A boat, like a wind vane, will naturally point into the wind if its skipper does not make it do something else. It’s the orientation of least resistance for a sailboat, in the dead center of the “no go” zone with the bow pointed directly up the eye of the wind and the sails flapping ineffectually. The boat begins to drift backwards, towards disaster, after that.

On Thursday, March 27, at Alhambra Hall, there was a two hour meeting on the future of the Mount Pleasant Town Sailing Center. At its end, the dangerous backward drift had begun.

Councilman Gary Santos ran an open, democratic meeting. Everybody got to talk for as long as they wanted and say whatever they liked.

Residents of the Old Village turned out to oppose locating a sailing center at Alhambra Hall. They said they already had as much traffic, parking in their yards, drunks, trash and crowding as anyone could ask them to reasonably tolerate.  One stood up to say that she “hated” the Blessing of the Fleet, the community’s annual celebration of the start of its shrimping season. The crowd cheered when Mac Burdette, the town administrator, promised that the town would try to move the event to the new Waterfront Memorial Park in 2010.

If that traditional event represents a celebration of the town’s mythic soul, it was clear both that and the sailing center need a new home.

Who was being selfish depended on what you wanted.  

It may have been the State Ports Authority and its friends in the containership industry.  They had several representatives at Thursday’s meeting.

Though Hobcaw Yacht Club teaches children to sail boxy little optimist prams in the waters to the North, and the College of Charleston teaches novice sailors to skipper and crew 420s just to the South, harbor pilots, shipping industry interests and their friends continue to oppose sailing from the three million dollar concrete pier at the new park.

George Wood, who researched and built the sailing center for the College of Charleston at Patriot’s Point has said, “the concrete pier constructed at Waterfront Memorial Park is a safe and functional place for a Town Sailing Center. The current there is not a problem for sailors in a properly run and supervised sailing program operating with motorized safety boats.”

The town’s new property at Shem Creek was proposed as the location for a sailing center.   However, the long commute to open water would require more chase and tow boats — and more of the expensive, paid sailing instructors which drive up the cost of the program. With enough time and money, you can build a sailing center anywhere. One of the best in the United States is in the middle of the Arizona desert on an artificial lake. Certainly constructing docks and facilities on Shem Creek would be vastly less expensive than at Alhambra.

Someone proposed locating the center on the Wando River, above I-526, where wind is often hard to find. That, like Alhambra Hall, would require a long and expensive access dock.

Everyone was in complete agreement — the sailing center should go somewhere else, sometime later.

The only issue in dispute was where and when.

There are no perfect locations left. If we wait, there may be none.

At the meeting’s end, nothing had been decided. Informal political wrangling isn’t getting the job done. The backroom deals among friends, which many accept as a substitute for open, democratic, accountable government here, aren’t getting the job done either.

It was once different. Mr. Darby, who built shrimpboats and yachts at his boatyard on Shem Creek, brought 30 widgeon sailboats to the Old Village three generations ago. He sold some for a profit, some at cost and apparently gave some away. They could be found up and down the town’s waterfront.

On Sunday, after church, kids walked to the beach and launched their little boats, without supervision or know how. Through trial and error, they taught themselves to sail. Their parents watched and sipped ice tea on their porches, cooled by the same breeze which sent their children across the water.  Most of the people sailing in Mount  Pleasant today can trace their introduction to the sport to someone, a family member, instructor or friend, who piloted those Darby Widgeons.

Mr. Darby could, and may have, built those sailboats with his own hands. His yard on Shem Creek certainly could build a graceful yacht or a hard working trawler. The yards massive marine railway and shops of skilled craftsmen, black and white, was home to a muscular Americanism. Those men lived in old Mount Pleasant, attended church here and believed the most important thing they made was the community their children and grandchildren grew up in.   They understood what a town must do to control its future: raise strong, capable citizens.

Modern Mount Pleasant has not (in four years), with 60 thousand residents, budgets of millions of dollars and two, large scale expensive waterfront projects (which promised to provide community boating access with a total cost of over twenty million dollars), managed to even a plan a way to launch a single boat.  

A lot of our kids need affordable, accessible year round sailing in their community so they can grow up to be strong, contributing citizens. Sailing should not be for a wealthy or lucky few. It isn’t in Boston, Baltimore, Clearwater or Arizona.

We need a town commission of experienced sailors, free of port industry influence, to review options, hold hearings and present a recommendation to Town Council this year. This should be the last year our town lacks community access to its waterfront.

It’s time to take the tiller in hand, push the boom into the wind and put the breeze across the rig. More action must be our course.

William Hamilton (www.wjhamilton.com) is an attorney who lives in I’On Village.