your pants are on fire! I'm kissing your wife!

Once upon a time, I took some sailing lessons and learned how to handle a sailboat. We started out on small boats under 30 feet and by the end of the 8 days I was chartering and skippering (as I recall) 35-40 foot boats. Nice ones with heads and radios and depth sensors and steering wheels and everything.

But after a while, I stopped doing it. I figured out why a couple days ago: I was always the one organizing things, and I always sailed out of Santa Cruz, which is a little far for me, and I had to skipper, and I never did manage to make a voyage without someone getting seasick. Mostly, I just got tired of organizing the trips (of course, organizing did not actually include "doing something" -- we mostly just sailed There And Back, which was fine with everyone on the boat). Skippering wasn't bad, and the drive to SC was actually usually fun. But finding people to sail and coordinating schedules is something I seem to find myself doing more often than I'd like, which is to say, more often than never.

Last wednesday, I went drinking with sailors, as it seems I now tend to do. After all, if I'm going to go drinking, why not go drinking with sailors? We swore and cussed and started some bar fights, and one of them asked me why I didn't sail anymore. At the time I had not had the chance to cogitate fully on the question, so my reply lacked the considered nuance of the above, and was: "I dunno."

So the sailor, who is co-owner of a boat, and whom we shall call M, invited me to sail with her in Friday's beer can race at the South Beach marina in SF. A beer can race is a semi-formal race where people with boats race, with big giant flaming scare quotes, "just for fun". At the time I accepted I couldn't see the scare quotes, but it wouldn't have mattered -- if they wanted to throw their race away on a newbie sailor, that was their choice. I wanted to sail. I accepted the next day after "thinking about it," which is to say, asking hops if I was busy on Friday.

My coworker and beer buddy D captains the boat, which is a J24 (note: I am not on the pictured boat). A J24 is 24 feet long and good for just about one thing: racing. Okay, maybe with some determination and creativity it could be used for other stuff, but as far as I know, M's boat is used pretty much only for racing. It has a sink but the head is 3 miles offshore.

The boat was on a trailer on Treasure Island and we lowered it into the water with a crane. I am glad I do not own a boat that has to be lowered by crane into the water, I think I'd have to change into my brown pants every time I did that. Maybe you get used to it. I dunno. I tried to be as helpful as I could, but I've been a newbie before at various things, and I happen to know that the #1 rule of newbism is "help, or get the hell out of the way", so I tried to not get in the way of the people who knew what the score was.

On land, that's easy. On a 24 foot boat under "normal conditions" there's not much running around even if you're not a newb with only one job.

The other crew members were A (also part owner) and Smart, which I thought was a pretty kickass nickname until I realized, once we'd finished the race, it was actually his surname, which is why my nickname is not "Smart". Smart had 3 trips on the boat under his belt, and suffered a promotion on my behalf. Since I was a rank newbie, I had only two jobs, one of which was to help launch and douse the spinnaker, and one of which was not. Now, if I'd done my job like the folks in those sculptures, I'd surely have been yelled at or worse. My job was to hang my legs out and my cheeks way over the side of the boat, not cozy my back up to the lifelines. There were five of us on the boat, and most of the time, 4 of us were lined up like ass cracks, "comfortably" reclining on the deck with as much of our mass off the boat as possible.

Now, I was told before I even set foot on the boat that Rule #1 was "stay on the boat". Later there was a discussion of the technical limits of this rule, and whether having an ankle touching the lifeline whilst dangling everything else into the bay to retrieve a GPS was still in compliance with Rule #1. I'd say the conclusion was: for A, yes. For me, no.

I did comply with Rule #1 for the entire trip. I'm a law and order type of guy.

My job of helping launch and douse the kite was pretty easy, as jobs go, although there is the usual sailboat confusion of which bleeding sheet am I supposed to be pulling, and oh shit i'm pulling the wrong end of it, and son of a motherless goat, i'm pulling the right end of it but now I'm pulling it the wrong fargen direction. But I think I'm over that now and next time I'll get it right the first time. Everything on the boat has to be done as fast as possible, which is really not fast enough. That doesn't make figuring out which end of which sheet to pull in which direction any easier. But I can't complain: Smart went from having one sheet to pull to having a bunch.

That reminds me: when I got invited I figured all my fancy sailing knowledge of which sheet to pull in which direction would be utilized. I was a little disappointed when I heard revision one of my responsibilities (which turned out not to be what I was doing, but did involve exactly as much sheet pulling as I eventually did). As it turns out I am lucky I had such a wise captain who didn't have me do much.

The difference between cruising and racing is: adrenaline. On a cruising boat, at certain moments, like during a tack or a jibe or setting a sail, things have to be done quickly, but otherwise, you find a nice deck chair and relax, enjoy the sun, have a sip of your beverage, talk with your crewmates, and so forth. If the boat starts to heel a little, you trim your sails or change your point of sail. You might have to shake the drops off your waterproof sailing jacket when you get back to shore.

