Ahoy, Landlubbers

When I lived in Chicago, on summer days, I would often walk out to the end of Navy Pier and watch the boats go by. From that vantage point you could see people sailing past, having a grand time, free of the constraints of land. They were always out on a pleasant excursion, smiles on their faces, drinks in hand, away from the traffic and din of the city. Sometimes I would see a boat coming in from a trip across Lake Michigan and imagine that they had come all the way down from Canada. I totally romanticized sailing and longed for the day that I could be out there with those of like mind.
So it was one day I suggested to my brother Gary, that we go to a boat show in Michigan City, Indiana. I believe I had already decided that on that day, at that show, I would buy a boat. Buying a boat was something my brother hadn‘t planned on doing. With just a little deceit, and mild cajoling, I managed to talk my brother into buying a cute little twenty five foot sailboat with me. What I knew about sailing you could fit on the head of a pin. I had sailed a little Sun Fish sailboat around a small lake once, and read a book about sailing. I considered that to be quite enough experience to qualify me as a sailor.
When you ask friends to go sailing with you they get quite excited at first. What they don't know is that they are only along as deck hands or 'boat whores'. Our first outing on the new boat we had named, ‘Madonna Lila’, lasted only a few hundred feet past the harbor entrance. I had convinced my friend Dennis to come along as my 'boat whore', and everything seemed to be going well until I gave the order to hoist the sails. The light breeze and gentle swells that we had been dealing with inside the harbor suddenly turned into a gale with huge waves crashing over the bow as we exited the protection of the harbor. Every few seconds the boom would swing madly by in front of me and over to the side, affording me a quick glimpse of Dennis clinging for dear life to the bow of the boat. Really, all I remember was a lot of screaming and the rocks along the shore getting closer and closer. Most of the screaming was coming from me, as I was not a pillar of confidence in my sailing skills. We eventually got turned around, and beat it back behind the breakwater to safety, with Dennis still clinging to the bow like one of those figureheads on an old whaling ship.
I never did get the hang of sailing in a decent wind. Anything over five knots (six MPH) made me nervous, and the more the boat leaned over the worse I got. Most sailors like a stiff breeze, and will be quite comfortable with the boat speeding along and leaning over at a forty five degree angle. I just never could get over the feeling that sooner or later the boat would tip all the way over, and I would suffer the embarrassment of the Coast Guard rescuing me. Picking me out of the water while television helicopters hovered overhead, broadcasting my poor sailing skills to the world.
The ‘Madonna Lila’ now sits safely in my brothers back yard, and I understand he does take it out sometimes in the summer. Meanwhile I sit here in a city called the ‘Venice of America’, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with a smile on my face and a drink in my hand, firmly ensconced on dry land.