Son of a son of a sailor
2004-04-23

While waiting for M.E to get home last night so we could get a bite to eat, the phone rang. It was our friend Jen asking if I'd be willing to say a few words at the memorial for a friend who had died. He was a good friend so of course I said yes, and then began to think about what I would say. It was easy to think of things, our Phil was quite the charecter.

He showed up on E dock in the sleezy marina back when Jim and I pretty much ran the show there. We were young, racing hotshots and also ran the local Yacht Club. Admission $25 and that included three parties with all the beer you could drink. It wasn't the most exclusive lot as you can imagine.

Phil was the old war horse, pushing 80 and had just downsized from a 36 footer to a little 23 called Spunky that had a rig as oversized as his personality. We adopted him immediately and never regretted it, ever.

Phil was an active guy. He still raced a couple of nights a week, played tennis, was going to college and was married to a woman 40 years his junior and had a 17 year old son. He was always doing something and maybe that was the secret of his longevity.

His new boat had lots of problems and we were always asked for advice or more usually to lend a hand or to crawl into some place he couldn't get at. In return, he aways tried to feed us awful combinations of things he bought at the local health food store. It was ALWAYS awful and I learned early on to say I'd already eaten even if I would have eaten and old sneaker. Yes it was that bad.

Phil went to every party, always alone and put us all to shame on the dance floor. He usually targeted some young lovely and just danced all night when he wasn't swapping sailing stories. If you didn't look at the 70's vintage clothes, you ckind of forgot he could have been our grandfathers. He was never treated that way, he was just one of the gang.

He drank like a fish and wasn't very fussy. One day when supplies on Spunky were low I found him drinking some concoction which turned out to be gin and wine, Do you want one? Um, Phil, no thanks.. Shudder.... More than once we had to play bumper Phil to keep him on the dock for the long walk to the parking lot.

On one of my last sails with Phil I invited him on the race to Block. His crew was out of town and I didn't want him racing alone as he had done several times before. Hell, he was pushing 90 and the sea can be a hard mistress.

Everything went well on the ride over, and we were in the money. We all had a great time at the parties and on Monday it was time to race home. We were short crew, really short, but I still reminded Phil that he was here for his brains, not his brawn. My boat was a lot bigger than his 23 and the loads on things were a lot higher.

Well, off Sandy Point, got hit with a big wind shift and a gust and it was all hands on deck trying to get things sorted out. Phil jumped in and tried to dump the main and it sort of pulled him in. I got it sorted out and he didn't try to do that again, but he did get kind of quiet.

We won the ride home by a lot, 20 minutes over the second place boat and finished second over all. We high fived, popped open some beers and sailed back to our home port on a beautiful summer evening and all was right with the world. Sort of...

Phil's wife met him on the dock and he thanked us for the weekend and said he had a great time. Then he got in the car and without a word to anybody headed straight to the hospital. He thought he was having a heart attack.

I found out about it that night when his wife called. She told me that Phil had given instructions that no matter what happened, to make sure I understood that I was not to blame. She said he was pretty stubborn and could never live in a nursing home and that his goal was to die racing a sailboat. My answer was short, that's a good goal, but not on my boat!

After lots of tests, it was determined that he wasn't going to die, and it wasn't his heart, he had just pulled some muscles. As you can imagine I was relieved. A few years later and well into his 90's he moved to upstate NY to be near family. He was teaching at the local college and still racing once a week on a local lake.

I got a long letter from him last year asking how we were doing and thanking me for all my help in the years. I sent one back but got no response. I didn't even know he was sick. I never saw or heard from him again.

He went pretty quickly, a blessing I guess. It was a brain tumor that finally brought him down. One of his last acts was to dictate what was going to happen after he died. He wanted his ashes spread by this racing mark wahich was always his nemesis. He also wrote a heafty check for a party. He didn't want a formal service, and so a party there will be.

I'm taking the boat down, maybe solo, but I'm going be there and I'll raise a glass (not gin and wine) in honor of my friend and smile, but I'll be a sad smile because one of the true rare charecters in this world now only exists in the memories of the lives he touched. God Speed Spunky.... Your friends miss you.

Ron

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