Sally Goes Sailing

I haven't felt much like writing about my life lately--when I'm not enjoying the good parts I'm too busy working through the less good parts to take the time to write about the good bits. But when you have a story to tell, well, it has to get out. That's what happened here.

When I was a little girl, my mom would tell me "Polly Stories" about things that happened to her when she was growing up. One was a story in which Polly gets sick of people making jokes about her nickname and asks to be called by her proper name. Whenever that was in her life, I always felt like calling herself Polly in the stories let me be closer to her--Polly was a little girl just like me. When I got older, I looked forward to telling my own children and/or nieces and nephews Sally stories (though the nickname Sally was even more short-lived than Polly had been). 

So, without further ado, and with a few bigger words than I would use for a kid, here is my first Sally story--based on real events, with all the usual caveats that go along with that phrase. 

~~~

Once upon a time (in 2004), in a state far, far away (Florida), a little New England family escaped from a harsh winter up north and rented a white sailboat to take in the beautiful Gulf Coast islands. They spent their days sailing under the direction of Captain Dad, with First Mate Mom and First Cabin Girl Sally manning the ropes (which were called “lines”) and the sails (which had several names). In the afternoons they went swimming and snorkeling in the glassy-clear water with the Second and Third Cabin Girls, Becca and Kathy, and in the evenings they read and played cards and laughed together. They lunched on extra-pickley tuna sandwiches, juicy oranges, and spicy ginger beer, and they snacked on a few M&Ms at a time (with pauses to comment on the ratio of colors they’d happened to grab). They tanned while they swam and sailed and combed the beaches, and they sang “A Pirate’s Life for Me” several times a day at First Cabin Girl Sally’s insistence.

 You see, Sally loved stories about the high seas. She could (and did) recite the whole Pirates of the Caribbean movie from memory, she kept a scrapbook of newspaper articles about shipwrecks and sunken treasure, and she knew how to make grog even if she would never, ever drink it. But these were just the latest in her list of sailing story loves. Her favorite book was The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Ever since she’d read it in fourth grade, Sally had dreamed of having a high-seas adventure. Sailing in the peaceful Florida waters wasn’t quite what she wished for, but she was practical enough to know that this might be the closest she’d ever get, and made sure she enjoyed every minute of it.

One night there was a storm. It wasn’t anything like the awful hurricanes Sally had read about: Captain Dad and First Mate Mom heard the weather report on the radio, pulled out the maps, and sailed the boat to a sheltered little cove where they could anchor, with a dozen other boats, on a secure permanent mooring. First Cabin Girl Sally and Second Cabin Girl Becca hung over the bow of the boat with a long hook to catch the rope on top of the mooring buoy and helped Captain Dad tie it securely to the boat.

Even though they were sheltered from the worst of the waves, the white sailboat still jolted and juddered all night, the wind whistled through the lines, the rain beat down on the deck overhead, and clips clattering. Third Cabin Girl Kathy slept, but no one else did. The worst of it was a metal clanging, uneven in the wind and rain and loud enough to wake a whale. Finally, in the middle of the night, First Cabin Girl Sally heard Captain Dad open the hatch and climb out into the rain, where he thumped about on deck. A few lines rattled, then the clanging went silent. Captain Dad came back down and explained, while he dried off with a beach towel, that one of the big metal clips used to haul up the mainsail had been banging against the aluminum mast. He’d moved the clip, and now the noise from the storm outside was even and regular enough that the rest of the family could get to sleep.

The air smelled clean after the night’s rain when First Cabin Girl Sally climbed up out of the hatch with her tea the next morning. Captain Dad and First Mate Mom had mopped the benches dry with towels and were nursing their coffees while they read.

“I’m so glad you fixed that clip last night,” First Cabin Girl Sally said.

Captain Dad and First Mate Mom shared small, sheepish smiles. “Well, actually…”

Captain Dad explained that in the dark and the pouring rain, he’d accidentally attached the clip to one of the shrouds, the long, taut wires that helped hold the mast in place. The wire was thin and smooth, and with nothing to catch the clip, the weight of the rope had pulled it all the way up the shroud to the top of the mast.

“And that line is the one that pulls up the mainsail,” he finished.

“Oh.”

All three of them leaned their heads back to look at the top of the mast, where the little clip was just visible.

First Cabin Girl Sally knew exactly what she’d do if this was Charlotte Doyle’s ship: She’d find the ratline that went straight to the top and scurry up the rope ladder. But the little New England family’s rented white sailboat didn’t have ratlines. It only had thin mental shrouds and a smooth aluminum mast not much bigger around than Captain Dad’s leg.

“We won’t have to call someone, will we?” First Mate Mom said. “Seems such a silly little thing to call about.”

Captain Dad agreed. They kept looking up at the clip until Third Cabin Girl Kathy came up.

“Let’s use that other rope on the mast.”

Captain Dad shook his head. “That’s the jib line. It’s on the wrong side to pull up the mainsail.”

Just when everyone’s neck was starting to hurt, Second Cabin Girl Becca joined them.

“Just use the motor.”

“We don’t want to motor the rest of the trip!” First Mate Mom explained.

There was breakfast, and then all five of them were looking up at the clip at the top of the mast.

“Maybe I could climb the jib line,” Captain Dad said at last.

