It was a warm spring day and there was a gentle breeze down by the river. I navigated through the parking lot of the sailing club, pausing to look at some of the small sailboats stored in the yard. Then down the long ramp to the floating boat house, I followed the signs to my first sailing class.
The clubhouse rocked gently on the water and took some getting used to. It rocked a little more whenever a motor boat passed by too close and too fast, as they often did. There wasn’t a marina or breakwater to shelter the dock and the Willamette River wasn’t very wide. There were coiled ropes hanging from the walls, photographs of racing boats and a pile of life jackets in the corner. I would later understand there was a difference between life jackets and PFD’s (personal flotation devices). What the club had were PFD’s, as life jackets were much more serious pieces of equipment.
Students trickled in and settled down as it got closer to start time. The instructor spent the first few hours explaining the basics of sailing. She covered the different parts of the boat; the bow, stern, rudder, centerboard, which side was port and which was starboard.
“You can remember there are four letters in port and four letters in left,” she said. Not quite a mnemonic device, but it gets the job done. She explained that starboard, which is the right side of the boat if you’re facing the bow, was a truncated version of the term steer-board, which was the side of the boat the helmsman steered. Over time, and once rudders were moved to the center of boats, the right side became known as starboard. Everything that exists long enough has its own lexicon that seems frustrating to learn for beginners.
There was also the mast, boom, gooseneck, boomvang and the spreaders. Then there was the rigging. There are running rigging and standing rigging. Standing rigging is everything that keeps the mast and boom up, metal wires attached to the hull. Running rigging encompasses everything that controls the sails, which are mostly different colored ropes for different jobs. There was a lot to take in and we were only being shown diagrams at first, but it would all come together in the end.
She set up chairs in the middle of the room and we all had the opportunity to mime using a tiller extension - a bar attached to the tiller that steers the boat - and the mainsheet, which is the line that controls the mainsail. Sitting in one chair we would hold a tiller extension in one hand and the mainsheet in the other. These were, in turn, held by students to simulate resistance and keep them in place. When the student was ready they would give the command to tack the boat, then push the tiller extension away from them, stand up from the chair while bending over to avoid being hit by the boom and move to another chair opposite the first, all while swapping which hand held what behind their back in, hopefully, one fluid motion. As I watched other students attempt it, it was obvious the club’s main student population were children. When it was my turn, however, I realized it was trickier than it seemed. The one thing this exercise was not able to simulate was that you would have to do this on a boat in the water while in motion. Tacking is turning the boat anywhere from ninety to one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, so getting some experience before actually being on the boat was very helpful.
There were moments during the class where we could chat among ourselves, at least the people who were more sociable could. I mostly kept to myself, as I tended to do. We were instructed to mingle and get to know someone in the class at one point. I’ve always hated this part of any class and I thought it would go away after high school. However, in college and any outside learning environment instructors feel the need to make people interact with others. There must be a trait in everyone who teaches that enjoys inflicting social pressure on everyone else. Or, perhaps, they are all just social people and think everyone wants to get to know everyone they come, even remotely, in contact with. Either way, it’s something I’ve never been able to avoid. I suppose this bolsters the sailing community. Single people can meet others who would like to go sailing with a crew. If you are a beginner it’s unlikely you’ll have someone to go sailing with.
“What got you interested in sailing?” Brenda asked. She was thin, maybe forty years old. Her husband, Clark, was the same. He quickly started a conversation with others in the class while his wife and I chatted.
“I’ve been interested for awhile,” I said vaguely. “I figured I’d start out on small boats,” I said. “It’s cheaper, for one. Both the boats and the lessons, and I think if I start on bigger boats with cabins and engines I probably won’t ever want to go back to smaller boats.”
This reasoning has bore itself out so far. Since moving on to larger boats over a year ago, I don’t have much of an appetite for sailing small boats, or dinghies. I’m sure I’d still enjoy it, but the type of sailing I love you can’t really do on a small, open boat. There is also the issue of simplicity. Dinghies are smaller and less complicated than larger sailboats. There are more systems onboard larger boats; navigation, electricity, radio, head, anchoring, water and fuel storage, engines. Starting with a simple boat forces you to focus on the basic aspects of sailing. Harnessing the wind to glide across the water and changing direction without capsizing. This is the essence of sailing and I think it’s easier to learn the basics when you’re not distracted by all of the other cool stuff to do on a sailboat.
