SAILING IN THE AQUARIUM

A journey of contrasts from Alaska to the Sea of Cortez, taking in the stark beauty of the desert.

- ELLEN MASSEY LEONARD

Scrambling over loose red rock, threading my way between spiny cactus branches, I’ve started to wonder if this hike up the arroyo is really worth it. There’s no trail up the dry river bed, which only flows – in torrential surges – during the hurricane season, in occasional floods of sudden rain. In the sailing season, from late fall to spring, the desert surrounding Mexico’s Sea of Cortez is bone dry. At the end of the season, in the first weeks of May, the land is also very hot, an omen of the summer hurricanes to come. Between the steep walls of this arroyo, the air is baking and windless. Hiking uphill in the heat among cacti and boulders seems, with each step, like a worse and worse idea. It’s amazing what a classic boat owner will do for yet another scenic view of her wooden treasure.

My husband Seth and I have owned Celeste, our cold-moulded cutter, since 2013, when we were lucky enough to purchase her from her original owner, the man who had commissioned her. She is a custom design, drawn by Francis Kinney, the New York naval architect who edited Skene’s Elements of Yacht Design and, during his tenure at Sparkman & Stephens, worked on many of the 12-Metre designs for the America’s Cup. Kinney designed