Mutiny on the Sabots

This actually happened a while ago...

So yesterday as I prepared to launch my mighty mosquito fleet of sailing vessels out into the Channel, the winds were roaring from Inspiration Point down toward Lionshead (out of the West). The previous period had gone surprisingly well and I was amped for a repeat performance. It was at this point that Barbara Radford, a cabin counselor, arrived with her cabin and informed me that several of her campers were interested in the exceptionally awkward acronym MLOP.

At our camp, this stands for Minimum Level of Participation, and is a concept put in place to coerce campers into at least trying an activity before we allow them to refuse to take part in it. At the climbing wall for example, the MLOP might be that kids have to gear up in harnesses and climb 3 feet up on the wall before they can choose to give up. Now I personally have never had a whole lot of use for this philosophy, as I decided long ago that my area's minimum level of participation was exactly the same as its maximum level: get in a boat and go sailing. If a kid actually gets out on the water and is really freaking out, I am happy to retrieve them via chaseboat and return them to the dock, but that doesn't really happen very often. The Challenge (climbing and ropes) staff are always talking about how leaving your comfort zone is how you grow, and that at CIC we like to do hard things, and these are ideas that I wholeheartedly embrace. I believe that even if a kid goes out and spends the whole period capsizing and recovering, that kid gains something from the experience, so pretty much I expected to have little trouble in convincing a camper or two to get out on the water.

And thus it was that I was quite surprised that while rigging the sailfleet on the beach, each and every camper from Barbara's cabin walked up to me and declared in one voice that they were refusing to go sailing. It was nothing short of mutiny! It was a full-scale rebellion of twelve year-old girls, and I can honestly say that in all my time teaching sailing I have never been met with such resistance. I have sent kids out on the water on days that made yesterday look like sailing in a placid pond, but never before did an entire cabin try to refuse to even get in the water. I asked the girls why they weren't interested in sailing, and they shot out a number of reasons, ranging from fear of the water, sharks, and capsizing to simple disinterest in being cold and wet. Seeing my opportunity, I quickly unleashed my secret weapon: PBA (Power Boat Activities). Now there are a lot of kids out there who will claim they don't want to go sailing for the above reasons, however there are almost no kids out there who will refuse to be dragged behind a powerboat on a tube at 20 knots, for any reason. Interestingly enough, PBA requires you to be just as wet, just as cold, and occurs just as far (actually farther) out to sea as sabot sailing does. Furthermore, this cabin of girls had literally just come from PBA the previous period (thank God), thus giving me a pretty strong argument against their supposed fears. After hitting them with the classic Dentinger motivational tool, "So you're willing to be dragged behind a boat at 30 mph with the potential to be snapped through the air like a rubber band but you're worried about falling six inches out of a boat whose top speed is about 10 mph?", several of the girls grudgingly agreed to get in the water. I knew when the group approached me that probably only 1 or 2 girls was actually committed to avoiding sailing, and the others just saw an opportunity and jumped on the bandwagon, and in short order I had carved away their supporters and only the ringleaders remained. I launched all the other boats first, then I convinced the last two holdouts to get into a fully rigged sabot. I actually was on the verge of backing down and letting them get out, but instead, in my most encouraging tone I said, "Girls, do you seriously think I would have you do this if I didn't think you were going to have fun and be safe at the same time?" they replied, "No, but we don't want to get wet!" I smiled and then I shoved their boat out to sea.

The girls actually ended up doing pretty well on the water, and were sailing fairly well given the wind speed. We ended up pulling the boats in early because they were starting to drift out of sight of the Tower and we wanted to be sure we had enough time to get them in. The mutineering ringleaders were on their way back in at the end of the sail when I saw them capsize, their screams rang out across the water. It was really too bad, they really did almost make it back unaided. I ran my boat over and decided they were too upset (more angry than scared) and took them aboard my boat, leaving Barbara behind to right the sabot and sail it the rest of the way in. For this I am extremely grateful, Barbara was a champ that afternoon.

Interestingly enough, this cabin of girls commanded by Ms. Radford was joined that period by a cabin of boys led by Ike Wallace of Montana, and their attitudes were diametrically opposed. None of those boys really knew how to sail, but they looked out at the wind and the waves and saw nothing but adventure and excitement. Because I had an uneven number of kids, I needed one camper to brave the seas alone, and when I asked the group for volunteers, not only did every single hand among Ike's campers shoot up, but each of them started yelling, begging, and jumping, desperately jockeying for my attention. This is the essential truth of learning to sail, that you need to be passionately interested in going out regardless of the threat of capsize and see if you can find a way to control the boat.

And so I witnessed two groups of kids attempt the same activity under the same conditions, and half of them loved it, while the other half (who interestingly were probably a little more competent at sailing) complained the whole time. As a Jedi Master would have said, "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view"