Carol’s Column

Boating's for the birds

I'M BRUISED and battered. Am sporting a black eye and have the bluest derriere in the business.

And it's not because I'm of royal blood.

You might wonder why?

I'll tell you why.

Because after 15 happy years of marriage, I find myself married to a fanatic.

It all started several years ago. I remember the morning well.

While lying peacefully on the patio, sipping iced orange juice, the light of my life drifted out.

Casually elegant in his baggy running shorts and aerated T-shirt. Beard unshaven, eyes bleary from waking up.

He was waving that well-known Sunday newspaper before him.

"I've had a wonderful idea," he said, pausing to gurgle his orange juice down his gullet.

My stomach dropped to my knees as it usually does when a member of my family has a wonderful idea.

"We're going to buy a yacht."

I couldn't believe it.

I shut my eyes and visions of long, smooth white decks flew breathlessly through shining waters.

I imagined myself, lean, glamorous and tanned in a mini bikini, sunbathing on the deck while my handsome hero, in nautical blue and white stripes, steered us through the Mediterranean.

Or the Vaal Dam, depending which was more convenient.

"Yes, I like the idea," I smiled.

My husband, always a man of action, especially on a Sunday morning when other people are relaxing after a long, hard week, leapt to his feet and said: "Let's go and buy a boat."

"Aren't we going the wrong way?" I murmured as we drove towards the mine dumps of the East Rand.

"No, nestling among those dumps is the finest yacht club in the world," replied my husband, an optimist to the tip of his new white sailing takkies.

When we finally reached Cinderella Dam, I didn't see it immediately.

Looking for a vast expanse of water, I didn't realise that the rather pleasant little stretch of water was actually Boksburg's answer to the Aegean Sea.

As we drove through the gates of the "finest yacht club in the world", I couldn't help feeling that perhaps the club had seen better days.

We stopped a little way along the foreshore, beside a covered shape.

"There she is," shouted my husband triumphantly. "Our yacht."

A bath tub with a sail.

"This is a yacht?" I asked my husband.

He didn't answer. His eyes were glowing and he was already sailing this tub across the waters of Boksburg.

That was when I discovered that not all yachts are 45 metre jobs with gleaming decks and shining wooden cabins.

This was a real do-it-yourself kind of yacht. Before it could be sailed, it had to be put together.

The mast and sail had to be erected — as did several other bits of boat.

"Let's go for a sail," said my man.

"In that, you're joking," I replied. "It would be endangering my life."

My husband took to small boats like a duck.

I discovered that I had one function in this marriage — that of balancing the boat.

Sunbathing was something that happened to other people. Not for me, the pleasure of a lazy day.

My weekends became a nightmare of dodging swinging booms, sailing a two-hour race crouched on my knees and being abused by other salts of the sea who sailed into us with gay abandon.

At home it was worse. We couldn't use the lounge because the sails needed to be laid out in a safe place sans children, dogs and wife.

I became sick of bathing with bits of boat and my husband took to wearing his captain's cap in bed and shouting "starboard", "port" every time I turned over.

The finale came last Sunday while competing in a race, he yelled "tack" and I asked him why.

With a majestic sweep of his arm, he keeled the boat and I found myself swimming.

Which wouldn't have mattered — except he left me to swim my way back to the shore while he went on to finish the race.

Who said sailing was a family sport?

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