Thursday, 12 March
He’s late 60s, early 70s maybe, a trim, athletic six-footer. Shirtless and barefoot, he wears khaki cargo shorts only as he stands on the off-white foredeck of a custom 40-foot catamaran, Windsong of Ocean City, NJ. The hull is metallic gray and she sports a pilot house of unusual design, not the usual. But there’s something else that sets her apart. Wait a minute! She has no rig! Mast, boom, sails, shrouds and stays all lie on the ground 20-feet away from the slip at Hinckley Yachts where Windsong is tied.
Windsong looked so forlorn with her mast in the water.
He must have quite a story to tell, one thinks. The way the wind’s been blowing the past week, it’s easy to imagine she lost her rig in a gale-force gust crossing the Gulf Stream, a bow dug into a steep wave or, heaven forbid, she pitch-poled in 20-foot seas. But no.
TowBoat brought her into the travel lift slip after dark.
“It was on the ICW, about five-o’clock last night, down near Jupiter.” His head turns toward the bows and nods slightly as he explains, “I looked away at a wake-boarder speeding by and—bang!—ran her right into a day marker.”
Judging from the damage, he probably had her moving at a pretty good clip at the time, too. So much for an exciting story of peril on the high seas. The guy just did what most skippers have done—and will do—at one time or another and lost track of where he was.
“I can’t believe it,” he says, his face showing more embarrassment than sadness. “I was right there, standing right at the helm!”
He then goes on to recite the damage, the spar that buckled, the torn trampoline.
Mike, introductions having been made, then goes on to enumerate the damage, the spar that buckled, the torn trampoline and so on and so on.
Torn tramp and a tangle of rigging wire on mangled spars.
“Just waiting to hear from the insurance company,” says Mike. “But no one was hurt. Thank God, no one was hurt.”
Amen, brother.
And now, as Paul Harvey might’ve said, for the rest of the story.
Windsong is a Chris White-designed Atlantic 42. Why is that notable? Well, because for a time not long ago, the Atlantic 42 was built at John Lombardi’s shop off the North River in, guess…Mathews, Virginia. How crazy is that?! Lombardi caused quite a stir, not just in Mathews, but across the sailboat industry when his first Chris White Atlantic 42 won the Cruising World Magazine 1998 “Boat of the Year” award for Best Cruising Multihull. Lombardi built several more, but fell on hard times. So Windsong was built in a yard in South Africa to the same Chris White design. And then, once he took delivery over there, Mike sailed her “maiden voyage” across the south Atlantic to Grenada in the Caribbean.
“I do much better on the ocean,” notes Mike. “I never do the ICW.”
Hmm. With good reason, one might say.
But next time you do, Mike, keep a hand on the helm, a sharp look-out ahead and let the wake boards go as they may.
(Oh, by the way, if you’re interested in a lightly used Atlantic 42, she is for sale.)
Steadfast out.
At Sea with Steadfast 
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