A true story…
I’ve loved sailing since I was a kid— and if you asked me how that started, I’d be tempted to point to my first lesson. But that’s not really accurate. It happened on the second day, about a hundred yards from the dock.
I was ten, more or less – give or take a year, the way most things from that age blur at the edges. As a family, we spent a couple of weeks every summer down at the Jersey Shore, and one year I announced I wanted to learn to sail. There was a marina up the road, a short distance from where we were staying, and they offered lessons. My mom booked me an hour.
I remember the walk from the marina office down to the dock, the life vest cinched too tight the way they always are on kids, and the boat waiting in the water – a Sunfish, one of those little single-sail boats, fourteen feet bow to stern. Red and white sail. Maybe. Varnished wood. Sun-bleached.
The instructor, a college student with a summer job at the shore, confirmed I knew how to swim and told me to climb aboard. I did. Kept my balance and didn’t fall into the water, which felt like a huge accomplishment for this city kid. Then she hopped in behind me, shoved us off the dock, and as we caught the wind in the sail, we were underway.
She rattled off the vocabulary of the boat: the tiller connected to the rudder that steered it, the mainsheet that controlled the sail, the daggerboard that kept us from sliding sideways and had to come up in shallow water. She demonstrated tacking, reaching, and running. How to come about. How not to jibe – she was very clear about that one.
About half an hour in, when we were in the open water of Barnegat Bay, we switched positions, and she let me take over. I sailed the boat myself while she sat next to me, ready to grab the helm if need be.
As we returned to the harbor, we swapped roles, and she steered us back to the dock. I climbed off the boat, and I with a big smile told my waiting mother that I wanted to go again.
The next day I met the same instructor at the same dock. Same life vest, again too tight. She asked if I was ready to sail. I said yes.
I climbed aboard the same Sunfish. Then, with a have-fun kind of smile, she pushed the boat away from the dock – with just me in it.
I want to be clear that this wasn’t totally reckless of her. She had watched me sail for half an hour the day before without her needing to intervene. But there’s a difference between sailing with someone experienced in the cockpit and sailing alone, and I felt that difference the moment the dock started getting smaller.
I did fine heading out towards the bay. I remembered the tiller, the mainsheet, the daggerboard. I remembered to figure out where the wind was coming from, how to steer so as not to jibe. I got about a hundred yards out, to where the channel narrowed around a small island, with boats coming the other way on both sides, and I turned a bit too hard without letting out the sheet. The wind caught the sail full force, and the boat went over. I tumbled out into the water.
While bobbing next to the overturned sailboat, some part of my brain recalled a sentence I’d half-listened to the day before: if you capsize, release the sheet from the cleat, get up onto the daggerboard, grab the lip of the cockpit, and lean back.
So I did. I got myself up onto that board sticking out of the water, found a handhold on the gunwale and pulled with all the weight I had, which at the time was maybe 75 lbs, but it was enough; being soaking wet might have added a pound or two! I managed to pry the boat upright. I then scrambled back aboard.
The instructor, seeing me flip, was already coming to get me via the marina’s launch. She shouted across the water that she hadn’t thought I’d right the boat solo – didn’t think I was heavy enough. She asked if I wanted to keep sailing.
Suppressing a shiver, I shouted: “Absolutely!”
And I sailed the rest of the hour. By myself. Out in the bay – learning to read the wind.
