Diving into Sailing - Southwinds, December 2001

- Local News for Southern Sailors - December 2001 Next Story

Diving in
By Sarah Steele

I lived aboard a sailboat with my family from the time I was 13 until 15—cruising around the southeast coast of the United States, learning about the sailing lifestyle and trying not to kill each other. Those night sails with my brother Adam and I on watch provided some real tests of character. One more crack from him about how I dress while going out to check the sails, and he might accidentally slip right off the boat. He would finally pay for his often obnoxious personality as well as being demeaned in the eyes of the ship's captainŠmy mom's fiance.

I, on the other hand, will show my courageous abilities as I wake everyone up with the man overboard warning while simultaneously pulling Adam out of that dark void of an ocean.

But that would be wrong, I tell myself, and somehow we both always safely passed through our watches.

When I finally went back to land life with a house and traditional high school, I would often tell my inquiring peers that everyone should have to live on a boat for a couple of years of their childhood. My reasoning was that it taught one about the things that really matteredŠlike how unimportant "stuff" was. We barely had any clothes or material things, and we didn't need them. There were always far more interesting things to see and do besides watching TV or getting dressed up.

Cruising also taught me to keep my eyes open and to pay attention for the unexpected—things like waterspouts or alligators in Georgia rivers that looked like logs. Not watching out could result in catastrophes as well as missing amazing sights like dolphins, sharks, and breathtaking sunsets.

I learned to entertain myself. It was just my family out there, and there were times when the loneliness felt deadly and my immediate termination imminent. I figured out how to get over being shy to meet the other occasional liveaboard kids who were treasures to my world.

And through nightly dinner discussions that could go on for hours in the middle of empty anchorages, where star gazing meant submitting oneself to untold millions of mosquitoes, I grew very close to my family. We became tight-knit, constantly putting our lives into the hands of one another.

I also knew from the start that if the devil on my shoulder got the better of me and somehow Adam went off the boat, I would have no one to snicker with over stupid adolescent things the next day. So I learned to love my brother and even enjoy his company.

So while I think not everyone is suited to the cruising lifestyle—not all of us can resist the devil on the shoulder—I do encourage people to try it if they have an interest in living aboard but are a little wary about having their kids along, too.

My mom first consulted my brother and I. I'm not sure she would have reconsidered even if we had started kicking and screaming at the thought of moving onboard, but it made me feel like I had a choice. I had never seen the ocean, much less been on a boat. To a landlocked Oklahoma kid, it sounded like an adventurer's paradise.

It wasn't exactly a paradise at all. Four people in a 30-foot motorsailor with a ten-foot beam can be crampedŠreally, really cramped. Especially when learning about boating and the space confines, while your stuff that you thought you valued so much gets soaking wet. Plus all that valuable wet stuff is taking up so much space that enough food won't fit onboard.

We didn't know about the food thing either. None of us had ever been stuck in days and days of gales, getting so low on food that we were mixing peanut butter and rice. That kind of adventure takes some getting used to.

We discovered that you can get really ticked off at the weather, each other, the boat, and just generally the world, but yelling and screaming made everything worse, and no amount of will can change some circumstances. So we learned to laugh, to get into really good conversations, to make a lot of jokes, and to keep laughing at one another. It made time pass quicker and the most scary moments a little less stressful.

If we had taken a trial run—not just dived into the whole affair—we probably would have said "screw it" the first night we got stuck on a shoal. Sitting in the dinghy all night freezing and watching the tide go farther and farther down until our beloved boat was barely in a puddle of water.

If that hadn't done it, our first mishaps docking in a Georgia marina where the killer tide was totally unforgiving would surely have ended the trial run. Those little learning trials of ours would have half the marina trying to catch lines or fend off our boat as we nearly ripped through various piers and docked boats, or as we tried to pull up lines that hadn't made it to the dock before they got entwined in our propeller. And there was the time our captain almost severely injured his arm when he stuck it between our boat and another. Trial and error. We learned and no one died or permanently lost the use of their limbs. They say life is a learning experience but, believe me, it can be embarrassing.

I now think an inexperienced group like ours should practice somewhere far, far away from people. That way if you do millions of dollars worth of property damage, you can just sorta motor on off, and no one would have risked bodily harm for something so silly as another boat or dock. Of course, when you don't tie the lines correctly and half of your crew is stuck on the dock while the other half starts slipping off the pier unaware, they'll know differently.

We dived right into the whole thing, and I'm glad. For every near-death experience, there are a dozen beautiful memories. I wouldn't trade those two years if I could.