Tiempo: a family history in boats

My father’s sailing life began at the Pointe Claire Yacht Club, racing in one of the twenty-three Jabberwocks the club had built. These were 19-foot Bermuda-rigged sloops designed specifically for the racing community there. I have a suspicion the name alone was half the fun of it, though the boats were swift and spirited enough to justify their reputation.

Later, he and his brother decided that building their own boat sounded like a good idea. They settled on a Y-Flyer and raced it for many years before life moved him in another direction. He married my mother, moved to California in the early 1950s, and for a while, the story shifted to family and career rather than regattas.

By the mid-late 1960s they had returned to Montreal, now with four children in tow. For a few years we crewed on a boat belonging to Frank Smith. Frank and my father raced hard and often, and whenever they were short of crew, my sisters and I were pressed into service. You can learn an awful lot about wind and water when you’re considered ballast by your own father.

(Dave and I went out together to test the new spinnaker.)

In the 1970s, he finally bought a boat of his own, an Alberg 30 christened Tiempo. We cruised the Great Lakes, slipped down the Richelieu River locks, and entered more regattas than I could possibly remember. To my father, racing was never just about speed. It was a test of character and a reminder that stubbornness is, in fact, a sailing skill.

(The sailboat at the front with the windsurfer board at the bow.)                           

When he retired in the early 80s, my parents and younger brother moved to Grenada. It was a place they had loved since the late 50s, and it had always been their dream to retire there. He bought a C&C 35 as part of a collective charter scheme. It was, as he admitted later, a brilliant idea that fell apart the moment a revolution scared the tourists away. There is nothing quite like launching a new business venture just as the market disappears overnight. Still, they continued to sail around the Venezuelan coast and up the islands to Guadalupe many times.

Some years later, he partnered with a shipowner from Seattle named John, who kept a handsome wooden trawler called Nestucca. Their arrangement was simple: my father would help deliver the boat from Seattle to Vancouver each year, mid-June, then he and my mother would spend a month or so exploring the BC coast up to Alaska with family and friends. Afterwards, John reclaimed her and sailed south again. It worked beautifully for several years, giving all the kids and grandkids a chance to know those deep, green waters.

Eventually, he decided to buy Otter One, a Grand Banks 42, to be able to explore the British Columbia coastlines more independently. True to form, there was always a rotating cast of family and friends aboard. The boat was rarely still and never empty.

Then came the purchase of his dream boat: an Amel Mango 52. Built for distance, she became the vessel that gave full expression to his wanderlust. We sailed her everywhere: through the Hebrides, down to the Canaries, across to Grenada and Venezuela, throughout the Caribbean, up the eastern seaboard of the States and further still to Newfoundland. She was elegant, capable, and unflappable. My father loved her for all the reasons sailors love their boats, but especially because she could take a beating and still bring him home in one piece.

When he died in 2000, he and my mother were still sailing on Tiempo and Otter One.

All of his sailboats bore the same name: Tiempo. Time. He believed deeply in the Spanish toast that was repeated so often in our family: “Salud, dinero y amor, y el tiempo para gozarlos.” Health, money, and love, and the time to enjoy them.

For him, time on the water was always time enjoyed fully. It wasn’t about owning the perfect boat, or even the biggest. It was about the chance to raise a sail or set an anchor and feel that you had stepped, if only for a while, into the part of life where nothing is wasted.