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But sailors don't need to know physics. All they need to understand is a few operating rules, and they're off. I got hooked in middle age. My wife saw an 11-foot boat in a yard sale for $450, and thought it might be fun for our four children to use at the small private lake where we live, near Charleston. The kids were bored - they prefer slam-bang sports - but I tried it and was enchanted.
Later I sold the 11-footer, called a Max, and bought a used Force Five (named for a category in the rating system for storm winds) for $500. It's a 14-footer almost like a Laser. Still later, I added a wonderful 1959 Flying Scot, a 19-footer big enough to hold a dozen grandkids and chums, for $1,500. Small-boat sailing is economical. Sailors tend to spend a pittance, then feel superior to power boaters in their $20,000 craft.
Now I use both boats: the little Force Five on my home lake, and the Scot for trips to bigger waters. Both have planing hulls that skim the top of waves as speed increases. When sunlight is glistening on the ripples, and a planing boat is sending out a spray that glints in the sun, you ride a million sparkles. Riding those sparkles is a joy.
Sailing is a sort of poetry. In the Book of Proverbs, Solomon ranked it among these marvels:
"There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid."
(Haught is editor emeritus of The Charleston Gazette-Mail, West Virginia's largest newspaper. This column was written a quarter-century ago. Now that he's 88, infirmity forced him to stop sailing, and he donated his beloved boats to a sailing club.)
(published in Heartland Boating, June, 1995)
(and in Small Craft Advisor, Jan.-Feb. 2005)
(and in The Sunday Gazette-Mail, May 22, 2005)
(and in a 2008 book, Fascinating West Virginia)
(and on a British sailing website)
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