Monday, December 10, 2007

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.