Chapter 3: Teaching or Learning?

Teaching sailing was almost as frightening as racing. The summer I was enlisted to teach sailing I was already working in the first floor men's department of Dayton's Department Store in not so beautiful downtown Minneapolis. So, of course, when the phone call came asking if I wanted to leave all that to be with eleven ten year old girls 24-7 for five weeks, I didn't hesitate to accept. I was only slightly less successful as a camp counselor than I'd been as a men's swimsuit saleslady. The campers' favorite way to antagonize me was to hide my razor so that I couldn't shave my legs. ...yes, having unshaven legs bothered me and still does. But I got even.

The first time I took my crew sailing, I felt I was finally on firm ground (even though we were on water) because I had so much experience sailing. I was supposed to simply go over the names of the parts of the boat with them. But this seemed dull, so I decided to show them how to jibe. Though some avoid the jibe, it's always been like parallel parking for me--a source of pride. Little did I know that the particular scow--a C scow as I recall--was missing a cotter pin in the cotter key holding the right front side stay to the deck. There was a good wind, not big but steady and strong enough to keep us moving nicely. These were the perfect conditions to demonstrate a controlled jibe. So after explaining what I was going to do and assuring the group of anxious ten year old girls that even though much was made over the dangers of jibing, I felt these warnings against the jibe to be unjust, I pushed the tiller away from me and, at the same time, quickly hauled in the sail. As I let the main sheet slip through my hands to allow the sail to swing in the other direction, something totally unexpected happened. Not only did the boat jibe, the mast fell over as well.

All eleven girls--some little and some not so little--began screaming. I knew that this would be the tale that would follow me the rest of the summer if not for eternity. "Well," I said. "That's what you don't want to do." We were rescued by the camp director who, of course, warned us all against jibing as we towed the crippled ship back to the dock.

Chapter 2: Bigger Boat

Why did I let my brother talk me into spending the money our grandmother left us on half a C -class scow? It was a poorly built boat, which was why the owner was trying to unload it. Made at Johnson Boat Works in White Bear Lake out of wood--what wood I haven't a clue as I didn't think to ask at the time--it had weighed too much. Building a wooden boat is never an exact science as this particular boat proved. Rebuilding it to be lighter was, of course, out of the question. The owner's solution was to remove the wooden floor boards and replace them with styrofoam wrapped up with tape. It was an awful arrangement. But my brother wanted that boat and seemed able to overlook both the cosmetic and the functional shortcomings of the heavy boat and it's makeshift flooring. But why did I who hated sailing with my brother who got mean when he was skipping the boat and losing as we always seemed to do go along with his plan? I'd have to say that I actually like my brother when he was pleasant, which he always was when he wanted something and rarely was when he didn't.

A C-scow has a 30 foot mast. The sail surface is tremendous. In a big wind, two crew are necessary just to keep the beast from flipping over. Sometimes even three large people hiking out as far as the canvas hiking straps around one ankle would permit couldn't prevent that flipping over. We flipped a lot. We never won a race. Winning, as far as I was concerned, was not even an issue. Not flipping over was my first goal. The second was to merely finish the race without one of the other skippers raising the black protest flag against out boat.

I've watched movies where the main character is charged with taming a wild animal and thought about that boat. It was a wild animal and we never did manage to tame it. Probably because it was lame from outset. The boat's weight and its lousy floorboard arrangements were definitely a handicap. My brother and I didn't need that kind of handicap; we were in over our heads without it.

How I started sailing

Chapter 1: How I got started sailing

Sometimes I let myself forget how frightened of the water I was as a small child. I didn't learn to swim until I was eight, and even then my relationship with water was shakey and uncertain. It wasn't until I started sailing a couple years later that I discovered the joy of feeling intense terror within the confines of a limited period of time--the sailboat race.

My father was the one with the love of the sea. Of course, living in Minnesota as we did meant that his love to the sea--probably due to his being 1/2 Norwegian--had to be satisfied on an inland lake, Lake Harriet to be exact. The first boat I remember my father having was a flat board that he had turned into a boat with the help of his younger brother Bill. They built this boat and one for Bill as well in my grandmother's garage. It was a wet and cold proposition riding the board. The board was also slippery, and, though many attempts were made to reduce its slipperyness, a ride on the board usually ended with the sailor in the lake and the boat sailing merrily on without him. A short while after these boats were built and abandoned, my father decided to buy what was then the racing boat for persons under sixteen. Since he was pushing 40 at the time, the boat was purchased ostensibly for my brother.

My brother was not a very sociable or likeable kid. He was moody and often mean. Sailing the boat my father bought for him without asking his opinion--possibly accounting for my brother's moodiness and meanness--required finding a crew. Friendless, this task was no easier for my brother than mastering the boat itself. That's why I ended up crewing for him, having had as little choice in the matter as he had.