Smooth Sailing

This journey began all the way back when I first transferred to Monmouth as a sophomore.  My dad has always loved sailing and has owned a good amount of different types of boats throughout his life and mine.  While shopping for merchandise in the university bookstore, as all new students do, my dad bought a Monmouth sailing hat for himself, despite me never sailing in my life and having no intentions to join the team.  In the 3 years since, he has always asked me to keep an eye out for people on the sailing team and ask them if they are ever selling merchandise so he can support the team. 

Fast forward to the beginning of my senior year, I was at the involvement fair to let people know about Monmouth’s radio station WMCX, the one and only club I have been a part of here.  It was hard to miss the giant boat in the middle of the lawn that the sailing team brought to show off their club.  As the fair died down and there weren’t as many students to talk to anymore, I decided to head over to the sailing team’s table for my dad, just to ask them about merchandise. Somehow they convinced me to sign up for the team (which I should have expected since that is the whole intention for an involvement fair) but I immediately had to tell my dad. 

I don’t think he fully believed me at first so he didn’t get too excited

So just like that, I was on the email list for the sailing team!  Since no experience is necessary, they're not just going to throw you on a boat and expect you to know what to do.  The first email I got as a member was about their Learn to Sail event for new members to try it out and see if they really like it and want to officially join.  Still unconvinced that I should go through with this, I waited a few days to respond.  However, since this is my last year of college, I decided that this year I may as well do as much as I can while I’m here. That’s when my mindset totally shifted and I became excited to join the sailing team (and the excitement from my dad helped too). So I took the next step and signed up for the Learn to Sail event!

The event ended up getting postponed for a week due to strong winds. They shouldn’t really throw inexperienced sailors into heavy winds…The night before the postponed date I convinced my friend, Aiden, to join me since he also said he was interested in going so he sent out an email at 11:30 PM to the coach, which she shockingly responded to almost immediately.  Now two weeks after first signing up, it was officially time to sail. 

When Aiden and I got to the yacht club where all the practices take place, we saw a bunch of boats (duh) and other students who were either already in the club or learning just like us. We introduced ourselves to the coach, and then kinda waited around for something to happen.  The current members were setting up the boats to get ready to take out on the water so there was nothing really for us to help with yet.  After more people showed up, the coach took us all aside to talk about the club, what they do, and what we would be doing. 

They only had five boats prepared with current members to take the new members out on the water, so we had to trade off who was sailing when.  Somehow, I was one of the people to go out, so I got to help launch the boat in the water.  My dad only sails in the summer, when you expect to be around water and the beach.  However this was nothing like sailing in the summer.  The water was freezing right when my feet hit it and obviously I’m not going to wear shorts in cold weather so my socks, shoes, and pants all got submerged.  Surprisingly, my body got used to it really quick and I wasn’t as freezing as I thought I was going to be.

Once we took off, the member I was sailing with was explaining all my jobs as crew for the day.  I was in charge of the two lines connected to the jib (the front sail) and had to keep it pretty much centered.  I also had to lower the center board, keep the boat balanced by switching the side I was sitting on if we started leaning too much, and scoop water out of the boat if it got too filled up.  Luckily I never had to do that last job for my short time on the boat because the rest of the jobs were enough to remember already.  I wish I could say my dad prepared me well for this and I already knew everything I had to do, but I didn’t. I’ve heard him talk about sailing many times in my life but still have no idea what any of it means or how to do it.  The same goes for the member I was on the boat with.  He was demonstrating how to tack and jibe so I asked him what the difference between them was.  I pretended like I understood, but I really had no idea. I know that tacking is when you turn but jibing is…a harsher turn???  I don’t know, I’ll just look it up.

After sailing around for half an hour and even practicing hiking, where you lean off the side of the boat to balance it, it was time to switch groups.  We got up to the dock and I hoped out and traded off my life jacket to another new member.  Now THIS is when I started to get really cold.  In the water and on the boat I was fine, it barely even affected me.  But once I got out covered in water and just sitting in the wind, that was when it was really bad.  We were told to bring a towel and change of clothes just in case we wanted to change after, except my bag of dry clothes was in Aiden’s locked car, who was now off on a boat with his keys in his pocket.  So I just waited with the other sailors talking and watching everyone else on the water.  

By the time the second group got back, the coach rode over on the powerboat and told us there were dolphins out in the river!  So about seven or eight of us pack onto the powerboat to go hunt for a dolphin sighting. It wasn’t long before we saw a group of dolphins following the boats and popping in and out of the water.  They were swimming fast so we kept losing them and would sail around until we found them again.

With all the distraction of the dolphins, one of the members was trying to get the attention of their coach when all of a sudden the wind died and we turned around to see the boat flip into the water. Luckily both the people on the boat were current members so they knew how to recover from this, but I certainly would not want to fall into that cold water. 

It was finally time to bring all the boats in and watch how they pack them up.  At this point, my feet were unbearably cold, so I was trying my best to pay attention and learn, but man it was hard to not focus on my freezing feet.  They showed us how to fold the sails and when there seemed to be downtime between packing up the sails, I got my dry change of clothes and went to go try to warm up.  I took my time with this to hope that I would warm up enough before going back out in the cold.  I guess I took a little too long because I missed the explanation of how they cover the boats, but I tried my best to help based on context clues and we were pretty much done after that!

Despite my freezing feet, I actually had a really fun time!  I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect going in and didn’t know if I’d be completely miserable having to be near water in the cold (I do not do well in cold weather) but I really enjoyed it and glad I went!  I’ve been considering learning to sail over the summer because it would be cool to know how to do, but I never seemed to have  the downtime to really master it.  While I still don’t think I’ll master it by the end of this year, I am excited to go out again and hopefully start to make some sense of those terms they were explaining to me.  All I know is that I have to learn enough to be able to beat my dad in a race next summer.

You hear that dad?  It’s on!!