How to Lie Your Way into Awesome Places

I step onto the boat, ready for my interview. The captain asks me, so how much sailing experience do you have?

I smile, oh you now, I spent a few good hours on an old water rat up in the glaciers of Alaska, worked as a fisherman – menpachi fish mostly – on the Kona coast, in Maine, we were lobstering; now granted that was primarily outboard, but on a nice day after the haul, you know, sometimes we’d throw out the gaff and boom and kick it for awhile under the sun. Beyond that, you know, I’ve planted my feet in any old hull that’s floated my way in the last ten years or so. What can I say? I’ve got a natural attraction to decks.

I’m grinning. Mostly because I’m not kidding about the few good hours in Alaska, the Hawaiian boat was not a sailboat, there’s no way in hell the lobster boat would have had sails, and any old hull that’s floated my way (if my memory serves me) consists of a single sailboat I snuck onto floating in the Seine in Paris, just to pass a drunken night and sneak away before the sun was up. If I’ve been on any other sailboat in my life, I have no recollection of it.

But here’s the thing: I want to go sailing. I want to learn a new skill, have a new adventure. While my friends are making money and building up their resumes, I want to commune with God on a two week (all expenses paid trip) journey that ends in Key West, with rum and sand and Cuban girls. Do you know what I’m saying?

So what did I do? I put my $150, 000 education to work and went on Wikipedia. The first sign of an experienced man is language. To convince anyone that you know anything about anything, you need to know the vocabulary. Find out what everything is called. Everything. If you suck at handling the equipment, you always have the twin excuses of I’m rusty and the boats I’ve been on in the past were different, I just need to get a handle on this and I’ll be alright. Or else flatter them: Your boat is much newer and in much better shape than what I’ve been on in the past. Give me a little crash course in her particularities and I’ll fall back into the swing of things in no time.

But once again: Vocabulary. Look to your friend and say, beautiful mainmast, huh? Can you hand me that stay, I want to see how tight it is. Run the running rigging through my hands to get a grasp of the play she holds. Try out the halyards and the sheets.

Then you turn back to the captain and say, the other boats I’ve been on were all smaller than this, they didn’t even have either a foremast or a mizzenmast. It’ll be a small learning curve for me, but I’ll pick it up in no time, don’t worry.

Toss jib and spinnaker into the conversation somehow and you’ve got yourself some sea cred. Now naturally, anyone who has ever actually sailed will be able to see instantly that you don’t know what you’re doing when it comes to knot tying (it’s good to know at least one knot – how ‘bout the bowline? that’s a classic) or running ropes through and following orders. But establishing the vocabulary gets you to the point where the captain may have to show you a thing or two, but won’t throw up his arms in despair that you don’t know the difference between port side and starboard. Hopefully, you’ll already be a few good miles out to sea before he realizes you have no idea how to sail, and by then he’ll have no choice but to bring you all the way to Virginia, at least.