Sailing Boot Camp

This sailing boot camp is merciless.  It must be like the astronauts, learning to live in a zero-gravity environment. Well, not that extreme but I find I must quickly develop brand new skills in everything I do.

Lesson 1 – Learning How to Shower on a Moving Sailboat

The most effective way to shower is while sitting on the toilet. Otherwise you need a helmet, knee and elbow pads. The toilet seat has now become loose from the abuse.  Once you have almost mastered the skills of showering or peeing on a bouncing toilet, Sailing Camp raises the bar. How about you do all that but without the fresh water? No problem!  Now how about we increase the wind to 20 knots? Try again. Try again. No problem.

How about we throw the whole ship into the washing machine? Slosh-slosh-slosh to the right. Pause. Slosh-slosh-slosh to the left. Try again.

Our legs are adorned with mysterious blue patches and stripes. It takes a few days to figure out that the spray sunscreen and nautical navy-blue anchor bedding is a match made in heaven. Scrubbing my legs with a brush dipped in extra degraissant dish soap barely leaves a dent on my leopard-patterned legs. All that while sitting on a toilet with the loose seat in the bow of the boat. Yeee haaaaa yeeee haaaaa!

Lesson 2 – How to Cook on the Moving Sailboat

How about doing dishes by hand? How about with the ocean water? How about finding out that half a bottle of the extra degraissant detergent fell and spilled down the sink while everybody was distracted with the impending collision course of the fishing vessel? How about when the dishes are starting to slide down on the floor and the water spills from our improvised buckets? Catamarans are not supposed to heel, and you don’t need pot holders and gimballed stoves. Yeah and you are not supposed to believe everything people say. How about if we won’t let you open the hatches because the waves are spilling over the roof of the boat? Have I mentioned we are sailing in the tropics? It means HOT, VERY HOT.

How about baking a pizza in an oven that has a dial with markings not in Celsius, not in Fahrenheit, but “1,2,3,4”?

I have never been a big fan of omelets. This trip has revised that. The eggs from Tahiti taste heavenly in general but the mean omelets I whip out on the boat impress even me. Maybe it is the Ementaler cheese, maybe the irradiated long shelf-life milk, or maybe it is constant rocking of the boat while the omelet is cooking that gives it a perfect, gentle mixing; but the result is the best fluffy egg and cheese cloud.

I must learn to cook (and live) while being thrown at various doorknobs, corners, flaming jets of propane while stubbing my toes at the thresholds throughout the boat which results in regularly spewing some @%&*! words after the first shock of pain subsides.  Thanks to Pierre and Arnaud, we are also increasing our vocabulary with some of the best French technical terms to describe our various pains and frustrations while cooking, sailing, and in general.

Arnaud brings his own jam for breakfast. He is very proud that his girlfriend made it. We try to figure out which fruits it was made from but due to lack of mutual French and English vocabulary and no access to Google Translate, we come to an agreement that it contains ginger and Fruit of the Loom. Jim attempts to explain that Fruit of the Loom is the brand for underwear, but we don’t know the word for underwear in French and so we are at an impasse.

Every breakfast gets crowned with some toast (sans croute) and that famous Fruit of the Loom jam. Jim says that after all, it might be the fruit of the loin or something like that. I can’t help but wonder who eats all those croutons if every loaf of bread loses its crust before it is bagged. The saying “the best thing after sliced bread” should be revisited.

Lesson 3 – How to Sleep on a Moving Sailboat

Whatever it takes to keep you in bed.

Or on the deck.