“We were going backwards faster than I have ever sailed before, and we never even got the sail up.” Sam later recalled, after the motor boat plucked us out of the violent wind and churning waves. That was just before we slipped helplessly into the main shipping channel, the interstate highway of the St. Lawrence Seaway. This wasn’t the beach in Maui—the St. Lawrence River can be hundreds of feet deep in spots, is littered with deadly shoals, and is notorious for shredding vessels to bits in swift currents.
It was the Summer of 2000, the day of the Saturday morning sail race, a community event in which sailors of all ages charge around buoys, their boats heeling and their sails reaching for the wind. I was 9 years old and had only been taking sailing classes for a few weeks. No one could tell me I wasn’t experienced enough to race in what were to become gale force winds on white cap waters. Of course, the extent of my sailing career up until that point had been floating like rubber ducks in a bath tub on the protected South Bay. But I smiled as I stared out over the water—thrashing around in the turbulent river looked fun and exciting to me.
That morning, I waddled to the dock wrapped in my enormous life jacket like a perfectly roasted marshmallow. By the time I reached the dock, I could barely walk on the shorelines without getting blown into the water, the wind lashing about, pounding my ears like a fist. I walked with my friend Sam, his round body bobbing along as well. He was about 80 pounds, unlike my 50. He wasn’t fighting the wind like a kite as I was. Sam was a year older than me, with all the benefits accrued with advance age.
“So…” I said to him. “It looks kinda windy.”
“Pssh!” He scoffed. “This is gonna be a piece of cake. We’ll pick the fastest boat; we’re a good team; we got it all…..yeah.” Sam’s voice quivered a little bit as he said this, his teeth chattering as the cold wind lashed at our faces. The first indication of our complete incapability to sail the boat in these conditions was that his dad felt he had to tow our boat over to the starting point instead of letting us sail.
I recalled choosing our boat from the fleet—focused on winning, Sam said with confidence. “We’ll take the Lazer,” pointing at the fastest boat available, a high-end racing sailboat that even in normal conditions requires a sailor of 150 pounds (we didn’t know that at the time, and I wonder to this day why no one told us.) At the start, we nervously listened to the race manager during the sailor’s meeting, whose monotonous recitation of the rules was drowned out the noisy sails flapping in the wind, and the rigging clanging against the masts. I was already shaking like a politician’s hand; I am not sure if it was from the cold wind or anticipation of our race. We “rigged” our boat, a term I had just learned, before taking it out to the starting area—
“Sam, should we, uh, raise the sail?” I timidly asked, the wind so strong I had to scream above the sound of sloshing water.
“No, you idiot! We do that once we’re on the water!” He replied in a patronizing, know-it-all sort of way. I agreed impressionably, thinking “of course he’s right…..isn’t he?”
“Sam, who’s gonna be the skipper? I don’t want to be the skipper. I’ll do the sail.” I quickly said, my heart pounding in anticipation. I knew that the person controlling the sail is the person who determines whether the boat flips or not. I could do this. I had to do it. I had to.
We climbed into the water to shove the boat off the dock. My feet were already blue, and my teeth were chattering. “What have I gotten myself into?” I wondered. We started to drift out of the protected dock area on the current, not daring to raise the sail. Then suddenly—BAM! A gust of wind caught us, and we bashed into the side of the dock like a sparrow hitting a window. My mom stood on the dock watching, terrified as I was.
“RAISE THE SAIL MARTY, RAISE THE SAIL!” she screamed. Sam and I ignored her, and we pulled out our paddle, desperately trying to get free of the dock area. It was like paddling up a waterfall, but we made it. Finally! We had escaped onto the open water. We were free! A little too free, as a matter of fact. Every epic has an epic simile, and here’s mine: We were being helplessly blown down river like a rose petal. Sam tried to look calm as he slammed the rudder back and forth like a crazy man attempting to start an old car, shaking in fear, ignoring my terrified screams. We didn’t even bother to try to put up the sail; we knew it would just flip us over. We were already going backwards as fast as an accelerating car, and we weren’t keen to drive our car upside down. As we were being tossed like rag dolls, we started to slip into the shipping channel.
“OH MY GOD IT’S A SHIP!” Sam screamed. When I say ship, I don’t mean “ship” I mean “SHIP,” essentially a floating football field that takes an hour to stop. For a second Sam gave up desperately jerking the rudder back and forth, and stared in a deadlock silence, his eyes full of terror and his body quivering. Suddenly, he screamed loud enough to wake the dead, the tumultuous waves smashing the boat while Sam howled, the sweat and tears glistening on his face. At that point in my adventure, I realized what a fragile thing life is. “I could die so easily right now,” I thought. Just then, a panicked race official zoomed up to us in a motor boat to rescue us. We hastily tossed them a line, and we were towed in. It seemed like the whole town was there watching us return, me crying hysterically next to Sam, who was trying really hard to look like it wasn’t a life-changing experience. As we climbed out of the boat onto sweet, lovely, land, my mom said to me.
“Why didn’t you RAISE THE SAIL?” I simply replied: “Mom, how would you like to see us go that fast upside down?”
That was the beginning and end of my interest in sailing. I still love to swim with my friends, but I haven’t willingly hopped into a sailboat since. Although it was pretty traumatizing, I really think that every kid has to almost die once to realize that they’re not invincible. It’s a rite of passage. Some kids find that rite of passage when they’re teenagers, and some when they’re not even kids anymore. I found it flying backwards on a sail boat in the St. Lawrence River at nine years of age.