Cap, you will be missed.
You wore more hats than anyone I’ve known…
at the Seaport and elsewhere on the river and the coast.
I’ve many fond memories of Don, although he frightened me at first. One, sailing under the Verrazano with a group of visually impaired kids, he suggested they all clap to hear the echo of the roadbed 217 feet above; once they began hearing the echo and clapping with more excitement, his face had every bit as much pleasure as theirs.
Another: Don’s safety speech to passengers: “Every boat has two sides, the wet side and the dry side. Rule #1 Stay on the dry side. Rule #2 Stay on the dry side even if you want to rescue some poor soul who messed up on Rule #1.
Fair winds, Don.
If you wish to share a memory of Don Taube, leave a comment.
13 comments
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July 11, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Andrew Willner
Don Taube is an icon of the Hudson and the Harbor. He taught me how to caulk, fit a plank on large schooner, and do a Hudson River jibe. He is loved and will be missed. He and Michael Kortchmar encouraged me to become a Pioneer volunteer, and gave me the experience on the harbor that enabled me to become the Baykeeper. There are too many stories to list here, but Carmine’s after a sail ending at midnight, a few beers, and a half order of pasta later, harbor tales, and shared experiences, a community made.
July 13, 2007 at 10:03 am
bonnie
What???
July 13, 2007 at 10:09 am
bonnie
Here was the post i did about the time I met him.
That was one of those really wonderful days on the river & listening to him & Maggie & Richard swapping sea stories was what made it so.
July 16, 2007 at 7:00 am
The Great Whatsit » In memoriam: Captain Donald Taube (1942-2007)
[...] not the only one who can’t believe Don’s [...]
July 19, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Adam
I think my favorite memory of Don would have to be the transit up to Waterford, NY in the Decker last august, for the Tugboat Roundup. Two days going up the Hudson in the little wooden tug, as the summer began to wane.
It’s one of my favorite boat trips ever, (the third crewmember would agree with me) and I couldn’t imagine having done it with anyone else in command.
Fair winds, Cap. May the wind carry you to your long home.
July 19, 2007 at 8:15 pm
debbie
I am Don’s little sister. I can’t believe I never got the chance to sail with him. Thank you all for your kind words and wonderful memories
July 20, 2007 at 5:26 pm
linda goldsmith
I always wondered if there was something Don could not do.
Never found it. He was a surprise every day–and his heart was that of an angel and a giant. He is with his beloved wife, who understood him and loved him and I hope he is looking down at me while he is sailing past in the clouds .
July 23, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Susan J. Murphy
Here’s a Don Taube story we treasure:
Whenever he could, Don loved to work with the crew that builds the Clearwater Revival music festival every June. The Site Crew gathers a couple of weeks before the festival to live and work together. One year, the crew coordinator suggested that Don bring a table saw. Don turned up in his honkin’ big old truck with a huge saw. The crew sweated and struggled to get it off the truck. Afterward, the coordinator mildly suggested that Don might have brought a smaller one. Don replied, “That is the small one!”
Don will be sorely missed on Site Crew, as well as so many other places where he so generously shared his skill, strength, intelligence, wisdom and love.
July 26, 2007 at 10:01 am
Pietro
Summer of 1987, 88, 86??, Clearwater in New York harbor, summer, dead calm, all the sails up, full complement of passengers on board. Don was relief captain and I was relief mate (I was usually the bosun or engineer).
Background: Don and I knew each other since 1982, the first year I work on Site Crew at the Revival. The crew chief, Jack Price, had asked Don if we could borrow his “small table saw”. Don showed up with a 12″ (very large), 240 volt, 3 phase, cast iron table saw that must have weighed a ton. I would have to rewire the dining room/workshop just to power it. All of us struggled with rollers and dollies to get it off the truck. Jack finally turned to Don and said, “Didn’t I say the the small one”. Don replied, “That is the small one”. Quiet, soft spoken, smart, educated, very strong, very good with his hands and his brain, patient, usually wearing greasy, tar stained work clothes; Don was what many of us aspired to. At dinner that night, Don and I immediately recognized the political activist in each other – he at Columbia University, me with the VVAW (Viet-Nam Veterans Against the War) and we launched into wonderful, spirited, sometimes raucous political discussions and downright arguments. We were fast friends and later ship mates ever since.
Wind starts to pick up, clouds are blowing in and, from across the harbor, here comes an intense, black squall line. Oh shit! Don’s command: Drop sails! The top sail starts to come down and the American flag, now whipping about in the wind, gets rieved through the topsail sheet block jamming it. We can’t get the topsail down so we can’t get the mainsail down. A squall line is coming and we can’t get the sails down. Don and I grin at each other knowing what has to be done. He tells me quietly, “Cut it down.” I scamper up the shrouds as fast as I can. I step off the cross trees heading aft hanging by my hands from the mainsail halyard until I can get my feet on the gaff. I work my way aft until I can plant my butt on the very aft tip of the gaff facing forward. Holding on with one hand, I proceed to free the topsail sheet block by chopping the American flag to pieces. My hands now shaking from the adrenalin, I work my way back. As soon as I’m safely on the crosstrees, I signal to Don to drop sails and they start coming down around me as I’m climbing down the shrouds. The rain is pouring down now as we start to motor back to the dock. Don and I didn’t say a word about this but you couldn’t wipe the smile from our faces with a belt sander.
