Last year we bought a sailboat. A COVID-inspired purchase. But not an altogether unexpected one. Wayne had wanted a sailboat for years. The pandemic was the catalyst he needed to finally take the plunge.
I, however, never wanted a sailboat. I thought a motorboat of some kind sounded interesting. However, even though my preferred method of travel is cruising and I’m happiest on the water, boats in general intimidate me. At least, the thought of operating them does. Espeically sailboats.
There’s a lot of jargon to learn, as well as techniques (knot-tying, reading the wind, etc), and while I’ve always been a decent student, sailing proved a stumbling block.
As I explained in the post where I wrote about our boat buy, I’m a sailing school drop out. I did okay with the book study portion when we were on land, but when we got out on the water? Uh uh. I was intimidated to the max and freaking out.
On our way home that day, I told Wayne, “This is going to have to be your thing, babe. I’m not into it. Sort of like how you’re not into my ghost thing.”
But then when COVID happened, here was a chance to get a boat. YOLO.
After my cancer, it was all about experiencing more instead of giving in to doubts and playing it safe like I had been for 38 years up until that point. A habit I’m ashamed to say I fell back into again a few years ago.
Then 2020 happened and reminded me…do it. Whatever “it” is, if it calls to your heart, make it happen.
I applied that to Wayne too. Instead of saying he’d like to have a boat, let’s make it happen. I try to be a supportive wife, and if it meant I’d have to resign myself to learning how to sail, so be it. Neither one of us should go to our graves wishing we’d done something and regretting we hadn’t. (Within reason, of course.)
Adjusting to sailing life has been a rocky experience for the both of us. The biggest challenge is that we have to back into our slip. It’s a little tricky. We learned very quickly about prop walk and that our boat has a healthy case of it.
Basically, when we put the motor in reverse, our boat swings hard to the left. The trick is giving it a lot of gas because once she’s in motion, we can control the propeller again and steer her.
Docking is stressful anyway, but adding going in reverse with prop walk…yikes. Returning from our second or third voyage and trying to dock resulted in a crash. Thankfully a minor one with no damage or injuries (except to our pride), but that’s when we learned why going backwards was so hard.
Well, at least the way we’d been trying to attempt it. Once we learned we had that thing called prop walk, we started studying ways to overcome it.
But we also learned the wind and current can affect docking too. Great. More to think about, calculate and account for.
And then there are the sails…oh my. They intimidate me the most. Ropes are not called lines, they’re called sheets. I thought sheets were the sails. I have to learn to use winches, winch handles, when to let one sheet out and pull another in…
We didn’t even try putting the sails up last year. In fact, after our docking foible, we were so gun shy we didn’t even go out for a month. We might never have again if I hadn’t insisted, “We got this. We’ll practice going in reverse until we figure it out.”
I knew if we didn’t go back out, we’d have to sell the boat, which made me sad. Because even though I’m so intimidated by it all, I love her. I love the lake. It’s my happy place.
This year we’ve already had a couple of hiccups. The first time Wayne raised the jib, it flung a bat into the water that we had to rescue. Luckily after he caught his breath and dried off, he flew away on his own. (The bat, of course. Not Wayne. He doesn’t know how to fly.)
And we had a rocky launch from the dock the other day.
But the other night when we went out, Wayne’s sailing mentor joined us. With his help, I got a sort of one-on-one lesson, which was incredibly helpful. We also got the sails up.
Then we noticed another boat. A pretty big one. (By Percy Priest standards at least.)
There are a fair amount of sailboats on the lake, but not a whole bunch over 30′. The largest is a 44-footer. Our dock neighbors, Le Vent et La Mer, have a 36-footer, which I believe may be the third-largest sailboat on Percy Priest. (Ours is 31′.)
It looked like Le Vent et La Mer, but I didn’t think they’d be out Wednesday night. Normally they do go out there, at least to have dinner, and sometimes to sail to watch the yacht races, but they’d recently informed us about some stuff going on in their lives that would keep them off of the water for several weeks.
There was only one marina that boat could’ve come from, though: ours. And then they turned and seemed to be heading there too. Either that or they were stalking us.
Turns out it was them! Which thrilled me. Nashville has been a hard place for us to click with people. We clicked right away with Richmond and Laura. Now we’re having a lot of fun finding ways to hang out both at the marina and otherwise.
But then I noticed something else too: The sunset, the full moon rising, and the sunset colors streaking the sky.
All stress, cares and worry melted away. Like they always seem to each time we take the boat out.
Because there’s always a moment each sail where the thought of docking doesn’t concern me. Nothing does. Any problems are stowed away. I’m completely absorbed in the moment. That moment. Whether I’m floating in the water on my sea saddle (a floating cushion) while we’re anchored somewhere, or I’m admiring blue herons in flight, or I’m delighting in a dragonfly briefly finding respite on my hand.
If I didn’t face the intimidation, I’d miss out on so much.
