This past weekend Amsterdam’s IJ was absolutely jammed with sailboats – like hundreds and hundreds of them from 24 countries – tall ships, historic vessels, yachts, and all kinds of nautical quirkiness. SAIL happens every five years and is quite a spectacle for us landlubbers and clearly a major draw for those who are more nautically inclined.
I took my kids down to have a wander around and climb aboard a few boats. And as we wandered from ship to ship, I was reminded of how wrong I was about sailing when I was younger.
Growing up on Okanagan Lake in the 1980s and 1990s, I was fiercely anti-mainstream. Watch Titanic? Nope. Home Alone? Pass. Boy bands? Forget it.
And in my mind, sailing was up there with golf as the ultimate mainstream activity. Probably because every 80s teen movie seemed to feature some smirking yacht-or-country-club villain with a white sweater tied around his neck, tormenting the misfit protagonists. Sailing seemed like an activity for the privileged jerks.
Not sure if this applies to golfing, but boy oh boy did I ever have sailing pegged wrong.
Real sailors? They’re the biggest misfits of all. Clambering over rigging, careening from port to port, sleeping in salt-soaked communal bunks. Hanging off the side of the ship to polish brass as the pong of too many people in too little space wafts up from down below. It’s a life that’s somehow gritty and raw, yet extremely disciplined; a team sport for independent iconoclasts.
And I guess there’s the other side of sailing too: the expertly drilled, pressed white uniform naval sailors. But any way you slice it, their lives look quite dissimilar to the lives of those of us who spend most of our time on terra firma.
I very much appreciate the brief chance to peek into the nautical lifestyle, and think about my plans for getting a little tar on my hands. Ahoy!
