On the first day of training for my Basic Keel Boat Sailing Certification, I learned that in sailing, things are never what they seem…
I arrived that day to find that another student had already rigged the boat to get it over with. He had made a dozen crossings from the West Coast to Hawaii, and he was there to get the certification he needed to get insurance on the boat he had just purchased. Next, I met a woman from Paris who needed certification to charter a boat for her family in the U.S. (it’s basically a driver’s license to sail). Both of these “experts” were upset about the amount of time the certificate would take to acquire – it was a five-day course, all day from 8 am to 5 pm.
I was the outlier in the group as I did not know the first thing about sailing. I couldn’t even tie a knot. I am, however, an expert skier, which is where I had spent the preceding three decades. But in this environment, I was literally a fish out of water.
As our sailing instructor approached the boat, he looked a lot like the other ski instructors I had spent the preceding winters with in Tahoe, but that could not have been further from the truth. I jumped off the boat to intercept him and give him a heads-up on the situation, which was that I wanted to learn to sail, and this crew already knew how to sail, but I still needed to learn.
The French woman approached him next, complaining about the time frame and insisting she didn’t need the entire 40 hours of training. Our instructor spoke back to her in rapid-fire French, as he was fluent, having spent part of his childhood in Paris and the balance of it on the Harvard campus where his father was a professor. He was extremely diplomatic with all involved and had even baked an apple pie to share with us at lunch. So, no, he was extremely unlike my ski instructor co-workers on the mountain.
Our certification schedule primarily involved demonstrations on how to retrieve a person who had fallen overboard. We were taught how to tack and turn, and pull a “deadman” or weighted line of about 20-30 pounds, out of the water. This is incredibly challenging to learn and extremely difficult to do alone. But it helps you not only learn to sail, but ensures you can rescue another human being should they fall overboard. It is the most important skill in sailing. The J24 boat is a two-man boat, so this was excellent training for all involved.
As our instructor explained the maneuver, I couldn’t help but think that the French woman had 4 children under the age of 10. She charmingly had two sets of twins, and her husband wasn’t much of a sailor, but she had grown up racing and had been across the English Channel more times than she could count, or at least this is what she said. My other peer looked like the kind of guy who couldn’t be bothered to turn around and would just let you drown.
I am the sort of person who is other-motivated. I would do anything for my friends and family. I would move mountains for my kids, so as I watched the French woman try to get her dead man and fail over and over again, I thought it was like her child drowning. So, I started to think of this weight as a baby, and then when it was my turn, I thought of the weight in the water as my child, or my own baby. Thinking I was pulling my baby out of the water made the difficult maneuver easy for me. I would never let anything happen to my baby! In the end, I was the only one who could do the maneuver consistently, while the other student barely passed, and the French woman did not pass. Needless to say, she was really mad about that, but I was relieved.
Find what motivates you.
Love and blessings to all.
Sydney 