Subjects that you will learn at the optometry course

The core subjects covered in the curriculum include life sciences, optics and visual science, anatomy and physiology of vision, causes of illness, and vision and optometric sciences. After…

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Learning to Sail a Brigantine

Seasick, check. Learned to sail. Nope, but caught some tuna.

I was jarred awake by sudden bounce and a spray of salt water. The easy roll that had lulled me to sleep was now a thudding slap against white caps. It took me a moment to remember where I was. I’d slept soundly for the first time in 72 hours. The dawn sun was glinting off the water beading on the teak deck. Oh right. I’m on the Kaisei, sick as a dog, two days’ sail from Guam in the middle of the empty Pacific.

I could feel the bow rise high out of the water, pause, then smack the swelling waves. I clipped on my safety harness and stood up, and was tossed forward in two giant steps, like when a bus driver maliciously takes off before you’ve made it to your seat. I grabbed onto the rail. Surprisingly, my stomach didn’t lurch along with my body. Maybe I was getting my sea legs. One can only hope in these situations.

The storm clouds raced over head. Water crashed onto the deck. The salt water stung my eyes. I hung onto a rail near the main mast and rode the deck.

Spend three days learning to crew a tall-masted, square-rigged brigantine — the kind of ship that carried 19th-century explorers. Join an international crew in an environment with no political or social boundaries; share the pleasures, hardships and camaraderie of life at sea. Sail training, as it’s called. Teach sailing with none of today’s push-button ease.

I was living on Guam and writing for a local newspaper when the owner of this particular brigantine called up looking for someone to join the crew and write about it.

“Not me,” I told my editor. “I get impressively seasick. I stand on a dock and my stomach flips.”

“But you’re the only one with time to do this,” she implored.

I tried to beg off but my editor egged me on, “just have dinner with him. We owe him that at least.”

This is exactly how I get myself into these torturous situations. Dinner. A glass of wine. A charming man. Flattery. A challenge.

“Okay,” I heard the words come out of my mouth over said dinner the next night. “I’ll give it a go.”

I had never sailed a day in my life.

180 tons, 151 feet, two ginormous 100-foot masts, 15 sails and more than 100 lines. Only its navigation equipment and engine (for motoring into ports) is modern. The accommodations: spartan. Six- and eight-berth quarters with bunk beds.

I stepped gingerly aboard, waiting for the tell-tale signs that my ear and stomach were not communicating. I am well aware of the false sense of hope I have developed over the years: this time will be different, I believe. I love water. I love swimming in it, diving into it, boating on it, eating the stuff that comes from it. The salty smell of the ocean immediately transports me to ship decks with beautiful people wearing striped cotton sweaters — Jackie and Jack, windswept hair, smiling on the back of the sailboat. Alas, Jackie’s poise eludes me as I typically am the one bent over the railing barfing in the photo.

But what is this? No ‘uh-oh’ moment? No sweat or overactive saliva glands? Could it be? Could this be my first sail without mal de mer?

I threw my knapsack into a small locker and took a big inhale of the salty air. Still standing. Good sign. We were immediately summoned for our first lesson. Easy: Remember your team number and fall in line. We got a quick rundown on the sails and their ropes. We learned the basic knots and the “heave-ho” needed to hoist the sails. No winches here.

No sooner had we digested the ins and outs of ropes and sails than we were donning harnesses. I suspect the crew kept us pondering the difference between a topsail and a staysail so we wouldn’t notice that we were about to climb a 100-foot mast.

But up we went. Joking, I asked the instructor which would be better should we fall, a cannonball or dive. “Neither, unless you’re planning to commit suicide,” she said, with a drill sergeant’s humor. I began climbing up the side of the mast on a worryingly flimsy rope ladder. Aha, those junior high gym classes were coming in handy, more than I can say for algebra.

“Keep climbing,” I heard from below.

“How far?” the guy ahead of me leading the pack smartly yelled back.

“All the way up.”

I looked up. There were at least 40 feet ahead of me, and about that much behind me by.

At the first (of three) platforms, the leader scrambled onto the teeny tiny deck. Think Jack Sparrow hanging on the mast and you’ve got the picture. Only now I had to bend backward, grab blindly for the ladder rung above me somewhere atop the platform and, defying gravity, hoist myself onto it.

My options were humiliation or grab-and-hoist. I grabbed and hoisted. This is another way I get myself into trouble. I hate humiliation.

Exhilarated, heart pumping, I glanced around. Holy crap. And now I had to take one (psychologically) giant step into midair to the yard arm laid out before us.

Palms sweating, I clipped my waist harness hitch — that mere placebo of security — to the yard arm cable. If I fell, I would be dangling from my waist, held by one contemptuously small clip attached to one very thin cable.

With a gulp, I stepped onto the rope strung below the yardarm. I reflexively glued my body around that yardarm and clung tight, like a cat taking to ground. Knees really do knock when you’re terrified. And there I stayed, swaying with the ship — which at that height is not an insignificant sway. Some of my crew mates had the moxie to appear relaxed.

