THE YOUNGSTOWN REGATTA CAP

"His vision and my vision of sailing were very different. I wanted to sunbathe on the deck with my friends, cocktail in hand, music blasting. He wanted to race."

My father was happiest on a windy summer day on Lake Ontario aboard his sailboat, Plum Danish—the realization of a dream he’d had since he was a boy sailing off the shores of Denmark. He was 53 when he bought her. I was 23, and his vision and my vision of sailing were very different. I wanted to sunbathe on the deck with my friends, cocktail in hand, music blasting. He wanted to race.

We’d started to grow apart when I was eight and he remarried, 16 months after my mother died unexpectedly. We stopped speaking of my mom, as if she had never existed, and no longer spent time together one-on-one. At 16, to escape the tumult in my family, I moved out. By the time Dad got Plum Danish, I had a life of my own.

He assembled a skilled crew who became friends on and off the boat. They competed in and often won regattas around Lake Ontario. The Youngstown Regatta was one of his favorites, an annual weekend-long event near Niagara Falls known for fierce competition as well as great parties. These red caps were given by the Regatta to participants and worn with pride. 

Three or four years after buying Plum Danish, Dad left his stuffy, must-wear-a-jacket-in-the-dining-room yacht club for a working club where everyone pitched in to clean and launch the boats in spring and haul them out in fall. An electrical contractor, he used his skills to make repairs around the club, and within a few years he became Yard Master, overseeing all the members’ pitch-in duties. There was still a clubhouse, but it was a come-as-you-are-after-a-day-of-hard-work kind of place. I didn’t get how all this work was supposed to be fun.

When I was 26, I moved to Pasadena. After I married and had a child, Dad started coming, alone, to see us every Christmas. On these visits we got to spend time together just the two of us, and were finally able to relax in each other’s company. We talked about all the things we’d never discussed: his illness with rheumatic fever as a child; life under German occupation during World War II; his heart-valve replacement surgery and his belief that he wouldn’t have a long life; my daughter, his first grandchild, whom he often mistakenly called Wendy—my name—when she was a toddler; our relationship; my mother. 

I started visiting Toronto most summers, and a Plum Danish outing was always on the agenda. On one of our last sails, it was just us and my daughter, who was then 10. A couple of hours in, the placid conditions shifted and the wind picked up, so Dad directed me on reefing the mainsail while the boat leaned at a precarious angle. Doing as he instructed, I let out the jib, released cleats, hauled in ropes, shifted sides when the boom came about, and we made our way to shore tacking back and forth through the choppy waters. For the first time, I felt the thrill of handling a boat, the sting of my hair whipping my face, the teamwork with my dad.

After we docked, Dad nodded at me and said, “I always knew you’d make a good sailor.” This cap never fails to remind me of those words and that wonderful day. It was one of Dad’s prized possessions; he gave it to me a few years before he died. I like to imagine him wearing it proudly with his crew, lifting a glass with a smile and a hearty “Skål!” “Skål,” Dad, to you too.

—Wendy Hudson

Dad aboard Plum Danish.

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Wendy Hudson lives in Los Angeles and earned her MFA at Antioch University. She is a writer, a grant writer and a volunteer mentor with WriteGirl, a mentoring organization that promotes creativity, critical thinking and leadership skills to empower teen girls and gender-expansive youth.

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