On a farm or ranch out on the High Plains, when something goes wrong and you’re the one standing there, you fix it. Like the time the cattle broke the fence up on the ranch in Prairie Center, Wyoming, and my dad and I spent two frozen days tracking them down. Or the time I got a pickup stuck in a snowdrift in below-zero temps, with two kids in back and one small shovel. There’s no cavalry on the way, no AAA or Helpdesk. You just commence digging the truck out. Out there, it’s on you.
Life on the eastern seaboard is a whole other proposition. Not that people on the street in Boston form much of a mutual aid society — on the contrary, if you hesitate at a green light for more than one-eighth of a second, you’ll get horn blasts and a string of colorful words. Even so, the sheer volume of people here means you can nearly always find someone available to help. And as I’ve often discovered in Marblehead, friendly neighbors provide invaluable aid in the business of getting through the day. Neighbors are everywhere! So many neighbors, in fact, that I sometimes walk to the sea just to get a line of sight.
I think it’s because I’m used to solitary problem-solving, I felt such a deep affinity for the paintings of cod fishing at the Marblehead Museum. For those sailors out there alone on the little dories, there was no backup, no navy to swoop in if you got in trouble. Just a fishing line, the deep blue sea, and them.
That venturesome spirit remains alive and well in Marblehead. Today, the spiritual successors of those Marblehead fishermen gather on Sundays at the harbor to frostbite.
“Frostbiting” is a term those used to discuss the racing of “tech dinghies.” These sailboats are 12.5 feet long, rigged with a single sail. Originally designed at MIT, tech dinghies exist not to haul in cod, but to go fast. The Boston Yacht Club hosts a fleet of these boats each winter. Recently, I had the opportunity to go frostbiting with them.
Now, recall that I’m a landlubber of the first degree. So I boarded a motorized mark boat, not a tech dinghy. The mark boats stay on the sidelines, keeping an eye on the racing sailors. It was a superb vantage point to take in the races, and watch the sailors pilot the boats at such hard angles I feared for their ability to stay upright. They do this to take maximum advantage of the wind, ducking at each change in direction to avoid getting smacked in the face by the swinging boom. All the while they race other boats, accounting for the uncertainty of the wind and waves. I was impressed! Those sailors know their business and I like watching skilled practitioners ply their trade.
Somehow, even out on the water and thus vastly out of my element, I immediately felt at home. I could see pedestrians at Crocker Park with a glance landward, but they were far, far away. Like being out on a Wyoming ranch, we were alone in our locale. No Coast Guard, no Helpdesk.
The races all went smoothly until the very last race of the day, when one of the boats capsized. When that happens, a mark boat quickly becomes a safety boat. The captain of my boat hit the throttle and we motored over to pull the sailor from the sea. Despite his plunge into the 38-degree water, he seemed more annoyed than panicked, which I found impressive. The task of righting the vessel remained.
We gave it our best shot, but were unable to turn that dinghy right-side up from the mark boat. With no other alternative, we towed the boat into the dock upside down. Reminded me of the time as a kid when I flooded the carburetor of the dump truck we were using for bean harvest. It was so dead that my dad had to halt harvest to tow it back home with a tractor. Talk about colorful words!
No farmer would leave a truck dead in the field, any more than a sailor would leave a boat floating in the water. Marblehead, Massachusetts or Prairie Center, Wyoming — if you’re the one standing there, you fix it.
As always, if you’ve got an idea upon which I can embark for a Marblehead First Time, drop me a line at court.merrigan@gmail.com .
Court Merrigan
Wyoming transplant Court Merrigan is a new Marblehead resident. His column “My Marblehead First Time” appears regularly in the Current.
