She was 30 years old and beaten
Her best days had been seen long before
She was a 22 foot sailboat
When I bought her in 2004
I had just turned fifty,
I needed a hobby or two
Better than buying a Miata
And it would get me out of the house too
She was laid up in her cradle in Oakville
Twenty five miles away
I went out there to see her with my brother
Decided to buy her that day
Two weeks later, we masted and rigged her
Brought five gallon jerrys, both full
A couple of sandwiches for lunch
And we gave the motor a pull
She started quite nicely and ran
We thought it would be easily done
To motor her thirty miles to Toronto
And get home with the setting sun
It never occurred to me to think
While we were getting ready to go
That the motor was a complete mystery
That I’d never sailed Lake Ontario
We had a VHF radio,
and a bearing compass and chart
We were never out of sight of shore
No navigation needed, no art
But the things that could have happened
That could have gone awry
Including fog, squalls, breakdown and drifting
Never occurred to me, I never asked why
We arrived in Toronto at sunset
Found our berth and tied up tight
Blissfully unaware of our triumph
And then we called it a night