Huckleberry Sailing Rig

A Huckleberry Sailing Rig...or that is what my brother called it.

 

In about 1956 my Dad got a family boat. The year before, Dad had built a cottage on Cataract Lake in Indiana. It was not too far from our house, as a get-a-way from his job and for us kids. The boat was a big heavy thing with a 25 horse outboard, and it would go at the most 20 mph. if that. I will say it was a good boat for the family, slow stable, and big enough for two adults, 3 kids and our two dogs.

My brother and I were not allowed to take it out by ourselves. When the boat was taken out, “all of us went”. What is the fun in that…

There was an old row boat at the dock we had, and everyone in the “group that had cottages” could use it. The real owner had a 3 horse out board on it, and when his two sons were around, all us kids used it. We just had to “pay for the gas” or we could row it.

On TV there was a show, I think the Hardy Boys, and they were our age, way down in Florida, and they had small sailboats they used. This excited me. You did not need gas and it was freedom on the water. I spent one whole summer trying to rig a sail on the old row boat. We did get a set up that would blow us down wind, but we had to row back. 8-) It was a 2x4 mast, a bamboo boom,and a old canvas tarp and a few control lines.

We used this set up to go around the edge of the lake to areas where the weekend boaters would camp and we would collect soda bottles that they had left. We got 2 cents a bottle when we turned them in, and with gas at 30 cents gallon, we could collect enough bottles to get a tank of gas for the 3 horse. With gas, we kids could motor across the lake to the public beach where there were other kids that we could get in trouble with. 8-)

My brother called my sail set up a Huckleberry sail and then the other kids started calling me “The Huckleberry Kid”. Thank goodness that did not stick for more than one summer. The others used the Huckleberry sail when it was convenient.

We had a lot of fun with that setup. I was cheap and it sort of worked, and I learned by trial and error a lot about sailing from it. My interest in sailing died for few years when we kids got the “Water Ski and sexy girl bug. The family big boat was traded for a ski boat, and the idea of a sailboat sank below the water for about 5 years till my dad bought a junk sailboat for me to fix up.

That junk sailboat was the real start to my sailboat interest. You can have just as much fun and as much freedom with a day sailor as a big boat…and you will use it more often because it takes less work to get ready to go out.  Arrg… lets go sailing.