Dave the Sailor

All of you know Dave as the Sailor of the Seven Seas (maybe two or three but it doesn’t sound as good). His sailing adventures began a little more humbly, but with equal voracity.  Dad (Daddy Bill) always did things a little differently than other fathers. When they were buying cabin cruisers, runabouts, outboard fishing boats, etc., Dad ordered a big yellow canoe from Herter’s in Waseca, Minnesota. Canoes were a rarity in those days, we had the only one in town. I dreamed of hydroplanes and Dave dreamed of sailing ships, but Daddy Bill dreamed of big yellow canoes.

Not to let a big yellow canoe get in the way his sailing dream, Dave found plans to turn a canoe into a proper sailing vessel. He fashioned a thwart out of a 2X4. To that he added a mahogany lee board to each end (to act as a keel or centerboard). He made a mast out of ?, it was varnished. It was attached to the thwart, and stepped in a wooden square, epoxied to the bottom of the canoe. He made a lateen rigged sail out bamboo poles and cloth. I recall Mom did the sewing. All of this was connected with various cotton ropes and hardware store pulleys.

When it came time for the maiden voyage, we loaded the big yellow canoe on top of the very big yellow and blue 1959 Plymouth station wagon. Since I was not big enough to lift my end of the big yellow canoe (repurposed as a sailboat), Steve Ford, a neighborhood boy somewhere between my and Dave’s age, was enlisted as first mate. We took the vessel (I'm thinking by now it should no longer be referred to as the big yellow canoe, since it has been transformed into a proper sailing ship), to Kentucky Lake. Mind you, Kentucky Lake is the largest manmade lake in the US. To the best of my recollection, everything went as smoothly as dreamed by Dave, even though I don’t think he had ever sailed before. Two distinct things I remember were the water gurgling as we sailed along, and being disappointed because we didn’t has a ship’s wheel or even a tiller, as steering was done with a canoe paddle.

As an aside, that adventure as well as a white water canoeing adventure were done sans life jackets.

Bob Kester

Author Bob Kester got an early start on another dream--bow-hunting--with none other than big brother Dave.