Down and Humbled

When you're at home on vacation, you'll do anything to kill time. And I think I've been lucky to find things to do this time. A unique opportunity presented itself when one of my dad's friends suggested I go for sailing at the Naval Sailing Club.

I don't know if you've seen anybody sailing before, but I'm sure you'd like to check it out if you saw it. It's a lot of fun. Typically you start with enterprise(dinghy) sailing. A dinghy is a light boat with two sails which are controlled independently by two persons. Before you set sail, it's really important that you know about all the parts of the boat, so you know what to do and how to communicate with each other.

The person who sits in front and controls the fore sail is called the crew. Apart from that, he's also supposed to make sure that the boat doesn't (which can happen sometimes when there are strong winds or if you have a noob at the helm - like me). The person at the helm of affairs, and rightly called the helmsman, controls the main sail and the rudder simultaneously. He's solely responsible for changing directions and steering the boat. Slight error on his part can cause the boat to capsize. And righting the boat is a daunting task in itself.

So as long as I'm giving teaching you the basics of sailing, I'll tell you what happened yesterday. Although I've tried helming before (read once), I committed some rookie mistakes. Firstly, the boat was already hall full with sea water because was a small leakage in the boat. Also I suspect, there was some water in the bouyany tanks (which are supposed to be empty to make the boat lighter in water and keep it afloat). Secondly, I committed the stupid mistake of taking a rookie with me who didn't know a thing about sailing. And being a rookie myself, things were bound to go wrong.

Having gone far enough into the sea, I thought it would be safer to come back. And turning your boat around is a tricky thing to do. If you're at the helm, you have to duck under the boom (the metallic rod which fastens the main sail to the mast), go and sit on the other side while controlling the main sail with one hand and turning the rudder with the other. So you're obviously bound to make mistakes if you aren't confident about what you're doing or if you're too slow. And I think I was too slow. I turned the rudder but couldn't pull the sail fast enough. Mother Nature played her part and we were soon in water.

And when the boat is capsizing, it doesn't really happen just like that. First you commit the stupid crime of tempting Mother Nature. Then there's a brief interval in which you see what's happening and you try to rectify things. And that requires a reflex action. In those few seconds, your mind goes over half a dozen things and if you don't have enough experience, you're bound to go down...slowly but surely. And no matter how many times you revise it on land, you can't learn without actually being there. It's all about mind over matter.

There's nothing to be proud about capsizing your boat. It's dangerous and if you don't know the capsize drill properly, you can be in a lot of trouble. But on the other hand, you can't learn the capsize drill without actually capsizing. And neither can you learn how to sail properly without making a few mistakes. So I guess all in all, you just have to take it as a stepping stone and not try and make the same mistakes again. Also never be overconfident about these things - take a trained professional who can quickly react to mistakes you make and teach you tricks properly.