POSTCARD FROM CAMBRIDGE: Learning To Sail

Last summer, as I walked through the Yard each morning on my way to work, I promised myself that I’d spend the next summer abroad. I had visions of casually sipping cappuccino under the shadow of Notre Dame or strolling along the Thames. Instead, each day I walk from my Dewolfe Street apartment to Widener Library.

My big adventure this summer has been learning to sail, right here in Boston. While biking along the Charles last year, I discovered Community Boating Inc. (CBI) just beyond the Hatch Shell, where for an affordable price they will make you into a sailor.

I signed up for sailing the first week of the summer. I expected to be shepherded through the learning process, taking baby steps until I would finally be ready to take a boat out alone. Little did I know that CBI preferred trial by fire. All I had to do in order to take a boat out alone was attend two onshore classes—one that taught me the theory behind sailing, and the other that taught me to put the sail up before taking off. Once I demonstrated that I could spit out what they told me in the classes, I was given my “solo” ranking and told I could take a boat out on calm days.

My only prior experience with a sail had been a disastrous attempt to windsurf in the ninth grade. I had managed to get out into the middle of the lake, but couldn’t figure out how to get back to the shore. After five minutes of trying to swim back while pulling the windsurf behind me, a motor boat finally took pity on me and dragged me and my board back to the beach. Given that the sailboat was about at least three times as big as the windsurf, I decided to take advantage of what CBI called “informal instruction” rather than risking the indignity of having to be towed back to the dock.

Informal instruction is a system where members who actually know how to sail take beginners out onto the water. Usually, an instructor will let the beginners do most of the sailing. While it’s supposed to be a safe way to be introduced to the water, I’ve never felt more at risk than while being instructed.

The first time was uneventful. I was too scared to drive the boat for more than five minutes, but I tried to glean wisdom by listening. The second person to take me sailing was a concert pianist in his mid-30s. After praising my nascent sailing ability, he asked to exchange emails, so he could continue to give me lessons. I hesitantly agreed, promising myself that I would “lose” his email address as soon as I left the boathouse. Unfortunately, he began to email me. At first it was just to see when I would be sailing, but later he wanted to know what I was doing for July 4th, and then finally he asked me to the movies. The final two requests I ignored, and finally excused myself from sailing with him by claiming that I was too busy. I spent the next two weeks trying to avoid him, but of course running into him each and every time I went sailing.

If I thought that being pursued by a random 30-year-old man was slightly off-putting, my most recent experience with instruction made me fear for my life. I showed up to CBI one day last week and put my name in for instruction. I took a boat out with a man in his 40s who’d been sailing for about five years, in what seemed to me to be gale-force winds. For some reason, he had purposefully left his glasses behind, forcing me to sail the entire time. The wind was incredibly strong, so the boat heeled sideways a lot, and every time I jibed—turned the back of the boat into the wind—I worried that as the sail swung across the boat it would take me with it. Lucky for me, my instructor believed that practice made perfect, so we jibed at every possible opportunity. Then my worst nightmare came true, and we crashed into a boat twice the size of ours that had suddenly appeared in our path.

We survived unscathed. Soon, however, it was no longer the sailing, but the man instructing me, that freaked me out. He had continually been dropping strange hints about the disarray in his life. For instance, he kept dropping cryptic remarks revealing that he was in a precarious position at work. Just after we crashed, we were discussing the carelessness of the other boat—clearly it was their fault, not ours. All of a sudden he turns to me and says, “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, since you’re stuck in the middle of the river with me, but sometimes I fear for my mental health. I can’t seem to control my anger.”

I made it to the shore alive, but the next time I went sailing, I took the test required to sail the boat alone in any weather. My fear of sailing has been conquered by the realization that I would rather capsize alone in the middle of the river than risk another hour alone with a psychopath.

Anyone want to come sailing?

Laura K. Cobb ’02, a Women’s Studies concentrator in Winthrop House, is a senior photography editor of The Crimson.