by Comstock Small

Quick, precise response to the helm is hardly characteristic of the "HMS" Rose. Her five hundred tons of bluff bows present to the ordinary aging trainee, of somewhat varied yacht and small boat experience, an impression of almost ponderous unpredictability--sometimes coupled, it would seem, with a cranky female's cussed determination to confound and to frustrate his most resolute efforts to do ship and self credit by tight adherence to the compass course ordered by the mate of the watch.

In June (of 1996), after several watches at the helm, headed into the wind and under power in the misty rains of the Irish Sea, I had begun to despair of ever developing reasonable steering competence. In mildly dirty weather, with the Rose pitching and rolling to the moderate Atlantic swells in St. George's Channel, steadied only the lower stay sails, while standing well out of sight of what might turn out to be a lee shore between Dublin and Wexford, the prospect for me was already dismal and deteriorating rapidly as I tried to accustom myself to steering by compass alone on the course ordered by Chris, the mate of our watch. No sun, no moon or stars, not a mark of any kind on our dime 360 horizon--nothing to steer by but the compass.

Bill, by deckhand docent, had been patient to a fault, calmly repeating good advice on anticipating departures from the compass course; urging early corrections as the plunging ship fell off or bore up in an endless series of depressing deviations, and then vainly urging me to count the wheel spokes turned in each correction (so as to return the wheel to the starting point correction (so as to return the wheel to the starting point after each correction). But the nearly constant swinging of the compass revealed the utter uselessness of fixing my tired, dim old eyes on that perfidious instrument. When to start counting spokes, I fumed inwardly? Did I ever have a starting point to which to return, spoke by counted spoke?

Miserable self-deprecation further lowered my expectation of gaining even a minimal skill at the wheel. What could I blame? The impaired eyesight, or the slower reactions, of advancing old age? The failing muscular strength and coordination that appeared to me to have taken an abrupt turn for the worse? The four-hour watch system that offered too little sleep?

But why fix blame? A trainee in his mid-seventies could hardly aim for a career involving any level of skill at helmsmanship anyway!

Still, apart from responsibility to the ship, the matter of personal pride, stemming from a lifetime of intense pleasure gained from simply controlling motion--whether skiing, skating, swimming, planing in a fourteen foot racing dinghy, driving a car, riding a bike, or flying a fighter plane, entered into it. Why couldn't steering the dear old Rose be added to that list?

Perhaps it could join my list of gratifying, exhilarating motion-control activities. Maybe all that would be needed would be a change in one of a number of conditions: from motoring to sailing, or from sailing by a compass course to sailing to a mark, or keeping as high on the wind as possible without luffing, or perhaps even a major shift in the wind to send the Rose racing down it with a bone in her teeth.

As it happened, once we had passed the Rosslare Harbour area, bound as we were for Bantry Bay, nearly all the changes could, and did, take place. Mate's orders for my next time at the helm, with square sails set, and the engines silent, and the yards braced close on the port tack, called for steering as high on the wind as possible without luffing.

All right! Good-bye to the binnacle; eyes aloft for that first fluttering leech. How much easier and more pleasant (for me, at least) to sail high on the wind than to try to keep my tired old eyes glued to the compass card. The beginnings of a sense of competence at the wheel slowly entered my erstwhile troubled consciousness.

My final trick at the wheel turned out to be for me a near personal apotheosis. Chris' order to us as relieving helm crew was, "Sail directly for Fastnet Rock Light--never mind compass course, never mind watching for a luff--just keep her bow on the distant lighthouse."

Still the grand swells, still the majestic pitching. All sails set and the freshening breeze bowling us along, with a moderate heel, through the green-blue sea under clearing skies. An hour to be remembered for the beauty and rightness of it all. Steering the Rose became the most exalting, exhilarating, glorious experience of conrol-over-motion to be imagined.

And how I silently bless Bill when, sensing the depth of my new-found pleasure at the wheel, he gently side-stepped my offer to yield the helm to him for a time. The skies had cleared so the angels in Heaven could partake of the Rose's sea-borne glory.