The funny thing about getting into sailing is that nobody really tells you what you’re getting into. They tell you about the freedom, the sunsets, and sitting in the cockpit with a cold beer while the boat quietly slips through the water. What they don’t tell you is that you’re also going to spend the first six months learning an entirely new language and trying to remember which rope does what.
I was beginning to figure some of it out, but I was still a long way from being what I would call a sailor. I knew the basics, and I was getting pretty good at getting Rogue in and out of the marina. I could raise the sails, trim them, tack and even make the boat go approximately where I wanted it to go. Most of the time.
I also discovered that sailing had another similarity to motorcycles. You could spend as much money as you wanted on a boat, but that didn’t necessarily mean you were going to have any more fun. In fact, I was beginning to realize that the less money I had invested in Rogue, the more freedom I seemed to have. She was a Cal 28, and she wasn’t exactly what you’d call a yacht in the traditional sense. But she was mine, and that made all the difference.
I started buying sailing magazines, which was probably my next big mistake. I would sit around the office reading about cruising boats, navigation, weather, rigging, engines, and all the other things that sailors apparently knew about. I quickly discovered that owning a sailboat meant you were also supposed to be an electrician, plumber, mechanic, carpenter, navigator, and weatherman.
I wasn’t any of those things, but I figured I could learn. The more I read, the more I realized that sailing wasn’t really about knowing everything. It was about knowing what you didn’t know and knowing enough to keep the things you didn’t know from killing you. That seemed reasonable.
So naturally, I decided to go sailing.
One afternoon Jim and I were out on Rogue when the wind started picking up. By then I was getting pretty comfortable. Maybe too comfortable. I could tack, I could trim the sails, and I had even learned that when the boat started leaning over, you didn’t necessarily need to start praying.
We were beating back toward the marina when Jim looked at the sails and said, “You might want to ease the sheet.”
I looked at him, then at the various lines scattered around the cockpit. “Which one?”
He pointed.
I grabbed it and eased the line. The boat immediately came back upright.
I looked at him and grinned. “See?” I said. “I knew that.”
He just laughed.
There are certain things you can admit to another sailor, but admitting that you still don’t know what you’re doing isn’t one of them. At least not when you’re twenty-something and have spent most of your adult life riding motorcycles and pretending you know where you’re going.
I was learning, though, and the strange thing was that I really liked learning it. There was something about sailing that was completely different from anything I’d done before. With a motorcycle, you had an engine under you, and when you wanted to go somewhere, you twisted the throttle and went. With a sailboat, you had to pay attention to everything: the wind, the current, the sails, the direction you were headed, and what was happening around you.
You couldn’t just bully the ocean into doing what you wanted. Well, you could try. The ocean generally won.
I think that was one of the things that attracted me to it. Out on the water, nobody cared what you did for a living or what kind of motorcycle you rode. The ocean didn’t care how much money you had, how important you thought you were, or how many people knew your name. It just was, and you had to figure out how to work with it.
Before long, Rogue became my escape. Whenever I could get away from the office, I’d head down to the marina. Sometimes Jim would come along, sometimes one of the guys from the motorcycle club would show up, and sometimes I’d just go out by myself.
The guys from the club thought the whole thing was pretty strange at first. They were used to seeing me on a motorcycle, wearing a black T-shirt and boots, not sitting in a cockpit with a tiller in my hand. But they liked it. Actually, they really liked it.
Pretty soon we’d have a group of us down at the marina, and whenever the weather was decent we’d load everybody aboard Rogue and head out. It wasn’t exactly the picture you’d see in a sailing magazine. There were motorcycles in the parking lot, leather jackets hanging from the lifelines, and enough black T-shirts aboard to make the Coast Guard wonder if we’d wandered in from a biker convention.
But we were having a hell of a good time.
And every time we went out, I learned something new. Sometimes I learned it before we left the dock. Sometimes I learned it after we left the dock. And occasionally I learned it when somebody yelled, “What the hell are you doing?” Those were generally the lessons I remembered best.
I began to understand that a boat was a lot like a motorcycle in one very important way. You could never really own it. You were just taking care of it for the next guy.
Of course, at the time I had no idea how true that was going to become.
Rogue was my first sailboat, and like most first loves, I thought she was going to be with me forever. I didn’t know yet that boats would come and go, that I’d eventually spend more time at sea than I ever imagined, or that this strange little Cal 28 was going to be the beginning of a completely different life.
At that point, I was still going to work every day, riding my motorcycle, running the business, and squeezing in as much sailing as I could. But something had changed. I had discovered that there was another kind of freedom.
It wasn’t the freedom of an open highway with a motorcycle underneath you. There were no yellow lines disappearing behind you and no road signs telling you where you were supposed to go. Instead, there was a horizon.
You could look out there and see absolutely nothing but water and sky, and somehow that nothing looked like the biggest opportunity in the world.
I didn’t know where it would take me. I didn’t know how many boats would eventually become part of my life, or how many oceans I’d cross, or how many crazy people I’d meet along the way. I sure as hell didn’t know that someday I’d be writing about it.
All I knew was that I had a boat. Her name was Rogue. And every time I untied those dock lines and headed out into the channel, I had the same feeling I used to get when I kicked the starter on my motorcycle and pulled out onto the road.
I was going somewhere.
I just didn’t know where yet.
And looking back, I think that was the best part.
