I taught myself how to sail. I bought a cheap, 12’ Craigslist sailboat, followed the manual (from the 70’s) to set it up, and went out on the water! I had no motor, just the wind to pull me along. I dropped the swing keel (the piece on the bottom of the boat that sticks down into the water) and used the tiller to steer myself out onto the lake. Too bad there wasn't a lick of wind that day.

The second time my husband, Sean, and I went out, the wind was strong, and I wasn’t sure we would even be able to launch. We were trying to get on the lake from the north side of the lake, but the wind was coming in strong from the south, and I couldn’t get out far enough to catch the wind. After an hour and a half of fighting the waves, we gave up and went home feeling beaten.

Over the summer we learned how to use our little boat, Nazaza, until we felt it was time to upgrade to a bigger boat. That’s when we moved back to Houston. One day, on the way home, I spotted an old beaten up sailboat sitting in the driveway of a little one-story house. We looked at it- it was perfect! Except it was full of water and weeds and looked like it hadn’t been sailed in a quarter of a century.
We knocked on the front door, and I asked the old man who answered if he would consider selling us his boat. He laughed and said, “If you can get it out of the driveway, you can HAVE it!”

I recruited my father, a skilled sailor, mechanic, electrician, boat builder, and captain, to help us. We saved the little sailboat from decaying in the driveway and brought it home to renovate.

The first day, I spent four hours in the sun scooping out mud, leaves, and plants from the inside of the boat. I also had to suction out the murky water. When I first looked in that boat, it looked like it was more likely to have sea serpent eggs in it than a passenger. After it was thoroughly cleaned, we replaced the hardware and rotten wood, repaired the damage to the cockpit as best we could, replaced the lines and the rigging, and painted everything inside and out. After a year she was ready to get on the water.
The first sail with Sean and my dad went perfectly. We put her (Elsa is what we named her) in the water and sailed her over to the dock slip at our house. The second time we went out, it was just Sean and me, and it felt like our first sail all over again. This sailboat was 6 feet longer, higher out of the water, and had two sails instead of one. We also had to maneuver it in and out of our marina. We were in real waters now, not just some 5' deep lake in North Texas. At least we had a motor this time.

I steered with the tiller and the motor while Sean untied the lines and shoved off. The little motor pushed us as best it could, but the wind kept sending us backwards toward the pilings. I pulled hard on the tiller, trying to turn us around before we hit the dock when- CRAAAAACK!! The tiller snapped off in my hand. I sat there, dumbfounded, with a chunk of wood in my hand as we drifted toward the dock. I looked at Sean and said, “Yeah, we’re done.” I steered us manually (my arm in the water turning the rudder) back to the dock.
We left the dock that day the same as we had left the lake last summer-defeated.

Later we found our resolve, replaced the tiller with a wheelbarrow handle and went back on the water! Sean and I sailed little Elsa back and forth across the lake at sunset, watching the sky turn from orange to pink and to purple, knowing there would be many more beautiful sails to come.