Last fall I helped some friends deliver a new-to-them boat from Annapolis to Newport. It’s a route that I have traced a few times before, both down the Chesapeake and through the C&D Canal, and I was eager to get one final adventure in for the year. Plus, it was a convenient addition to my boat show rounds as I was headed back north anyway.
After the Annapolis boat show, the SAIL team spends a few extra days in Maryland conducting test sails for our Top 10 Best Boats competition. Somehow they always seem to be the coldest mornings in October, and for three days we dash from boatyard to yacht club to landing point, taking reams of notes and shoving chapped hands in pockets whenever they’re not holding a wheel, line, or pen.
So, it was a relief to pivot from the chaos of testing to the still, cold night at Jabin’s, where my friends waited for me, protected in the warm little haven of their boat. I can still remember how the tips of my ears stung when I came in from the chill.
Like many other boatyards, and in particular the transit hubs along the marine highways, Burt Jabin Yacht Yard has a little collection of books that have been left behind by people passing through. These libraries are usually tucked somewhere between the showers and the washing machines. Sometimes they’re on shelves, sometimes it’s more of a pile, but you can almost always find books in these liminal spaces between one adventure and the next.
I’m enamored by this practice. I always take a moment to browse what’s been left by my fellow sailors. It’s a little snapshot of a community, of what we cared about, what we spent our time on, and what we left behind. There’s something special about these books that travel up and down the coast, being passed from one sailor to the next.
I ended up picking out a battered copy of a book I’d been meaning to read for ages but hadn’t been able to find because its out of print. I knew at least two people had lovingly read it before me because they’d left underlines throughout. I came to think of them quite fondly by their chosen instruments: Pencil and Blue Pen. Throughout the book, I learned what Pencil and Blue cared about and what they thought while they were reading. Pencil loved a beautiful turn of phrase and the craftsmanship of the writing. Blue read with a sense of justice, outraged by the indignities suffered by our protagonist. I felt that I came to know these two readers as well as I knew the characters in the book. We were our own little on-the-page book club. Somewhere out there, there are two sailors who I will never meet but who I nevertheless know pretty well. They left me a gift in the form of this book, but also in the form of their own perspectives.
It reminded me of one morning in our little office in Salem, Massachusetts, maybe six or seven years ago, when Peter Nielsen logged on in the morning, scrolled through his inbox, and said, “I don’t know what’s happened, but suddenly all our readers think they’re writers.” SAIL has long been driven by submissions from our community, and that particular month we had such an influx that it took ages to get through them. But of course, his question was rhetorical. We knew what had happened. It’s hard to spend long hours at sea and not feel it’s meaningful and worth jotting down the memories. Stare at the horizon long enough, and anyone becomes a poet.
Storytelling is an old and integral part of community building, and it’s particularly central to ours. Over the centuries, we passed our narratives down through shanties and superstitions and folktales. You can hear about local legends at any sailor’s bar or yacht club. Maybe it’s the adventure or the meditation of long quiet hours aboard, but there’s something about being at sea that calls us to share.
So, on these frigid autumn nights, I hope you’re cozied up with a good book or good company, and carrying on that tradition by indulging in a salty yarn. It’s how we stay connected. Who knows, it might even be you and I meeting the next time you pick up a book in your marina’s little library. I’ll be the annotations in black pen.
— Lydia
Lydia can be reached by email at lydia.mullan@firecrown.com or @lydiaatsea on Instagram.
