A Yarn About a Sailboat without a Mast

I will apologize ahead of time for the sailing jargon that is about to come your way, but without it, this yarn would have been difficult to spin.

Sailors spin yarns. Some spin grandiose yarns, and some retell the same stories over and over. What these yarns teach you is that in sailing the unpredictable and unexpected will occur. To prepare, you listen to experienced sailors as they spin yarns about troubles on the water. You ask questions. You read books about tales of ingenuity and feats of great character and resourcefulness. You may watch YouTube clips or browse the Internet in search of harrowing experiences. You can also pose situations to yourself and troubleshoot theoreticals. But to tell you the truth, nothing prepares you for an event as much as the event itself.

I had not been sailing in a while when a friend invited me to join him and the owner of the boat for a Sunday sail. While I was a bit nervous about predicted heavy winds, I thought, as I usually do, if the skipper is comfortable going out, then we will all be okay.

On my way to the clubhouse, I thought about the shiftiness of the wind, the lulls and gusts I saw cascading through the streets, causing flags in close proximity to fly in different directions. I figured that perhaps the buildings were causing interference.

As we set up the rigging, I worried about my already slightly queasy stomach on the big waves caused by a passing storm. Normally on days with larger waves, my stomach can throw a bit of a fit, so with a queasy stomach, I wondered how I would fare. I also planned for leaning over the side. One of the great things about sailing and being sick is that you have the water right there. No need to worry about a mess.

Finally, the four of us were off, the owner (a Frenchman), my friend (a British-Belgian), an experienced sailor (a Korean) who was at the helm, and myself (an American). All on board had more experience than I did, and the mix of languages being spoken among the crew was quite fascinating, sometimes instructions or observations were repeated three times, once in each language.

On this small keel, duties were as such: helmsman took the main, the owner took the jib, and the friend who invited me took the gennaker. My hands were empty, so I focused on shifting my weight with the gusts of wind and staying out of the way of working sailors.

I admired the setup of the rigging on the little Open 5.70. It could easily be single-handed, similar to a dinghy.

As we sailed further and further from the buildings and shore, the waves grew bigger, the sky a tad darker, and the wind slightly heavier. Gusts would come regularly putting more and more pressure on this small keel boat, but our helmsman kept us at a comfortable heel. We flew the gennaker to take on a little more speed.

“Watch the bowsprit as it works with the gennaker, and you will get to see the wonder that is carbon,” my friend directed me.

I watched the elasticity of the bowsprit as the wind hit the gennaker and the bowsprit curved, and I began to wonder what would happen if the bowsprit broke. It seemed like it could be slightly dangerous, but we would probably quickly drop the gennaker and take care of any issues which might accompany a flying bowsprit. I also decided that troubleshooting issues like this while underway might not be the best thing. Though emergency preparedness is important, I am also superstitious.

I shifted my attention from the bowsprit to the gennaker trim, watching as the sail curled ever so gently when properly trimmed. Trying to understand the amount of pressure that was on the sail. With every gust, the trimmer shifted and adjusted the sail trim, and you could hear the gennaker sheet groan as it moved through the blocks. I did not pay much attention to the mainsail or main trim. A flying yellow gennaker against a grey and darkening sky is quite poetic.

As I silently waxed poetic, happy that my stomach was behaving, we lunged over a wave. A gust caught our sails. We kept sailing, and the gennaker was adjusted to the wind. We all shifted in our seats. Another gust, another adjustment, another shift.

A stronger gust, the boat heeled. We started to adjust and shift.

“Crack!”

Within a split second after the gust, the sails we had been looking at lay in the water. The mast was down.

As quickly as it happened everyone grabbed something.

The owner grabbed the mast, trying to counterbalance its weight, and keep it from sliding completely into the water. I grabbed for the boom, not really sure what was going to happen but knowing that we had to hold on to the rigging.

As the rest of the crew communicated in a mix of French and Korean, I tried to understand how to help and pulled with the rest to try and get the mainsail out of the water.

As soon as the sails were down, and I saw the bare hull, I knew my stomach was doomed. With nothing to take my attention, and not wanting to get in the way, I was doing as told. I was not focused on more than holding a sail and confirming that yes, the mast had broken not just once but twice, preventing the mainsail from easy removal. The helmsman worked on getting the sail apart from the top fragment of the mast, and I sat there taking deep breaths trying to decide which direction I would yak when it finally came to that.

In the end, I turned around and retched off the side of the boat, not letting go of the sail, though there was not much pressure on it. As the skipper and crew salvaged the wreckage of a broken mast, I let loose the contents of my stomach into the seas outside of Busan.

After the retching episode, I did all that I could. I untied the cunningham as directed. I helped communicate that the lower part of the sail had to come up off of the mast rather than down. I did my best to watch the different things happening around me and help others stay safe. The scariest of which was in the maneuvering of the broken mast, the snarled middle part almost hitting the helmsman in the head. Finally, I helped get the furled jib back on the boat.

After we arranged the wreckage inside the hull on the starboard side, I sat in the middle of the boat and held onto the boom as we zoomed back to the marina with our little outboard motor.

No, zoom is not the right word, but we did slightly better than putter.

There was a brief discussion about a possible fuel shortage. A small container filled about a quarter of the way came out of the hold. None of us felt that was very promising, so further discussion resulted in two oars making an appearance. I was happy to see that while fuel planning might have been optimistic, other plans took being stranded out at sea a bit more seriously.

As we motored in, because I previously had considered sailing the ship solo, I asked myself, “How would I have dealt with this situation single-handedly?”

I don’t think it would have been impossible, but it would not have been as fast as this crew working together, of course.

