My dad was a sailor. Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York was his home port. He gave it all up when he married my mom, but until then, he was on the water a lot. He sailed many types of boats, ranging from small dinghies and sailing canoes to sailboats in the 30- to 40-foot range.
The 34-foot sailboat Gray Viking circa 1940, somewhere off the East Coast.
By CaptaIn Ray
Published: January, 2013
My dad was a sailor. Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York was his home port. He gave it all up when he married my mom, but until then, he was on the water a lot. He sailed many types of boats, ranging from small dinghies and sailing canoes to sailboats in the 30- to 40-foot range. (He even paddled a canoe from Brooklyn to Albany, a distance of over 100 miles, just because someone said he could never do it. Coming back was much easier—it was downstream!)
He and his boat partner, Al (as a kid I called him Uncle Al) also built three 34-foot sailboats. The first they sold just before they completed her, because they realized the next one would be so much better. The following events happened aboard their second boat, the Gray Viking.
They were anchored off the Seawanhaka Yacht Club in Oyster Bay, on the north shore of Long Island. On board were my dad, Al and his wife Flo, and their six-month-old son. The fog was thick—very thick. It was so thick that not only was the shoreline invisible, they could not even see the other boats they knew were anchored around them. There was no thought of getting underway. They would just wait for the fog to clear. The boat was securely anchored in a safe location, there was a small cabin heater to keep out the damp, and they had plenty of food aboard, except milk for the baby, which was running low.
They were quite sure that even in this thick fog one of them could take the dinghy and find the shore to get more milk. The problem would be rowing back and finding the Gray Viking. Al and my dad sat in the cockpit discussing this problem for several minutes. As they talked, they began to hear the approaching sounds of someone rowing; the creak of the oars in the locks, the soft splash of the oars dipping into the water, its regular pattern evidence of a skillful rower. They stopped talking and stared into the fog, wondering who was out there.
What appeared out of the fog was quite a surprise: A beautifully varnished mahogany dinghy, the man rowing it dressed in a butler’s uniform. He came alongside the Gray Viking and said, "Please pardon the intrusion, we didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but you do know how sounds will carry in the fog. Here is some milk for the child."
An astounded Al took the offered milk and thanked the man. The butler began to cast off to return to wherever it was he had come from, when my dad said, "Please wait just a moment before you leave. Let me get you something for the milk." He turned and headed below for his wallet.
The butler raised his hand, smiled, and said, "Thank you but no. Mr. Vanderbilt wouldn’t hear of it!" He lowered his hand, grasped both oars and rowed off into the fog.
Ray Wichmann, is a US SAILING-certified Ocean Passagemaking Instructor, a US SAILING Instructor Trainer, and a member of US SAILING’s National Faculty. He holds a 100-Ton Master’s License, was a charter skipper in Hawai’i for 15 years, and has sailed on both coasts of the United States, in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Greece. He is presently employed as the Master Instructor at OCSC Sailing in the Berkeley Marina.
