Learning to sail

22 February 2014

Update by Claire:
“When it comes to sailing this ship, I’m a slow learner. When distracted by personal matters, like today, I’m an even slower one. The simplest thing, like belaying a line, is sometimes beyond me, much to the chagrin to everyone else on my watch — they all perfected that skill a week ago, and I’m still screwing up.
Then again, I never claimed to be good at anything. I love the art of sailing, but I’m far better at writing about it than doing it. This is true of most things. In fact, I’ve never had any practical skills to speak of. What few I may have had were wrung out of me in second-grade physical education classes, when I didn’t come in first in the race, so I decided never again to run fast. In fact, I avoided learning how to do anything I wasn’t already good at. But in time, I became tired of being bad at everything and then giving up. I decided to try sailing, vowing that I would continue to try to improve, even if it took me years of being bad before I really got anywhere.
Besides, when it comes to my book, even the failures, maybe especially the failures, make for interesting reading. If I’m going to fail, I might as well fail epically, and then write about it.
Another thing I’ve always been bad at is protecting myself. For some of us, including me, it may seem a wiser choice to cut things short than see them through to the end, even if we suspect that seeing them through might be more entertaining. But it’s naïve to think that anything we do can spare others from being hurt. Pain is everywhere — look at me; I have bruises all over my legs and hips from banging them against various objects when the ship lists sharply. But it’s a long, cold month or so ahead of us (though slowly getting warmer) and then, no matter what, it will be over. There’s a song I like by Beth Orton with the words: ’Come on out/come on out, child/We’re here just a while.’”