A novice sailor finds it easy to slip out of time while learning a new world.
Issue 130: Jan/Feb 2020
It all started as a writing project. Assigned an article on sailors who singlehandedly sailed across oceans, I spent hours reading about their trials and triumphs. I imagined being alone, surrounded by water and sky, and wondered what the silence would be like. Immersed in the adventures of Joshua Slocum, I was an easy mark for my husband when he proposed we buy a sailboat.
“But you don’t know how to sail,” I reminded him. He’d once been a passenger on a sailboat on Grand Lake in Oklahoma; I’d never even stood next to one.
“I could read books on it. Besides, we’d buy it in partnership with Ralph, and he knows how to sail. I’ve got it all worked out.”
And, I agreed. I figured it was a male thing—man against nature, taming the wind, battling the elements. Jim could take our three sons out, leaving me at home with a good book.
Jim wrote the check for half the 25-foot Catalina, and he and the boys spent the next few Saturdays scrubbing the boat and learning to sail. It was still spring with a nip in the air, but when the thermometer hit 70, I was coaxed out to the lake. Armed with sub sandwiches and a cooler of drinks, I climbed on board our “ship” for the first time.
Soon we were motoring out of the cove, and Jim raised the mainsail. “Pull on that sheet,” he called to me. I grabbed an edge of the sail, since it was the closest thing to a sheet I could see.
“No, no,” he said. “That’s the leech. Pull that line.”
“This rope?”
We trimmed the sail, killed the motor, and the boys raised the jib. I relaxed and opened a soda.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Can’t tell until we get there, it all depends on how much wind we get.” We were sailing toward one side of the large lake.
“Ready about!” Jim shouted to the two older boys. Then to me, “We have to tack, or change directions,” he explained. “It’s dangerous to sail with the wind directly behind us, so we sail just off the wind, like this.”
The boys jumped into action, one on each side of the boat, lines in their hands, feet positioned, heads up.
“Coming about,” Jim called. He pushed the tiller, and one of my boys untied a line from a winch on the starboard side. When the wind caught the sail, my son on the port side hauled the line until the jib was on the opposite side of the boat.
We zigzagged this way across the lake. I watched my family in action, I contemplated the shoreline, enjoying the breeze blowing through my hair as water lapped the hull and seagulls cried overhead.
“Hey, there’s another sailboat. Tighten that sheet!” Jim yelled to the crew. “Bring in that jib!”
The boys scurried around pulling this, adjusting that, and the boat sliced through the water. “Cleat that line,” Jim said to me, pointing. Suddenly, I found myself way into the game, a part of the crew. I was elated when we “won” our little race.
The moments ticked by, easy and peaceful, until Jim called, “Ready about,” and our crew swung into action again. “We need to head home.”
“Already?” I asked. It seemed as if we’d just gotten underway. I wasn’t prepared for this disappointment. I realized then the peace I felt while out on the water, a tranquility that washed over me when I least expected it. I hadn’t thought of writing deadlines, laundry, or what was for supper. I was someplace else, and time was suspended while we sailed across the lake.
“Wrinkle in time,” Jim said, evidently reading my mind.
“What?”
“We need a name for the boat, and Ralph’s wife suggested Wrinkle in Time, but he said to talk it over with you.”
“That’s perfect.”
It had only been one day on Wrinkle in Time, but I knew just then that sailing wasn’t a male thing shared only by Jim, our boys, and Joshua Slocum. I was a sailor too.
Veda Boyd Jones has been a freelance writer for 30 years and her publishing credits include hundreds of articles and 47 books, some fiction, some nonfiction, some for children and some for adults. She’s currently working on a mainstream novel set in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
