If you have not already done so, please read this first article before reading this article. Jackie

True confession time, I do not know how to sail, despite spending large amounts of time on boats both underway, in marinas or under repair or construction. I have read as many magazines, books as many of you have. I have visited marinas, museums and boat shows, even worked a few of those. I have walked docks and looked at lakes and oceans. Doesn't matter, I still do not know how to sail.

Undeniably, Mike Monies was a competent, nay extremely competent sailor. That is probably a modest description in fact, I always felt he was like the Jimmy Buffet song I loved, a man whose life's career had passed in another century. Nothing would have suited him more than building and sailing great wooden ships or fighting battles at sea under sail. I would look at him and think I was seeing a reincarnation of a past life. I loved Mike with all my heart and soul and that too is probably an understatement.

But here is where perfection left a real big hole, Mike never really taught me to sail. Before he switched from big boats to small boats and bigger adventures, I spent a lot of time aboard boats. I was the galley wench and the cockpit wench on the winch a lot of time. Mike's expectations were that when we had kids I was to have them dressed and aboard with all the diapers, formula, food, toys and life preservers, the picnic lunches, ice chests, galley supplies and his job was getting the boat from the dock. Then I was to take over as deck hand, having stowed kids neatly below decks or hooked to tethers for safety in their PFD's in a dry diaper and a bottle.

I sailed as deck hand on several boats including our large thirty-seven foot schooner, I ran sails up and down, winched in lines, bagged sails and even took the tiller or wheel so long as the route was fairly routine. Did I learn how to sail? No and had Mike gone overboard or dropped dead I was not going to be able to turn around and the VHS radio was what I would have to depend on. Most of Mike's instructions were brief and terse and involved things like, "Run up forward to the bowsprit! Bag that flogging sail and don't let it get wet before you do so." Then, "We're dropping the mainsail, get it tied down neatly and don't wrinkle the sails, fold them neatly before you put the bungee ties on!" I actually got pretty good, even could anticipate what the captain would want next. Lines had to be neatly coiled, only one way for hanging lines, identically and perfectly looped each time before hanging.

The story about Mike dropping me off on our waterfront lot on the lake with a Laser or a windsurfer is the truth. He said, " Just right it when it goes over and get back on and pretty soon you will stay upright." That didn't work very well, although I got pretty good at righting them and getting back on. So, we moved to step 2 and I went to the Annapolis Sailing School in Kemah/Seabrook for two weeks of lessons or maybe it was two months of weekends? By that time Mike had sold our waterfront lot and bought a waterfront condo on Clear Lake so the opportunity to get back on land was a little more difficult, there was an entire canal to navigate to get out to any water. I really felt not knowing how to sail our boats was a danger to us all, especially our children who were quite young then so I tried.

First, the boats the sailing school used were open boats about twenty feet long and had no motors at all, so you left the docks under sail and you had to get out into Clear Lake not only through canals from the marina but you also had to return the same way, threading hundreds of coming and going sailboats far bigger than you were. That didn't bother me too much, I was used to the marina where we spent so much time, had kept our boat there for years. The open boat didn't scare me, even the lack of a motor didn't. But the guy the school paired me with as a partne, since we were the only two students at that time, sure did.

The man had never ever been on a sailboat! He was arrogant and self-centered and while polite to me, treated me as a total inferior. This sure did not set well with me, I was there to learn I thought. He was there because he had arm twisted one of his employees into loaning him a thirty-five foot sloop to use for his vacation with his girlfriend whom he was planning to impress with a borrowed yacht. Those of you who know me will know that mind set did not go over well with me! He continued to make me angry to point I was not able to focus and learn, to the point where I was constantly alert to threat of being knocked overboard or boat capsized. We had an instructor aboard who tried to keep things under control and who probably feared I might kill the other student with the paddle if I could.

Highlights of the class included being out on Clear Lake and looking up to see not one but TWO water spouts heading right for us. Normally I would have probably shrieked a little but no way was I going to let this guy know I was the least afraid, so I coolly watched them dipping in and out of clouds and touching down, coming dangerously close to us before lifting up into the clouds. I watched over his shoulder without saying anything, instructor and I both saw them, didn't say a word. When student finally noticed them we said, "Oh , that's nothing, won't come near us." I was actually kind of hoping they would in truth. They didn't.

