The Grove Project

Hail Hadiah!

The maiden voyages of the sailboat Hadiah and its co-captain

To an impressionable young man, there is something remarkably fantastic about visiting a barbershop for the first time. I remember the building my father took me to as a boy clad on the exterior with dirty green siding and the barber pole just a few inches from the entry door. The air had all the familiar smells of barbershops in the 1970s - pipe smoke, the stench of stale Tampa Nuggets with faint undertones of malt liquor, shaving soap and talcum powder. It was the kind of place where you could see men at every stage in their lives, the aged huddled into dimly lit corners to tell lies and ambitious checkers players taunting their opponents and reveling in jubilant self-congratulations. The owner of the place was a thin, brown-skinned man in his late thirties or perhaps a little older with a well-groomed afro. The man we came to know as Frank would place a wide wooden board across the arms of his service chair for kids to make sure he didn’t have to bend down too low to cut. Successful barbering after all requires intense duty and skill. To the left of the chair was a sharpening strap, which he used to hone his straight razor before commencing to shave. It would be a few years before I would need that particular level of service, but it was fun to speculate about the symbolic importance of shaving. I’d sit there on elevated “chair” watching my brother and father across the small room as Frank sheered away my boyish bangs with surgical precision and brought me, at least in appearance, one hair cut closer to adolescence. As he cut, my head took on a new lightness. Clouds of talcum powder billowed around my head and neck relieving the irritation of small residual hair clippings - the hum of electric clippers muted by loud unrelenting banter and challenges to whoever would dare to be the next victim in either the chair or at the checker board from the modestly toothed checker champion, “Cho da public you ain’t chared!” which is apparently a colloquial barbershop rendition of “show the public you’re not scared!” I’ve taken that challenge with me throughout my life and apply it generously to all things new and nostalgic.

Such was the case when my friend Ian Rutherfurd suggested to me that we set sail on the maiden voyage of our newly acquired boat, the Hadiah, without the benefit or safety net of motorized propulsion. To an experienced sailor, this may seem as natural as opening a cold beer. But to a novice, it is a proposition tantamount to navigating Niagara Falls in a barrel. I put my apprehensions aside and indulged him. We sailed out of the Carolina Beach State Park marina at approximately 11:30am on Saturday, August 23, 2008, propelled by rapid winds over a white-capped Cape Fear River. It didn’t take long to attain a slight degree of mastery and I was elated to have my fearless friend and skipper embrace me as a worthy copilot and relinquish to me the helm. Now that’s faith. We had an awesome time. We heeled up to what I believe must have been 70 degrees from the horizontal water surface below more than once. The port rail was temporarily submerged up to the window line but I was able to control it without tipping over. Other more modern watercraft passed us on the right and the left, down stream and up observing our prowess with primitive envy.

The day’s lessons included a full regimen of man-overboard maneuvering and of course, knot tying. Dodging submerged piles and charging into the wake of Fort Fisher ferry proved to be only minor challenges. We fancied ourselves mythical aquatic heroes – the likes of Leif Ericsson and Christopher Columbus and the 900-pound Hadiah proved to be all that we could have hoped for and more. There are those who might argue that our reliance solely upon wind is a fool’s errand. On the contrary, it is our natural need for the elements of wind and water that inspire us to aquatic recreation and there is something greater than speed and convenience at work when one chooses our present course.

I must confess that I was initially skeptical but by the end, having left my anxiety at the foot of Horseshoe Shoals, we approached the marina upon our return to land with quiet confidence as Ian took the helm, letting wind in and out of sails like a seasoned professional and coasted effortlessly towards the dock. I extended my hand toward the first upright pile for a final braking maneuver and alas, the journey was over. Once back at the homestead, we celebrated with a round of blue Hawaiis and battened down the Hadiah in preparation for her next journey.

This brief account of a 4-hour river cruise began curiously with a memory from my childhood as I looked toward being an adult. Standing in front of a mirror as an adult, my graying hair lengthened by age and obstinance, I smiled gleefully in self-congratulations having eluded the awkward moments and dangers of sailing for a regression into childhood simplicity. For four hours the tangible world around me disappeared behind flashing buoys and pelicans and in a weird way is like a barbershop refuge – a place to escape and a place to dream.