The Water Log

“So how’d you know it was me?” Teddy Charles keeps asking.

We had planned to meet in front of a diner in Riverhead, Long Island, near where the Hampton Jitney lets off. Never having laid eyes on Teddy Charles before, I walked straight to his car and got in.

What gave him away? Aside from the fact that he was the only one idling in the parking lot? It could have been his Volkswagon Rabbit, a tiny beat-up two-door relic that gets 50 miles to the gallon and requires two people to open the passenger-side door; or the giant white sail furled upon itself in the back seat/trunk area; or maybe that you don’t see many 78-year-old guys wearing shades and cruising around in such a vehicle. This was clearly Teddy Charles.

Charles’ life, as he tells it, seems to have unfolded as a series of fortuitous opportunities for which he was totally unprepared.

The first transpired when he was maybe twelve, spending the summer on the Long Island Sound. All the kids owned 16-foot sailboats, and after going out in their boats a few times, Teddy “got really hot on it.” One day, he recalls, “I asked one of the kids, ‘Are you going to take your boat out today?,’ and he said, ‘Nah, go ahead, you take it.’ I hadn’t the vaguest idea, but being young, I said ‘Sure, why not.’ The lesson I learned, it’s still good today: it’s very easy to sail out, and it can be difficult to sail back. I didn’t know how to tack. I learned.”

Good timing, and a proficiency with percussion instruments, would get Teddy out of his hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts (“the cultural anus of the world,” he calls it), and into Julliard through a back door. “It was right after the war, otherwise I never would have gotten in. It was a summer extension program; it was a lot easier to get in.”

And a few years later, yet another lucky break– in the form of Thelonious Monk showing up late for a gig – landed him at the piano at a midtown jazz club and launched his professional career as a vibraphonist and composer.

But living in Manhattan, close to the sea but so far removed, Charles eventually started to miss the water. “Well,” he thought, “I used to know how to sail. I’ll get a boat.” He bought a 1903 43-foot yawl, “fixed it up, went out sailing. Never sailed a big boat before but I learned quickly… It was almost the end of my music career.”

A few upgrades later, and he was the somewhat hesitant owner of the Mary E, a 1906 75-foot sword fishing schooner that was not at her prettiest.

She was “hardly fixed up at all from being a fishing schooner,” Charles recalls. “No staysail, schooner rig, nothing, stainless steel, just old time stuff, and I loved it. Actually, I didn’t like the way it looked at first. Ugly boat, but once we got it rigged out, got some sails on her, I started to really get to liking her.”

Operating out of City Island, Charles took New Yorkers and tourists alike on weeklong trips to the Vineyard and weekend trips to Block Island, and was even chartered by the National Park Service to sail students from New York to Miami, stopping at every national park on the way.

Around that time, Peter Stanford, “a go-getter type,” founded the Seaport Museum, intending to recreate the seaport’s old-time feel. In 1975, Stanford asked Charles to bring the Mary E to the seaport.

“We were doing great,” recalls Charles. “People flocked to go on the boat.” But the Mary E’s success would only a last a month. “They saw we were doing so good, they decided they’d better bring the Pioneer in.” The 102-foot Pioneer, which still sails out of Pier 16, quickly overshadowed the Mary E.

“They moved the Pioneer in front of me, moved the Mary E way back in the pier so it was difficult to get in and out, took my signs down so they could advertise the sailings for the Pioneer. I was so subordinated. I was just sitting there. Nothing was happening.”

The museum was also not going as planned. There had been big plans to “restore this here, put a seafood restaurant here, just like the days of old South Street, bowsprits coming up over the East River Drive and so forth,” recalls Charles. “It was all a sham. Next thing you knew there was a Citibank rising in the spot where it was supposed to be the seaport… Everyone who was serious took their boat someplace else.” Charles followed suit. “When they fired Peter Stanford, I went with him.”

In 1976, less than a year after he moved to the seaport, Charles took the Mary E to Greenport, where he started a charter business that’s still bustling today. He goes out on three trips a day, seven days a week.

But these days, Charles has been feeling the tug of the big city. “I’ve thought about bringing the boat back to New York, too,” he says, slowly, as if the notion is still forming itself. “There’s an awful lot of business in New York.”

He’s got a gig coming up at Kitano, a midtown hotel that offers live jazz, and he’s been asked to record some of the pieces he’s composed. There’s music on the stand in front of his vibraphone at home, and for the first time in a long time, he didn’t go down south this winter.

“Ideally, I’d probably like to have the boat in Manhattan, so I’d be accessible to New York clubs again. Run the boat a good part of the time and play music a good part of the time. Ideally.”

Posted by Tucker on Friday, January 26, 2007 at 11:30 AM | Permalink