Sail #5

 

My favorite number is 55. Originally it was five because that was the number on my soccer jersey ever since the Wallingford Tornadoes. It has seemed like a pretty nice digit since then. There are five fingers on a hand and five toes on a foot. I was born on the 25th, which is five squared. My favorite shape is a star, which has five points, and just because I am patriotic, there are 50 stars on the American flag, which is five times ten. Five is the middle number; like I am the middle child. Although I would never refuse a number five jersey, I started to become more attached to the number 11. It is my lucky number. It was one number compiled into the random combination of ink on a fortunate cookie paper after I ate my chicken and broccoli from Panda Express. I see it everywhere now. Like when it is 11:11 and you make a wish. I like when numbers repeat like that. For a while after discovering how lucky the number after ten was, I could not decide whether I liked five or eleven more. Finally, I just multiplied them and called it a day. So, if I ever have to choose a number between one and ten, it will probably be five and if the options are between one and twenty, it will most likely be eleven. However, if you ask for a number between one and one hundred, it will definitely by 55.

 

As we prepared to go sailing, I  could not help but to have a huge smile on my face. Being assigned to the sailboat with a bold “5” on its red mainsail was just the cherry on top. The smaller piece of cloth had a number three on it, which just so happened to be Danielle’s favorite number. She has a much more elaborate reasoning behind this decision than I do.

 

I had no interest in turning into a popsicle, but I was extremely excited to control a 420. The sailors paired us by weight to keep each boat balanced and then we all went out into the water. It was only the second time I was ever on a sailboat, and the first time I was just watching and holding the jibs. I went out on the little motor boat and waited for my turn to trade with someone else. I did not mind at all because I was lucky enough to have watched Jonah and Josh capsize. The man was trying to tell them what to do, but they were too slow for the wind. Jonah still had his knees bent as if he were sitting parallel to the water, as the boat slipped out from underneath him. It was pretty hilarious and we all had a laugh before flipping the boat back upright.

 

The man asked if I wanted to trade places with Kojo to sail with Danielle and I nearly refused. She had told me earlier that she was not very good, according to her sailing camp experience, and she did not mind if she fell in.

 

My hands were shaking from the wind and water, but I hoped into the 420 sailboat and grabbed the jibs. Danielle was controlling the steering rod and the main sail. Neither of us knew what we were doing. The other sailors kept telling us what to do, but we continued doing our own thing. We spun a couple 360s before we successfully jived, which was apparently a lot more advanced than the tacking we were supposed to be practicing. I unlatched the rope, knelt under the boom, and sat right back up. It was as if I had done it a million times before, but the truth is I really thought we had tacked. The man that was sitting in the dingy seemed to be very proud of us, which made me even more excited to sail.

 

After getting back in the wind, the rope for the mainsail got tangled and Danielle just kind of went with it. SHe knew she could not let go, or we would flip. It took us a half an hour to finally fix it, while being yelled at by the women in the other boat to tack. Our first couple attempts were unsuccessful, so they kept telling us to do it again. We were getting kind of annoyed because they kept using all these sailing terms that we did not know. We decided to just do whatever it takes to keep the boat balanced. Once everything was back to normal, and we were in the right direction for the sail to catch some wind, I remember we both agreed that we liked the clicking the little widget made when the mainsail was pulled in. It was a reassuring sound.

 

We finally made it back to shore and as we were emptying our ocean of water in the plastic boat, we concluded that the only reason why we did not capsize was because the main sail was number 5 and the other was 3, both of our lucky numbers.