She leans effortlessly against the white, plastic barrier. The dock creeks beneath her worn rubber shoes; the clouds gather above her crusty bucket hat.
To the passers-by looking on from the park, she may not appear to be doing much. But she knows that dock beneath her feet, and that sky above her head. She knows the movement of the tide and the actions of her crew. She knows the wind from a glance at the water, the weather from a sniff of the air, and the truth from the sound of a luffing sail.
She even knows what’s for lunch when you get back to shore.
She is a Piers Park sailing instructor, and she will teach all she knows, to you.
As a student, it wasn’t just the wild harbor and hearty Sonars that kept me coming back to Piers Park. It was the small group of strange, salty sailors running the place that sustained my intrigue. These sages-of-the-sea, clad in a haphazard amalgam of foul-weather hand-me-downs, would lead ten-year old me on amazing Atlantic adventures that even if I told you about, you wouldn’t believe. Somehow, amidst this years-long furor of canvas and fiberglass, they handed down to me the knowledge and experience necessary to not only become a better sailor, but also a more well-rounded individual.
I am now finishing out my seventh year as an instructor. It is my hope that somewhere in those seasons of laughs, lines, lobster traps and luncheon feasts, my students were shown to find the adventures waiting in their own back yards, and that somehow, I was able to pay forward to them what values were given to me. But really, above all else, I just hope they had a good time. I sure did.
In the coming weeks, I will find myself working a very different type of job, with an altogether different type of people; it is my goal to remember that even in this type of world, tucked away in some office building, adventure exists. You just have to find it. But for now, I take my listless position on the plastic dock barrier next to Giulia, next to all of the instructors, adorned in a crusty hat and rubber pants of my own. Sure, we may not look like we’re doing much, but we’re about to pass on a decade’s worth of escapades and understanding to the next generation of Boston Harbor sailors, in the benevolently unorthodox manner only Piers Park can provide.
…however, if Catherine asks, we’re “supervising.”
–Capt. Joey Bosco
