By Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 8, 2001; C02
Am I a sailor yet? I have a new certificate that says I am. I have a working seagoing vocabulary of luffs and lees and jibs and jibes and clews and crews. I know the word leeward is pronounced loo-erd, and I know starboard from port without thinking about it for much more than a beat. I can tell a reach from a run, a head from a foot and my aft from a hole in the ground. I didn't used to know these things. But I do now because I've just been through the Become-a-Sailor-in-One-Weekend course offered by Annapolis Sailing School. The school -- which bills itself as the oldest and largest sailing academy in the country -- says some 80,000 people have learned sailing basics in its two-day class, more than in "all other courses combined at any other sailing school." It's an old-salt assembly line on the docks of Annapolis's Back Creek. Since 1959, lubbers like me have arrived at the school's marina as hopeless nautical neophytes. Less than 48 hours later, they spit us out again dipped in brine, able to rig, reef and steer on command. But does that make us sailors? Unlike garden-variety, populist pursuits like bowling and softball, sailing is one of those hobbies -- like polo, grand prix racing and international art collecting -- that comes weighted with socioeconomic implications. Tell your co-workers you play basketball on the weekends and they think "Pabst." Tell them you're hoping to get pole position at Monaco this year and they think "Dom Perignon." (Well, first they think "snob," followed by "bull," followed by "Why are you telling me this?" Then they think "Dom Perignon.") Tell them you're A Sailor and they think "yacht" and look to see if your ankles are bare over your Top-Siders. Sailing, it seems, can be as much about culture as sport. "Sailing is not something you usually get into without money," says Rick Franke. Some sailors, like Franke himself, were born to the tiller not through privilege, but through proximity to sailing hot spots like San Diego and Newport and Annapolis. And indeed, many of the school's young instructors are local kids who grew up with boats but who may never have the funds to skipper their own 47-foot Beneteau. But those who come to sailing later in life are typically looking for more than an education in bowlines and half hitches. "They're looking to adopt a lifestyle," Franke says of the mid-career, successful professionals who are his average students, "from wearing boat shoes without socks to owning their own boat, and everything in between." It starts with the vocabulary. To be a sailor, you have to talk like a sailor (no, not swear like a sailor -- that comes the first time the boom whacks you in the forehead). And so, Day 1 of Course 102 begins with a basic primer of all the nautical terms and definitions you'll need to navigate around the bay and, more importantly, around the Yacht Club bar. Our teacher was Jay Neale, an affable retired investment banker and lifelong sailor who looks like a tanned Dave Thomas. "It's all about communication, with your crew in the boat and with your fellow sailors after you come off the water," Neale said, holding up a model sailboat in one of the school's three waterside classrooms. "Now, this is a sloop; it has one mast and two sails . . . " Sloop. Schooner. Brig. Got it. I expected to be restless during the three-hour classroom sessions each morning of the class, but in fact I was fascinated by Neale's clear, intense briefing. Frankly, my only prequalification for this class was being an avid reader of the Hornblower books as a kid and the even better Patrick O'Brian naval novels as an adult. Even though I've read that 20-volume series twice through, each one of Neale's definitions added retroactively to my understanding of their dense jargon. Not much has changed in sailor talk since the 1800s, except now you're supposed to cry "Crew Overboard" instead of "Man Overboard." Finally, though, Neale led us down to the dock, where a line of sturdy fiberglass sloops kissed the weathered planks and sang the comforting marina tune of ropes -- I mean halyards -- dinging against the mast. We broke into small groups and, under the watchful eye of Neale and two other instructors, we rigged the mainsail and the jib and readied to sail. You want nervous, try tying your first knots in front of someone who used to walk the docks with his father, openly ridiculing the rope craft on display. "By their lines ye shall know them," Neale quoted ominously. Thanks a lot. By the time I finished my cleat hitch it looked like a rag doll someone had blown up with a firecracker. Am I a sailor yet? Boat by boat, we hauled in the starboard jib sheets and let the stiffening breeze pull the bows around toward the Severn River. The boats came alive, and we got our first taste of the joyous motion that makes sailors such fanatics. It's like the first time you connect perfectly with a tee shot -- your heart soars with the ball and you're instantly willing to endure a thousand humiliating hooks, slices and bouncing miscues in the hopes of just one more arching drive like that. Trimming the jib, feeling the boat heel over with water gathering urgency along the side, was like sending a Top-Flite 300 yards down the middle. The boats -- 24-foot Rainbows -- were specially commissioned as training vessels by Annapolis Sailing School back in the early 1960s. School founder Jerry Wood was looking for a stable, roomy sloop that would be durable and impossible to capsize. New York designers Sparkman and Stephens came up with the Rainbow, one of the first sailboats designed for the fiberglass age. Wood manufactured them until 1973 in an Eastern Shore factory, not only for his own school but for the U.S. Naval Academy, competing schools and hundreds of private sailors. Rainbows even emerged as their own racing category at clubs around the country. Thirty years later, the school's own fleet remains trim and seaworthy. Here's what Katharine Hepburn says of a scrappy little sailboat in "The Philadelphia Story": "My-y-y, she-e was yar-r-r." Here's what Neale says of the indomitable Rainbows, "They're like Clorox bottles that never disappear." Same thing, really. For three happy hours we plied the windy waters off Annapolis, taking turns at the tiller, keeping the Rainbow as close to the wind as possible in exhilarating close-hauled tacks and then sweltering along in still runs with the breeze. The waters were full of boats, from the big gray working vessels around the Navy docks to obnoxious, roaring cigarette beasts to the fleets of student sailors skittering about like water bugs. Annapolis Sailing School may have been the first, but now several schools teach on these waters, and the sailing short course has become a popular vacation. My classmates Rob and Kate Gould from Silver Spring booked into the historic Governor Calvert Inn through the school for a three-day instructional getaway. Kelly Stainton, a rancher from Colorado, came to learn the basics this summer so she could return with a group of friends for a longer course in Chesapeake cruising next year. We all came as novices. We all left as . . . what? Sailors? After two days, most of us certainly executed the basic maneuvers more smartly than when we started out, even beating upwind to the marina at the end of the day and tying up with a recognizable cleat hitch. (I was particularly proud of the way I came to cry "Ready About!" in my best gale-proof bellow.) But does simply knowing how to sail make you a sailor? Almost. But in case my new certificate doesn't convince those skeptical mates around the yacht club bar, I'm going to get myself a pair of Top-Siders.ESCAPE KEYS