It started in Montana.
Well, maybe not in Montana. Maybe in the Bahamas at a seaside bar called Sundowners when I met George and Lillian Heyward. Goombay Smashes were two for one and a guy named Elliot was ripping around the pool on a skateboard while two locals stood in the ocean cleaning conch 20 feet away.
(Elliot's now halfway around the world in the 2022 Golden Globe Race--a solo, nonstop sail around the world using somewhat antiquated technology.)
We talked boats, Bahamas, this and that, and I saw George and Lillian here and there as we all pivoted through the Bahamas that winter. I was aboard my old boat, a Tartan 34c named JADE. They were on their motor sailor, Bluffton Gal.
On my way north in JADE that spring--headed back to Maine--I pulled into their dock in Bluffton, South Carolina, for repairs. I spent a week there, working on my boat and learning about the Carolina Low Country.
Tied to the dock was a little, salty-looking boat named Polaris Jack. George gave me a tour of the boat. It looked like a miniature ship, all teak and bronze, weathered and aged. "This is my favorite boat in the world," George told me. And that's saying something, coming from a guy with more boats on his property than I could count.
Fast forward. The following summer, back in Maine, I came down with giardia and Lyme at the same time. I'd left JADE at a boatyard in the Chesapeake in order to return home in time for my clam digging season, and was living in my tiny cabin, far too sick to dig clams. I awoke one night in a fevered sweat, delirious, with the firm conviction that I'd sell JADE where she sat and I'd move back to Montana--at least part-time. No more sailboats for me.
I followed through. I sold JADE, which was a painful thing to do, given the amount of time and work I'd put into her. Plus, she was a flat gorgeous boat. But I did it, and shortly after Covid hit, I drove to Montana and moved back into the house I'd lived in 15 years earlier.
Months clicked away. I wasn't' used to the urban setting. Missoula winters are raw and gray and dreary, and the snowpack was bad so the skiing wasn't the lifesaver it usually is out there.
I found myself perusing sailboats for sale on the internet, as most boat lovers tend to do now and then. When a little boat in the Chesapeake caught my eye, I shut the computer off. Days later, I looked at the boat again. It was a Nor Sea 27', I think. Finally, I called George Heyward down in Bluffton, SC, and asked him if that was the same boat as his beloved Polaris Jack. I'd begun daydreaming about a small, salty boat.
"No," George said. I hadn't talked to him in over a year, most likely. "Polaris is a 26' Bristol Channel Cutter. Why? Do you want her?"