Page 14 of The Sailor in Polynesia
I hung on toWelinawhile Lila started the engine. It took her a few tries again, and she grunted in frustration. “Any tips you want to share with me?”
I grinned at her. “You have to be really committed. Yank that fluffernutter as hard as you can.”
She laughed. “Fluffernutter.” She cast a spiteful look at the motor.
I opened up the little locker in the bow and pulled out the anchor. Lila and I navigated toward the coral as if there were an invisible obstacle course in the way, weaving from side to side as she steered and overcorrected.
Lila flushed, embarrassed.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “I can’t tell you how many people I’ve taught to drive boats and they have trouble learning how to steer too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Even some professional captains overcorrect from time to time. It’s no big deal here, especially because there’s no one to run into.” I gestured out at the wide and empty lagoon.
With my guidance, we dropped the anchor in the sand and put our gear on. “Okay, lessons first, or fun first?”
“Lessons.”
“Cool. So, what have you done in terms of snorkeling and free diving?”
Lila told me about practicing in a pool with Eivind and snorkeling a few times in the last anchorage. She interrupted herself. “What are you doing?”
I looked up from my mask, where I cleaned the lens. “Oh, this? It’s baby shampoo. It keeps the mask from fogging up. Want to try some?”
“Yeah!” She wrinkled her nose. “Eivind and Jonas spit into their masks. It’s kinda gross.”
“Yeah, a lot of people do that. I’ve never liked it and find the baby shampoo to be better anyway.” I showed her how to wash and rinse the mask out and then we put the masks on our faces. I slipped my fins on and strapped the weight belt around my waist. “I brought you a weight belt too. Since it’s shallow here, we’ll use these to keep ourselves closer to the bottom. You’ll still float,” I assured her. “But you don’t have to work as hard to stay down.”
I showed her how to put the belt on so that the weight sat comfortably and how to quickly release the strap and drop the weight. “Don’t worry even a tiny bit about having to drop the weight. It’s so shallow here, I can easily retrieve it, so if you panic or anything, pop it loose and surface. Okay?”
“Okay.” We ditched our snorkels—we didn’t need them.
I held my mask to my face—Lila watched and copied me—and we flipped backward out of the dinghy. I swam around to her side and she grinned at me.
“It feels weird. Not as floaty.”
“True. We’re going to hang on so you don’t have to work so hard to stay at the surface.” We both gripped the handles and stopped kicking as much. “Make sure you don’t come up directly under the dinghy.”
I gave Lila instructions on how to breathe at the surface and how to pop her ears if she needed to. We did some easy exercises, sinking to the bottom and staying down as long as she could.
In between dives, we rested at the surface, hanging on and chatting.
“You are pretty good at this,” Lila commented.
“Thanks. I enjoy free diving, and I’ve practiced a lot. You’ll get a lot better with more practice.”
“No, I meant the teaching thing. You’re a good instructor.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Thanks.”
“Did you ever teach sailing?”
“A long time ago, at summer camp when I was a counselor. It’s been awhile. I mean, I guess I kind of taught Liam, but that was hard.”
She grinned at me. “Some guys are pretty stubborn. Eivind and Jonas have been teaching me sailing since I joined the boat, but it’s not always easy, and I think it’s because they are guys.”
I hummed. “Sometimes I do get frustrated because I’m not strong enough to do the things I need to. I feel that I have to be more creative to get the same results. Does that make sense?”
