Personal Narrative: Girl Scouts
Sailing is one of the only things that I have done since I was little. Ballet, I did that for a while, and then skipped that. My obsession with fashion designing, however, definitely grew out of it. Dora the Explorer, well, it would be weird if I still liked that. We still sail, and I had always heard adrenalin rushing stories of adventure on sailing trips or racing. I never thought I would live one of those, especially without my parents and even weirder, on a girl scout camping trip. Anyone who has been a part of Girl Scouts, knows that there is a safety rule for EVERYTHING. There are a safety rules for the safety rules, which is why my parents let me be a part of the trip with seven girls and a captain I and my parents had never met before.
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To give you an idea, we lost use of our engine, wrapped our anchor around another's anchor when we started drifting sideways, lost use of our stove leaving us eating froot loops and slim jims for dinner, and other problems I do not care to explain. One of the most important screw ups our group of inexperienced civilians encountered did teach me a important lesson about sailing in poor weather. The day we set out to the islands, it was cold and foggy, less than perfect sailing weather. Our captain, a nice middle aged woman didn’t seem worried at all, which I of course gave a judgmental look at. Soon, I was very startled when our captain let a person with no sailing experience steer the boat out of the marina. For people who are not sailors, that is like telling someone with no driving experience to drive on a busy highway. Long story short, we barely missed hitting a docked ferry boat. As soon as I could I took the wheel, and after the girls on the boat learned of my experience, they gave no argument. All was going pretty well, but soon most of the girls realized that they had not properly prepared for our trip. Waves had splashed on our boat due to the windy weather and the group was soaking wet. I looked ridiculous. It was June, but there I stood my wet hair pulled back, drowning in a huge red foul weather sailing coat, and winter gloves,
To give you an idea, we lost use of our engine, wrapped our anchor around another's anchor when we started drifting sideways, lost use of our stove leaving us eating froot loops and slim jims for dinner, and other problems I do not care to explain. One of the most important screw ups our group of inexperienced civilians encountered did teach me a important lesson about sailing in poor weather. The day we set out to the islands, it was cold and foggy, less than perfect sailing weather. Our captain, a nice middle aged woman didn’t seem worried at all, which I of course gave a judgmental look at. Soon, I was very startled when our captain let a person with no sailing experience steer the boat out of the marina. For people who are not sailors, that is like telling someone with no driving experience to drive on a busy highway. Long story short, we barely missed hitting a docked ferry boat. As soon as I could I took the wheel, and after the girls on the boat learned of my experience, they gave no argument. All was going pretty well, but soon most of the girls realized that they had not properly prepared for our trip. Waves had splashed on our boat due to the windy weather and the group was soaking wet. I looked ridiculous. It was June, but there I stood my wet hair pulled back, drowning in a huge red foul weather sailing coat, and winter gloves,