on the belaying pins. He said about 20 times how amazing it was to be out sailing, not because of the sailing itself but because of the family being there with him.
See, we are only guaranteed our last breath. None of us knows the number of minutes we have ahead of us. Yet do we take the appropriate opportunities to look for ways to have a meaningful impact on others around us? Maybe there will be another opportunity to sail with my dad, maybe not. But I am glad that I carved out those hours to hoist the sail, smell the salt air and feel the breeze as it passed through our sails. And with my dad at the wheel, to hear one more time, “coming about!”
