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| It looks calm because it's a still photo. |
On our first voyage
aboard the 28’ Sirius Sailboat ‘Waterbaby’, my father’s entire crew mutinied.
It was 1984, my mother, my
11-yr-old brother and I – aged 13 – had no sailing experience at all, and for
some reason my father thought he could have us sailing like pros in no time.
His confidence was so
overwhelming that we willingly launched ourselves into the myth. And into
Georgian Bay.
At the dock, we took the
sail cover off and stowed it correctly in the ‘starboard’ locker. We bent the
jib onto the forestay. We turned the battery master to ‘both’ and my father
started the engine. I was wearing brand new topsiders and felt a little like a
pro already. With everyone’s bladder emptied – including the dog’s – we cast
off and left the marina.
In fairness, we weren’t
completely unprepared. My brother and I had been excused from school for a one-day
sailing lesson with a CYA instructor. I knew the difference between a halyard
and a sheet, a winch and a cleat. If I ever forgot anything, my father had put
sticky labels on just about every available surface to ensure we didn’t screw
up, including a red ‘!’ on the companionway hatch so we’d remember to duck (a
label which my brother, much later, chose to ignore, but that’s another
adventure). Having thus prepared his crew, my father put the bow of the boat
into wind and shouted, “Ready the main!”
“Okay, now, kids...” my
mother put down her book and said that when Dad told us, Robert and I were to
pull on the main halyard (clearly labelled) until the big sail reached the top
of the mast and then close the jam-cleat. Easy.
Mom got up on the turtle
and took off the bungie cord that held the mainsail on the boom. The sail slid
into the cockpit. Robert had the winch handle ready and was holding me for
balance as the boat swayed on the water.
“Ready,” Mom said,
standing by the mast.
“Ready,” I said.
“Ready,” Robert said, and
then said it once again, this time in a squeaky voice that was supposed to be
our dog, Duchess, who lay trembling under the sail in the cockpit.
“Hoist the main!” Dad
hollered.
I immediately pulled on
the halyard, throwing all my weight into it. The mainsail rose... about a half
a metre.
“Pull, Jessica! Pull!” my
father shouted. The urgency in his voice frightened me. We were, after all,
pointed straight at shore. There were children swimming not far from the
pointed bow of our boat. I got a better grip on the line and pulled again.
Robert helped. Little by little, we got the sail to within a meter of the top
of the mast. The noise was tremendous. The sail rattled the boom, shook the
halyard, tried to batter itself against the mast. Mom’s expression was intent.
“Use the winch handle!”
Dad exclaimed. The swimmers had, by this time, noticed they were in danger. One
of them waved.
Robert threw himself on
the winch handle. The sail crept up the mast, turn by turn, until Dad said we
could stop. Robert closed the jam-cleat, and we collapsed on the cushions in
the cockpit. Dad turned the helm, and the mainsail filled with wind. The engine
was shut off, and silence, at last, descended over the ‘Waterbaby’ as she
heeled over and shouldered into the waves. My father looked at his watch.
“Not bad, guys,” he said.
“We’ll do it a lot faster next time. Ready the jib!”
There are a lot of things
to love about sailing. My favourites include reading, singing camp songs and having
watermelon seed spitting contests. My father’s include adjusting the sails
every thirty seconds to get as much speed out of his boat as possible. We were
new to this. Goodness only knows what we looked like from the shore, but the
cockpit of ‘Waterbaby’ was, that day, a madhouse. Every sail adjustment was an
argument, every tack bounced us around like we were on a trampoline. Finally,
after a particularly arduous tack, Duchess gazed apologetically at each of us
and vomited all over the main sheet.
True to form, my father,
who’d been watching the wind indicator at the top of the mast, chose that
moment to shout, “Let out the main sheet!”
Duchess retched again.
“No bloody way!” my
mother exclaimed. “You want to let it out, let it out yourself!”
It’s a miracle that we went
sailing again, and again, and that we did eventually become the pros my father
had hoped for. I even went on to sail a tall ship, work at a marina, and, much
later, I bought a sailboat of my own. But that day, as Mom dug into the port
locker for a bucket with which to wash the dog’s puke from the deck, and my
brother and I exclaimed ‘ewwww!’ from the safety of the turtle, my father
surely wondered if it wasn’t too late to have us all walk the plank.
