Spring is here, finally. The spring we've all been waiting for--
colors shouting in your ears, orange blossoms and lemons showing off
And look what we've left behind. Oh, sorry! You can't walk on the water anymore, and why?
Because it's spring! Glorious spring! Take off your sweater, now put it right back on,
because even here in Southern California spring keeps changing its mind
and although your thoughts may be cheery the Pacific still interrupts them
from time to time. But fickle spring relented today, and there's a sucker born
every moment, don't you think? Because here I am sprouting like a crocus.
You know, when I tack out of a harbor even when the wind is light like this I just
roll out a 90 percent jib. It's just easier than dragging that big Genoa
around the mast every time and if you have folks on board they see how easy
everything is and and how effortless sailing is. Ain't spring nice. Look at
those pretty clouds! You know spring takes credit for everything--youth, vigor,
daffodils! Nobody ever said, put some winter in your stride! But I wonder
because Spring's a faker. See those cirrus clouds? It'll blow 30 knots tomorrow and
that's a fact. Spring, you're full of yourself. You don't
hold still. You're often late, and then you breeze right in. I think the coldest
and wettest I've ever been was in spring. Oh, and don't make plans. Spring's just
waiting for that. Here's some sleet! Los Angeles usually has very well behaved
weather. Usually in fact it doesn't have any weather at all. Well, it looks like
spring. Well, that's because it is spring. Which means it's going to blow 40 one day
and zero the next and when it gets tired of that it puts on June gloom
around here, and then May gray and you don't see a
shadow till June. My friends in the East haven't even launched their boats yet.
And whose fault is that? Spring! The Chesapeake is sailing a month
before New York while Maine waits, stomping its feet. Spring ain't fair.
It plays favorites. It changes its mind. Why does spring always behave like a
just ate a whole ginger root? Pretty immature ,if you ask me. Say, you know that
this course, if we held it for a few months, would take us to the South Seas?
Well, all right, I flew to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, where they told me, "Sir the
minth you make difference to, April, is autumn here. So October is spring?
That can't possibly be right. The harbor at Rarotonga is very small and pretty and
if your dream is to sail there whilst going round the world here's the single
Anchorage for the single sailboat it accommodates and if you like banging
around while moored, okay. They don't really have seasons 20 degrees south of
the Equator but what they do have is the happiest dogs I've ever seen in
the world. Beach dogs! My dog at home lies on the couch with the television remote
control in its paw. This is what these dogs do all day.
l Iike a dog who waits while I catch up. A three-legged dog.
Maybe three-legged dogs are the best dogs of all. Well, a few martinis got me
through my seasonal adjustment to the Antipodes and it was back to spring in
Los Angeles. Look at that sky! 30 knots tomorrow, I'm telling you. Spring has a
big head. Spring invented literature don't you know--lilacs out of the dead
land--the force that through the green fuse
the flower-- even in Middle English, "Whan that April with his showeres soote/ the
drouth of March hath perced to the roote/ and and bathed every vein in swich
liquor/ of which virtue engendred is the Fleur"--yes yes yes, to hear spring tell
it everlasting life too, you know? The
vegetable myth--the resurrection--the feasts of Easter--even the invention of
agriculture 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent. And what time of year
was that? Spring! I like spring. Just don't get your hopes up. Summer is much more
reliable. Fall is for reflection, not working up a sweat, and winter lets you
sit down and work and plan and hope for what? Well, for spring! Spring is the most
intemperate season, the most provocative, the most outlandish, the most downright
perverse. the most mocking and unrepentant, introducing itself with a
hatch of mayflies in the garden and termites in the house while all the time
hopping up and down like a five-year-old on his birthday.
Ninety-nine percent of all persons who went sailing once and never again went sailing,
went sailing that once in April, freezing in their clothes while the captain took
them to windward in 48 degrees and short chop, all the time declaring that spring
is here! Spring is untrustworthy. Spring is glorious. Spring is everything
starting all over again. All promises, all fizz, the whiz kid of the calendar. It's here
and it's now, but by July it will be all tuckered out.
Yo, spring! You won't hear a word from spring then, just the buzzing of bees and
the waves settling down and a warm wind on your back.
Spring is the promises. It's up to us to keep them.
Engine off.