The Journey of Daniel Row – Part I

Owning a boat has been a dream of mine for a long time. It was on, what I like to call, the master list. Essentially a mental ledger of all the things I want to do before I die – things like sing “LA Woman” in front of people, jump out of a plane, climb a mountain, stuff like that. That being said, the actual purchase of the boat turned out to be both impulsive and coincidental.

I carpool with a couple of people from work. One Friday afternoon, while driving home on the Long Island Expressway, we started talking about boating. Matt, who was driving that week, owns a 27-foot sailboat. He used to own a 22-foot Pierson sloop that he had donated to Boat Angels about a year ago. It was never picked up from the boat yard, and has been sitting, neglected, in the boat yard down the street from my house all winter.

Now I believe in fate. When Matt assured me that I could get the boat declared abandoned and pick it up for free, I figured it was meant to be. Naturally I was excited. I spoke to my wife that night and first thing Saturday morning my daughter and I headed over to the boat yard to meet Matt and see the boat.

It was in surprisingly good shape. The cabin had flooded and the scuppers were clogged (scuppers are the drain holes in the cockpit) but the sails were in good shape and the boat seemed more or less seaworthy. Now I was really excited. I even went so far as to think up a name for the boat – The Maggie Mermaid.

On Monday morning I called the boat yard. They informed me that the sloop had changed owners four times in the last year and that the most recent owner had just settled the 800-dollar storage charge. So much for having it declared abandoned.

The lady at the yard, Maureen, told me that there was another 800 dollar charge coming up in two weeks. She suggested that I call the new owner I see if I could take it off his hands.

Enter Daniel Row:

The boat was registered to a man in Massachusetts, one Daniel Row. Maureen kindly gave me his number and I left him a couple of messages on Friday afternoon. The night passed into morning with no response and I was starting to get bummed out.

I looking around on EBay and saw a 19 foot boat in Huntington Station. Being impulsive by nature I put a deposit down on my beloved Starwind19 and the rest is, as they say, history. I never expected to hear from Mr. Row again. In fact I purposely dodged his return call on Monday morning.

I was working this past weekend and I happened to answer a number I didn’t recognize. I usually don’t do this but I just assumed it was work. It was Daniel Row.

He was not interested in parting with the boat. In fact he was coming down in the next week to pick it up and sail it to Buzzard’s Bay in Massachusetts. This is at least an 80-mile trip from Mt. Sinai Harbor, half of it in open ocean. He mentioned something about sailing through Nantucket Sound, which is on the eastern side of Barnsdale Peninsula. This would add about 50 or 60 additional miles to the trip and take him deep into the Atlantic Ocean.

I was told early on that on a 19 or 22-foot sailboat an ocean trip was a mission of death. To make matters worse the boat was still flooded, the sails were in an unknown condition, and there was no engine. I mentioned all these things to Mr. Row, but he was undeterred.

He asked me a few questions about the status of the vessel, about its design, and the configuration of the keel. Mostly stuff I was not equipped to answer. I told him honestly; the best information I could give him was that “it looked like a boat”. I have very little sailing knowledge, and I pretend to have none, which keeps me out of trouble.

My friend from Massachusetts would not be put off and seemed determined to come down. I promptly offered him my services as a deck hand and novice rigger. He needed a pair of hands to raise the mast and get things ship shape. It turns out that Row is a boat builder and he has made to crossing from Long Island to Buzzards Bay several times.

At the very least I hope to get some good information. More importantly I want to get some interesting sea stories. I also want to get a photo of Mr. Row, as the popular opinion is that he will soon be lost at sea.

More to come…