Two Yellow Things

This is the story of two fond memories from my childhood, and both happen to involve things that are bright yellow: one is National Geographic magazine and the other is a very small sailboat.

One of the best gifts my mom ever gave me was a subscription to National Geographic. I collected issues throughout my adolescence, filling shelves with years’ worth of them. Numerous older copies could be found at my grandparents’ house, and I read every one of them.

A few articles that made a profound and lasting impact on me were “The Bird Men” (August 1983), about ultralights and the people who built and flew them, “A Tunnel Through Time: The Appalachian Trail” (February 1987), about hikers who walked the full length of the footpath from Georgia to Maine, “Double Eagle II Leaps the Atlantic” (December 1978), about how Ben L. Ambruzzo, Maxie L. Anderson, and Larry Newman piloted a balloon from the United States to Europe, and “The Thousand- mile Glide” (March 1978), documenting the world-record flight sailplane pilot Karl Striedieck made from Pennsylvania to Tennessee and home again on the same day.

Like many members of my generation, I was inspired by the exploits of Robin Lee Graham, covered by the magazine in three installments (October 1968, April 1969, and October 1970). At sixteen, Graham sailed alone from California to Hawaii in his 24-foot sloop Dove and then just kept going. Five years later, after circumnavigating the globe, he ended up back in California.

All those stories—and those incredible photographs for which the magazine is so famous—were my escape. I detested the suburbs with every molecule of my being. (Still do.) It was just so mind-numbingly dull. I could get on my bike and pedal around, but all I would ever find was mile after mile after mile of the same thing: endless residential subdivisions. I wanted to be out there backpacking through the mountains, flying, parachuting, scuba diving, traveling the world . . . all the cool stuff the adventurers and explorers in National Geographic did. As I read those articles, I dreamed about doing those things. I dreamed about being happy.

It was in this context that I realized we had a sailboat.

You know how when you’re a kid, there are features in your daily existence that are so familiar that you don’t really think about them? I never paid any particular attention to the big yellow thing hanging from the ceiling of our two-car garage; it had just sort of always been there. But at some point, it dawned on me that it was a sailboat. A real, actual sailboat. Wait a minute—we had a sailboat? We had a sailboat! I was suddenly very excited.

It was a Sunflower, a model of the Snark line, an 11-foot open dinghy with a single 55-square-foot lateen-rigged nylon mainsail and an aluminum mast. It had a wooden daggerboard that dropped straight down through a raised slot in the center of the deck and a plank for a helm station. The hull was made completely of expanded polystyrene, so it was unsinkable. If you cut it into pieces, the pieces would float.

I informed my parents that I wanted to sail it. I was probably about eleven years old, so this would have been around 1982.

Now you might think my parents would send me off to sailing camp or sign me up for youth sailing lessons. In Florida, there are sailing clubs everywhere. However, that was not the approach they took. Instead, they gave me the manual that came with the boat. It was a black-and white pamphlet printed on what looked like ordinary typing paper, folded over and stapled. It was probably about eight pages long. It contained illustrations showing the names and locations of all the parts of the boat, basic instructions for rigging it, and a diagram that showed the various points of sail. I studied it with intense interest, although without any real comprehension.

They drove me to Lake Brantley, which was only a couple of miles from our house. Dad assembled the mast, spar, and boom. They put a big fluffy orange life jacket on me. It was adult-sized, so it hung off my shoulders. It was an old-fashioned style, with a shell of cloth, and the straps had metal buckles. Dad gave me a shove to push me off the sand. Just like that, I was on my own, master and captain of my vessel. My only sailing knowledge at this point was from that pamphlet, plus what I had gleaned from the “Sailing” article in the World Book encyclopedia (volume S-Sn).

I remember how weird it felt to be rolling and bobbing in the water. It was an unexpectedly unstable sensation. Predictably, I flailed for a bit, a few yards from the beach, not really going anywhere, with the sail luffing and flapping and the boom periodically swinging from one side of the boat to the other. I drifted generally downwind, gradually getting farther away from land, turning in slow circles as I pushed the tiller back and forth in an incompetent attempt to steer.

But then something magical happened: I found the right combination of heading and point of sail, and the little boat began to slice happily through the water. It was an amazing feeling, an exhilarating burst of power and freedom. Despite my total and complete lack of training, I was accidentally in the groove. It helped a lot that it didn’t matter which way I went. Any direction was acceptable. I adjusted the mainsheet, or more accurately, randomly played with it, alternately easing and trimming until the boom was in what seemed to be the right place, with the sail nicely filled and pulling me along forcefully. I very quickly figured out that if I pointed the bow in a certain direction, I went faster, although I didn’t really understand why, especially since that direction was not the way the wind was blowing. Since I didn’t care where I was going, however, I just maintained the course that enabled me to go fastest.

Soon I was way out in the middle of the lake, and I felt like an intrepid ocean voyager. I wondered what my parents must be thinking as I got farther and farther away.

I followed a canal up into a neighborhood with fancy waterfront houses that had docks in their backyards. I did not have a plan. I was just sailing. When I got to the end of the canal, I turned around to go back. But the sailboat wasn’t moving; the way out was almost directly into the wind. So I just sat there, embarrassed and wondering what to do. My lack of experience was now painfully obvious.

A man came out of his house and called to me. He asked if I needed help. I explained that I couldn’t sail back out into the lake, because the wind was blowing the wrong way. He laughed and told me to sail over. So I pushed the tiller and pointed my bow towards his backyard, and soon the Sunflower slid right up onto the grass. He asked if he could come aboard. I agreed, and he hopped in, causing the little boat to wobble.

He took the mainsheet in one hand and the tiller in the other. I observed closely and tried to stay out of his way. He expertly tacked back and forth across the windline, explaining what he was doing, tracing a tight zig-zag pattern through the water as he worked his way up the canal towards the mouth. As we reached the end, he gave the controls back to me and instructed me to steer right up to the edge of the last dock. He jumped off the boat and onto the low wooden platform, and he invited me to come back so that he could teach me more about sailing. I thanked him, and we waved to each other as I began to make my way back towards the beach at the other side of the lake where my parents were waiting for me, and probably wondering where on Earth I was.

I never did go back to find that guy, although I thought about it often. I wonder if he remembers that day. I would love to tell him how much I appreciated his act of generosity, and what an impression it made on me. I would love to tell him that I now live aboard my own sailboat, and how I hope to sail her around the world like Robin Lee Graham did on Dove.

The memory of mom and dad plopping me into that little Sunflower and giving me a push continues to amuse me. For just a moment, in my head, I was the star of my own National Geographic article.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

My author page:
www.AustinScottCollins.com

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Recent popular posts:

Crazy People in History #1

A Brief Guide to Writing Terrible Fiction

Martinus or Martino?

I Interview the Lovely Dalia Lance