Slow Boat

When we completed our first crossing on Lake Ontario two days ago--plunging through the two-foot waves stirred up by a 15-mph wind--we felt like true adventurers.

Back in Oswego, though, we made a sighting that really puts our voyage on perspective.

There's a little footbridge that takes you high above the canal. I was crossing at dusk and looked down to see what I thought, at first, were two enormous wooden canal boats.  I guessed they might be reconstructions, museum-bound. Through binoculars, though, I could see these were actually wooden sailing ships, with their masts stepped (lowered and tied on deck).

Well, Bill and I are crazy about wooden sailing ships--in the abstract, of course--thanks to the time we have spent reading the novels of Patrick O'Brian.   So we walked down to get a closer look at the real thing.

We discovered that the two boats are replicas of the Nina and the Pinta, yes, that Nina and Pinta,  of Christopher Columbus-and-the "discovery"-of-America fame.  They were hand-built--no power tools--by the Columbus Foundation, an organization in the British Virgin Islands, and they were on their way to Rochester, as a "living history" museum to educate schoolchildren.

These boats are bigger than our canal boat--but not a whole lot bigger.  Like our boat, they are steered with a hand-held tiller. There didn't appear to be much in the way of cabins or creature comforts.  And on the original boats  (not the reproductions, which have hidden diesel engines to pilot them up the canal) there certainly was no GPS or a VHF radio or life vests or the Coast Guard to call if you screwed up.

When we were contemplating the weather on Lake Ontario--and deciding whether it was safe to venture out--I thought about the age of exploration and the people who set out in little wooden ships, with no multicolored nautical charts to tell them where the dangers lay and no idea of what to expect at their destinations.

On the one hand, taking big risks is dangerous.   On the other hand, if you never take the slightest risk, what is your life like?

(Don't worry, Mom, we're not ditching the GPS!)