No Short Trips

As Brion Toss once said, there are only three types of sea-faring sailors­—dead, novices, and pessimists.

Story by Moxie Marlinspike

Sailing is unlike almost any other activity, in that one does not come into sailing with apprehension and slowly graduate to comfort with experience. Just the opposite. Sailors who are really good, know everything about boats, and have thousands of hours at sea are continually and unshakably terrified while on the ocean. Not because they don’t know what they’re doing, but because they know the ocean so well as to fear it deeply, regardless of how conditions may initially appear. Novices, on the other hand, usually proceed with an affect which is considerably more blithe. As Brion Toss once said, there are only three types of sea-faring sailors­—dead, novices, and pessimists. I knew this, but not well enough.

My friend Fritz and I had recently come into a small 15-foot Hobie cat. We didn’t really have a place to keep it, so we resolved to try anchoring it out. The idea being that we’d see whether we could set up a semi-permanent anchor mooring close to shore to keep it on, and then just paddle a windsurfing board out there every time we wanted to sail it. In the meantime we’d parked it, on top of a trailer, in a random Bayview side-street.

After work one day, we both hurried down to the boat launch with plans to get the Hobie cat anchored out. We had two anchors, and the strategy was for me to sail the Hobie cat out with one anchor, while Fritz would row the Sea Louse out with the other anchor. The sun was about an hour away from setting, and it seemed a little windy, but we were really only traveling 200 yards over to drop the anchor, and the wind didn’t seem that terrible.

I sailed off the dock, around the pier, and into view of the anchor spot. As soon as I came out from behind the protection of the pier, I was hit with the full force of the wind, and realized for the first time that it was probably blowing a strong 20 to 25 knots. The Hobie cat was incredibly light, and was moving amazingly fast, but was also fairly difficult to maneuver in those conditions. I immediately realized that the wind was too strong for our operation, and decided to head back to intercept Fritz.

I had mis-rigged part of the Hobie cat, and as a result it took me a while to get it turned around. Before I could head back, Fritz came rowing around the pier, was suddenly hit by the entire strength of the wind, and was blown out into the bay. I sailed past him and suggested that we should just head back, but he was having trouble rowing steadily, and after a few more passes, it was clear that he wasn’t making much headway. I began to get worried that the sun would set, that he’d get blown out into the bay in the dark, and that nobody would be able to find him since he didn’t have a light.

The wind was howling relentlessly, and the sun was already nudging below the horizon. Seeing that things were beginning to get serious, I tacked over with the intention of picking Fritz up and either towing or abandoning the Sea Louse. As I was shifting my weight over from the tack, a huge gust of wind hit the boat and instantly capsized it. The suddenness of it was unbelievable, as if I was on a tiny model made of paper which someone had simply flicked with their finger; I didn’t even have time to register that it was happening. I landed in the water, felt the shock of intense cold run through my system, and gasped as I clambered onto one of the overturned hulls. The wind was blowing so hard that it effectively pinned the boat down, preventing me from righting it, and eventually turtling it completely.

In disbelief, I took stock of where this simple operation—moving a small boat 200 yards—had left me. My phone was dead from the initial water impact, I could see Fritz way off in the distance but didn’t know if he could see me, there were no other boats out on the water, no other people on shore, and the last bit of twilight was beginning to fade. I had a lifejacket, but was wearing soaked cotton clothing and had no light or radio. Even if there had been anyone around, yelling would have been useless, as the wind would have immediately scattered my cries.