Pietro Poccia
July 26, 2007 at 1:57 pm
allan goldhammer
Ok, ok. I’ll tell it. I remember one hot summer evening in the eighties when Don was driving Clearwater. We tied up at Aspen, below the Palisades, and it was around midnight when the rules were cut loose and we all went skinnydipping. There are no better words to describe heaven than that. There were the beautiful women on the crew to cast surreptitious glances at, and then Don appeared on deck wearing a housedress…the old reprobate. He was the hairiest most gnarly person I knew, with the possible exception of Jack Price..but l liked Don better. There is a sort of perfection in humor and in contrast, as well as in the peak of summer, when the heat dies back only at midnight with the help of river water.
I miss him, even though I only got to talk to him ten minutes a year at Revival. I have a few more stories, as do all of you.
Allan Goldhammer
August 2, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Malcolm Martin
I have struggled for some time to write something in memory of Don. So many have written so well about him and I hardly knew him by some standards. I have come to realize both from attempting many drafts of this and by reading what others have said that Don could hardly be summed up by any one brief (or long) essay. His life was a rich cloth woven of many threads and most of us only had the privilage to know a few of the strands that made up the person. So here are what yarns I have to share.
I met Don around the Pioneer at South Street. First as a volunteer then again later when I was Pioneer’s master. Don was a constant source of ideas and opinions. His history with the vessels and his technical know-how was a constant resource all of us there tapped time and again and which was always freely available to us. His underlying interest in environmental and social justice was always at the root of his approach and attitudes. His staggering experience and powerful intellect made him a valued member of the team of people there who actually liked ships and truly cared about environmental issues.
You just couldn’t help liking him. He was generous to a fault, smart, handy, personable. His erudition and breadth of interests made him a lively and enjoyable conversationalist both at work and after hours. He always had a tale… One which may or may not have been appropriate or helpful, the telling of which may or may not have sped the tasks at hand but ALWAYS interesting and often quite funny. Best of all he could help you to laugh at yourself when appropriate chiefly because he was never afraid to laugh at his own follies. Don made a great teacher for the myriad volunteers on Pioneer. He knew what to do and when and never let the mistakes of others put him out of sorts. He enjoyed the tackling the challenges and sharing in the joy of learning that is the regular fair on board the Pioneer.
When I was an impending father Don shared his insight and delight in fatherhood. His excitement at my future experiences (especially once we knew we were having a daughter) was inspiring and comforting. It was impossible to not be moved by the close and deeply loving relationship he had with Jessica and June. His pride in Jessica’s accomplishments always buoyed his spirit especially in the sad time around June’s death. He set a benchmark for us fathers and husbands few of us can hope to achieve.
I did a couple of transits with him either delivering or returning the Indy for the revival. The din of the Indy’s 671 made conversation difficult but Don’s love of the river and the serenity it seemed to bring to him to be on it made those dark trips particularly memorable.
Don often said things others subsequently repeated. I remember one in particular I have repeated many times to both myself and others. It was one breezy evening Don was taking the Pioneer out for a charter. We had discussed the difficulty of the docking at the end of the trip due to the state of the weather, current and other vessels in the way. As he prepared to get underway he turned to me and said “I try to never let anxiety about the docking interfere with my enjoyment of the sail…” I think Don was giving me his secret to a life whose energy was well spent.
I know Don has thousands of friends and admirers but I count myself very lucky to be among them. It was an honor and a privilege to sail with Don and to know him. I am sure I will remember him many times in the course of my life. I will always be grateful for having known him. We may never again have new memories of Don but his warmth and sincerity and the lessons we learned from him will remain. I hope more folks will share their stories of this one guy who left us too soon but in a world a fair bit better for his having been here.
December 6, 2008 at 8:57 am
Sails to the Sunset « Llanera Solitaria
[...] At the same time, unbeknownst to me, a captain with whom I used to sail had a stroke and died a year and two seasons ago. Don Taube was a fine captain and an excellent teacher with a flawlessly warped sense of humour. I found two memorial pages — here: one, two. [...]
December 12, 2008 at 2:31 am
Jeff
Fair winds, Capt’n Don!
I sailed with him on the Pioneer. He was the genuine article, endlessly calm and in control, a true old salt with an enormous store of useful information and colorful stories, and a gravelly delivery worthy of any pirate. I’ll never forget the time I went to dinner with him and some of the other weirdbeards from the boat–we had to be the hairiest, rawest, ugliest guys int the restaurant.
OK, How many of you guys heard this before: “The cue for you to abandon ship…is when you see me waving from the lifeboat.”