A Mariner’s Able Crew

I sailed every fair weather weekend from 1972 to 1980. That was my parents gift to themselves and to me.

This morning I was working out titles for digital wallpaper collections. Random namings thrown together. Truffle hunting for metaphors. Clever Capstans came to mind. This set off a series of associations from those days. Without fail, I tacked to searching on the internet for basic sailing terminology. Didn’t take long to become nostalgic, nor to explain a couple things.

For eight years, I was part of a crew. I know the stages of preparing for a sailing afternoon, launching the boat, navigating out of a narrow, shallow channel, handling any wind conditions we could safely navigate and returning safely to sail again the next weekend. And I did it under the tutelage of two mariners, trained in the art of sailing by arguably the mightiest sailing tradition the world has known since antiquity.

“Standby to come about” and “the helm’s alee” are two moments in a sailors day every crew member and passenger must understand. And you must understand them according to your role. On a 17-foot (5m) craft, the stakes are you get tossed in the river with a helluva thump on your noggin. It could be worse, a concussion, or trapped beneath a capsized boat, tangled in a sail. Which is why your best chances of success + fun = sailing with US Navy trained personnel.

A “tack” is the direction a sailing vessel takes towards her goal. Sailboats, of any description, ever, cannot sail directly into the wind. You can get close, hence “close to the wind”, but not directly. Therefore, if your destination lies in the direction of the wind, that is, “windward”, your strategy is to “beat to windward”, “close hauling” in one direction then “close hauling” on the other side of the wind, the other direction, to approximate progress to your goal. You zig-zag across the water. This action is called “tacking”.

“Coming About” is the term used to change directions. When a sailboat “comes about” the boat turns, the sails flutter and, if the maneuver is successful, the crew arranges the sails on the other side of the boat and you are underway again. You have changed tacks. The sum of the tacks is how you get to your windward destination.

If you read around the web about sailing terminology, specifically in my journey this morning, about “sailing tacks”, you run across variations in the two commands a boat captain calls to the crew and passengers to change ship directions. And my two teachers, my parents, had the historical, operational and leadership chops to come to a working agreement with anyone on the planet about what those terms should be, when to use them and then orchestrate the movements of crew and passengers. They were literally qualified to operate a navy.

Insight Number One: Team sports in high stakes games. This is my heart and soul of home, of belonging. History, operations, leadership. These are major building block of civilization. Technology is not enough. Vital, critical, decisive in some cases, but not enough. Experience, knowhow is not enough. Vital, critical, decisive even. But not enough. You need leadership as well. A vision of what could be. A “beautiful lie”, an untruth, because it is an imagining of a time and circumstance in the future, of something that has not happened yet. There is no truth involved. There is only belief. And what is that belief based on? Fear or love? Terror or Light? Also not always enough. But vital, critical, often decisive.

Insight Number Two: Don’t sail if you can’t communicate. If you are having troubles in relationships, any relationships, make sure your communications are sound. That everyone understands their roles and the associated behaviors. Make sure they are willing and able to do those jobs. On a small sailboat, our guests, as our passengers, were basically told the following: “standby to come about” means “get ready to duck, lower your head, because the boom is about to swing hard across the boat.” “The helm’s alee” means “duck!”

Failures in communications are a limiting factor in team sports. So add that to the necessary building blocks of a civilization.