Call me Nathan. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - I first set eyes on the little sloop known as the West Wight Potter 15 and now I finally own one,
The Mighty Epic. Since boyhood I dreamed of sailing out to sea accompanied only by my two best friends The Wind and the Stars.
I am no stranger to boats. My father and brothers were avid sports fisherman. Together we would cruise the coast of Southern California in the
Migrant, a powered cabin cruiser of twenty-four feet. While I never refused a chance to go to sea in the
Migrant, I was always made uncomfortable and a little ill at the harsh noise, the nauseating motion of the boat, and the frenzy of angry activity on the deck. The point here was not to cruise but to battle the fish and each other.
It was 1989 when my family and I spent the summer in Victoria British Columbia. We stayed at our friends home while they occupied their summer cottage. The house was of stately portions and included a private beach where I found a row boat ready for use. Every day I would spend hours out in the cove rowing and mucking about.
The final day I will not forget. A fierce rainstorm has stirred up the cove and brought in whole armies of huge jelly fish. I went out in my row boat as usual but not aware of the hundreds of creatures floating under me. When I finally took notice of all the translucent dinner plate sized jellies I went white (well, whit
er). I had never seen anything like it before except in movies. Hundreds of them just floating still all over the cove. As a boy of 11 I envisioned myself being entangled and feasted upon by the jellies. I quickly rowed to shore occasionally whacking a jelly fish with my oar movements.
My family thought it was so peculiar that I enjoyed being out there alone. I suppose it was peculiar. Peculiar and wonderful.
My father being a transplanted Brit had of course a beautiful library in our home. It had wall-to-wall oak book cases filled with everything from the classics to reference books. One day I discovered The Time Life Library of Boating which was published in the nineteen seventies. I fell so in love with this series of books. They were beautifully illustrated and filled with those wonderful Kodachrome photos of that era. I became totally immersed in these books and read every one cover-to-cover, over and over again.
What intrigued me most was the (yet undiscovered to me) world of sailing. I had never really been exposed to sailing or sail boats before -my family being quite the Motorheads. It all seemed so... foreign to me. You don't just fire up the beefy engine and tear around the waters. This was an artful craft, an ancient skill, a holy communion between a human being and nature. Nature, of course, having all the power, and the human being only granted permission to use it temporarily until nature turns furious and the human being must either find safe harbor or weather the storm. For me it was a whole new world which combined a sort of Zen philosophy with geometry, physics, meteorology, logic, and human intuition. The sum of which is peace and beauty.
"All this?" I remember thinking, "is what it takes to make the boat go." and is what it has taken for centuries to make all the great ships of discovery (prior to the industrial age) go.
By age 19 my sailing aspirations became a reality when my then partner and I bought an old twenty-four foot trailer sloop built by Roger MacGregor in 1972. We named her
Aquitania after the famed Cunard ocean liner that carried my father, my uncle, and their parents from Southampton England to Nova Scotia in 1948 after their neighborhood in Finsbury Park, London had been heavily damaged during the Blitzkrieg. The
Aquitania was in need of much work but eventually sailed to sea the summer of 1996 where she had a permanent mooring in Long Beach California.
In late 1998 my dear father passed on and during the following weeks of mourning and the stressful liquidating of his house, my partner arranged for us to sail the Aquitania from the Channel Island Harbor where she had been on her trailer, to the Ventura Ilse Marina for a weekend overnighter. I recall the first day out on the ocean. I spent hours sitting on the bow with my feet dangling over the gunwale, the large white sails taught on a beam reach, the boat heeling beautifully to port. I just sat there gazing out at the horizon, taking it all in and letting that feeling of peace enter my soul.
Life would happen again, and again, and again. The
Aquitania sat on her trailer, neglected for almost ten years before the other owner, aforementioned as my partner, would have her moved to her new home in Alameda California. The poor forgotten
Aquitania by now had become sun baked and worn. Her wood cracked and dry, her metal dull, and her keel split where it rested on the trailer. She needs a lot of work, time, and money invested in her before she ever sails again.
And so that is how
The Mighty Epic came to be. My good friend Erik came along one day to survey the Aquitania and in so realizing she will not take us sailing anytime soon, decided to buy another boat. I convinced Erik (who did not need much convincing) that our ideal boat is the West Wight Potter 15. A boat small enough to own without hassle, seaworthy enough for the ocean, and comfortable enough for sleep on for a weekend voyage.
I found one for sale a few blocks away in Alameda. She is a 1982 model I believe and had spent most of her career in a garage. A boat this old should not look this good! Her previous owner had barley used her at all and in fact had never even named her. And so, this stray puppy of a sailboat is now mine (and Erik's) and we will break a bottle of Champagne on her bow and name her
The Mighty Epic.
