How things have changed

September 2024

By David Roper

These two pictures were taken about 20 years apart. It’s a yacht club cruise (same club each time) having set a “starburst” in the Basin off the New Meadows River, in Maine. It takes some doing, but in the end you have to admit it’s pretty cool. You even get a swimming pool in the middle! I guess during cocktail hour the idea is to work your way around, having a drink in each boat. (Though I’m sure no one ever made it all the way; beyond the hazards of too much alcohol, just the gymnastics of climbing over 20+ sets of lifelines would be daunting.)

But what is remarkable about these two shots is how things have changed. Count the power boats in the mid-’80s photo; then count the power boats in the current one. Things are changing fast! When my brother gave me these photos, it made me think of a piece I wrote in “Beyond Mermaids,” a book of mine published not long ago. Here’s an excerpt:

For a few moments, let your mind be a bird, a thoughtful soaring bird gliding over a harbor full of boats. You’re returning to your home after many years away. You’re full of anticipation and yearning for the place you left behind. You begin your flight at the harbor’s mouth, where the biggest boats are tethered in this great, 2,000-boat anchorage. You look down. Then you swoop closer, skimming the tops of the masts of some of the sailboats. There are fewer of them today, these boats with masts, replaced by so many other types of motorized craft. And the wooden boats are mostly gone; many have evolved into sleek, two- and three-outboard fiberglass center consoles. When you last flew over, years ago, a big outboard was 28 horsepower; now it’s 350. The world changes for lots of reasons, you think. Maybe for the good. Maybe not. Depends on who you are and where you come from. You keep flying. You go down lower. The harbor’s a mile long and a half-mile wide, and the boats are getting smaller as you reach the shallow end at the head. Go ahead, you think, go down a bit more. It’s okay; the masts are getting shorter as the sailboats get smaller.

You swoop down over a large powerboat and two center console outboards. Wow, you think. I bet those boats, those in their prime, those sleek ones with the 350-horsepower outboards, I bet they get there fast, wherever it is they’re going. And I bet the humans on them love the speed and thrill of it all. But there! What’s that little boat – the one between them, almost unnoticeable, the one partially rebuilt and with no mast yet in it? She sits like a bird perfectly alighted on the water, perfectly acclimated to her environment. You circle around, going lower and lower, until your own wing tips momentarily eclipse the glint from the sun’s morning rays on the water. Wait, there’s a man there, sticking his head out of the tiny cabin; he seems content, snug in his own era. He must have been sleeping aboard. He’s a white-haired man, fit-looking though way past his prime, probably pushing 80. His vessel, too, may be pushing 80, a craft from a bygone day no doubt, and obviously amid a careful, loving rebuild. There’s only one primer coat of paint on the hull, and some pieces of the boat are missing: part of the cockpit coaming, a piece of the rail, the companionway hatch. And of course, the mast isn’t there. But you can just tell, by her narrow beam, her lovely sheer, and her sleek, double-ended lines, that this is a thoroughbred. You know now, as you swoop very close, that this is the former steed of a knight-errant. This is a Rozinante, a legendary design from legendary designer L. Francis Herreshoff. This is one of the finest sailboats ever designed.

The world keeps changing, but this man down there seems to have hung onto the past. Maybe he knows something. Maybe he hasn’t forgotten something. Perhaps he knows enough about what’s good about the past that he’s going to hang on to just that. Perhaps he has an inherent sense of quality and knows he’s found it right here in this boat. The fast boats, those sleek, modern, high-powered ones all around him, are what much of the world seems to want now. Whenever their people get aboard, wherever they’re going, wherever there is, they want to get there quicker. As you tilt your wings and begin your ascent, you take one last glimpse at the white-haired fellow and his beloved boat below, and you think: yet that man, when he gets aboard, he doesn’t have to go anywhere. He’s already there!

David Roper’s new novel, “The Ghosts of Gadus Island: A Story of Young Love, Loss, and the Order of Nature,” is now available. Dave is the author of the three-time bestseller “Watching for Mermaids,” as well as the sequel “Beyond Mermaids” and the novel “Rounding the Bend.” Buy them at Amazon.com or roperbooks.com.

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