Oops…
During a break in the annual Cutty Sark race, the club had a
free-sail. My friend Missy and I were standing almost halfway around the
pond from the clubhouse to watch and comment on the impressive collection,
along with a crowd of a few hundred people who had gathered for the same
reason. There were a lot of boats, and they varied widely in size, craftmanship and maneuverability,
so skippers needed to be cautious and mindful of each other's
positions. The Cutty Sark
was one of the largest if not THE largest ship in the pond, and it was a very
elegant model. It was being sailed by a representative of the company,
and as Pop would tell me later, "he was an
inexperienced skipper." The clipper had full sails and was flying
from open water toward a more-populated area of the pond. Our father's
Fair American was in that zone, sailing gently between other ships, and she was
the largest boat in that grouping. The audience was doing the math,
calculating which boat the Cutty Sark
was going to hit, ceasing casual conversation and pointing excitedly to what
was unfolding. Pop saw it, too, but did not have enough speed to
completely avoid the oncoming clipper. The Cutty
Sark's skipper probably noticed too late and just
froze: it didn't look like he tried to change course at all. The crowd fell dead-silent as the clipper closed in and then rammed
the Fair American mid-ship, almost perpendicularly. The
CLUNK of the impact triggered a massive gasp from the audience,
like they were watching a tightrope walker lose their footing. The wind
pulled both ships alongside in a second, facing the same direction, looking
like the attacking ship would have mini-sailors swinging over to board Pop's ship at any moment. That's when it happened.
Our flustered father was working to get his ship away before the rigging
got tangled or who-knows-what-else got damaged, but in his effort, he bumped
the switch that operated all the cannons facing the Cutty
Sark. The cannons fired almost simultaneously,
sounding a bit like a string of mini firecrackers, and each cannon blew a line
of smoke across the decking of the clipper. The onlookers exploded in
cheers, applause and hard laughter. It was fabulous.
I ran around the pond and the
crowd to congratulate our father on "the coolest thing he had ever
done," just to find him red-faced and dispirited. He quietly told me
how he didn't mean to fire... I quietly told him to just smile and go with it.
I pointed out that hundreds of people thought it was intentional &
loved it. It was a great show. He had been too worried about both ships and too eager to help the
embarrassed Cutty Sark
skipper to look at it that way. He started to see the humor in it and had
cheered up a little, even had a tentative smile starting up (although his
eyebrows were still raised in the "oops" position) when I made room
for others who wanted to pat him on the back.
