Changing Like the Wind

Muscles bulged, white knuckled fingers wrapped around the halyard and eyes squinted to see the top of the sail. Did the mainsail catch on the hook? Are we ready to go? The jib, pregnant with wind, pulled at us, our feet were braced in the water that tickled our knees. There was the hollow clang of the ring settling on the hook and we all began to look at the job in front of us. Batten down the snacks, jackets and shoes, sail and tuck the mainsheet in its cleats then bruise shins and stub toes while scrambling topside because sailboat 888 is not staying by the dock for very long.

Our eyes turn to the open lake, wind creating a map of it's directions and speeds around the lake. Out to the starboard side a it is like a crazed weaver created a cloth with random texture, some of the water nubby with wind and other parts smooth and soft like velvet where the breeze has lifted her skirts and floated past on lace pantaloons without touching down.

We were in a nubby section and the boat is sliding backwards toward immanent collision with the dock at a frightful speed. The mainsheet yanked forcefully from the stainless steel of cleats allows the mainsail to slide across the hull, we ducked our heads one right after another in a silly looking dance to miss the mainboom's skull crunching reach as it swings overhead. Turbo lifts his black fuzzy ears as it comes toward him and drops to the trampoline deck with an omph. Once it is settled in its new location it causes us to bear away, out of the wind's strength, and gives us more time to get all the tack arranged and ready for the warm breezes that are pushing across the lake.

After an appropriately democratic discussion on where best to tie down the mainsail we begin come about and the boat begins to heel. The three designated scramblers, Charles, Dad and I, scratch and tumble under the mainboom and onto the hull that is hovering above the water by several inches. We do not want to capsize, what a mess that would be, we don't even know how to sail let alone right an upside down boat. Thus we are off across the lake heading toward our current destination, the other side of the lake.

My hair pulls out of it's ever present black hair tie and finds a way to tickle my nose and slide into my mouth. My heel touches the water and it releases diamonds from its murky depths that land on my leg and slowly make their way back to the whole. Eric, at the helm, has the smile of the toothpaste model, his hand holds the tiller firmly. Dad and Charles lean out over the hovering hull, holding spider web guy wires, their eyes shut to the wind. Dad is dipping his backside toward the water to see how close he can get before it drags. Turbo the breeze pets him, ruffling his hair on his head, then his back and then lifting his tail for one last tweak, lays with his chin between his feet. His frosted eyebrows move up and down as he looks around at the liquid and shoreline birds sliding past. It is silent among us.

In front of us a velvety spot appears, much to large to avoid and immediately the wind stops. The heeling hull comes down to the water and Dad's posterior comes down into the water and he yelps. He and Charles laugh while splashing around to get out of the water and back topside. We're learning. So there we sit. Wind happening all around us, other sailboats speeding on toward the other side. We look over the edge and our faces stare back at us a perfect mirror in the middle of a lake wracked with wavelets. We pull out the paddles and begin to paddle toward the nearest nubby spot in the lake but we don't make fast time. Sometimes it works and sometimes we wait it out until the wind blows up on us again. It will, it always has, it may take awhile but it will come running by, pick up our languid sails and we will fly again. We may have to adjust our course, or our goal but we will sail again.