Changing The Sail Number

Usually, a sail number stays with the boat through its lifetime, but in 2026 I decided to make a change.

I originally selected sail number 18 simply because it was used on two of my previous boats. There is no Camden Class Knockabout class association that hands out numbers, no rating organization that assigns them to classics, and no accurate count of class boats built before Ponyo. I was able to pick any number I wanted.

60 years ago, I sailed a local design, the Sailstar Explorer, built originally in West Warwick within walking distance from my house, and later in Bristol, Rhode Island. It was a 16-foot-long centerboard sloop with a small cuddy, very similar in appearance to the O’Day Day Sailer.

The original advertisement for the Sailstar Explorer, from Yachting Magazine, March 1961

Sailstar began numbering their boats randomly, skipping around willy-nilly using ever higher numbers to make the class seem larger. After some years it decided to go back and fill in the numbers they skipped, and that’s how my Explorer came to have number 18. I don’t know how many Explorers were built before mine, but that’s how I got the number.

Explorer #18

That was replaced by a Lightning in which I had a few successful seasons. That carried sail number 11272 which has nothing to do with 18.

In 1972 Olympic coach and local legend Skip Whyte started selling Lasers and cleverly approached the various class champions from the previous year to buy one, hoping to set up a very attractive class of champions. It worked, creating a strong Laser class right from the start, but sadly beginning the demise of several long-established classes, mostly those with wooden hulls. I paid $625 for my laser and got a lime green hull with the number 1848, and that’s another tip towards 18.

Laser #1848

Finally, I knew there were four original Camden Class Knockabouts built in 1915. One still exists in North Haven. The original name is not known, so the family just calls it “The Knockabout.” Then within the past twenty years I know there were some replicas made – how many I do not know. There’s mine, and one in Camden named Starship, two in Germany, Santa Maria and Jane, and another in the Midwest. There’s one more in Switzerland named Merlin.  That makes ten that I know of, and undoubtedly there are more, so maybe mine was the 18^th built. Who knows?

Then, as I brought the boat around to classic events, I realized how much I was enjoying my new sailing life. I’m 75 and seeking serenity, so I no longer wanted to subject myself to the tension of one-design sailing, nor the crew organization of handicap big boat racing. Racing a classic with one crew, in a fleet where everyone is competent, quiet, and a vested interest in keeping sailing a non-contact sport was exactly where I wanted to be.

After a while I began thinking Ponyo should have been numbered 42, the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

That, or course, is reference the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Universe books, by Douglas Adams.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

For a long time, there were three Hitchhikers’ books, but then he wrote a fourth, and a fifth. When he published the fourth, “So Long and Thanks For All The Fish” the cover included the comment, “The fourth in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers’ Trilogy.”

The fourth in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhkers’ Trilogy

As it turns out, just about that same time I was publishing the fourth edition of a textbook I had written on eye surgery. In the introduction I mentioned how I thought I was done after the first three books in the series, but then I came out with a fourth and a fifth. In the introduction to the fourth book, I mentioned Douglas and what he called his increasingly inaccurately named trilogy, and that I was adding to my trilogy and blah, blah.

With Joanne and Douglas Adams

Little did I image then that a short time later fate would have the two of us in the same room. We had a good laugh about the reference in the book and I ran out to the car to get him a signed copy, and another for him to sign for me. He wrote, “Everything I know about cataract surgery I learnt from you. Best Wishes.”

Which is, of course, nothing at all.

If 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything, what is the ultimate question itself? The answer can be found in the second book of the series, The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe.

“What do you get when you multiply six by nine?”