This little essay was first posted eight years ago, in August 2001, before the days of the Orlop when I was at dayers.net. Here I am once again re-living my 15 minutes of fame as a blue water sailor in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Santa Barbara.

Something strange happens when a flatlander starts reading sea novels. This product of the Kansas prairies started reading the Aubrey/Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brian several years ago and found himself captivated by the concept of wooden ships navigating the seas, powered only by wind against sail. Reading aside, what do I know about sailing? Short answer, zip. Long answer, still zip. A power boat with an engine and propellor I can understand and make go from here to there. Operating a sail boat is a complete mystery to me, Captain Jack Aubrey notwithstanding.

I am here to tell you that, thanks to the unlimited patience of brother-in-law John, some of the mystery has been dispelled. On the momentous day of August 26th of the year 2001, from Santa Barbara Harbor, John took five lubbers out for a sail in his J105 35 ft. racing sailboat. Perhaps thinking that I might have figured out how sailboats work from my reading, John put me at the helm and started raising sails and pulling on ropes and stuff. His only instruction to me was “please don’t do anything drastic.” Fat chance: I was frozen to the wheel.

As the sails were set and the boat started leaning away from the wind, we started moving through the water faster and faster. The deck seemed to prefer an angle to a sensible horizontal. I just hung on and didn’t do anything drastic. Finally I figured out by means of some some cautious experimentation that steering away from the wind courted disaster while steering closer to the wind slowed us down from a gallop to a canter.

We made our way upwind by tacking a time or two to the buoy opposite John’s cliff-side home where our audience was lined up and waving. I thought briefly about waving back, but my fingers had molded themselves to the wheel and I thought it probably best if I didn’t let go.

What happened next seemed to have the makings of a quick salt water bath. John thought it would be a fun thing to set the spinnaker for a downwind run. So he scrambled all over the boat with minimal help from the crew until the huge spinnaker billowed out and started pulling us along. Fortunately once the spinnaker is set there isn’t an awful lot to do, and everyone relaxed and enjoyed the sail. Even John relaxed, which amazed me no end. What a guy! All I had to do was to keep us pointed at an oil rig on the horizon.

After our race with the wind we went back to mainsail and jib to watch the sun sink into the ocean before we headed back to the harbor.

So what did I learn from all this? Well, I gained a lot of respect for John’s confidence in his boat and for his sailing ability. Not bad for another product of the prairies. I think that I also might be able to learn to sail, given enough time and especially if I had a patient tutor like John. Sailing is not quite so much a mystery to me now.