“What about you? What sparked your interest in sailing?” I asked.
“Well, we want to sail around the world.”
“That sounds great. That’s a really fun dream to strive for.”
“We’re setting out in a little over a month,” she said as if that were a perfectly rational thing to say. “We’ve already sold our house and bought a forty-foot boat. Our kids finish school soon and then we’ll set off to sail around the world and continue their education onboard.”
I stared at her, blank faced. I didn’t want to be rude so I nodded and looked away. “And this is your first sailing class?”
“Yes. We’ve never been on a boat until we bought ours.”
There were a lot of things I could have said. There were a lot of things going through my mind. The first was, simply, you’re going to die at sea. You have no experience on a boat large enough to sail you and your family across several oceans and the only preparation you’re taking is a beginners sailing class on fourteen-foot dinghies? There are so many systems on cruising sailboats to learn, so many things that she and her husband were going to have to figure out how to do on their own while on the water that I don’t see it ending well at all. These are the types of people who have children, I thought. My god, do they think anything through?
During the class, there was only one sailboat that capsized completely. They had to use the motorboat, attach lines to the mast and have people in the water help flip the boat back the right way. The two men on that boat were Clark and a man I privately called Captain Willard.
I named Captain Willard after the actor Fred Willard. He didn’t look much like him, but he resembled the clueless morons Fred Willard often portrayed in movies like Best in Show and Anchorman. Captain Willard was a tall, thin man with a George Hamilton tan. He wore a captain’s hat to a beginners level dinghy sailing class.
“I’ve owned four boats,” Captain Willard told the people he was talking to loud enough for the whole room to hear. I watched him try to impress the ladies with his smarmy smile. I wasn’t sure if they were buying it or not, but he seemed to think they were. Clark made his way over to Captain Willard multiple times during the class. What kind of a person brings a captain’s hat to a beginner level class, I wondered. If he were self deprecating and didn’t take himself seriously, one could conclude he was being a clown. I could understand that. I could even get behind that. Portland is full of eccentric weirdos, why not at a sailing club?. He didn’t seem like he was joking, though. He was serious and his hat was serious as well, as far as I could tell.
We moved out to the dock to get our first interaction with a boat itself. The first day there was no sailing, it was all instruction. We would end the day with an examination of the boats we would start sailing the following day. The instructor stood between the boat, which had been tied off to the dock, and us. She pointed out the various parts of the boat and explained, again, how the mainsheet controlled the sail and the tiller controlled the rudder. We all listened, excited to get out on the water and disappointed that we would have to wait a day to do so.
Captain Willard, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to touch the boat. Surely a man who has owned four boats and a captain’s hat knew his way around a sailing vessel. While the instructor talked, Captain Willard put his foot on the bow of the small boat, and instantly regretted it. The lightweight craft tipped as soon as he stepped on to it, sending his foot straight down into the water. His body lost its balance and followed his foot downwards where his face met the starboard side of the deck as it rocked back into its natural position. The gasps were short lived and quickly gave way to snickering. I turned away to laugh quietly, as did others. The instructor helped him up and made sure he wasn’t too hurt. Just his ego.
“That’s why we don’t stand on the deck of these small boats,” she said. She was too professional to laugh but I’m sure she wanted to. “These boats are very tippy, as you’ll find out tomorrow.”
The following day we learned a few basic knots that everyone learns in the beginning. The bowline and the figure eight. The bowline knot is useful for rigging. Control lines for sails are almost always a bowline and the figure eight is a stopper knot to prevent a line from slipping away out of reach. Before sailing we were given a swimming test. To ensure we could keep ourselves up with a PFD and swim back to the dock if needed, we all went into the water one at a time and swam from one end of the dock to the other.