Then my friend posed me a question, “What would you do [with a dismasted ship] if you didn’t have an outboard motor or oars?”

My immediate reaction, as I looked toward Haeundae Beach and all the buildings was that I would set off a flare, and then he clarified, “Out on the open sea, miles from land.”

In that moment, I could not wrap my head around the question. I just was not sure, but as he answered stating that you would have to salvage what you could and make due, I realized that yes, that is exactly what would need to happen. Get your wits about you, and set about troubleshooting and jerry-rigging your mast so you can have some kind of sail.

It just goes to show that if you are sailing on open water, you should have a toolkit and other spare things lying around that can help you in dire straits.

The Zoo in My Basement OR What Makes a Story**

I liked to tell stories. Stories that people would believe. Stories that others would help me construct as I gauged their reactions. In my book, I was not a liar. 

I lay on the bottom bunk in my friend’s room staring up at the bars that held his mattress in place. I shifted my attention to the dark blue flannel sheets which covered me. The stars on them nearly glowed as they reflected the night light.

My friend’s mom had told us to be quiet and go to sleep, but I was not ready for sleep. As I took in the smell of a foreign detergent on the sheets, I thought about my sheets at home, the cotton and polyester blend which was so much cooler and smoother than these, and I waited for the right moment to speak.

Thinking about the mystery that lay hidden in that basement, I could not hold it in any longer.

“Hey, are you still awake?”

“Yes.”

“I was just thinking about the basement of Room 10.”

Sometimes we would use Room 10 as a shortcut to the yard at the back of the Motel. I knew my friend had seen the dusty, wooden stairs leading to a dark void, but he probably had never ventured down them.

Usually accompanied by my father, I had. 

“There’s a secret room in the basement. It has an orange light.”

So far, I had not strayed from truth. The steep, cobwebbed stairs led to a room filled with gas-lit furnaces and water heaters. The room smelled industrial, like steel pipes mixed with water and heat. Near the bottom of the stairs was a shelf which organized the letters for the motel sign. Usually, that was as far into the basement as I got, grabbing letters for the sign. But earlier that week, I had seen more.

I found a cellar or bomb shelter, an ill-lit, hidden compartment in the basement. This hidden room got my imagination churning. What was it for? Why was it there?

“A secret room?”

“Yeah. We have animals in there.”

“Really?”

I could hear by the tone in his voice that I had his interest, but he did not quite believe me.

“What kind of animals?”

“There’s a pony.”

I always wanted a pony when I was a child, so it made sense to start there.

“A pony?”

“Yeah, it’s a really big room. So big, I couldn’t see the end of it. There’s a pony and a couple horses.”

“What else is there?”

This time, I felt I was losing him. Horses? Ponies? This was a boy I was talking to, and his tone told me that he was not going to be that interested unless I upped the danger factor.

“There’s a gorilla.”

“A gorilla?! What? Wow!”

Now I had him, and as I continued to craft my underground zoo, I envisioned it in my head.

“Yes, a gorilla. And …” picturing what I knew about the jungle and wild animals, “And, a lion.”

“A lion? Wouldn’t he eat all the other animals?”

“No. It’s like a zoo. All the animals are kept separate. The zebras are together. The giraffe is …”

“There’s a giraffe?!” Neither of us had ever seen a giraffe. Our local zoo did not have them. Even the large zoo in the closest major city only had one, and it was mostly kept out of view.

Now, I had gone almost too far with the story. I had captivated him with details that begged to be shown off. I should have predicted what would come next.

“I want to see it! I want to go to the zoo in the basement of the Motel! Can you show me? Can we play with the animals?”

My friend raised his volume to a point where I almost shushed him. I was afraid his mom would come in. She was not the kind of mom you wanted to come in to tell you a second time to be quiet. Her stern voice always made me feel guilty before I could even process what I had done wrong. Thinking quickly, to avoid ruining my storytelling experiment, I countered his proposal with the end of my story.

“You can’t visit the zoo because the animals aren’t there anymore. There was a big flood in the basement …” I had heard of basements flooding, but I had never seen such an event. “Anyway, all the animals had to be moved out. Now there’s just a big empty room. No more animals. No more zoo.”

“Oh man.” Even in his disappointment, I could tell that his mind was still buzzing with the questions, the plausibility of this story.

As we both fell asleep that night, my friend probably dreaming of an underground zoo, I reveled in the satisfaction of a story well told. While I had walked close to the line, he had not once called me out and said I was telling a story. He believed my story, and this meant I had done a good job.

I firmly believed that a good story came from a captive audience, one which could give feedback about the believability of my stories. This kind of feedback only came from an audience which did not know if I was telling a story or not, I never told my listeners I was telling a story. That would take away the spark of imagination, the excitement of possibility, the line between believable and not.

The next week would show that the adults in our lives did not think this way. To his mom, I was a liar, spinning unbelievable tales and taking advantage of the goal-ability of her child. I was a liability. If I could tell this kind of a lie, what was next? I can only imagine the conversation which occurred between my mother and her.

Afterwards, at home, my mom asked, “Did you tell your friend that there used to be a zoo in the basement?”

“Yes, but it was a story.”

“He didn’t know it was a story. If people don’t know you are telling a story, it’s a lie.”

“But, if people know it’s a story, it’s not as fun to tell.”

This was not the last story I told. The next time my mother was much more firm, and I stopped telling fictional stories for good.

**As a note about this story. I do not remember the exact dialog or layout of my friend’s room. Some details may have been extracted from other memories or embellished to tell a better story. Please do not think this makes me a liar.