The Wildflower arrived in our driveway at 556 Ponte Vedra Blvd., inverted on a rack atop our blue-gray Buick sedan. Our father, Byron, had just picked it up and driven it out Beach Boulevard from its delivery point somewhere below Avondale in Jacksonville. It was the culmination of months of his research into what would and would not be allowed on the lagoon behind our house.
Dad was an architect and planner with Reynolds, Smith, and Hills, and a member of the PV zoning district. He understood, more than most, the importance of rules and policies and why community standards are important. This boat would be his first introduction to the art of sailing, and model No. 6-9901 was his craft of choice.
The daggerboard-dinghy style of the Wildflower was the newest production model of Snark-type boats being offered in 1972 and distributed through the O’Day Sailboat dealership in Jacksonville’s Ortega. It caught our father’s eye during a demonstration at the Florida Yacht Club, and it fit perfectly the PV specs.
The boat was manufactured as a companion to the very popular Sunchaser recreational sailboats seen regularly on the river off the Yacht Club. But in PV, there was a slight problem. The Sunchaser had a centerline of 12 feet, and the community standards specified non-motorized boats and launches in the lagoons needed to be “under 12 feet.” Not “12 feet and under,” but “under 12 feet.” In the early ’70s, following the rules of the game in PV was a type of sport. The Wildflower came in at 11 feet 5 inches length over all.
Within a week of its arrival, and after many shake-down cruises up and down the south lagoon, enjoying every advantage of this purest of pure recreational leisure activities on the waters behind our house, a member of code enforcement arrived one day unannounced, bringing with him a round leather-over-steel-cased fabric measuring tape reel, the kind used to measure setbacks, property line encroachments, fences, wall heights, rye grass seed-stalks and other lawn heights within the community at-large.
The inspector was absolutely sure we were in violation, and he took it upon himself to walk directly to the boat from our driveway without first coming to the door. His encounter with our mother, Nancy, at the edge of the lagoon behind our house that afternoon did not go well. Our mother’s deep Old Palatka roots held firm. Her grandfather was W. A. King, who built the King Hotel just up Lemon Street from the Underwoods. Old Palatka and Old Ponte Vedra were cultural cousins from another era united by the Hart Line, Florida excursions, Flagler’s rails, dry goods and Stockton vision.
Our mother allowed the measurement but only after she convinced the code inspector that it was her idea that the boat needed measuring in the first place to officially record its compliance. Alice Landrum, next door, was already using this moment as an opportunity to walk over for a quick visit. The man’s demeanor changed almost immediately when the hull fell short of a violation by seven inches. 40-love. McIntyre. The rules of the game required the measurement to be recorded in his notebook.
We named the vessel FREE, partially because of the freedom it afforded us on the water, but more importantly because all that was needed for its operation was a little skill and a free breeze. In some ways, FREE represented a feather-soft nod to the looming national energy crisis beginning to surface in other parts of the country, but one that had not yet touched Ponte Vedra proper. As a family, FREE gave us every bit of excitement we had hoped she would. Nearly every afternoon, the lagoon had a steady early spring breeze east to west allowing long tacks up and down the lagoon.
Once, my brothers and I dropped the mast and maneuvered under the bridges at Rutile Drive and at Lake Road and then portaged across Solana into Ibis Cove. This broke the rules and earned us a demerit with code enforcement. Because our property was on the south lagoon, as it was explained to our mother, sailing in Ibis Cove was off limits since “boat launching” was prohibited, and to cross Solana and re-enter the water there would officially classify as a launch. Following the rules of the game in PV was well played on all sides.
Our preference was always for our end of the lagoon. But we did drop the mast a few more times and glide under the bridge at Rutile Drive and sail south and around the island. But this maneuver landed us in a gray-zone with code enforcement, and we ceded the point without protest. Once, in the ocean off the mid-500s, out just beyond the swells, our daggerboard came up from behind on a large manta ray sunning a foot or so beneath the surface. The board touched the filter-feeder's center back and its winged fins instinctively catapulted buckets of water simultaneously into FREE from either side, port and starboard, as the fish descended deeper. The encounter made a lasting impression on everyone aboard who felt the slight drag milliseconds before the waterworks. We voted the south lagoon would be our water of choice, where we could see the cat-paws coming, and where we were able to fine-tune our art at our own leisure, as our father always intended our sailing lessons to be.
Creating space for leisure, our tacking or wing-on-wing from one end of the lagoon to the other, was an invitation to our neighbors to “leisure here with us for a moment.” Some would sit in lawn chairs, others would watch from their patios or through large picture windows, as my younger brother, Scott, perfected his single-man maneuvers, under the large orange “W” printed on the mainsail announcing with skill and acumen, Wildflower FREE on the south lagoon, in this smartly casual place of all places, Ponte Vedra Beach.
