Ammi Midstokke: Anyone can learn how to sail

The first sign that I’m likely to fail miserably at something is if people tell me, “Oh anyone can learn how to do that!”

This is a lie told by people who are entertained when watching others flounder about in circles while attempting to nearly flip a nearly unflippable boat. Luckily, they were not my only audience when I was given an opportunity to dominate the marina stage.

There were the families on the beach, who had nothing better to do than watch my singular sail dinghy tack and jibe in an irregular pattern reminiscent of a trapped cat. Then there were the paddleboarders quietly trying to sign “watch out” to each other. And the sea plane preparing to take off. And my instructor, who said helpful things like, “Do you know why that happened?”

Things you learn when sailing a dinghy: Sea planes make wind. Paddleboarders are slow. Sailing instructors are slow to panic.

As far as I can tell, sailing is basically the sport of waiting, waiting, waiting, and then rushing like a lunatic to do 18 things at the same time before you run aground or sink. The only thing worse than those is the public humiliation of being “caught in the irons” because you turned too slowly and lost your wind and now you’re just bobbing about with luffing sails.

Sailing is also the sport of new vocabulary. Front, back, left, right: Those are all landlubber terms and not to be used on a sailboat where up and down refer to wind directions, not actual directions. But port and starboard are not interchangeable with leeward and windward, which are interchangeable with up and down. Of course, you could just say “turn left” or “turn right,” but then everyone would know exactly what you meant and where would the fun be in that?

Just in case I actually start adapting to this new terminology, the boat has a tiller which you have to move one way in order to go the other way. Technology has brought us far enough that AI robots perform neurological surgery, but we can’t make a boat go where we point it?

I don’t think I’m dyslexic, but I didn’t learn left from right until the age of 45, after a lengthy argument with my plumber about where the sink ought to have been installed. Thus, the go-right-to-go-left-which-is-up method has me more than a little confused, or “all at sea.”

I may have been a little unwarranted in my optimism about genetic propensity toward sailing. It appears my Viking ancestors just raised a knit woolen sail when the wind was at their back and rowed the rest of the way. Those are two things I’m far better at than actual sailing. I’m also adept at plundering, as demonstrated in my adolescent neighborhood crime streak, which sounds more fun than learning how to sail. Perhaps some of us were born to be land pirates.

After crying my way home one fine sailing evening (whether my adrenals just needed a shake out or I had some high school PTSD to work through), I did the next best thing to sailing. I chartered a boat with a captain.

It was then I realized most people who say, “Anyone can learn to sail,” are the people on the bow (that’s the front of the boat) with a cocktail in their hand while someone else does the actual sailing. They are right – even I can learn to do that.

On a warm summer evening, my husband and I packed a picnic dinner and boarded a 29-foot vessel operated by a man who called himself Captain Bruce. He didn’t have an eye patch or wooden leg, but he seemed legit. We floated here and there and stared out at the oversized houses I frequently and publicly complain about.

Eventually, I dug up the courage to say I was trying to learn to sail, but couldn’t remember what a shroud or line or sheet or halyard was most of the time.

Or the calculation for a genoa versus a jib. Or even really what makes a boat move.

Then he gave me the most effective, succinct explanation of sailing I’ve heard yet and said, “I don’t use the sailing vocabulary much. It tends to confuse people.”

I decided I liked him. By the end of the evening, I even liked sailing again.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com