gybe ho

After having spent eight hours sailing, I feel so tired that I want to burst into tears during the car ride home.  It's a strange sensation, wanting to cry simply because I'm tired, because that's a feeling I haven't had so much as an adult.

We spent a big part of the day learning how to do the proper manoeuvre for when a crew member falls overboard and it becomes necessary to turn around and fish them out of the water while making sure they don't get run over by the boat or die of hypothermia while you take your time.  And it's a tricky thing to do.  It's not a simple turnaround, but rather, a series of three turns that create a figure eight (that sounds impossible, doesn't it? - but it's true).  When I was a crew member it was exhausting, but when I had to be the skipper it was nearly impossible.  Frustrating doesn't begin to describe it.  

I just don't get it.  

It's the kind of thing that I'll probably need to do fifty more times before it makes sense, and the four or five turns that we each took at it just couldn't begin to penetrate my thick skull.  I couldn't man the jib or the main sail while still paying attention to what the skipper was doing and learning from his/her turn at the tiller.  

From the perspective of a teacher, it's probably a good thing for me to see what it's like to be the kid that just doesn't get it while everyone else seems to be doing just fine.  It really drove home to me why some kids develop behaviour problems, because after my third or fourth aborted attempt, I felt like lying in the bottom of the boat and making armpit noises.  To direct attention away from the fact that I'm a dunce.

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