It Takes Years to be a Sailor, It Takes Seconds to Die

Chapter 2: Finally Together

Since I am a racer, I have sailing and racing classes every week day. These regular classes are about two hours long. I also have my private lessons every day at eight in the morning.

     I have four coaches- Even, Jessie, Lilly, and Ali. I usually work with Jessie; he is the one who coaches me privately outside of regular lessons. Jessie is the only instructor that actually teaches racing strategy. And yes, there is strategy for going around buoys. He is a slightly new instructor, but in my mind he is by far the best.

     So on Monday when the whole class finally gets to the pier, Jessie discusses with us the coming regatta. And no, not the cheese- regatta is a fancy word for a huge race. When Jessie announced "here are the teams" in his awesome Boston accent, I was elated. He said "Megan and Erin- teams, Scott and......” The suspense was killing me!!! But he finally said “Maddi- teams". My heart sank. This is it!!! I wonder if Jessie knows of my obsession?

     As the class moved up the beach, Megan, Erin, and I jumped around in a circle singing out yay, yay, yay. We were completely oblivious to the fact that we were not alone. I thought they said you get smarter as you get older? Whoever they are, they are lying.

     Of course me just being me, I must do something to ruin the moment. As Scott and I are towing down our boat I spaz out. I trip over seaweed and drop the boat on my leg. Just to make things worse it bruises instantly. Scott and Jessie have to lift the boat off of me and Jessie starts yelling at Scott for my spazticness. Once I explain, Jessie walks back up to the pier. Still on the ground, I don't consider the fact that Scott is fussing over me and get up and limp my way down to finish carrying down our boat. Once our boat is half rigged we start over to the pier to have another talk with Jessie. Again me being me, Scott looks at my leg and says how much pain that I must be in at the moment. And even though it was a complete lie I say “nah- not too bad" even though it was throbbing beyond belief. (Holy crap! I must have got the blond genes and had some DNA malfunction and got brunette hair.)

     Jessie says that he will elongate our lesson because there was much too much to discuss before we could go out and sail. Some things we need to discuss are how the harbor is and how the race will be laid out. Jessie was right, we spent a half an hour just talking about the harbor and how we will get there. Just as I start to zone out Jessie finally said "now that that is out of the way, we can talk strategy."

     Of course this is the point that Even's brother Paul walks down the pier. Paul has a reputation for pushing kids off the pier. I am sitting in the spot I always do on the rail. Paul pushes me off the rail and I fall fifteen feet onto my face. As I look up at the pier again, spitting out the sand in my mouth I see Scott get up. He ends up pushing Paul off the float and into the harbor. When I climbed back onto the pier I give Scott a sandy high five as we watch Paul emerge from the water.

     I assessed my face. I have a small cut under my right eye, probably from a shell.

     When Paul left the beach we became serious again.

     About another half an hour later, we go down to finish rigging and start practice drills. There was a nice amount of wind today so it should be fun. Since I am a heavy wind crew I will be crewing today. This means that I will have to hike out a lot! For those of you unfortunate enough to not know that hiking out is leaning out of your boat to keep it flat or from flipping, I am truly sorry.

     Another thing that we are to work on is flipping. Since the big race is only days away we already know that there will be even more wind than today.

     Scott and I are doing fantastic! We have almost perfect starts most times. After many successful practice races and even more practice starts, we started to work on flipping. I have always found joy in flipping. Still to this day I am unsure as to why but, I guess it doesn't matter much. As I was out on the bow ready to flip it, I saw a scarlet, elephantine jellyfish. Oh good lord help us now! It's jellyfish season again, it gets really bad real quick. But, since there aren't too many yet we decide to continue with our plan.

     Scott and I get our boat flipped quite quickly. But, with his muscle I could see why. As we slowly keeled over I un-cleat the jib. This was to make sure that once we do right the boat, the wind won’t catch it and flip again. I swam around to the bottom of the boat, to grab the center board. Once I get there Scott practically lifts me onto the board. He hangs on to the end like he’s doing one of those flexed arm hangs in gym class.

     It didn't take long for the boat to start to right. As it came about I tried to jump into the boat. I missed and landed back in the water. Scott got into the boat without a sweat, but I can't get up. So, he turns around and again about to practically lift me up into the boat. But first he gave a concerned but not scared look. He proceeded to lift me up into the boat.

    When I asked him about the look, he didn't reply. So, I turned around to where I just was moments ago. I found an identical jellyfish to as I had seen before. I turned back towards Scott and gave him the "oh now I get it look".