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By Gaye Lounsbury
The first time I see the boat enter the water, see her come alive, dipping, swaying in response to her liquid medium, I fall hopelessly in love.It's a complete surprise. After all, I grew up on the prairies, lived much of my adult life in the desert hills of the interior. How could I suspect that every cell in my body was secretly straining toward the siren call of the sea?
I step onto the deck after we cast off, immediately find my sea legs. I don't know, of course, that they're "sea legs", because that first summer, we take her out only on the interior lakes, getting to know her and each other before we venture onto big water. You put the sails up, the main and the genoa, shut off the motor, and I experience for the first time the magic of the moment: silence falls, the boat leaps forward, powered only by the wind that fills her towering white sails. God, how I love it!
So much for the romance - which I'm very good at. What I am much less good at, it turns out, are the practical things. The ropes, for example. To begin with, I find they all have names; I'm suddenly and totally immersed in a foreign language. Sheets are no longer things you put on beds beneath blankets - they're ropes attached to sails. So are halyards, and I'm feeling very foggy about which are which. Then there are lifelines, haul-down ropes, bow lines, stern lines, anchor lines and the boom vang, all ropes of one kind or another. I've never seen so much of this kind of footage before. The closest I've come are the balls of yarn I used to knit up into sweaters in my youth, and let me assure you, the similarity is not great.
This rope thing might be manageable except for one other little thing: where there be ropes, there also be knots. No problem, I think, did I not (no pun intended) leap to the head of the macramé class in the community hall back in Stony Plain, Alberta those many years ago? Quickly I master the figure eight. Now I am qualified to tie this knot in the ends of the- the- those ropes that come into the cockpit from somewhere up there, and ready to move onto the next knotty challenge - the bowline. Okay, the rabbit goes into the hole, the fox goes around the tree for a pee, the rabbit, er, the fox. The whole uncooperative mess ends up lying flacidly in my hands, not even close to a bowline. The idea of this knot, you explain, is to form a loop that neither slips nor jams, so you want this end to blah blah buh blah blah, see, isn't that easy? I pout. No, darn it, it isn't that easy. I throw the dumb rabbit and stupid fox overboard, descend to the galley via the companionway (translation: go through the doorway to the little kitchen area inside the boat), start chopping veggies for a chowder. Now that's what I call easy.
To my credit, I do not give up on the bowline. I see a book in one of the marine stores, a kind of how-to-tie-knots-for-knot-retards volume. It comes with its own little color-coded mini-ropes, gives step-by-step directions, minus foxes and rabbits. One week when you are away, I practice, secretly, until I can tie the elusive bowline backwards, forwards, upside down. Now am I a real sailor, or what??
I learn there is more - much more - to it. You're sitting there in the cockpit, tiller in one hand, gazing out over the lake. The water reflects back the sun in the silver shimmer of a thousand restless ripples. Suddenly you straighten and point. "Look," you say, "there's a breeze picking up over there." I am awed into absolute stillness, glance at you out of the corner of my eye. Who is this man, I think, that he can see the wind? I decide to let you become my lover, hoping you'll teach me how to see it too.
And you do. I see it now, coming across the water, not literally, of course, but as you saw it that day, in the different color, shape and size of the waves on the surface. And I'm not worrying anymore about whether or not I'm a real sailor. I'm too busy watching the wind. |
