I am afraid of the sea. I fear the brushfire crackle of the breaking wave as it topples into foam; the inward suck of the tidal whirlpool; the loom of a big ocean swell, sinister and dark, in windless calm; the rip, the eddy, the race; the sheer abyssal depth of the water, as one floats like a trustful beetle on the surface tension. Rationalism deserts me at sea. I’ve seen the scowl of enmity and contempt on the face of a wave that broke from the pack and swerved to strike at my boat. I have twice promised God that I would never again put out to sea, if only He would, just this once, let me reach harbor. I’m not a natural sailor, but a timid, weedy, cerebral type, never more out of my element than when I’m at sea.
The following is an example of varied texture from my book The Year of the Boat:
This seems counterintuitive, but small sailboats are generally slower than large ones. This is the only morsel of serious sailboat physics you’re going to get between these covers, but it’s fundamental to boat design and the transcendentalism of sailing, so listen: The top speed (in knots) of a displacement-hull boat—meaning one that has to push the water out of its way rather than planing over the surface—is equal to the square root of the waterline (in feet) times 1.34. My Zephyr’s waterline is only 12½ feet long. So no matter how much wind might be blowing, water resistance would limit this boat to:
√12.5 x 1.34 = 4.74 knots
Or, in dry-land numbers, 5 1/3 miles an hour. That’s it. Slower than Patty’s kayak, Sea Major. Slower than a pathetic-class weekend jogger. More evidence that what was painstakingly evolving under my sandpaper truly would be a toy, not a device useful for any practical or explicable function. But I recall paddling in the San Juans on a calm morning—the wind couldn’t have been more than a five-knot whisper—and overtaking a solo sailor lazing on the deck of a little sloop.
“Great day, isn’t it,” he called out as I passed.
“Great for paddling,” I replied. “Maybe not so much for sailing.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re not going to go anywhere fast.”
“Why would I want to go anywhere fast?”
And three examples of inversion of expectations, a vital tool in your box:
...Lisa had been voted “Most Likely to Succeed,” so it confused her to be ringing up gallon jugs of hearty burgundy.
—David Sedaris, “Repeat After Me”
A hermit crab lives in my house. Here in the desert he’s hiding out from local animal ordinances, at minimum, and maybe even the international laws of native-species transport. For sure, he’s an outlaw against nature. So be it.
—Barbara Kingsolver, “High Tide in Tucson”
Weekend campouts at Camp XXX were a cross between Animal House and Lord of the Flies. The fathers would hole up in a small cabin and drink and smoke. We Scouts would hole up in our tents and drink and smoke. We'd go for days without visible adult supervision. So when I was supposed to be learning how to read a compass or tie knots, I was in fact learning skills that would be useful if I were joining the Viet Cong.
—Knute Berger, “What I Learned as a Boy Scout”
