Three Ways to Capsize a Boat: An Optimist Afloat Read Free Page A

current was a little slacker here as the river was wider. The fishermen waved us good-bye and I dropped the rope into the water. Keith steered us nervously to the dock with the screaming engine. “Prepare the warps!” he yelled.
    I looked around. What the hell were the warps and where were they?
    “All right, you take the tiller and I’ll do the warps; just steer us into that dock over there.”
    I stumbled to the back of the boat while Keith staggered to the bow. I took the tiller, happy at last to be doing the fun bit. I eased in toward the dock and gave a professional sort of a blip to the throttle … whereupon the engine stopped. Keith spun round, tripped on a warp, and, with a foul oath, fell overboard. One moment he was there; next moment he was gone. I heard a mad scrabbling, a splash, and then … just the rocking of the boat.
    For a brief moment, I wondered if I should try to rescue Keith, but as the boat was now spinning in the current, all set to rocket back down the river and out to sea, I couldn’t see there was much I could do … and besides, at least he’d be out of the running for the girlfriend. Poor Keith … I really hoped he was all right and had managed to thrash his way to the shore—though there didn’t seem much point in dwelling on such matters. I pulled the starter rope on the engine … nothing.
    “Chris!” There came a strangled croak.
    “Yes, what?”
    “Help me back onboard, you arsehole!”
    “Thank God, Keith!” I exclaimed, peering over the side. “You really had me worried there!” And with a lot of undignified heaving and grunting I started to pull the poor sodden bloke back onto the boat—no easy matter as he was on the big side anyway and, with the wool of his clothes having absorbed a couple of bucketfuls of river water, he must have weighed about as much as an average walrus. This operation inevitably resulted in the loss of much valuable time, and although the tide had slackened off a bit, by the time the poor shivering Keith had got the engine restarted we were shooting out sideways past the end of the pier again. We didn’t say much at this point; I felt he was being excessively morose and uncommunicative.
    This time it only took us about forty-five minutes to cover the half mile back to the dock. Keith filled the time usefully with an exhaustive explanation of the procedures with the warps and the whole business of docking, and when we got there it went smoothly, without a hitch.
    After a long and tedious episode during which Keith beavered about making the boat “shipshape,” as he insisted on calling it, we had a beer in the yacht club and discussed the lessons we had learned. I had had no inkling of the danger Keith was in—nor the boat, nor myself, for that matter. It seemed to me that if you fell in a river, you swam to the bank and got out, simple as that. I had not taken into account the awesome power of the tides—and this on a little river like the Arun. I was inclined to treat the whole thing as a laugh; it had certainly been a lot more fun than the so-called sailing we had been doing earlier.
    All in all we got off lightly. Keith’s boat didn’t get wrecked; he didn’t drown; and to his credit, he seemed to bear me no grudge for my part in the shameful debacle. Also I learned a thing or two about sailing, although perhaps not as much as I should have done. Had I taken a little more notice of what was going on, things might not have turned out as badly as they did. I fear, though, that I am a rather obtuse person.

    IT MAY SEEM ODD to you that either Keith or I would ever want to sail with each other again—but we did, the following weekend. This time there was actually some wind, and with it, or rather against it, we sailed all the way to Chichester Harbour, most of the trip being in the dark.
    This is one of the things that I was learning about sailing: it wasn’t just a matter of going when the mood took you, you had to take into account the