And showing off. Near the shoreline, beginners climbed onto clunky floaters in the frothy surf, unsteady as rookie riders at a dude ranch. Just why do they call this horse Dynamite? Windsurfing is a sport with a steep learning curve, and the first few tries can be frustrating. Watching an experienced boardsailor tear through a series of bottom turns and slashbacks on the offshore waves can be inspiring to the newcomer, or so I rationalized my blatant showboating. On occasion, I could even be persuaded to teach a grateful beach bunny how to tie a bowline or a Prusik hitch knot, all in the spirit of sportsmanship, of course.
Approaching the shoreline at warp speed, I leaned a heavy foot on the rail, and the board carved into the wind. I let go of the boom and dragged my aft hand in the water, a flare jibe. In theory, the hand acts as a daggerboard and pulls the board through the turn. In reality, it’s a grandstanding technique equivalent to a hot-rodder fishtailing on the asphalt. Hey, look at me! I finished the jibe, flipped the boom, then shot back out over the chop, the wind snapping my sail and whistling a tune like a flute through the holes in the mast extension. I squinted into the sun, jibed again, and rode heavy rollers into the shallow water near the Fifth Street beach. I shot past startled swimmers, a couple of teenage sailors in a Sunfish, and some novice boardsailors. Nearing the shore, I pulled the foot of the sail over my head as the leech swung through the eye of the wind-a flashy duck jibe-and just as the board should have started on a new tack, the tail sunk and the bow shot up like a leaping marlin. I toppled backward into five feet of surf. Served me right.
Shaking water out of my eyes and sand out of my trunks, I recognized the sound of sail crackling in the wind, somewhere behind me, moving closer. It is equivalent to hearing a trucker’s horn when you are on a bicycle. I turned just in time to have a mast topple onto me, whacking my right shoulder, and I went under again. This time, I had company.
She was a tall, sunburned blonde, who hadn’t seen thirty. She wore a white one-piece Lycra suit, and when she crawled back onto the board, I could see telltale scraped shins. Her hair was plastered to her skull, and she breathed heavily through pouting lips. If anyone had ever taught her to boardsail, they hadn’t taught her right.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, clinging to the board, which teetered in the surf. “This is so much harder than it looks.”
“First time,” I guessed.
“No. Yes. I mean, in the ocean. I’ve sailed on Lake Minnewaska. But this…” She gestured at the rollers.
“Lake Minnie…”
“In Minnesota.”
She had a faint singsong accent. Swedish maybe. “It’s a different sport in the waves,” I agreed. “Try again. I’ll give you some pointers.”
Jacob Lassiter, Esq., to the rescue. Accused murderers and sopping wet damsels, walk right in. She looked at me the way they do when sizing you up. Deciding whether you’re Tom Cruise or Charles Manson. I crinkled my best beach smile at her and must not have looked too lethal, because she allowed as how my assistance would be peachy, got to her feet, grabbed the uphaul, and pulled, straining to get the sail out of the water. She had some fine ripples in her triceps, but the mast stayed put, weighted down by what must have seemed like a ton of water burying the sail. Beneath the white Lycra, her nipples were perking up.
“Heavy son of a bitch,” she muttered.
At first I thought she meant me.
I like a woman who curses. Makes me think she’ll be honest in personal relationships. It’s stupid, I know, like believing a guy who doesn’t look you in the eyes is shifty, when he may just be bashful.
“Damn right,” I said, adapting my lingo, chameleonlike, to my companion. “Try leaning back. Let your legs do the work. Don’t be afraid. You won’t fall, just keep hold of the uphaul.”
Beginners have this fear of toppling over backward, so they stand straight up and do all the pulling with their arms. Gradually, she leaned back and got the tip of the mast out of the water, and the rest followed. She grabbed the boom, raked it in, and headed the twelve-foot board out through the surf.
She yelled something that sounded like “whoopee,” and looked back at me over her shoulder through her flying blond hair, brave enough now to loosen up a little. “Sail with me.”
Willingly, I ducked under my boom and lay in the water on my back. I propped my feet on the board, and tilted the mast into the wind. When I felt a gust, I lifted the boom gently and let the sail pick me up as it filled with air. I slid my feet into the straps, tugged the boom toward me, and followed my Minnesota friend. I pumped the sail twice and whizzed alongside her.
“Thanks for showing me the ropes,” she called out. “I’m Jillian. Will you let me take you to my hotel for lunch?”
I couldn’t think why not. “Sure. I’m Jake. Let’s get past the surf line. I’ll show you some tricks they don’t know in Duluth. When we get in, I’ll give you some salve for those scrapes.”
Doctor Lassiter at your service; we make beach calls.
She smiled and kept sailing. I stayed upwind and behind her, watching her calf muscles undulate through the window on my sail. “Watch out for those jet skis,” I yelled, pointing in the general direction of Bimini. Three hundred yards away, two machines euphemistically called “personal watercraft” were chawing away, fouling the breeze with their noxious noise. Nearby, a sleek yacht was anchored, pitching gently in the offshore waves.
What loggers are to forests, what sheep are to grass, that’s what jet skis are to a fine patch of turquoise water. It’s not the machine, of course, loud and irksome as it is. The yahoos who ride them, water bullies, are the problem. They ignore the rules of right-of-way, cut off sailboats, terrorize swimmers, scare the fish, and toss beer bottles into the surf. Down in Islamorada recently, a fisherman plugged a jet skier with a. 22 rifle when the punk wouldn’t heed his warnings to keep a distance. Only a flesh wound in the leg. Most of the locals wish the fisherman was a better shot.
These two surf jockeys were headed right for us on their black-and-white monsters, churning up the water, jumping each other’s wake, and generally destroying the tranquility of a place where the only sound is the smooth slash of water and the tune of the wind. We stayed on our tack, a close reach to the northeast. The onshore wind swept the gaseous stink across the waves. The two intruders slowed about thirty yards away. Two Hispanic men, early twenties. Both wiry, both looking at me, instead of Jillian, which any red-blooded guy would do. One of them said something, but with the sound of the damned engines and the whistling wind, I couldn’t hear. A second time, louder. “Ay, you! Follow us.”
I shook my head, dumbfounded.
“C’mon, asshole. Somebody wants to see you.”
I luffed the sail and slowed, but at two hundred twenty-something pounds, I can’t stop. If I do, the board will sink. “No thanks, have a lunch date.”
Jillian sailed by and was looking back over her shoulder. Probably thinking about all the Miami horror stories she must have heard. It’s one thing to be caught in the crossfire of a Colombian cowboy drug war at a shopping mall. Or to wander into a Santeria ceremony sacrificing live goats to the god Yemaya. But to witness a boardsailor’s kidnapping might be a new one for the folks in mid-America.
Their engines were idling, and the incoming tide brought them closer. Both had tattoos on their upper arms. The talker had a neatly trimmed mustache. “C’mon, Hector. We’ll tow him.”
They revved up and followed me, Hector zooming close, reaching for the bowline that sweeps back into the water as you sail. I pumped the sail and caught a gust that took me out of his reach. Except for a couple of space-age trimarans, a fiberglass board with a sail is the fastest wind-driven craft in existence. The America’s Cup yachts? Spare me. The fastest boards can triple their speeds. But a sail is not an engine. I depend on nature: wind and water. Those damn motorcycles on water generate four hundred fifty pounds of thrust out a jet nozzle.