After a few minutes, my fear began to subside and my legs became stronger. I cautiously straightened up. Before me was a vastness of blue, blue, and more blue. I have never felt so inconsequential.

A cry went up. Our job was to do something or other with the rigging to unfurl the sails. I was too focused on staying alive to hear. I feigned looking busy while my braver mates untied things and actually sat on the yard arm.

After what seemed like eternity, we were called back down to deck. My crewmates were giddy with adrenaline. I was thankful for semi-solid ground.

Off to work we went, tying knots and heaving ropes. It was about then that my stomach decided the five-alarm survival drill that had preoccupied my brain was over and it was time to take charge again. I ran to the edge. After a few heave-hos, I turned back, embarrassed, as my crewmates kindly looked away.

“Everyone gets sick, don’t worry about it,” Carol, one of the instructors, said.

Uh-huh, I thought. Not like me, they don’t.

At first the crew ignored my seasickness. I bent over to tie knots or untie knots. Stood up. Puked over the rail. I heaved the python-sized ropes along the deck. Stood up and puked. They sent me below deck to peel potatoes. I bolted up the stairs, out the door, and to the railing. I lunged about like a cross-eyed drunk, unable to even see straight. I opted to sleep standing up as lying in a berth as the boat rolled and creaked was not in the cards. At least I was getting good a knowing whch way the wind was blowing.

By day two, as I was contemplating how far the swim would be to the faint island in the distance, the crew began to take pity. Carol brought me bananas and let me take a break from attempting to wash potatoes below deck in the close, hot mess.

“Stay above deck,” she said. “Sleep up top if you like. It’ll make you feel better.”

They put me at the helm, thinking that staring at the horizon would help. Steering a lumbering ship is like trying to adjust the hot and cold water in a temperamental shower. Turn too far and you’re scalded, which makes you over-correct, and now you’re in an ice bath. Same with a ship. The big oaf responds slowly to a sweep of the wheel. You must adjust to its pace, not it to yours. Sense the timing. Wait. Correct. Wait again.

This I could do.

I’d taken Carol’s advice and slept on deck, eating my bananas and watching the stars blink on. The smell of salt air in the tropical night, clouds scudding past the golden moon, the boat creaking and slapping the water — simple beauty.

I was at the helm on the third morning, when the cook, binoculars in hand, began yelling and jumping and pointing. He had spied a school of tuna running off our leeward side, their yellow fins slicing through the blue. Dinner! With the Kaisei’s cruising speed of four knots, the tuna had us beat, though we did manage to catch two for a little sashimi that evening.

Giving up the helm, I climbed atop to my deck-top perch. As I lay watching the waves march past like noontime pedestrians, I noticed dark clouds gathering in the distance. The storm was moving fast, right toward us. Cries went up. Sails began snapping, and with a whoop from the helmsman, the Kaisei doubled its speed, skimming the surface. Before I could pull on my oilskins, the rain burst was over and the sun was shining through again.

Barefoot and soaked, I climbed back to my perch to watch the storm travel on. The deck was glossy with rain, the air invigorated. I sat alone under a snapping sail, the sun drying my clothes, saltwater stretching my skin taut, enjoying the sweet tartness of a persimmon.

I’d fallen asleep, finally, the first good sleep since boarding when I was awakened by the wind. The rain began to pelt me as I clipped on my harness and pulled on the oilskins. Carol came by.

“Are you buckeled in?” I nodded.

“Enjoy the ride,” she said as she and the crew began to trim the sails.

The ship reared up to meet a huge wave and then down into its trough, a trough so deep we disappeared between the waves. Up again, and over. I hung on, blinking the water out of my eyes. We tilted far to the side. I held my breath. Then righted ourselves. The sky above was black, tinged with a sickly yellow. The trainees were all below deck. The professionals were doing this one. They had no time to care about me.

But just like that, it was done. The hysterics the sky had pitched were over. The storm had passed. Carol threw me a mop. The deck needed some TLC.

Later that afternoon, Guam appeared on the horizon. To approach an island slowly from the sea, to see it gradually forming out of the mist, green amid the blue, is to comprehend its languor in a way not possible for those who drop from the air with a bump. As it grew, it gathered itself into the shape I now knew so well. Thirty-five miles long, ten miles wide. Home. By noon, I could make out the village on its southern end. By two o’clock, we were docking.

As the harbor neared, we kicked into full gear, dousing sails and coiling ropes. My crewmates climbed out on the bowsprit to ride into port, bobbing like fishing corks as the jibs came down. Me, I stood with my rucksack at my feet near the gangplank.

Rex, my husband, was waiting for me on land. My crewmates lingered aboard, reluctant to say goodbye to the adventure. I threw my bag into our sand-carpeted Toyota and stopped to kiss the ground.

I wrote the story, and over drinks with the owner, he said, laughing, “It’s only a small portion of people who don’t get their sea legs by the third day. I guess you’re lucky.” Yep, that’s me. The lucky few.

To this day I proudly carry the Kaisetravei’s laminated sail record in my wallet. And I have never voluntarily set foot on a sailboat again.

Subjects that you will learn at the optometry course

Learning to Sail a Brigantine

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