We went down there and were met by a nice group of people and assigned to a boat captained by a man named Bob. Bob is one of the founding members of the organization and has been in a wheelchair for twenty-six years. He was injured diving into the Yakima River and, since his friends did not notice that he was injured and in trouble after the dive, he is very lucky to be alive. It just happened that a fisherman downstream saw him struggling and pulled him out of the river with a broken neck.
Bob has a low cervical injury and what that means is that he has some, but not complete use of his arms. Of course, he has no use of his legs. In practice this means that he can grip things with several fingers but does not have complete use of his hands. His arms themselves are relatively strong.
Bob is the captain of the boat. The boat is a standard sailboat with almost no special provisions for handicapped people. There is an interesting arrangement on the mainsail, one that I had not seen before, where the sail is zipped into a linear bag against the mast that is constructed by building a zipper into the cloth of the sale itself. As the halyard is raised the sale unzips itself and becomes a standard mainsail. As the halyard is lowered, there is a small bag moves down the zipper stopping the sale in and zipping the bags closed. The jib has a standard arrangement where it is stowed I by rolling around the fore stay. As a result of these two arrangements there is a lot less work in raising and lowering the sails and no work is required to stow them.
Getting onto the boat is a challenge. The boats rail is at least 10 inches lower than the height of my chair, a considerable distance. Bob is of course used to making the transfer from his chair but I am not. I request that a few pillows be placed on the rail raising its height and adding padding against any mistakes I might make. It turns out that getting down is fairly easy but I will later require help to get back up into my chair. I never did see how Bob manages to accomplish this task.
We had seven people in the boat, to able-bodied assistants from the club, skipper Bob, a woman and her very severely disabled daughter. I believe that the daughter must have had a developmental disability because she never spoke on the entire trip. We fired up the motor and motored into the lake. Once outside the breakwater we turned into the wind and raised the sails. I have located myself on one side of the stern with skipper Bob on the other. after we were underway I took over sailing and sailed the boat most of the way across the lake. I had little trouble handling the boat except that the tiller was loose and fairly heavy and required me to lean too far forward in order to effectively run it so after a while I gave that task to Verna who was sitting further forward and had better leverage on the tiller.
On the way back Bob ran the boat for a while. When he adjusted the lines, for example pulling in the jib, he would fall in the line and then hold it in his teeth well he reached out to pull in some more. He was very efficient at this process and had no problems controlling the line.
Bob has been sailing this boat for over twenty years. He can get around the boat easily, I am not quite certain how he manages it. Which is arm weakness I would certainly have a great deal of difficulty getting around. He is able to get down to the cabin and sleep there, a task that I certainly could not accomplish.
Back at the dock I was faced with the problem of crossing from one side of the cockpit to the other. After considering several options, I ended up reaching up and pulling myself up on the boom and then swinging across. On the way out I was able to get onto a pillow on the rail but after contemplating the distance I would have to rise to get into the wheelchair I ended up asking for assistance from a couple of able-bodied men who were able to easily raise me onto my chair.
We will return to footloose sailing hopefully on a sunnier day.
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