Prospective career in sailing?

When I was about 4 years old, my lovely mother attempted and succeeded in making my sister and me a sailor inspired dress. Decked out in our navy knee length dress with a wide white sailor looking collar – we looked one million dollars. Our white frilly ‘bobby’ socks (gosh how I miss them!) and white sandals completed an already perfectly cute outfit. I fit the part of being a sailor yet had no ship to sail, not even a boat, just an abundance of water – our inflatable backyard pool and a beautiful beach 5 minutes away (if you could avoid standing on syringes and broken bottles). Some of my best memories are of my summer holidays. I remember going down to that beach, feeding chips to seagulls and going on pony rides on nearby green grass. But I was far from being a sailor, even if I did look the part.

12 years later when I was 16 years old, I was excited by the opportunity to take lessons in how to sail a boat. The ‘lil sailor in me was bursting with energy! My sailor dress that I once owned, was now nowhere to be seen. Instead, I now wore jeans and a t.shirt, and had an ego so big that it could rock (and sink) the boat.

So, my sailing lessons began. It has been so long ago now and my memory has failed me, but the lessons were something about how the sail catches the wind, using the tiller to steer the boat and not getting whacked in the head with that thinga-mi-doo. As you can tell, I wasn’t listening properly to the instructions told. I have never been great with instructions.

With half of the instructions in my head, and the other half drifting somewhere over the lake, I set out in my boat with my school friend – attempting to sail like a true sailor.

Things were going great when my friend directed the boat out from the pier towards the middle of the lake. The wind seemed to be calm as we lightly cruised along the lake on this perfect summer day. But my friend was always better at following instructions than I was. It was now my turn to take hold of the tiller. If you can picture this scene, it was me sailing back from the middle of this large lake, towards land. Yes, we were heading towards the pier.

That stupid tiller! Why can’t small boats just have steering wheels? But then again, maybe a steering wheel wouldn’t have benefited me either. You see, moving vehicles and poor little me weren’t a good combination at that point in my life. I had repeated dreams as a child that I was in a car, the car was about to crash, and as I was sitting in the driver’s seat, I was responsible for stopping the vehicle. I could never work out how to stop it, so that is when I would wake up in a puff. I also had a phobia of dodgem cars. For some reason, the steering wheels were always faulty (or, so I thought), as they made me drive straight into other drivers, as well as around in circles.

The pier did seem a couple hundred metres off in the distance at this stage, as I was still trying to work out what the hell a tiller was, but more so, what the hell a boat was. But hey, I wasn’t totally clueless! I did know that if I pushed the tiller away from me, the boat would go in one direction, and if I pulled it towards me, the boat would go in another. But which one was which, I had no idea. And that is a very important concept to learn and remember. Trust me. Particularly when the wind starts going nuts around you, your sail stiffens up and you start charging full-speed-ahead towards the pier in front of you! YES, by this stage, the pier was literally in front of us!

‘Til this day, I can still hear my teacher’s strong British accent screaming out at me: “Tiller away!! Tiller away!!”. I don’t know who was more scared, him standing there helplessly on the pier, or us roaring ahead, about to hit the pier at an intense speed in that tiny psychotic good for nothing boat.

BAM! We hit the pier at a fairly high speed. Our bodies jolted. They really should install seat belts on those things! Even if the boats are built for recreational sailing only. I was more scared that I had put a nasty hole in the boat, rather than being concerned for my well-being (or my friends for that matter!). Fortunately there was no (or minimal) damage done to the boat. It seemed the most damage done was to my teacher’s mood, the pigmentation of his skin (which had turned hot pink), and my usually well inflated ego.

I was yelled at for the next 10 minutes by my teacher about how I should follow instructions better, and how I should have tillered “away”. Yes okay, I got his point, but I didn’t even know what that meant at the time.

I really don’t know what the big deal was anyway. This whole event was triggered by a young lady who, until this very day, gets mixed up with signs that say “Push” and “Pull” on shop doors. It was a disaster waiting to happen in my opinion.

As I went home that afternoon, I walked up to the colourful list on my bedroom wall, with the bold header “Prospective Careers”. I crossed the word “sailor” off my list with a big black marker, as a tear trickled down my rosy cheek.