1889 Feb | March 2018

Until Next Time
Hoisting the Sails in the San Juans
written by Lori Sweeney
I’M AT THAT SEASON in life when, if I bend over, I
think about the consequences. Will I get back up? What
will be damaged in the process? What shows?
On the Schooner Zodiac, thirty women raised four
sails daily. The main sail weighs 1,800 pounds, and
hoisting it took ten minutes, longer if you were on the
peak (that log on the main that had to be raised 110
feet). Taking it down meant taking a knee to let out 600
feet of the halyard, then unceremoniously climbing up
on the boom and stuffing it all back in. Women my age
are familiar with stuffing it all back in, but this involved
bending over.
The whole experience of being on the “Z” involved
learning. Tim Mehrer and his high school friends bought
the Schooner (so called because it has more than one
mast and the main sail is on the taller mast) in the mid-
1970s. They restored all 127 deck feet back to her 1924
glory, no small feat given she’s made of wood. They teach
every passenger about tall-ship sailing—every passenger
learns to chart, steer, swab the deck with seawater, learn
“aft” and other jargon and hoist those four sails.
Day one is like childbirth. It’s exhilarating. But then
it’s hard (did I mention hoisting that main sail?), and you
wonder if you’ll ever raise your arms above your head
again. You finish and the sense of accomplishment is no
small thing, but then you realize the bunk is a small thing
and you wonder if your bent-over back will recover in
this odd-shaped mattress. You never slept so well.
... Or ate so well. The only paid person on the ship is
the cook, and she is so worth it, providing fresh produce
and good coffee and enough chocolate to keep thirty
women happy.
You learn to have the highest respect for the ten
women who are the volunteer crew. They know this ship
inside out. They crawl belowdecks to the chain locker
with ear protection and bare feet to lay the anchor
chain evenly. They “sweat” the line 25 feet to hoist three
dinghys and all that rigging. Never stern (pun intended),
these muscled, good-natured women showed us the
ropes on this all-woman sail. They never gave into the
fatigue, and patiently showed us a ballantine coil for the
sixth time.
Plying through the water in the San Juans, anchoring
in a quiet bay, enjoying the fine summer weather and
working hard at something so satisfying, so seemingly
unattainable at this juncture in life, was the best
experience. Becalming, as the sailors say. Repeatable.
Memorable. A grand story.
Travel, at it best moments, helps us rethink how we do
life. It renews our senses, introduces us to a whole new
vocabulary of life. The Schooner Zodiac did all that for
me in three days. It helped me bend over. Ahoy!
Brenda Lawrence
88 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE FEBRUARY | MARCH 2018