Tight Lines
LIVING THE DREAM
I'm a big fan of the movie "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." Not the new version, the one with Johnny Depp. After all, we're on Nantucket here, where tradition reigns supreme, so I'm sticking with the original on this one. One of my favorite scenes from the movie is at the end, when Willie Wonka has just announced to young Charlie Bucket that he's the new owner of the chocolate factory. Charlie's glee is palpable; his family's financial problems will be over and they will all go to the luxurious and fantastical factory to live, leaving behind their one-room house. Willie Wonka gets a little twinkle in his eye (in the way that only Gene Wilder could really pull off) as he says, "Don't ever forget what happened to the little boy who suddenly got everything he ever wanted." Charlie, looks confused and asks Willie what in fact happened to the little boy who suddenly got everything he ever wanted.

"He lived happily ever after," Willie replies confidently.

Kids, I've just completed living what amounts to a pretty amazing week for a sailor on Nantucket. For those of you who only read this paper for the purpose of reading my column - and who could blame you for that? - I'll fill you in here. I got an unexpected last-minute invitation to sail with a team from San Francisco in the International One Design World Championship being held here on Nantucket last week. It was kind of like getting a chance to go to the IOD version of Top Gun; you find yourself sailing against the best-of-the-best in the world of IOD sailing. I spent the first half of the week in utter amazement at the fact that I was hanging out with these people, and the second half of the week trying to make sure I didn't perform so horribly that I was deemed an absolute flop who would be blacklisted from ever participating in another IOD regatta again. With any luck, I managed to maintain my good name, but that will remain for history to decide.

PHOTO BY GEORGE SPENCER Eight-year-old Henry knows something about tuna, and about the wonders of the world around him

More than once, though, Jill said I was like a kid on Christmas Eve, too excited to sleep and uber-anxious to get the next day going. We experienced every conceivable weather condition over the course of the regatta - from absolute zero reading on the wind gauge to Biblical winds pegging at twenty-five knots. It was nuts and it was crazy and it was a blast. For the time during the regatta, I was Charlie at that exact moment when he got everything he ever wanted. I was rubbing elbows with the best IOD sailors on the planet and they more-or-less accepted me as one of their own. Long story short, I was in hog heaven.

And even though this whole thing was about the competition, there was so much more to it than that. When I first signed on, I thought it was all about the winning; I found out very quickly, though, that there was much more to the whole thing than just first place. And it's not just the fact that we finished tenth that I'm saying that. It was truly an incredible experience that involved meeting amazing people and having a great time all the while. And you know what it reminds me of?

My little nephew, who recently went on his first long-awaited and hard-wished-for tuna fishing trip.

Oompa Loompa, doopity-day, in case you missed it, that's the segue.

Friends and neighbors, my nephew Henry is all of eight years old, and he's already a pretty serious, die-hard fisherman. He begged and pleaded for his father to take him out tuna fishing, and brother George agreed. So off they went with Captain Peter "I-sez" Kaizer aboard the Althea K. And, as I told both George and Henry would happen, Captain I-sez would have them in the thick of the tuna out there. And sure enough, young Henry pulled in a couple of nice tuna over the course of the day. Living the dream, he was. All he'd talked about all summer was going out after tuna. And he caught a bunch and he had a blast. But, just like me with the IOD Worlds, he learned that there was a lot more to the whole thing than just the catching of the fish.

On the morning they went out - and it was ohso early in the morning - there was a lunar eclipse. My brother reported beautifully clear skies and a perfect view of the eclipse. That was followed by an artist's vision of a sunrise, coupled with whales jumping out of the water around them. Throw in the incredible feeling of catching several large tuna, and you've got yourself a pretty amazing experience out there on the water. So when they got back to the house, of course Henry wanted to tell me about his tuna. But he wanted to tell me, too, about the amazing beauty that he had encountered out there on the water. And just for a minute, the fish took a backseat to the natural wonders of the world that a lot of us often overlook.

When you get right down to it, kids, the fishing on Nantucket is, dare I say it, almost secondary some times. So the next time you're out on the water, take a second look at that sunrise or sunset and remind yourself why you're here on Nantucket. Yeah, the fishing is phenomenal and all, but the natural wonder of the place is enough to keep you coming back. And just like that, you suddenly realize that just about everything you ever wanted in the world was right in your own backyard.

Now if I can just get that hundred-dollar-bill tree to grow in this climate, I'll REALLY have everything I ever wanted right in my own backyard.

I

Tight lines.