Man overboard drills using boat cushions and boat hooks, which I had done off high free boarded boats was simple in the low open boat. Naturally he botched it and I thought," You fall overboard and I am not dragging you in! No one had better actually go over the side."

So naturally, it was me that did, right in front of the clubhouse dining room during the Sunday brunch special that at least 200 of our nearest and dearest friends were consuming. We were to bring the boat into the docks out in front under sail, drop the sails, tie off lines alongside in a docking drill. Instead, my buddy jibed the boat, sweeping me overboard as I tossed a line and leaned backward to tighten it snugly. I went under, he turned the tiller loose and ran over to side to "help me back in", hitting the docks and almost capsizing the boat. I came up spitting water and yelling, "I don't need help, don't turn the tiller loose with the sails still up!"

This dramatic swimming lesson was the talk of Clear Lake for some time, everyone wanting to know who my friend was and why I was out in a boat with him and not Mike? I went home and declared I was quitting and not going back. I went to office of instructor who was a friend also and said "You can fail me, I don't care about the fees for the course, I don't care about the certificate, I am not getting back in a boat with that man and going out into Galveston Bay to solo with him because I will come back solo after I have killed him with a boat hook." I didn't and I still got my Annapolis Sailing School certificate to carry in my wallet and the discounts on boat rentals at many places, which may have been all Mike wanted.

Move forward about twenty years and we are now in Oklahoma and Mike has become a builder of little boats, not an owner of a schooner or a sloop nor a yacht broker. I thought the small boats enchanting, especially the ones like the SCAMP by John Welsford and the Laguna Dos by Jim Michalak. I loved Laguna Dos, a beautiful and graceful boat and at 23 feet plenty big enough for multiple people to sail in her, twin masted she reminded me of our schooner. I never once got to sail in her and despite me begging Mike to build another one, I never will. Never got to sail in the Red Scamp or any of the Ducks, not even my own Kiwi Duck, gifted by John Welsford. The larger fiberglass sloop rigged "Sea Biscuit" got put aside for building more small wooden boats and never finished nor put in the marina as planned, so I never sailed in her either.

My role has been to be a galley wench par excellence, a cooker of food, a writer of tales, a travel agent across America, a correspondent to all who wrote and the backbone of expedition sailing and "adventuring" but never aboard a boat.

I am ever optimistic that there is still time to learn. I am enrolled in the Wooden Boat School's basic sailing course the end of June at Brooklin, ME which is being taught by two women. I am excited by this prospect for many reasons but mostly because I was in Brooklin about two years after the school was opened. I made a vow to return someday and take courses there, it was the most idyllic place I had ever seen on the water. It has taken me over twenty-five years but I am going there at last. I will be there over the July 4 weekend, another event I have longed to attend there.

Before I do that, I will be going to the FL 120 in my new AF3 sharpie by Jim Michalak and John H. Wright has bravely offered to teach me as much as he can on the trip out in the beautiful Gulf Coast waters. This event is one I have long wanted to attend and this is the year some of my own dreams come true. I will also be hauling the Core Sound 20 up to Dave Gentry's home in North Carolina to start finishing it to enter in the Everglades Challenge in 2016. I hasten to add I will NOT be sailing the EC but real sailors will be. One of them is Dave Gentry who has also generously offered instruction in some of his boats, as did Carla and Graham Byrnes from B and B Yachts. You had better believe I will be taking them up on this.

Right now I plan to be at BOOTS on Lake Texoma and Rend Lake with Jim Michalak's Messabout. I hope that there are some generous souls who will risk capsize with me in "Bottoms Up!" and be patient enough to help me learn. I will be at Lake Stockton Messabout in July and then on to the Pacific Northwest where I will change over from the AF3 to my own fiberglass Scamp and lessons with Howard Rice and his sailing academy, the Scamp classes and Red Lantern Rally. Dan Rogers has volunteered his time in Almost Canada for further lessons, an accredited sailing instructor in a past life, I am sure Dan is hoping some of the earlier instruction has taken hold!

By the time October, 2015 rolls around and Sail OK 2015, I will either know how to sail or I will be the most experienced nonsailing boater around. I hope I will learn and I am going to give it all I have to do so. Those who know me also know I am a lot like a bull dog, I grab hold and don't want to let go, pure stubborn refusal to admit defeat. So, hopefully the PFD will keep me from drowning and the extra flotation in the AF3 and the SCAMP will keep the boats afloat and me as well.

See you all somewhere on the water!