As Captain Willard could attest, getting into a dingy for the first time takes some coordination. They are likely to flip if you stand on the side so you have to step one foot into the cockpit and quickly follow it with the second. A second person holding the boat is helpful, or you can use a childs method of sitting on the dock and easing into the boat on your butt. We all looked silly as we made it into the boats, but we all made it.
We spent the day sailing in short, zigzag patterns in front of the clubhouse. There were two small motor boats with instructors to keep an eye on us and traffic. When a larger vessel came through they would shepherd us to one side while it passed. All of us went into the water at some point, which is completely normal for small sailing dinghies. They are designed to right themselves quickly and easily as spilling into the water is part of the sport.
The following weekend we sailed further away, tacking back and forth down the river to the Ross Island Bridge before turning around and lazily sailing downwind back to the clubhouse. The exhilaration of the wind whipping past as you coast across the water was magnificent. The lightweight nature of the boat means the occupants have to balance the boat as it heels over when sailing across the wind. With our feet in a set straps, the two person crews would practically stand with half of our bodies outside of the boat, leaning back towards the water preventing the boat from tipping over. You have the feeling you are speeding through the water, the wind shooting through your hair, but you’re really only going the equivalent of between five and ten miles an hour on land. Occasionally you would fail and get dumped into the water, but that was part of the fun.
Docking the boats under sail was quite fun too, if a little intimidating. The maneuver is to sail towards the dock at an angle. Then, at the last second you drop your mainsail and push the tiller hard across the boat, turning the bow away from the dock and gliding within reach of a pylon or a cleat to hold the boat steady. Since those boats were so light, one person, even a child, could hold the boat steady against the dock. We practiced a few times before finishing for the day and it was the last bit of sailing we did for the class after racing on the last day.
A few years later, after barely using my new found sailing skills, I went back to take a refresher class. The class consisted of only myself and one other student. The instructor, a kid of about twenty, just let us sail around while he and another instructor puttered around in a motorboat. They were always close by if we needed anything, but they were very hands off.
We sailed up and down the river with no problems, having retained the knowledge we’d learned from the earlier class. It turned out I wasted my money on the refresher class, but I didn’t know until I got back out there. The wind had picked up and we were sailing along, hiked out as far as we could be, when I realized we were going to crash. I could tell by the resistance the boat had to flattening we would capsize. It’s the same feeling you get on a roller coaster when it feels like you’re turning too far before snapping back to a normal position. Only the boat wasn’t on tracks that would keep us upright.
“I think we’re going to go over,” the other student shouted.
“Yep,” I answered.
Suddenly, the boat stopped moving. The mast had hit the water and the boat lay on it’s side. I heard the splash as the other student went into the river and I found myself still, technically, in the boat. I was hiked out so far I was standing upright. I didn’t really want to go into the water, so I didn’t. As he swam to the mast to lift it out of the water, as we were taught, I simply stepped over the side of the boat and put my feet on the centerboard.
“Ready?” I called out. He replied and I stood on the centerboard as he helped to lift the mast out of the water and the boat righted itself. I managed to get one leg into the boat before it was upright and only got my foot wet as he swam back to the boat and I hauled him in.
“How’d you get to the centerboard so fast?” he asked. “Why aren’t you wet?” he asked before I had a chance to answer.
“I stayed in the boat,” I said. “I just stood there and got on the centerboard.”
The instructors arrived on the motorboat with huge smiles on their faces. “I’ve never seen a student do a walkover before,” one of them said to me. “Great job man!”
We continued sailing until our time was up and headed back to the dock. We parked the boat in the slip, removed the sails, folded and bagged them, coiled the lines and put everything away. In a rare moment for me, I was proud of myself. I had learned something and enjoyed doing it. I would soon disappoint myself by not doing much sailing for several more years before picking it up again. I’ve moved onto bigger boats now, and even bigger boats are on my horizon. Bigger bodies of water too. The rivers are nice, both the Willamette and Columbia, but they are limited by which directions you can go. I’ve been looking into buying a sailboat that I can start cruising to destinations more than a day’s sail away, and I’m looking forward to getting there.