On a race boat, you (well, "you" the newbie) hang on for dear life and try not to swallow too much of the bay, have no idea where the heck the boat is going or when it's about to tack (okay, towards the end I was beginning to figure it out), scramble in terror to the high side of the boat when it turns out the side you're on is going low (more on this in a moment!) hang on for dear life (did I mention that already? I have bruises in both armpits from clinging on to the lifelines. nice!), joke a little with the crew when your mouth isn't full of bay. If the boat starts to heel a little (ha! when the boat starts to heel a lot) you hang your ass way over the side and hope the captain knows what he's doing and won't dunk you. When you get back to shore, you'd better hope you brought a change of clothes.

When my main job was explained to me, I thought I was being told a joke. All sailboats have a rail and a lifeline. The rail is the little lip around the edge of the deck upon which, if you were running from one side of the boat to the other, you would stub your toe and be catapulted into the Pacific. This is where the lifeline comes in. The lifeline is a sturdy cable that runs above the rail at shin level around the boat, suspended by sturdy metal posts. On a cruising boat, its job is to keep you on the boat when you stub your toe on the rail. On the J24 its job is a bit different.

In my sailing class, they told us repeatedly: do not hang on to the lifeline, it will not keep you from going over the side. There are other things on the boat that you should hold on to, namely, the mast or the shrouds (cables that keep the mast in place). These are built to withstand tremendous forces, the sort of forces that you simply cannot generate yourself, so unless the mast is broken, in which case you're seriously boned anyways, you should be safe holding on to them. The lifelines, in contrast, are built to withstand much smaller forces (D said 500lbs, which, I pointed out, I could easily exceed by falling).

But on a race, the lifelines have to be used. Due to my previous programming, this was scary but necessary (getting to that). By the end of the race I was convinced that it was plenty safe, as safe as any part of racing, which is to say, terrifyingly unsafe (at one point in the race I thought to myself: wow, this is probably the most terrifyingly unsafe thing I've ever done in my life, which I guess means I've led a pretty boring life).

Okay, finally, on to my job description, which I thought was a joke. From my sailing class I remembered the basics of tacking (turning the boat into the wind): the skipper/captain says, "ready to come about", the one guy besides the skipper who has something to do readies himself and says "ready", everyone else gets out of the way and says "ready". The skipper says, "helms alee" and comes about, the one guy adjusts the headsail, and everyone gets back to relaxing. That's not how it's done on a J24 in a race. My job, when the skipper says "ready to come about", was to prepare myself by steadying my foot against the 3/4" rail, turning and facing the lee side of the boat, which was most likely slightly underwater, and when the captain came about, launching myself as fast as I could, on my belly, across the deck to the other side, which, if the skipper and Other Guy (trimmer) did their jobs correctly, would then be the high side of the boat, which meant I was sliding uphill (!) and grasping desperately for the lifeline above me, or which, if there was a screwup (there never was, this trip) meant I just launched myself downhill into the ocean. Once I'd slithered at As Fast As I Can speed across the deck, under the moving boom, I was to get up into a sitting position and hang my mass out of the boat to counter the heel. All this with no shoulder/arse clearance on either side, in the span of 2 seconds.

I wouldn't say I got good at it on this trip, but I did get a fair amount of practice, it being really my only job on the boat (aside from avoiding getting hit in the head by the boom, which I failed at twice). Several times I mislaunched due to foot-rail contact failure, and let me tell you, scrambling up a heavily heeled boat on my belly with no traction anywhere and the captain yelling "FASTER FASTER FASTER" sure is a lot of fun. No, really, it kind of is. Except for when I banged my knee. And my shin. And my hip. And my elbow. And cut my hand. And banged my knee again. And my other shin.

Everyone on board but me had sailing gloves (M still got a cut on her hand, it just happens). M and Smart had kneepads to help with the belly sliding. I now have sailing gloves but the folks at the PA West Marine must sail on something bigger than a J24 because they had no idea why I'd want knee pads.

I can't complain much about my job. For 3 trips that's all Smart had to do, but this trip, he had to do that, help me with doing that, and also help trim the sails, which, at one point, he was not doing quickly enough, and the captain, in a moment of motivational genius, shouted "I'm kissing your wife!!" after "faster! faster!" had failed to speed up Smart's actions, and "your pants are on fire!" had likewise failed.

After we had arrived early at the starting point, we did a couple of warmup maneuvers. On our very first warmup tack, someone flubbed up and I found myself hanging off the side of the boat (as I should have been) up to my armpits in the bay. Fun times! I seem to recall that I was not the one who flubbed up, though technically I suppose I did, since Rule #0 is "stay on the high side of the boat" and by definition, with my ass in the water, I was on the low side of the boat. It only got more adrenalinic from there.

This was the crew's first time sailing in this area and they were not familiar with the water, the markers, or the route. They weren't foolishly unprepared, either, and since we had 3 excellent sailors on board, we managed to come in 5th out of 10 in our class even though at multiple points the crew admitted we had no idea what route we were on, whether we were in the race, whether that thing up there was the marker we were supposed to head toward, whether we were following people who were in the race, or in our group, or what planet we were on, not to mention whether or not pants were or were not actually on fire.

In the end, it was simultaneously more fun and more injurious than any sailing I've done before. I got invited back (no, no date was set, so I dunno when it will be). I learned quite a lot (example: change of shoes goes in gear bag, not with wife). Most importantly, I followed Rule #1 (even when it wasn't easy) and Rule #2: have fun.