Graduation

If you read “Sizewise” in the last issue, you may be able to figure out where this column is headed. But stick around – it’s worth the ride!

My grammar school, in semi-rural Illinois, was a very small affair. All eight grades shared four classrooms, and my eighth grade class had all of thirteen members. For what it’s worth, I was the class valedictorian, but it wasn’t worth much.

My high school was a typically suburban institution, but big, with an enrollment of 4,000 and a lot of smart, motivated kids. In one summer I went from the big fish in a very small pond to one of the nameless, faceless fish in the big school. Graduation became accommodation overnight.

Needless to say, I did accommodate, and duly graduated, but no longer at the head of my class. I learned a lot, and matured some, but not as much as some other kids. I did manage to meet my future wife, Betsy, in high school, but she wouldn’t go out with me – she dated the cool guys and I was something of a dweeb.

My parents thought I wasn’t quite ready for college, so they convinced me (“ordered me” sounds too demeaning) to go into the army first, then to college. Once again I was thrown into the water without a life jacket. I thought I was tough, but my drill sergeants were tougher, so I learned and accommodated some more. KP, night marches, and Saturday inspections were just the ticket for a suburban kid who read Sartre and wrote poetry.

In fact the army prepared me very well for my chosen college, a Big Ten university where the undergraduate enrollment was 25,000, and the graduate enrollment was 10,000. You could get a great education there, if you were determined and persistent, but nobody handed you anything. By this time I had toughened up, and was certain enough of what I wanted to do to take advantage of the opportunities, and during my senior year I applied to several grad schools.

I was accepted to a couple, much to my surprise, and chose the London School of Economics, in consul-tation with Betsy, who was by then my fiancée. Off we went to London, without much money but with lots of enthusiasm. It as a very urban school in a very big, sophisticated city, and we loved it.

So, graduations have been for me passages from a familiar place to a bigger, more challenging world. In every case there has been lots of anticipation, a little fear, and more learning than I ever expected.

Well, it’s happened in sailing. You may remember from “Sizewise” that I had been bidding, albeit timidly, on some bigger boats on Ebay. In June I saw a Ranger 26, a boat whose history I know a little about, up for auction in a boatyard in Verplanck, just up the Hudson from Tarrytown, which made it perfect.

I put in a ridiculously low bid, and promptly forgot about it. Later, when I was in Chicago on business, in the car to O’Hare Airport, my Blackberry went off, with the message, “Congratulations…” The old joke is that mixed emotions are watching your mother-in-law drive off the cliff in your new car. Actually, mixed emotions are buying a sailboat on Ebay. I could hear myself saying, “Oh, cool!” and “Oh, darn!” several times over the next few minutes.

The pictures of the boat looked very promising, but my state of mind all depended on a first-hand examination. When I was able to get to the yard, she was all I had hoped for, and more. The hull was in very good shape for a boat more than 30 years old, the standing rigging must have been replaced within the last ten years, and the jib furler looked brand new. The new Greyhound was a keeper. “Oh, cool!”

So I pulled the sails out of the cabin and sent the genoa off for some minor repairs. I painted the bottom and waxed the topsides. I put her new name on her. I poked around below decks and above, and finally she was ready to launch. The boatyard picked the new Greyhound up in a giant forklift and deposited her in the water, with me in the cockpit. I motored to a transient berth and set about rigging her.

The next day, a Sunday, I planned to sail her down from Verplanck to Tarrytown. I was worried that we might have a typical windless sultry summer day, but I should have known better. The winds were 20 knots, right in our face. Fortunately, I had an experienced sailor as a crew, but we had a bit of a wild ride down the Hudson. The Ranger is a LOT more boat than the Alacrity. I’ll definitely think twice before singlehanding this baby.

Now I’m embarked on all the fix-ups and upgrades of a new boat. The Alacrity is up for sale, with some people poking around. So I’m no longer a twin-keeler, but I still plan to write this column. We can’t let an extra keel come between us, can we? I’ve only graduated - I haven’t left the family.

George Bollenbacher

Posted July 18, 2008