The most memorable physical education class
in college had nothing to do with the gym.
Issue 143: March/April 2022
“I’m sorry!” I shouted as a massive wave hurled itself across the bow, soaking my crewmates. Again.
Nervous that I was doing something wrong—and downright terrified of those waves—I eased the tiller to fall off the wind.
“No!” the instructor, Brian, stopped me. “Don’t apologize for good sailing.”
Forrest Hunter and Walter Bain learn the rules of navigation under the careful watch of their instructor, Whitney.
This was perhaps the best sailing advice—or advice in general—I’d ever received. I tightened my grip on the tiller, but I wasn’t nervous anymore. Keeping my eyes on the mainsail, making sure it wasn’t luffing, I steered us close-hauled. The boat was still leaning like it was about to capsize, and the waves were still horrifyingly tall. But it felt like we were flying.
This was my first time sailing, my first time cooking and sleeping on a boat, and my first time peeing in a bucket. And it was exhilarating.
In the spring of 2019, I signed up for what sounded like Penn State University’s most interesting physical education course: sailing. In March, 15 other college seniors and I traveled to Florida, to Hurricane Island Outward Bound School’s base on the island of Big Pine Key. We would spend the next week learning to sail and living on two 32-foot sailboats incongruously named Llama and Boat Fifteen.
When you sign up for a college class, you usually know what to expect. There’s typically a syllabus. There was no syllabus for what we would learn out at sea, in the backcountry of the Florida Keys. Nothing could have prepared us for the lack of privacy, the practice and finesse sailing as a team required, or the backbreaking work of rowing for miles upon miles under the hot sun when wind inevitably failed us.
We slept on deck, on top of oars that we rolled into a platform over the thwarts. When the skies were clear, we sprawled in our sleeping bags under the stars. When it stormed, we squished together under the tarp like a row of piglets.
The crew goes over the day’s sailing plan in the morning on Boat Fifteen.
By day, our two instructors, Brian and Whitney, taught us the essentials: knots, navigation, sailing theory, points of sail, rowing, tacking and jibing, anchoring, and even backcountry cooking. We were not hardened sailors, and we were not easy to teach.
The first lesson we learned came out of necessity. By the first afternoon at sea, everyone was dying to use the bathroom. The only caveat: There is no bathroom aboard a 32-foot pulling sailboat. There was a bucket at the bow, just in front of the main mast, or you could go over the side while the boat was underway. There was no privacy.
The first time I tried to go over the side, to avoid the hideous thing that was the bucket, I couldn’t relax enough to do it. The bow was swinging wildly in the waves—we were sailing out into the Gulf of Mexico, and the water was rough. Up, down. Up, down, I swung. And I couldn’t do it. Of course, it didn’t help that the other boat kept gaining on us, threatening to reveal my struggle to an additional 10 people.
The bathroom situation aside, however, it turned out that we weren’t good sailors.
“You know,” Brian said at one point, “sailing is actually a sport to some people.”
Lying around the deck, soaking up the sunshine, we all thought he was pretty funny.
We did focus seriously most of the time, however. Most of us, never having sailed or received any education about wind-powered transportation, had a hard time grasping the different points of sail and the perfect execution of tacking. We learned by doing—and failing—repeatedly.
The crews of Llama and Boat Fifteen enjoy the sunrise after spending the night camping and swatting bugs on a deserted key.
We readied the tarp at night in case we encountered unexpected bad weather. A few days in, an engineering student named Thomas thought he could handle the setup. He couldn’t quite master the knots though, and when we came to help, he shook us off.
“Whatever,” one of us said, raising our hands in defeat. “You’re the expert.”
We called Thomas “The Boy Scout” after that.
Tensions ran high when we weren’t getting along with each other or with the boat, but things could also be unexpectedly—even hysterically—great when we sailed. We took turns being the day’s captain. When one of the boys, Forrest, was captain, he taught us all the words to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot.
I tried for a rousing chorus of “Baby Shark,” but it was shut down immediately.
One of my favorite parts about exploring the back-country keys and wild maze of mangrove-covered islands was the night sky. Each night, the eight students aboard our boat would take turns on anchor watch, staying up for a little more than an hour at a time before waking the next person. It was the most peaceful experience, sitting at the bow on the still waters, looking up at the Milky Way shining magnificently above.
