“The Sailing Fiasco”
Julia Krumholz
Sometimes, living abroad is a fiasco. A new place with new expectations, conditions, and social norms—all of which everyone besides you seems to know and respect. When I chose to study abroad in Australia, I expected things to be different from the US, but not that different. This was still a fully developed, English speaking country; maybe it had a few more kangaroos and some nicer coral reef systems, but besides that, I thought that my transition would be easy. As it turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
About two months into my program, I was living in Townsville with three friends and commuting to the Australian Institute for Marine Studies to work in a lab every day. My mentor, Kathryn, was a young, peppy PhD student from Canada studying coral spawning. Every day, Kathryn would greet me with a warm smile, a cup of coffee just for me, and instructions for what we needed to do for that day. Kathryn was the epitome of what I wanted to be: a successful scientist, designing her own experiments; a competitive athlete, participating in tennis and soccer tournaments; and a social success, with lots of friends and a nice boyfriend. I wanted to impress her all the time, but most often I just stayed quiet and did whatever she told me to do.
One Wednesday, I showed up to the lab and found Kathryn in pigtail braids, wearing anchor earrings and a shirt patterned with whales. “I’m going sailing today! Do you want to come?” she asked me.
Despite growing up on the east coast, I had never been sailing, and am actually mildly scared of the ocean. Sailing always seemed like one of those kind of cop-out sports, where you just sit on a seat and tell yourself that you’re “competing” with someone. But how could I say no to Kathryn? This was our chance to bond, to really get to know each other. Just Kathryn and me, alone out on the open sea, sharing life stories and bonding.
“Sure, I’d love to!” I replied. I didn’t bother mentioning I didn’t know how to sail. How hard could it be?
***
As Kathryn and I stepped out onto the marina that afternoon, we were immediately engulfed in a swarm of people. The dock was a blur of activity: people loading onto boats, lugging coolers full of soda and beer, standing and chatting in impenetrable circles. Kathryn weaved her way through the mass, and I trailed timidly behind. Finally, we made it to a boat on the far edge of the dock.
The boat itself did not look like anything special—it was decent sized, able to fit about 10 people on its deck, with a few fold-out tables places around. The edges of the boat were lined with a ledge, presumably so that people could have somewhere to sit. High above, a sail flapped in the breeze, with intricately tied ropes cascading down to the floor.
The most surprising detail about the boat was not what it looked like, but what it held on its deck. About eight strangers stood around, all laughing and talking with each other. They wore brightly colored nautical outfits, and seemed totally at ease as they threw back and forth questions and laughter laced with Australian slang I had yet to pick up on. I could feel my face heat up as I realized my mistake. Of course Kathryn and I weren’t going to be sailing alone—why would she want to waste her time just hanging out with me?
Kathryn scampered ahead, hugging our apparent sailing partners—clearly longtime friends—who we would be voyaging with. I climbed onto the boat awkwardly, straddling the side before pitching over onto the deck. No one so much as looked my way, much less greeted me with a hello.
I scanned the boat, looking for an out-of-the-way place to take a seat. I made my way to the corner where I perched awkwardly alone. I looked around for Kathryn, but everyone was racing around me, messing with the sail, moving things around, getting into place. Soon, the boat was untied from the dock and cutting through the water. Kathryn was happily wedged between two of her friends at the front of the boat, chatting away.
In my two months in North Queensland, I had learned that many Australians don’t love meeting new people. Strangers at parties are asked to leave; rarely will someone run after a pedestrian who accidentally dropped their wallet on the street; a random girl coming along on a sailboat isn’t necessarily welcome if not properly introduced by her idol and best friend-to-be. And so, all alone on my corner seat, I could feel my crewmates eyeing me, wondering if I had snuck on to the ship as some sort of devious delinquent.
We got about 100 meters out into the water before the captain cut the engine and everyone jumped to their feet. People raced around, fixing things and moving things and putting things in place. “C’mon, help out!” someone called to me. Finally, someone was speaking to me! Excitedly, I looked around to see what I could do. Umm… it looks like that rope is connected to that hook… which goes up to the top of the sail… I was at a complete loss.
“What should I do…?” I hesitantly asked the woman.
“Can you let out this sail?” she asked, handing me a rope.
No, I cannot let out this sail, I wanted to say, but instead I took the rope and gave it a little tug. The sail flapped helplessly in the wind, looking as pathetic as I felt.
“C’mon guys, we wanna win this thing!” someone called. My stomach dropped. Sure enough, looking to my left and right, I noticed that there were sailboats on either side of us, all heading the same direction. We were racing?? I felt a wave a nausea that I knew had nothing to do with seasickness.
Desperately, I looked around for Kathryn, but she had her back turned to me and was doing something with a wooden lever/rod thing that looked important. The rest of the crew kept on pushing me out of the way, barely acknowledging my presence.
“Tack!” the captain yelled, and everyone flew themselves to the right side of the ship. I, unaware that “tack” apparently meant dive to the floor, hung on for dear life on the left side as the boat tipped me towards the ocean.
Clinging to the side of the boat, I watched us round a buoy, and the boat evened out.
Everyone was staring at me, as if I had just committed the world’s worst crime.
“Have you ever sailed before?” Finally Kathryn was talking to me… just when I wanted to hide below deck and never come out.
“Um… a long time ago…” My voice came out in a whisper.
“OK, we should be good for a while now,” the captain said, drawing the attention away from me.
The Aussies turned away, and started pulling out chips and vegetables and dips from their bag and putting them on the center table.
“Did you bring anything?” the captain asked me.
Another protocol I had unknowingly broken. “Uh… no… sorry…?” I said back. The captain scoffed at me, then turned his back. Everyone was paired up, chatting excitedly about the race and eating the communal food. I felt like I wanted to cry. How was I supposed to know we were supposed to bring snacks? Kathryn should have warned me that this was a race. And why hadn’t she introduced me! I was an outcast. I wanted to be swallowed whole by the ocean.
I huddled in my corner, feeling as tiny as a minnow in a sea of sharks. Finally, the marina came into sight—we were in the home stretch. People started doing more “sailing things;” adjusting the sails, shifting weights, etc. I had given up and just kept out of the way. At one point everyone cheered—I looked around, but all I saw was open ocean on either side of us. Was that the finish line? Who knows.
The captain guided the boat back to the dock, and the one and only Kathryn tied us up to the dock. I climbed out of the boat unsteadily, my body unfamiliar with having one foot on solid land, and one foot on shaky boat. I followed Kathryn down the dock, where she hugged her fellow crew and said goodbye.
As we got into the car, she turned and smiled at me. “So sorry I didn’t get to chat with you at all! I just love sailing so much, I got caught up in the race!”
I sighed internally, then plastered a fake smile on my face. “It was lovely. Very nice getting to see what Australian sailing is like,” I replied.
***
The next day in lab, Kathryn greeted me with a smile, a cup of coffee, and instructions for the day. She made some small talk then went off, probably to catch up with her real friends, not just the lab intern. I watched her go, feeling my tense shoulders relax. I smiled to myself. It was funny, really. Would I ever be able to impress her? I decided that when I became a superstar scientist, I would talk with each and every one of my interns until I knew them like a friend. And I would never, ever, take them sailing.
