Doc

Writing about the folks in my life can be a challenge. How do I express my thoughts about them without making it sound like it’s all about myself? This is particularly true when it comes to one of my personal heros, James B. Boucher, DDS. He passed away recently, at the age of 94, and I think his departure from this life will leave an empty space in my “order of things” for a long time.

I first knew him as Dr. Boucher. Then sometime in my teens it became the more affectionate “Doc.” For as far back as my memory allows, he was a permanent fixture at the sailing club my parents joined when I wasn’t even one year old. At first he was the white haired guy who sailed the white boat. Later that white boat was distinguishable by the red spinnaker with a big molar tooth on it. He was the father of two of my first sailing instructors, Tim and Mark. When I was old enough to crew for my dad, Doc and his Molar Marauder were regulars on the race course, usually in front of us.

After a few years, Doc asked my mom if I would be available to crew for him at a regatta. I don’t remember being consulted, not that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because I was going with Doc to Mohican Sailing Club for their Fall Interlake Regatta. I clearly recall the cool sunny morning he rolled into the driveway to pick me up. He was driving his blue Barracuda convertible, top down and pulling Interlake 1178 on its trailer. It was my first time in a convertible. It was a chilly, hour long ride to Mansfield, Ohio, but I was amazed at the brightness of the sky and the near sensory overload of wind and smells, and Doc’s conversation. On the way, he munched on an apple and offered me one. I ate it down to the core. When we got to the sailing club, I was still holding the core and wondering where he had put his. I asked if I could throw away his core for him and he said he’d eaten it. It was just one of the many Doc “things” I learned over the years. After the drifty racing that day, we had dinner (my first real pig roast) and we slept in sleeping bags on the floor of the club house. It was a new world for a kid of 13. I sailed with Doc in a few more Interlake regattas over the next several years, but most of my time was devoted to racing with teams competing in the US Junior Championship series. Then, just as I and my fellow Sears team members reached our peak in 1984, I aged out of junior competition. Not to worry, Doc had a place for me.

1984 was also the year Doc acquired a Tarten Ten, hull number 343, and named it Halesworth, after the street where his recently passed mother had lived. My brother Doug, (“#2 son,” as dad would say,) was a plank-holder in Doc’s program, but he was leaving for the Navy and I was to take his place for the 1985 season. I sailed with Doc and Doug on the T-10 for the first time at the Fall Regatta in Sandusky, Ohio. It was just as memorable as that first convertible ride with Doc several years before. 33 feet of boat, weighing nearly 7000 pounds, with complicated systems and a “cabin” was a huge jump from the forward crew spot on a 500-some pound Thistle. After the racing was done on Sunday, we had to move the boat to Port Clinton, Ohio. The wind was from the south and perfect for flying the spinnaker as we sailed out of Sandusky Bay to make our way around Catawba and Mouse Islands. After clearing the breakwater at the sailing club, Doug and I hoisted the sails and Doc steered down the channel towards Cedar point. Once everything was set, Doc asked me if I’d like to take the tiller for a while. I was in heaven as I watched the knot meter steadily climb from four to five to six. We were high and dry in the cockpit, slashing through the chop that would have soaked me to the bone in the front of the Thistle. As we passed the amusement park on Cedar Point, I asked Doc if I could veer left a little, out of the channel to head more directly to the Marblehead Light. He thought that would be fine, and it would net a higher speed. We shifted course, re-trimmed the spinnaker, and just as the knot meter climbed to seven, the keel struck something solid. The boat came to a complete stop immediately. Out of instinct, I shoved the tiller down, and the boat, sails still full and drawing, laid hard over on its side. We could feel the keel sliding and scraping across the underwater object, until finally it dropped off the other side and let the boat stand upright again. In a moment of coolness that I have tried to emulate ever since, Doc checked that Doug and I were okay, and then inspected the bilge and keel bolts. When Doc came back on deck, he joked that my eyes were as big as saucers when we hit. I’m sure they were! He also said that he couldn’t have handled the boat any better in that situation. High praise from the man whose yacht I just crashed!

I sailed on Halesworth as the regular delivery crew and bowman until 1990, and then off and on for a couple years more. It was often just me and Doc on those drives to and from Sandusky, and on the deliveries to the next regatta. We cleaned and fixed stuff, ate Mrs. Boucher’s picnic meals, and learned about racing T-10s on Lake Erie. I heard stories about Columbus during the 30’s and 40’s, and attending high school gym class during WWII, where the teacher had the boys preparing for boot camp and practice lying perfectly still on the floor so the enemy wouldn’t find them. Doc told me about serving in the Marines on an aircraft carrier at the tail end of the war, carrying sacks of potatoes during replenishment and and maintaining the 40mm anti-aircraft gun. I learned about Buddy Byers and motor boat racing on Griggs Reservoir, and how if Mrs. Boucher hadn’t been his constant study companion, he’d never have finished dental school.

Doc loved tinkering with stuff, learning about new technology, and making things “better.” He had the first LORAN navigator I ever got to use. He’d build all kinds of things, or find somebody who could if it exceeded his ability. In recent years, he’d call me to lend a hand if something was too big to do by himself, like the new sign in front of the yacht club. His last project, the brass sailing ship wind vane on top of the clubhouse, will serve for may years to come. At least I hope so, because every time I look at the sign, or the wind vane, I think of Doc and the adventures we had together. They will have to stand in the gap in my “order of things” until time closes the ranks, and all I have left are the fond and funny memories of a man who got a heck of a lot out of his 94 years.

Post Script- Doc’s wife, and the love of his life, passed away within a few day’s of his departure. Bobbi was a wonderful woman who also taught me a lot about sailing. I mentioned her in my post about boat food some months back. (https://www.timothymsavage.com/blog/boat-food-the-halesworth-cookie) I will miss them both, and may they be welcomed with open arms as they cross the threshold of heaven.