“Without warning a violent storm came up on the lake, and the boat began to be swamped with the waves” — Matthew 8:24.
As fate would have it, one of the last days of sailing season sailing dawned windless. Still and motionless, even the flags hung limply parallel with their poles.
We decided to set out anyhow, if only to take in for a last time the ambiance of the marina: the colorful nautical flags, the seagulls and ducks, the cleverly named boats, the faded lines coiled on the docks.
But after an hour or so of puttering around the slip, we decided we could just as well bob around in a 25-foot sloop in the middle of the lake as in the harbor. So we cast off and took to the waves, albeit small ones on Denver’s Cherry Creek Reservoir.
The first hour was so calm we actually took up the swing keel to decrease the vessel’s drag, making her quicker in case we found any amount of wind. We floated, tried various tacks and jibes, all to no avail. We were, as the old salts say, in the irons, going nowhere. Lazily, we kept just one foot on the tiller. Sailors, particularly during the doldrums, require fathoms of patience. So we waited, watching the sun reflecting off the water like aluminum.
We waited. And watched. And waited. Motionless.
Until we smelled wind, felt it in our hair, saw it whip our way, ruffling the surface of the water. We trimmed the sails, allowing the puff to fill out the sheets. Our luck lay in the fact that the skipper remembered to drop the keel again. Before I knew it, we weren’t motionless; we were cruising across the lake at about 10 knots.
The winds shifted, as all winds do, and I used my every muscle to haul in the sail as we tacked. The next thing I knew, the boat was at a 30 degree angle, and I heard everything down below in the saloon go crashing to the floor. Another shift and the line of the foresail pulled out of the cleat and flew wildly, a snake writhing against the mast. Gingerly, I climbed out on starboard to pull in the line. I grabbed the teak handhold and stepped back down into the cockpit about the time the boom swung around and smacked me in the face.
Before I could catch my breath, a microburst blew over the port side. The boat heeled over, rails in the waves. The boom smashed into the water. Water rushed into the cockpit. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw the keel about to breach the surface. Against tremendous force, all I could manage to do was shift all of my weight toward the high side. Like most well designed sailboats, she righted herself.
Drenched and delirious with adrenaline, we dropped the foresail. On a day when we thought we would find no wind, we sailed the remainder of the afternoon with just the main sheet.
And, even though these winds came on the tail end of a thunderstorm hitting elsewhere, not until that day did I have full understanding what a Savior Jesus was when he appeared to the apostles during the tempest, when he walked on water, when he calmed the storm at sea, rebuking the wind and the waves.
Once we were docked, back in the slip, feet on solid ground again, the whole episode brought to mind the nearly forgotten lyrics to an old Leonard Cohen song:
“Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water
and he spent a long time watching
from a lonely wooden tower
and when he knew for certain
only drowning men could see him
he said all men shall be sailors then
until the sea shall free them.”
Learning to sail has taught me more than how to tie new knots and how to use terms like “port” and “starboard” correctly. Many of us know that wind symbolizes the Holy Spirit. But few realize that in ancient iconography, the sailboat symbolizes pilgrimage. Sailing reminded me that you can’t have a pilgrimage without Spirit. Just as you cannot sail directly into the wind, you cannot sail without wind. And, sailing reminded me, too, that about the time you think there’s no wind, the Spirit comes rushing in to blow us all away, on our way, anyway the wind goes as the breath of God.
