She’s a Captain

Yes — it’s true, I received my US Coast Guard 50-ton master’s inland license just a few weeks ago, making me a newly minted captain. Hold the applause, thanks. I’m not saying you have to call me Cap, but I am saying that you could, if you wanted to. To any landlubbers reading this, you might be tempted to put me up on a pedestal for my many accomplishments: “She’s only 30? She only started sailing a few years ago? She’s a professional writer, too, with a dozen published articles in Latitude 38? My, however does she do it all?” Well, I did “it” because I ran out of other options.

I graduated into the COVID pandemic as a dreamy French major, which didn’t exactly yield the career jobs I had hoped to land. And so, like many others before me, I gave up and took to the sea. Or, I took to the Bay. Because, did you notice? My license is designated “inland waters,” which is pretty much the Coast Guard’s way of saying, “Sure, you can drive the boat … just not too far.”

Even so, earning this license took five years of adventures: 1,000 documented hours of sea service time on sailboats, 40 hours of class time, 10 hours of charting homework, eight hours of exams, untold hours of fighting imposter syndrome, and countless times I’ve received help along the way.

None of this would have happened if I had not joined Cal Sailing Club in 2018 as a curious transfer student at UC Berkeley. Wildly unprepared and far too nerdy for the marina, I hopped onto a dinghy, barefoot in yoga pants and a T-shirt, and immediately capsized during a lesson. Twenty-knot gusts in an ebb-current chop meant 40 minutes in the water before getting rescued. I had hypothermia — and a nasty case of the sailing bug. I had to get back out there and beat this thing called a dinghy.

After that, it is possible I sailed more than I studied, and I studied a lot! (I was a vitamin D-deficient nerd who read a lot of fiction to escape and loved Berkeley academics a little too much.) But I also loved the sailing community. I loved getting stronger. And I loved being on the water. It was as fun as playing outside had been as a kid — the sun and wind and salt and aching muscles and bruises. (The RS Quest gives you the worst kind of bruises, the kind that make the pool lifeguard ask if you’re safe at home.) I had found a new, unlikely escape.

After a year abroad in France, a global pandemic closing airports behind me, and a crash landing back in my hometown, I found myself on the water again. I landed a gig as a deckhand for Captain Kirk’s San Francisco Sailing. That’s where things really took off.

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