Salts Alive!

Old salts never die, I've heard it said—they just peter out.

Although most of my crowd of inland sailors don’t really qualify as ‘old salts’, we are getting on.  Some of us faster than others.  So it’s increasingly hard not to notice our ranks are thinning each year when we gather in the boatyard at the start of another season.

Amid the bustle in the yard yesterday, Old Pete, a retired schoolteacher who has sailed in the Thousand Islands forever, ambled by with an armful of cleaning gear and stopped for a gam.

I put down my polishing cloth and gave him a beer and the time of day.  This has always proven worthwhile, and I was not disappointed.

We exchanged the usual comments about the weather, the past winter, boats for sale, boats that had left the yard fleet.  Inevitably, we noted yard-mates who had made the big jump and were now sailing bluer and better seas.

“So, how’s life treating you, Pete?”  I asked.

“Well, I’m still alive,” he said. “And this year, I have scientific proof!”

Of course, I had to ask.

“You remember from school, don’t you, that there are seven big differences between things that are alive and things that aren't?”

I must have looked blank.

Pete rhymed off the seven: growth, assimilation, respiration, reproduction, irritability, movement and excretion.

“Pretty big words, Pete”, I observed.

“I qualify on all seven! I’m still breathing, and I’m growing older and more irritable, or so my better half tells me.  And my assimilation of ethyl alcohol continues unabated.”

He winked as he lifted his can of beer.

“OK, that’s four—what about the others?” I played along.

“Oh,” he said, “as for the rest of them, I regularly ambulate, copulate and defecate.”

Tossing me his empty beer can, he gathered up his gear and ambled down the yard.

Definitely alive.