Sailing Yesterday and Today

An experience of limited general interest for you all.

When I was about twelve or so, I learned how to sail on Lake Massapoag, in eastern (Easton) Massachusetts. I was skinnier then than I am now, weighing about negative four pounds, and probably a couple few feet shorter. We sailed on tippy high-performance race boats called Zumas that would go fast if you were very nice to them, polished their hulls and sacrificed a fatted lamb to them on the vernal equinox, but the rest of the time would dump you in the water at their cruel whim. They were fickle hellcats.

So a storm blew in one day, and little pre-adolescent Eli found himself unequal to the challenge. I didn't quite have the weight to counterbalance these boats against the force of the wind, and so wasn't able to point the boat far enough into the wind to get back to the dock. Of course the boat capsized, and although little Eli survived, it was probably more due to the fatted lamb than any authority I had over circumstance.

So, ten years pass. Now I'm on lake Erie for a week or two, and a friend just recently came out from Cleveland to visit. I decided to take her sailing. Of course, the gods of irony throw a lil lovin' my way, and our little Sunfish is ricocheting off three foot waves, alternately being hurled around and swamped by the crashing waves. We're having a great time though, hollering over the big ones and bracing against the ones that momentarily submerge our little ship.

But then I attempt a jibe without sending us to the other side of the boat in time, and we go over. The boat keeps rolling, and before we've regained our bearings in the water, it's upside down, nothing more than a fiberglass dome half-submerged in waves. Little Eli had faced this, and although I don't remember what the hell I did then, I still think it was by the grace of the gods that I survived. Pah, I've since discovered the temple of Chuck Norris. I swam out to recover the drifting daggerboard, and came back with it to where my friend was clinging to the hull. I reached out with my free arm clear over the hull, grabbed the far side, and hauled myself up onto it.

Imagine this: a bedraggled me standing on an overturned hull in the midst of crashing waves, clutching a wooden plank. I raise the plank high above my head, lightning strikes, and I stab it down backwards through the slot in the hull. I use it to pry the boat back upright, then from the water, hurl the entire boat back to the shore, 300 yards away. then I drink the lake and pee it off the planet, and saunter across the dry lake bed to the beach, carrying my friend.

well, ok, it didn't go that well. but I did have a bit more of a say in my own survival, and it felt real good. I'm a big boy now! I'm going to save a ton of money on fatted lambs. The end.