Seaworthy

As I reflect on my childhood, a lot comes to mind. I grew up in Bay Park, San Diego. We were in the middle of everything, whether it be the beach, downtown, or the Harbor. Because of this, our family became involved in many organizations and activities. We had so much fun. I met a lot of new people and other families as result. One thing my family got involved in was the San Diego Yacht Club. Now this is where the story begins. 

My dad moved to San Diego about 30 years ago and since being here, he has always had an interest in boating. Whether it be a sail boat or a motor boat. When I was eight years old, my dad started taking sailing lessons. We became members of the yacht club and at the time did not have a boat. He would attend these lessons and practice sailing with an instructor once a week. After months of being on this sailboat with an instructor, he finally felt confident enough to take our family out sailing. 

When we got to the yacht club that afternoon, he was obviously nervous but excited. I remember it being pretty windy and overcast. We rented a sailboat and started at the dock. There weren’t many boats out on the water but there were a lot of boats on the dock. My dad, my mom and I got on the boat and my dad went through the steps to get going on the water. We got the boat out and were sailing on the water and everything seemed to be going perfectly fine. It was so much fun! But at that moment, everything started going wrong. The wind picked up and all of a sudden, our sailboat was about to tip over. We all panicked and my dad wanted to bring the boat back in. 

As we were all panicking, we were around other boats. There were three ladies on another yacht that were watching the whole thing. My dad tried taking the boat into the docks with the way the wind was moving. We were in the middle of the harbor, the eight year me at the time, was panicking and crying. Somehow I knew what “seaworthy” meant and I kept yelling “you are not seaworthy Dad!” over and over again. We got to the dock and had to tie our boat down so my dad told my mom to jump on the dock. What he forgot to say was “take a line with you.” So my mom jumped off the boat onto the dock without a line and at that point, it was just me and my dad panicking and not knowing what to do. Our boat was flipping and turning and everyone was watching us struggle. 

Somehow my mom found a guy who could help us take the mainsail down and dock our boat. He pulled the boat to the dock and took the main down and made it look so easy. Leaving the yacht club that day, we were very disappointed. But from that funny experience, we named our boat that we got a year later “Seaworthy” as a joke to remember the time when we were everything BUT. Since then, we have not tried sailing again and we figured that we will stick to motorized boats.