WELLFLEET — We built her in a garage in Syracuse, N.Y., a 23-foot cat ketch dory, small for a cruising boat. Ignoring Capt. Nat Herreshoff’s dictum that the only suitable color for a boat was white or black (and that only a fool would paint a boat black), we proceeded to paint the hull royal blue and, in a further affront to the good captain, outfitted her with red mainsail and yellow mizzen. We launched at Alexandria Bay, hoisted sail, and set off eastward down the St. Lawrence.
A few months later, we fetched up in Provincetown Harbor. Easy to find on a mild September night. We simply pointed the bow toward the monument, which was well lit in 1974.
We decided to winter over and continue south in the spring, but Provincetown worked its magic on us and for 22 years we lived in a small apartment in the far West End, just down the street from Manuel Furtado’s boatyard, now long gone. Instead of continuing south, we sold the dory and acquired a Beetle Cat, a fine, seaworthy little craft at 12 feet, 4 inches, and, at the time, the only one in town.
Launch day was not a fixed date. It coincided with what Henry Beston termed “the great rhythms of nature,” in our case, the flowering of the crab apple in our front yard. The mild weather would revive the tree and mark the uncovering of the Beetle, itself a transfigured cedar tree. As the blossoms unfolded and prepared to greet the spring, so did the boat until, on a particular day in mid-May, the tree stood forth in brilliant array and the boat returned to its mooring.
William Buckley once described big-boat ownership as akin to standing in a cold shower while tearing up $1,000 bills. Not so with the Beetle. Materials were few. The time-honored tasks of sanding, caulking, painting, varnishing, and checking the lines, sail, and standing rigging were satisfying. In fact, everything about sailing lends itself to learning new skills, from marlinspike work to weather awareness and a growing sense of self-reliance, which makes the Beetle an ideal boat for young sailors.
If help was needed, as when I was faced with replacing the deck canvas, advice was close at hand, freely and generously offered by Joe Andrews, Ray Merrill, and “Flyer” Santos, men whose knowledge of boats was encyclopedic.
For the sailor, Provincetown Harbor has hosted many interesting boats: Joe Andrews’s beautifully restored Ranger; Flyer Santos’s equally graceful Columbia; the leeboard Herreshoff Meadowlark; Ted Barker’s Tamerlane; schooners Hindu, Olad, and Bay Lady II; and Eskimos, Peapods, Dories, a Thistle, a Snipe, Lightnings, multihulls, twin keel boats, and a variety of larger cruising boats and visiting historical craft. Our modest little Beetle Cat was in good company.
I clearly remember the last time we launched the Beetle. It was a peaceful afternoon. The sky was full of portents. A half moon floated high in the east. Laughing gulls cruised over the beach, chortling. A kingfisher balanced patiently on a flagpole, scanning for shiners. A pair of orioles pillaged the cherry blossoms that drifted to the ground like early snow. The sky was cloudless, unwinking. We chose to interpret these as favorable signs. It would be a smooth launch.
Meanwhile, the crab apple blossoms were fully open, their color a deep rose. A robin patrolled the lawn and a house finch alighted in the tree near a cardinal. A breeze shuffled branches and birds as I brushed copper red bottom paint onto the hull, the last job before launching and my contribution to the yard’s burgeoning rubescence. All that remained was to send the Beetle down the ramp and walk her to the mooring.
A few days after launching the Beetle a stiff wind scattered the crab apple blossoms and heralded the start of a new sailing season and the unbounded sense of freedom that is the boat’s gift to those that sail them. As Joe Andrews put it, “Next to sailing is God.”
