Your hands methodically rig the sleek, white, lightly damaged Laser. The motions you have built up over years and weeks and hours of setting up boats are now second nature; they have yet to fail you.
The wind is strong but bearable. You race across the sea like a speeding car, hair whipping around you. Droplets of water and salt cling to your skin. You feel godly, as if you are Poseidon. One with the power of the sea in this unbeatable moment of freedom. One subtle shift of the rudder or quick pull at the main sheet could transform your trajectory, could bring you to Greece. The nose of the Laser dips up and down into the unruly waves, splashing your arms and face. Your abs and thighs tense to keep the boat from leaning too far.
The ropes strain your hands as the wind brings you to the other side of the coast. Your old, green, fingerless gloves aren’t enough to protect your hands against the burns and aches from the ropes, but you don’t care enough to notice. The groan of the boat beneath you becomes your favorite sound, and the stinging eyes and horrid tan lines and scars littering your legs are all worth it for the fraction of freedom.
Your perfect moment is interrupted as your instructor calls you to the motorboat, asking if you want your friend to join. You love your friend and the experiences you’ve had sailing together, but you wish you could stay Poseidon. Nevertheless, you concede, and your friend carefully climbs over the side of her half-deflated motorboat, sitting on your sailboat’s nose.
Your arms ache from ceaselessly holding the coarse ropes, your cheeks hurt from grinning, and your friend is tired of getting splashed by the waves. You slowly release the main sheet. You must not be as strong as Poseidon. Your fingers stretch out, freeing themselves from the tension they carried. You and your friend lay back, comfortable on the uncomfortable plastic. You are grateful your instructor called you over.
You realize shortly into your break that the rope is slackening too much. Frowning, you reach to pull it a little, only to find that although you pull and pull and pull the main sheet won’t tighten. You see the end of the rope and suddenly you understand. It has untied itself and escaped from its hook. Your knotting skills were not as flawless as you thought. You try to tie it back, but the end of the boom is too far. You cannot fix it from inside the comfort of the boat. The simplest solution is to jump into the cold water; the hook will be reachable from there. The sea is refreshing, cooling you down from the sun that stained your skin.
You swim a few short strokes to the end of the rope, now dangling from the central hook, finally within your reach. You begin to tie it the way you were taught, hoping that this time it will hold. It is not easy and your fingers fumble the slippery rope. You try to keep yourself afloat as you and the boat sway from the persistent waves. As you attempt knot after knot, your friend warns you that the boat is starting to move. Your grip on the rope has caused the wind to fill the sail.
“Can you make sure it’s not tangled on your end?” you ask, not letting go of the still untied rope afraid it will completely escape the rest of the hooks. Your friend, making sure that it’s not tangled on her end, does not immediately notice how the wind fills the sail more than before, moving the boat quicker and quicker.
“We’re moving again!” you exclaim. It’s obvious you are moving. It would be impossible not to notice your movement with the speed you pick up. Still in fear of undoing the boat entirely, you hold tightly onto your end of the rope. You are dragged by the wind through the waves. You are like the sailboat you are so fond of, though gliding less gloriously. You wonder if Poseidon has to deal with saltwater in his eyes.
You understand, finally, that you won’t be able to solve this problem without letting go.
So you do, but the rope does not let go of you. Confused, you double-check, but there is no invisible fragment of rope knotted in your hands. It is wrapped around your ankle, instead, pulling you along with the sailboat like a salmon going upstream. You do not understand how the rope has strangled your foot; perhaps it has learned to knot just as you have. The wind continues to drag you through the water. It is certainly saltwater, you think, as you catch wave after wave in your face. The sailboat does not seem to slow down; you do not know what your friend is doing.
The sailboat does not seem to slow down, and your friend is laughing, and perhaps she does not understand that you do not want to be dragged eternally through the sea, and perhaps she does not notice your head going under the water, and perhaps she does not see that the sea level must be lowering at the rate you are swallowing these waves, and they are filling your lungs, and the rope won’t detangle itself from you, and you cannot push against the wind because you are not Poseidon, and you cannot avoid the water in your face and your mouth and your eyes and your ears and you can’t tell if your friend is still laughing because you can’t hear her—
Somehow, you manage to unwrap your leg from the rope without losing your shoe or your life. The wind and the sea will always hold more power than you.
