Back on the Water
When the past resurfaces on social media
Ness is about making and thinking about content strategy, storytelling, and the creative life. It’s free for now. Someday, it will earn its keep.
Back on the Water With My Old Man
Even though I work in social media and video creation, something I never expected happened to me last week. An unforeseen but very welcome apparition of my father, who passed away almost three years ago, appeared online in a social video.
Some background. For my father, sailing wasn’t just a hobby; it was a throughline in his life and part of his DNA. His father was an avid sailor, and he grew up racing boats in Massachusetts. He owned a sailboat when he was younger and made several memorable passages over the years. In my office, I sit next to a trophy he earned for completing a transatlantic passage in the 1980s aboard Shamrock V. I keep his old Minerva yacht timer close by too.
My old man used to like to say there was no better place to sleep than on a boat, because it rocks you to sleep. This is true. Even as he got older, he frequently mused about owning a boat again and cruising up the coast of Maine, something that was financially and physically out of reach for him. So instead, he joined a small yacht club near his house, pushing himself to sail boats that were hard to get in and out of because that’s how he could get on the water. He also just liked being around fellow boat people. And even at the very end of his life, when the fog of death was overtaking him, his mind returned again and again to sailing—to the wind, the water, and time spent on boats. It was his happy place, for lack of a better phrase.
That’s why I was so taken aback by a video the America’s Cup account recently posted. It’s a fast-moving look through the decades of America’s Cup racing, a hype reel designed to build excitement for the next race in Naples, while anchoring it in the competition’s long, storied heritage.
In the early 1980s, my dad helped with fundraising for the famed American skipper Dennis Conner and his Freedom Syndicate, which defended the Cup in Newport. For an avid sailor, that also meant time sailing on the boat. He proudly hung a Freedom flag (burgee?) in his house for the rest of his life and kept a photo of himself with Dennis Conner and his best friend on his desk (I need to track that down).
In the video, my dad appears on screen for just a flash, about nine seconds in. It’s unmistakably him: on a boat, looking forward, fully absorbed, caught in the intensity of the moment in his trademark aviator sunglasses.
I had no idea a video of my dad from that period even existed. I certainly never expected to encounter it online years after his death. But the joy of seeing him took me by surprise. Floored me, even. It’s not just that the video is some affirmation of his work with the America’s Cup, which he was very proud of. It’s that in some small and almost mystical way, he’s reappeared in my life, and he’s doing what he loved most. It feels deeply fitting and so incredibly reassuring.
I know it’s just social media. But this time, it carried something more. It reached back across decades, across loss, and for a brief moment, brought my father back. For that, I’m incredibly grateful.
Lovely essay, John.
How lovely and special.