This is about a story of my life. A very dangerous scary story about camp. If you are a sailor this is the right story for you. This story is about my near-death experience that just about everyone in the world has.
Personal Narrative
Fighting For Life. My story doesn’t cover me as a baby, but it tells about how I turn out to be so dedicated to the things I love. When I was about twelve I went to my first camp where I didn’t go home. This camp was two weeks long and was the most fun I’d ever had. This was also when I met my new favorite thing to do—sailing. I don’t know how many of you have gone sailing, but without a doubt it is a life-changing experience, and I did it every day.
When I was thirteen I went on a sleep-away sail boat during camp, with three of my friends. We went off on the first day to go near the Canadian border. This was the scariest thing I have ever done; our 22ft boat was about to capsize (flip over). The wind was in my face going at roughly 30mph, making the boat sway back and forth.
This was the craziest thing of my life, especially because I was on the front of the boat. You could see people’s stuff flying from left to right, my snacks fell off of the boat along with almost everyone else’s. The boat was sliding back and forth at 60 degree angles, and sometimes we went up to 80 degree angles. But, for some reason I stayed hanging on to the mast of the boat tying down ropes, changing ropes etc.
I don’t know how many of you have gone sailing, but it is beautiful. Having sun, water, and wind all in one, doing this while hanging out with friends is the best thing to do. It makes you want to sail all day.
Well, when I was on this trip, that’s not how I felt, we were a group of ten split up on two boats. We had a cruddier cheap boat, and the other group had a fancier, more expensive boat. Well, the other group was leading, and we were following, their boat went on practically a 90 degree angle. The boat was sideways and looking at them really put in perspective what could happen to us: capsize. In 30 degree water with no one around, I thought, “Great we’re gonna flip over and die.” Sounds like a fun trip right?
Well, as the trip went on there was one out of the four days that you could consider borderline “nice.” We were in between the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Canada. How good can the weather get in an area like that anyways? On the fourth and final day is when everyone (even the two counselors) was scared for their lives. The winds were outrageous, 40mph on average. To add onto that, you couldn’t see more than a quarter-mile in front of you, and it was also raining like nothing you’ve ever seen.
Then in the distance, you could hear the occasional freight boat, which wasn’t able to turn fast, so if we were to run into one… well, we would not be winning that fight. Well, anyways we were about 3 miles away when all of a sudden something snaps on our boat. And of course it’s the main sail and the boom (the boom directs the angle of the sail). So, we had to go the next 3 miles with 40mph winds, rain, fog, freight boats, and no sail. You would be surprised I’m still here, well so am I.
What ended up happening was our front sail (the jib) was huge, so this was able to bring us close enough in to a point where we would have enough gas in the 15 horsepower engine (there is more than 15 horsepower in my lawnmower!). The engine was hanging in the back of our boat to get us back. But, when we were about 3 minutes from being at the dock, the engine fell right off the end of the boat. So some nice people towed us in.
Well, just remember, when you go sailing with a bunch of other twelve year olds in between Canada and Upper Peninsula in Michigan, use a good boat.