Author: Hank Garfield

“Is There a Problem, Officer?”

Hank Garfield

A sailboat is the ultimate slower traffic.

My Cape Dory 25 sloop tops out at about seven knots*, and that’s in the best possible weather conditions. The small outboard motor can push the boat at five knots in a flat calm. It takes most of two days to get from Bangor to Rockland, a distance one can drive in two hours.

I usually make this annual trip with crew. But circumstances this year forced me to do it alone. Which was fine – I grew up with boats in Maine, and ever since I moved back here from California at the turn of the millennium I’ve had one. I’ve also done a fair amount of single-handing, and my Cape Dory is nothing if not seaworthy.

Thus I was caught off-guard (I guess the pun is intended) on the second day out, when the orange powerboat coming up the bay kept turning in my direction. I had raised the sails and cut the motor and was working the light morning breeze for whatever I could get out of it, just south of where the Islesboro Ferry crosses to Lincolnville. It was about ten in the morning.

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A Backyard full of Bathtubs

Hank Garfield

I came across an old photograph, from the days before cell phones, when you had to drop off the film and pick up the prints later. The photo was taken in the summer of 1992 from the window of an Amtrak train on the outskirts of Albuquerque. I had never seen a backyard full of bathtubs before, and I managed just one shot before the train rolled on by.

You see things from the train that you see nowhere else, parts of America away from the vast network of roads and the endless chain of gas stations, stores and eateries, identical from coast to coast. On a train you see wild estuaries and flooding rivers. You see quaint midwestern towns and the worst parts of a few large cities. Surfers flash you from the shore on the elbow of California. Sometimes you can literally look into someone’s back yard – and it might be full of bathtubs.

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