Faster Than Wind. Steve Pitt

      Everything on a boat had a different name than I was used to. The front of the boat was the bow and the back was the stern. Left was port and right was starboard. When Tommy turned the boat, that was called tacking or gybing, depending on whether the wind was in front or behind us.

      Both gybing and tacking involved ducking under the big swinging stick on the bottom of the sail as it lurched from one side of the boat to the other. It was appropriately named a boom because if you didn’t duck quickly enough, it hit you in the head. Boom!

      Besides moving our weight from one side of the boat to the other, part of the job for the crew was to look out for bad ice, open water, and deadheads, which were logs, boards, or any big pieces of garbage frozen into the ice that stuck up high enough to do damage. If the sailing was smooth, I climbed a few rungs on the ratlines because the view was better up there.

      Not surprisingly, sometimes when the boat zigged, I zagged because I didn’t grab a handhold fast enough. That sent me tumbling off the boat, though I didn’t have far to fall. Usually, I just skidded across the ice, hoping I wouldn’t hit anything until I came to a rest.

      At noon there were three races staged with at least ten boats per contest. I stood on the shore and watched as Ed, Tommy, and Tommy’s father, Hector, competed in the second and third races.

      The racecourse was set up like a triangle, with the starting point and finish line at the foot of York Street. There was a marker set in the ice at the Eastern Gap of Toronto harbour and another one at the Western Gap. A triangular course meant that the racers usually had one leg with the wind solidly behind them, a second leg where the wind was at their side, and a third leg where they had to sail into the wind. Sailing into the wind demanded the greatest skills because the boats had to tack back and forth. That was difficult enough when an iceboat was alone on the ice, but it was really challenging when there were up to a dozen boats zigzagging in a tight clump. Collisions were frequent, and sometimes boats were so badly damaged that they had to be dragged back to the finish line by a team of horses.

      The Royal George won the first race, just as Tommy had predicted. In the second race the Marinion placed third, but in the last heat of the day it won and the crew collected a five-dollar prize from a purse that had been created by all the entrants contributing a dollar each.

      After the races, we went out for a few more laps around the bay so I could practise standing on the runner beam. I was getting better; I only fell off once. Before we knew it we could hear the clock bells in the New City Hall ringing 4:30 p.m. Darkness came early to Toronto in December. With the sun setting in the west, we sailed back to the York Street anchorage, which was again crowded with boats. During the weekdays, less than ten boats were parked here. Most belonged to professional ice taxi drivers who made their living transporting people to and from the different islands. On the weekends as many as fifty boats crowded the ice. The majority of the weekend skippers were amateurs in clunky homemade boats, but there were also rich people with fancy custom-made craft.

      When the iceboat sailors weren’t out on the ice, they sat on wooden buckets and packing crates around open campfires — millionaires rubbing shoulders with common working men. They exchanged sailing stories, relived past races, and told jokes, mostly about sailing and races. Blackened iron kettles full of melted snow continuously hissed over the fire for tea, and from a fifty-pound burlap bag sailors threw unpeeled potatoes onto the coals, which they turned with long sticks until the coals were completely black. Each boat had a small store of tea bags and tin cups, and anyone could help themselves to the kettle water or a hot potato.

      Like most old hands, Tommy and Ed could pick a potato right out of the fire and hold it in their bare fingers. The first time I tried it I burned myself.

      “Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” I gasped, letting the spud land with a hiss on the snow. This earned me a loud burst of laughter from the rest of the men.

      “Here, laddie,” a gruff old man said, handing me a long spruce stick he had been whittling for kindling. I stuck it in the spud and lifted it out of the snow. Steam poured off the potato, but it quickly cooled until I thought it was safe to take a bite.

      “Hot! Hot!” I cried, burning my mouth. But after a full day of sailing, the spud tasted wonderful — even the burnt parts.

      “Don’t forget the pepper and salt,” Ed said, producing two tiny shakers from his coat pocket.

      I found an empty nail barrel and sat on it crosswise.

      “How did you boys do for fares today?” a fuzzy-jawed young captain asked Tommy.

      “Two one-way island runs and one round-theharbour tour,” Tommy replied.

      “We had a good one,” another skipper said. “Five young lasses from the nursing school. Lots of ankle.”

      A third captain jabbed his colleague’s ribs hard. “Tender lugs about, Simon. Watch your language.”

      I blushed not from the comment but from the fact that some of these men obviously thought of me as a child.

      “So who’s your new man there, Captain McDonell?” a silver-haired man in his forties asked Tommy.

      “Fred, this is Bertie McCross,” Tommy said. “Bertie, this is Fred Phelan.”

      Both Fred and I half stood so we could shake hands. As someone at another campfire started playing an accordion, Ed filled me in on who was sitting around our circle tonight.