Sailing Lessons

Sailing Lessons

Penn State University

University Park, PA

July 1977

During the summer of 1977, I was a senior at Penn State and I won a spot in the sailing class, one very popular option offered through the PE department.  Everyone wanted to take this course.  So the university had a lottery for this class. I won. And I was thrilled. I had great visions of learning how to sail and then taking off and sailing around the world on some National Geographic expedition.

There were 21 of us in the class. We were bussed out to a nearby lake and 20 of us were paired together.  There was one woman confined to a wheel chair, paralyzed below the waist.  She had a special sailboat, which was smaller, narrower, just big enough for one person.  She rolled her chair to the dock and fell forward into the hull of her boat. I admired her determination but worried about the fact that she sailed on her own. The rest of us sailed as partners.  We were to switch off roles of captain and crew.  Personally, I didn’t have any interest in being the captain. Crew was good enough for me.

Within five minutes of instruction, the class scared the hell out of me.  The boat sailed on its side a little to high for me.  The wind swept us up too quickly and I was overwhelmed. And maybe I should have been more forthright in letting my instructor know that I didn’t know how to swim.  But if I had told the truth, I wouldn’t have been eligible to join the lottery.  And I really didn’t plan to do any swimming in this class.  I had no intention of getting out of the boat at any time.

Anyway, the first class ended and I survived. I was scared but not enough that I didn’t come to the second class. I figured I would be a bit more confident now that I had experienced the worst of it. So I went to the next class. The instructor told us we had to take the boat out to the middle of the water and purposely overturn the boat, right it and get back in the damn boat. Several boats turned over immediately. I could hear people laughing. Some people were cursing.  But all of the boats were overturned but mine.  Even the wheelchair girl was in the water, righting her boat.  I was petrified and I wouldn’t do it.  The instructor called to my partner and me via megaphone, several times and told us to capsize. 

My partner begged me to help her turn the boat over.  And I begged her to paddle back to shore. “But I have a 4.0 GPA”, she cried, “I have to get an A in this course.”  I felt sorry for her but not enough surrender. “Get me back to the dock and I will tell the instructor that I am dropping this course right now.  I’m too afraid.”  She cried a little bit but we paddled in and she was assigned a new partner (the girl in the wheelchair) and I walked back shamefully to the bus, relieved that I was now out of danger.