One night I dragged my hand through the water and came away with little green sparks shooting outward from my fingertips: bioluminescence. I’d only ever read about that in books and wasn’t even sure it was real until that moment. I wanted to dive overboard and swim in the dancing green lights.
Often, while we were sailing or rowing in shallow waters, we would see baby sharks or stingrays.
“Manta ray!” The Boy Scout shouted one morning, and I had to explain that stingrays and manta rays are not the same. I don’t think he liked me much after that.
Every time we saw a baby shark I was quickly silenced before I could start my favorite song. But I didn’t mind.
Walter Bain on the tiller and Meredith on the mizzen sail aboard Llama.
On the day I learned to sail—the first morning I got my hand on the tiller, at least— dolphins swam to us and played in the waves off our bow. Half my crew rushed to the front and sides to watch, abandoning their posts trimming the main and mizzen sheets, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to change our course anytime soon—not with dolphins as our company.
That day when I was captain, I believed I learned more than I’ve ever learned on a single day of my life. I learned
how to judge the wind and sail and how to steer us as close to the wind as possible. I learned how to tack and when to shout to my crew to perfectly execute the maneuver. I learned if I fell off the wind just a hair, my crewmates hauling in the sheets and cleating them would have an easier time getting them taut. I learned how to raise anchor, and what “coming about” meant.
Over the next few days, I would get many more chances to practice sailing at the helm. I improved a lot—possibly more than anyone else on board. I knew at least a few people thought that, when Thomas was acting helmsman one afternoon and we seemed to be wavering between being caught in irons and being too far off the wind to make good headway.
“Can we get Meredith back on the tiller, please?” Forrest asked loudly. That was the best compliment I’d ever received.
One evening, the instructors dropped us off at an uninhabited key.
“Shipwreck!” they shouted, tossing a tent overboard and leaving us with a few meager supplies. We thought it would be fun, camping on a deserted island like in the movies. We were wrong.
The bugs on the island were awful. We couldn’t do anything before coating our skin and hair with at least two layers of DEET. An argument broke out over whether the tents were far enough from the waterline. The boys burned our dinner in the campfire. But it was an experience we wouldn’t forget.
The crew of Llama tries to catch up to Boat Fifteen before the evening anchorage as the sun sets behind them.
A few of the students—now my fast friends—and I wandered through the mangroves and discovered an open, sandy beach on the other side. The water lapped at our toes, made purple and pink by the reflection of dusky clouds. We watched the sun set and herons fly home to roost for the night. We swapped stories and shared secrets around the fire.
In the morning, Walter declared, “It was the worst night of my life.”
In some ways, he was right. In others, it was the best night of our lives.
Most of us were ready to leave the boats—to go home, shower, pee in privacy, sleep in a bed. But I wasn’t. I could have stayed out on that boat, out at sea, for another week. Or month. Or year.
We sailed back to Big Pine Key, practicing our tacking one last time before rowing in. I let my hand fall regretfully from the tiller. Whitney, directing us through the tight canal to the dock, told Walter to steer left.
“What’s left?” he said. “I only know port and starboard!”
When we were back on dry land, the Outward Bound instructors presented us with course certificates. We said goodbye.
“Thanks for secretly knowing how to sail,” Forrest told me. He waved away my protests that I never knew how to sail, and, once again, I was proud of us.
We weren’t sailors. Heck, we weren’t even boaters. We were just eight college kids stuck on a 32-foot boat for a week. But we became a team. We learned how to survive—to thrive—together, and that’s something you can’t replicate on dry land. We went out of our comfort zones. We learned something new. We stood in awe before the sunrise while cormorants squawked on wild mangrove keys.
Brian kept trying to teach us the word “alacrity.” It means “with joyful readiness.” We laughed, but some of his teachings must have sunk in.
When the next adventure arises, I know we’ll approach it with alacrity.
Meredith Rohn first learned how to sail in 2019 as part of a college course set in the backcountry Florida Keys. She has since sailed in places as diverse as Maryland and Thailand, but her love for the water traces back to becoming a SCUBA diver in 2012. She currently lives in inland Pennsylvania, where she’s picked up yet another water sport—whitewater kayaking.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
