S/V Spindrift

The math of fleet management, and why it never adds up.

I’m sitting at the house on LBI. We just got back from the first sail on our new boat. Not S/V Spindrift — our other new boat, S/V Hairball.

This sail got me thinking. How many boats is enough boats? The correct answer is n+1, where n is the number you currently own. I’ve field-tested this formula for forty years. No exceptions. A 100% success rate, if your goal is another boat, except this time. At last count we had a Lightning, a Flying Scot, a Laser, a 17-foot Boston Whaler, a 26-foot Jones Brothers, a Sunfish somebody gave us, and a 56-foot aluminum bluewater sailboat currently sitting in a boatyard in the south of France. Before that: Optimists, 420s, Mariners, a Grady White 248, a Stieger Craft 25, a Ros 19 Claiming Skiff, a 470. And at some point in my 20s and 30s, six windsurfers — not counting those, as the boat classification remains under review and I filed for redress for these. Every powerboat was for catching fish or digging clams. Every sailboat got raced, which I’ve always considered a justification, not a character flaw.

Sarah found me in the driveway. Not at dinner, not on a walk. In the driveway, where there’s nowhere to flee. She explained that we had too many boats. I was curious what she meant by “too many,” since I wasn’t familiar with the concept. We talked it over. I’m still not entirely sure how it ended the way it did. She’s better at algebra than I am, I think. We landed on: sell three, buy one. I sold the Lightning, the Flying Scot, and the Laser. The math works out to n-3+1, which is fewer boats overall, which is what Sarah wanted. One new boat, which is what I wanted. By my reckoning she still owes me two just to break even. Sarah is still working out what she agreed to. I’m going to remind her she got her way, and that her way comes with a boat named S/V Hairball and she might owe me at least two more boats.

The new one is a Marshall Cat Sanderling. One sail, one mast, a sheer line that makes you purr. Classic New England design. They race them, but casually, which is exactly right. We’ve got serious sailing ahead on S/V Spindrift and years of expedition plans to sort out. Close to home, we needed something simple. You put it in the water, you sail it, you go home. The Sanderling is that.

(Photo: Sarah Walsh-Mercurio.)

Before any of that, though, there’s the naming. There’s a rule in sailing: you don’t simply rename a boat. Do it without the proper ceremony and you’ve invited bad luck at sea. Sailors don’t do that. I had to look this up. The protocol: purge every trace of the old name first. Off the transom, off the life rings, out of the log. Write the old name on a piece of paper and cast it into the sea as an offering to Poseidon, who keeps a ledger of these things. Pour champagne over the stern. Invoke the four winds by name: Boreas from the North, Eurus from the East, Notus from the South, Zephyrus from the West. Only then do you christen the new name and pour champagne over the bow. We’ll be performing this ceremony in full for S/V Maybe Someday — the name she came with. When it’s done, we’ll have a boat named S/V Hairball. Poseidon has no say in this.

Please welcome S/V Hairball, our new cat, to the Mercurio-Walsh fleet.

This may be our last post for a while. We fly back to France in September, recommission S/V Spindrift, and pick up the expedition through the Med.