A retrospective field report, a metaphor, and ruminations on the Captain/First Officer dynamic- plus lots of Red Flags that were ignored until the sex died down after the kids and I was driven to The Red Pill.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in another life time, I had a pretty young wife who was a law student. She was a hard-nosed professional on the surface and our equalitarian marriage was the stuff of legends, poetry and song. We had sex every day. Life was great. During this (short but) euphoric period there was an incident worthy of transcribing for posterity because it is so illustrative.

My “Co-Captain” and “Equal Partner” and I rented a small sailboat. This was a two person boat with one on the rudder and the other operating the sail by hand. Nothing fancy. No problem, right?

We took it out across the lake with a strong wind from shore but we were already almost across the lake before we realized we would have to tack in order to get back to shore. For all you non-sailing types, “tacking into the wind” is the PERFECT metaphor for marriage 2.0. You can’t go directly into the wind so you sail at about a 45 Degree angle into the wind. Then you switch (tack) back the other direction at 45 degrees into the wind and thereby advance forward directly into the wind but in a zig-zag manner.

In order to tack, you have to swing the boom (the HEAVY wood horizontal rod that holds the sail) and switch the sail so it catches the wind from the other direction AND at the same time you have to move the rudder in the back in the new direction.

Also, you have to duck under it or you will be brained, because it swings around like a baseball bat.

Got it? No problem, right? I duck down and swing the boom over by hand and then catch the wind on the other side of the sails. All my wife has to do in the back of the boat is move the rudder and swing the boat around into the new direction.

Simple, right? Yah, it WOULD HAVE been simple. It SHOULD have been simple. But that would have required her to follow my lead. That would have required my high powered equalitarian lawyer yougogiiirrrrl to actually listen to her husband. To actually follow his lead like, I don’t know, maybe a trusted First Officer? Something like that anyway.

So the jobs were, I needed to catch the air in a small portion of the sails (remember, we are going 45 degrees into the wind so only about 1/4 of the sails will be filled with air). SHE needed to pay attention to the air I was catching and steer the rudder at an angle to the wind so we could tack.

Want to know what happened? Can you guess?

Instead of steering diagonally, to the wind she turned directly into the wind, OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Of course when the wind direction shifts relative to the sails, the boom swings around HARD. Like I said, it is like a baseball bat. She did it at least 5 times and each time the boom just miss my skull as I skillfully ducked. The boom nearly wrenched my shoulders out of socket each time to say nothing of my life flashing before my eyes and the stars and the colors.

I tried to explain each time but each time we attempted it again, seemingly panicked, she turned the fucking boat directly into the wind and swung the boom around.

She would NOT listen to me or follow me lead. Eventually I insulted her enough so she refused to help at all which turned out to be a blessing. I physically moved her- with much carping and bitching- to the center of the boat and told her to lay down. She continued to complain but wisely ducked down low.

I grabbed the rudder with my left hand, laid down, and stretched out as far as I could and reached out with my feet and grabbed the boom. With a little maneuvering, I managed to catch some wind and steered us in the right direction. I was able to change direction 5 or six times, literally with my toes controlling the boom, and we made it back to the other side of the lake.

TLDR: Captain and First Officer is not always just a metaphor: A ship run all by yourself is much more efficient than a ship with a disobedient First Officer or even worse- a ship with two Captains.