When I was growing up, anyone who spent enough time at our cabin was going to learn how to do three things well: I was going to teach them how to catch toads, my Mom was going to teach them how to ski, and my Dad was going to teach them how to sail.

In the early years, Dad had a nice wooden catamaran; it was his pride and joy. It would spend winters in our garage, and my friend Jimbo and I would play on it, pretending we were zipping across the blue waters of the lake, with the sun in our eyes and the spray in our faces. We couldn't wait until the day would come that we were old enough to sail the boat for real.

That day never came. As it turned out, all of that beauty came at a price, and Dad got tired of sanding and varnishing his boat just so my cousin Steve could spend the summer capsizing it, which he did just about every time he took the boat for a spin. (The funny thing is, once Steve got a sailboat of his own, the capsizing stopped. Of course, Steve now does his sailing on Lake Michigan, where capsizing means getting dumped in frigid waters that are too cold to sustain life. Well, life that grew up in an Alabama summer, anyway.)

So Dad sold the wooden catamaran, and replaced it with a newfangled fiberglass model. In fact, it was so newfangled that it showed up in pieces. It was the first thing Dad had tried to put together from a kit since my sister's swing set; that was the night I learned the truth about Santa Claus.

With the swing set trauma not too far removed, Dad decided to assemble as many helpers as he could-- uncles, aunts, cousins, friends… everybody but us kids. We did our part by staying out of the way and hardly ever asking if it was time to go skiing yet, but mostly we sat on the dock and watched as the box of parts slowly began to resemble a sailboat.

It was a beauty, and the crew had done such a good job that they had used almost all of the pieces. Dad and his hardest-working helpers took the first voyage, and the rest of us stood on the dock and watched them sail into the sunset. About the time I was asking Jimbo if he thought the plastic bag full of corks and stoppers was important, the new boat turned around and headed back to shore, and Dad's voice could be heard halfway across the lake: "We are NOT sinking!!" He was wrong.

With those corks and stoppers in place, the boat performed quite well, and that was the boat that Jimbo and I eventually learned to sail. (And we never capsized it; take that, Steve!) Many of our sailing adventures were memorable, more memorable than they needed to be. For example, there was the time we were far from home when the wind died. We had no paddle, so we were forced to get in the water and push the boat home. Which would have been very slow going, except that I had the bright idea to push the boat as far ahead of us as we could, and then swim to it.

It wasn't the fact that we had just one life jacket in the water with us that made it a bad idea, and it wasn't the fact that the wind picked up as soon as we pushed the boat that made it a bad idea. Combine the two, though, and you have one very bad idea.

Over the years, though, the boat fell into disrepair. In fact, it looked to be a lost cause, but Jimbo and I decided to bring the boat back to life. We invested a lot of time, and a lot of elbow grease, and in the end we had restored the boat to almost-new condition. The bent rudders definitely kept it from being "as good as new." Whether or not the bent rudders affected the performance of the boat is something I'll never know; before Jimbo and I could test it out, my sister hopped aboard and took it for a spin. Some ominous thunder made her cut the trip short, and she beached the boat on the closest shore… which happened to consist of big sharp rocks. At least one of the rocks punched a fist-sized hole in one of the pontoons, and we were never able to get the hole fixed.

That was the last sailboat we owned. Many times I wished we had one, especially on windy days, but my Dad never felt the urge to buy something just so my sister could sink it. (At least, that's my reasoning.) I've been on the lookout for a good used sailboat, though, and I finally got lucky. It's going to take a little work before it's ready to go in the water, but it will be worth it. But will it give me the same sort of adventures the old one did?

Don't bet against it. Even before I got the boat home, I disturbed a nest of red wasps that had built their nest in the trailer I was going to carry the boat home on. Next, I bought a cover for the boat, to keep the pine straw out. Note to the people who make boat covers: having one model that fits boats up to 16 feet, and another model that fits boats more than 17 feet, omits that segment of the population that owns boats more than 16 feet long, but less than 17. People like me, for instance.

I bought the cover that was one size too big, which left me with a hard-to-fit cover, and several extra feet of it. That extra fabric will no doubt make a great place for the red wasps to build their next nest; in fact, one of them showed their appreciation by stinging me while I was putting the cover on.

I can't wait to see what happens when I finally get to sail the boat… assuming I survive the wasps that are going to attack me when I take the cover off, of course. I guess as long as I don't break my never-capsized streak, I'll be happy.

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