Amazing Grace

Grace knows I love boats. That’s why she told me that she and, her partner, Kurt had been storing a Sunfish in their garage for over fifteen years for a friend of theirs who moved to where there was no water. I said, “Really? It hasn’t been in water for that long?” Grace asked me if I wanted the boat because they were now themselves going to be moving. Kurt had rigged thick ropes to suspend the sailboat at the top of the garage. The design of the storage rigging was ingenious with pulleys and clamps to lift and lower the boat. It looked as if a spider had caught the boat in its web.

This Sunfish dated back to the 60’s and is one of the early models. Since the design hasn't changed much the way you can tell if it's pre-1970's is by the rudder. The older ones have a rudder that doesn’t clip on easily like the newer ones do, but instead has to be manually tightened by turning a wing nut every time before setting out to sail. It is also a heavier boat than the ones built today which makes it feel more stable on the water when the breeze is up and sluggish when there’s little wind. Except for these two things the Sunfish has basically remained the same in design over the years. You will know any Sunfish once you get to know just one. They are not like cars that change designs but still go by the same name, say a Mustang.

A Sunfish looks like a Sunfish and handles like a Sunfish whether built 30 years ago or today. The sail has to have the officially stylized imprint of a sunfish on it and has to have five stripes. The colors can vary, but the number of stripes cannot. These kinds of details are what makes a “class” of boats and is really only important if you want to race because you have to meet all the specifications of the class you are racing in. There are other things, too, like how high you can rig your sail and at what angle you can tilt your rudder on the newer boats not the older ones because that older wing nut design doesn’t give you that flexibility.

But let’s go back to Grace and Kurt’s garage. Here was this beautiful old boat caught in Kurt’s web. It had been there long enough that generations of mud wasps had built nests in every possible place so that when we started to let the ropes loose to set the boat down on the top of my car, the air in the garage got dusty. The hull was intact but the boat needed everything else. The rudder, tiller, sail, and rigging had long gone into disrepair or had disappeared over the years. It was still a good boat though. She didn’t exactly drop down from the sky, although Kurt’s garage web made it seem like she did, but she was an unexpected gift. After cleaning her off and getting her rigged up the only possible name for a boat that had been suspended in the air for fifteen years, was offered as a gift from Grace, and was now floating on water had to be Amazing Grace.