Smooth Sailing

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.