Sailing for married couples | Ammi Midstokke
Some people work on their marriage by spending hundreds of dollars on a sofa across the room from a therapist who knows them well. Charlie and I work on ours by sharing a V-berth the size of a phone booth for a week within earshot of several strangers.
One night, before bed, which was the time we’d assume the position of twin fetuses in order to fit most of our limbs under the blankets, Charlie said, “I love you.”
“Don’t say that!” I hissed at him. “People will think we’re having sex in here!”
Incidentally, that’s what it sounded like any time either of us tried the acrobatics of changing our socks in a space designed for someone getting their legs sawed off by a magician.
The living quarters of a 40-foot vessel filled with five adults are so close, we may all have been copulating without knowing it. Once, I tried to get a plate out of a cabinet while someone was cooking, thereby taking our relationship to intimacy levels previously reserved for high school wrestlers on mats. I think boat kitchens are called galleys because we’re always saying, “Golly, did I just spoon you while reaching for a fork?”
As we were recently bequeathed a sailboat and sailing season will soon be upon us, we thought it might be a good idea to learn how to sail. I’d seen some pictures of people in pink shorts and Sperry loafers looking decidedly relaxed to the backdrop of Bahamian turquoise waters, celebrating sunset and their good fortune with champagne, and booked the version of that I could afford: An off-season course in the San Juan Islands.
Water temperatures in March hover around 47 degrees, but it was only 38 degrees outside, so we didn’t even have to go in the water to get hypothermia. It warmed up to a balmy 44 one day, accompanied by gale-force gusts. We were anchored to the boat mostly by the layers of clothing we wore and the fact that we’d curled into tight balls of frigid rigidity, occasionally checking each other to see if it was actually rigor mortis. Had it been, I would have stolen Charlie’s wool socks.
The part about sailing that no one ever tells you is that you are mostly motor boating, only real slow so it takes just as long as sailing to get anywhere. There are a lot of things people don’t tell you about sailing, including the details of bathroom etiquette, until you find the toilet paper trapped behind a door trapped behind your knees while you’re trapped on a bowl you really hope doesn’t slosh at the next wave.
Of course, we weren’t there only to enjoy the wind in our hair and the spray of saltwater. We were there to pass American Sailing Association exams certifying that we were bona fide sailors. On paper, at least. For months, our kitchen chairs have been tied together with bowlines and trucker’s hitches and square knots, alarming visitors that we were perhaps becoming hobby kidnappers. We had vocabulary flashcards, sailing manuals, practice tests, and all the confidence of the naive.
All of that, including the book learning, evaporated the moment a multiple choice test was put in front of me. Were leeches luffing or luffs leeching? My left-right – which is actually my right-left – dyslexia transferred to starboard and port, then applied also to latitude and longitude. My map skills were not usable on charts, which are supposedly maps of water, but really just polka-dotted paper that requires a 136-page book titled US Chart No. 1 to decipher. At an average speed of six knots in a zigzag, you may decode the symbol in question by the time you reach it, and it may even be something almost pertinent, like a wreck one league below you, lying on the ocean floor.
Somewhere between Stuart and Sucia, we saw a pod of Orcas: four fins, one tinier than the others, moving across the distant horizon. Our sailing instructor cried. The company owner hushed. “I’ve never seen them so close up,” she said.
If I could have read the nautical chart, I would have measured them to be a good mile away. I wondered if we could get a closer look by holding up a hoop for them to jump through, but apparently that’s called exploitation now and only dog shows have an exception.
We saw an eagle carrying a snake, and other birds trailing behind as silent thieves. We saw sea lions and seals and ungulates roaming uninhabited islands. We saw a coyote trotting along a stone beach and the blows of other whales less willing to identify themselves. We tried to sink our dinghy at least once, hiked across an island to look at a lighthouse, and learned to stand wide-legged at all times.
We passed our tests and beamed at ceremoniously receiving our signed logbooks, like we were members of some new club, having survived the hazing of sailing in the Pacific Northwest in March. And we even learned a little sailing.
Maybe we’ll try it again someday so I get a chance to wear my loafers.
Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com