I’ve wanted to learn to sail for a number of years and planned to go to sailing school someday. Since I’m about to turn 60, I thought I’d give myself an early birthday present and go to WoodenBoat School in Brooklin, Maine, for their course in Elements of Seamanship. I had done some sailing with friends and liked it, but still wondered how this course would go.
New arrivals like me show up at WoodenBoat School’s Mountain Ash Student House down the road from the Brooklin General Store. I wander around trying to figure out what to do, find my room assignment, and drag in too much luggage.
Couples, singles, and children with parents sit around before supper, name tags on. I chat people up (you know, where you just approach people you don’t know from Adam). Makes you feel you’re back at freshman orientation or a high school dance.
Later there’s a group introduction led by director Rich Hilsinger. Among the 60 students are lawyers for wind projects (pro-wind, mercifully), salvage yard owners, retired corporate guys, schoolteachers, and database managers from California, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, and Nova Scotia. About 45 percent are returning alums; one-quarter of this week’s students are women.
Courses this week range from watercolor painting, to a ketch course, “Elements of Design,” “Building Radio Controlled Pond Yachts,” “Building an Annapolis Wherry” (a one-person rowing vessel), and a boat repair course that’s rebuilding Cinderella, a 25-foot sloop.
A student from Tennessee brings up aspects of why people come here. For some it’s stress relief-an adult summer camp, in a way. Boating is a great leveler, he says-people can share a love of boats regardless of their expertise; it might be sitting by the waterfront just looking at boats at sunset, talking and relaxing. It’s not always about getting somewhere.
My intro sailing course has an evening session at the boathouse. We meet instructors Annie Nixon, from Damariscotta, and Martin Gardner, from Venice, California, and learn to make a bowline, joking about the “bunny through the hole and around the tree” method. Everyone heads back to the dorm, campground, boats, or B&Bs for the night.
WoodenBoat School was founded by Jon Wilson in 1979 as an adjunct to WoodenBoat magazine. Wilson bought a 60-acre saltwater farm on Eggemoggin Reach, which had been vacant for nine years, converting it into a sprawling and well-organized operation in a spectacular setting.
There are seven people in our course-four teenagers; three adults. I’m more than a little surprised to have teenagers outnumber us. Some of these kids have taken this course before and know how to sail some and make spiffy knots. We older folks do some eyeball rolling as we’re being outshone by another generation in the knots department, and later, at the tiller.
Each day includes classroom time and plenty of hours on the water, both mornings and afternoons. The kids fidget and make knots obsessively while our instructors talk. After the indoor session, we grab life jackets and head to the Havens (Joel White-designed, 16-foot, gaff-rigged).
Annie, our instructor, demonstrates setting up the rig as we watch dockside. She smoothly sails away, circles back, makes a whisper-soft landing at the dock, takes the rigging down, buttons up the boat, and then says we now have to do the same thing in teams but shoot for the mooring. Right.
Off we go, me with Annie and two teenagers, to tack and jibe our way around the Reach. The instructors are great-clear, encouraging, and with senses of humor. And they really stress avoiding the ledges, not wanting us to wreck the school’s exquisite wooden boats.
Men attending and teaching here are very egalitarian. I got a small taste of a guy thinking I was a dopey rookie, however. Holding a chart of the Reach during the orientation, I had turned it upside down to orient it. A gent from behind me reached over my shoulder to turn my chart “right side up.” I turned to him to quietly say that I was orienting my chart (duh).
On my way back to the dorm, I stop in the workshops to see Cinderella and her restorers. All I see is the cabin roof on sawhorses so I ask, “Where’s the boat?” Jonas, a Swedish guy who lives in California, replies, “There’s no boat; just parts. We tell our girlfriends and wives there’s a boat but we just come and play with a bunch of pieces.” Really, I think, as they smirk and Jonas says, “C’mon. She’s out back.”
A big old hull with replaced floorboards, frames, some planking, and transom, Cinderella has patiently waited through four years of restoration with two more to go before her re-launch.
Next day, we do some chart reading and set out for Shoofly Ledge in rowboats. Instructors are in the motor launch in case anyone goes into the drink (none do). I’m rowing alone and two harbor porpoises breach near the tip of my oar-I hear the “whoosh” of their blowholes as they dive and resurface. I’m frozen in the moment, oars still.
The week is going by too fast-I’m having way too much fun and don’t want it to end. Three of us in the catboat finish a two-hour sail around the Babsons and grab the mooring, then spin around it way too many times after tying on-a mistake of holding the boom to stop it from swinging. Oops. (I love grabbing moorings and crawling around the small bow, so I volunteer to do it often.)
The high point of my week comes on the last day: a long afternoon sail around Bear and Black Islands without instructors-they surprise us with this plan, but follow our boats in the motor launch.
I’m paired with Carlos, who’s 14-a soft-spoken, methodical young man. Our instructors radio us to say, “Tighten the jib clew” or “Tack now!” My teenage crewmate and I are doing pretty darn well. This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever done as an adult besides learning to Telemark ski at 45.
I’m at the tiller when the breeze really picks up and the boat heels way over (yikes!). I fall off the wind, but get an adrenalin rush-that fine line between thrill and apprehension. Annie cheers me on from the launch alongside, shouting, “Look at you! Did you ever think you’d be doing this?”
Linda Hedman Beyus, when not in Maine, lives in Connecticut and is a regular contributor to Working Waterfront.