The three Cabin Girls burst into giggles at the thought of Captain Dad climbing a rope no thicker than his thumb, but First Mate Mom had a good point: “What if you fell?”

Captain Doug only paused a minute. “I could tie the rope around my waist. You could wrap it around a winch so it would catch me if I fell.”

It was First Cabin Girl Sally’s chance to share a glance with First Mate Mom as they remembered how it took two adults to haul in a sheet in a stiff wind, even with the winch to help, and how the winch lost its grip on the rope when the sail got too tight. A rope around Captain Dad’s waist might slow his fall, but wouldn’t necessarily stop it…and it would hurt.

And that was when First Cabin Girl Sally had her idea. “We could make a harness.”

Captain Dad shook his head. “I don’t think I knew enough knots even when I was in Boy Scouts.”

“No, I mean, I can make a rope harness.”

The previous fall, in gym class, Sally had spent almost four weeks in the patch of woods behind the high school track. There, telephone poles leaned between pine trees, wires just like shrouds held giant ladders hanging in midair, and tightrope wires zigzagged through the branches like strands of spiders’ silk. There were no harnesses: you only went up in you could tie a harness on yourself out of a single length of rope.

Sally was afraid of heights.

Sally loved every adventure she could have.

Sally could tie a tight, secure harness with her eyes closed.

Everyone in the white sailboat in Florida stared at her, half impressed and half skeptical. Captain Dad stood up, lifted his bench, and rummaged around in the hatch below to find two sturdy coils of extra rope. “Let’s see.”

One rope was too short, but the other was just fine. Sally took her time, remembering the wraps and tucks and knots. When she was done, she showed it off to the crew: these ropes pulled the ones that wrapped behind her legs to make a seat; this group of overlapping rope between two knots was where the clip would go before she started a climb. Captain Dad and First Mate Mom gave the harness a few tugs.

“All right. After we clean up breakfast.”

First Cabin Girl Sally wolfed her breakfast and gulped her tea, then left First Mate Mom to explain to Third Cabin Girl Kathy why a six-year-old couldn’t be the one to go up the mast.

First Cabin Girl Sally knew exactly how to prepare. She left off her earrings and took off her grandmother’s ring. She put on her pirate pants, which were tight around the waist, and her sailor shirt, which was tight, striped, and sleeveless. Charlotte Doyle had cut off her long hair; First Cabin Girl Sally twisted hers up into a bun.

When she climbed back on deck, she felt every inch a sailor. She was barefoot and tan, she had no loose clothes, hair, or jewelry to get caught on anything, and she had a length of rope in her hand.

The harness came easier this time. She pulled it tight and secure and made a few extra fisherman’s knots to tuck away the loose ends. She was ready.

Captain Dad showed her where to stand, clipped on the jib line, and gave her a boost up onto the boom. Then First Mate Mom took over his position at the mast while Captain Dad readied the winch.

“You ready?”

First Cabin Girl Sally couldn’t speak, so she nodded. The winch ratchet rattled and the rope around her waist and legs tightened.

In gym class, Sally had started climbing and her classmates took up the slack rope as she went. Now, with no way to pull herself up, the rope and her harness pulled even tighter to lift her into the air. She didn’t want to be pulled the whole way, so she caught the mast between her hands and feet and pulled a bit, though the winch took over so fast that she never knew if she’d really moved herself.

The climb had just started and it was already almost over. First Cabin Girl Sally looked up—better than down—and started to reach. One second, she couldn’t quite make it; the next, she wrapped her right arm all the way around the mast so she could grab the clip and haul its line back up, over the top, and down the shroud again. It was almost over and First Cabin Girl Sally hadn’t seen anything but her hands, the grey aluminum mast, and the line in between.

She looked down. Third Cabin Girl Kathy jumped up to the mast and grabbed the clip to pull it down the shroud. First Cabin Girl Sally looked over.

Far away, over the tops of the mangrove trees that sheltered the cove, were the dark blue waters of the Gasparilla Sound. In contrast, the pale green water in the cove was as calm as ice, clear enough that, from where she was, Sally could see the cement block of their boat’s mooring at the bottom. She could see where the water turned bottle green in the deeper channel that bigger boats had to use, and there, speeding about without a care for what went on above the waters, were two sleek dolphins.

She didn’t have a chance to call out: at that moment, Captain Dad started letting out the line, lowering her back down to the deck. Going down was much smoother than going up, like an elevator hugging her waist, and soon enough her feet touched the rough deck. First Cabin Girl Sally only realized she was shaking when her knees couldn’t keep her up and the rope lowered her to sit on the deck.

The Second and Third Cabin Girls cheered, and they weren’t the only ones. First Cabin Girl Sally felt her face grow hot when she realized that people in the boats anchored in the cove around theirs were clapping and whooping. She’d been so focused on her task and her goal, then on looking around while she had the chance, that she’d completely forgotten about anything beyond her family’s rented white sailboat. And here she’d just provided everyone’s breakfast entertainment!

There was plenty still to do that day—the extra ropes had to be coiled and stowed, the anchor weighed and the mainsail clipped back onto the line. As the boat slipped out of the sheltered cove later that morning, Captain Dad cut the motor while First Mate Mom and Midshipman Sally hauled up the mainsail. The papery sail snapped taut and Midshipman Sally reached for her book and a few M&Ms while the rented white sailboat carried the little New England family off to their next adventure.