Foreword
These stories are based in Australia and written in the idiom the characters would use.
Some issues in language variations I anticipated and built translations into my narrative. Others have caught me by surprise especially in their intensity. Generally, the intended meaning will be clear from the context if you don't cling too tightly to your usual usage.
Crutch/ Crotch has been a subject of much comment. Australians more commonly use 'crutch' and that meaning of the word is supported by the Macquarie Dictionary.
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Story
With such a long summer holiday, Greg, as he so eloquently put it, said he needed to find ways to entertain me so that we just didn't lie up the back of the beach and screw each other silly all day. One of the things he introduced me to was sailing.
It was a sport Greg had been active in until the end of year 10, at which point the need to get a job and study harder for his HSC years had left him with the choice of giving up sailing or lifesavers. Greg had chosen to give up the former and his sister had eagerly taken over the boat. So the boat was still owned by the family and kept in the sailing club by the river.
The club was one of those old boatshed type clubs built by the members themselves out of concrete blocks and fibro in the 50's. The boat storage and change rooms were downstairs; while upstairs there was a big open hall and canteen with large glass windows looking out over the river. From the looks of it not much -- and especially the change rooms -- had been updated since the 50's either.
The type of boat was a 29er; a high performance skiff type boat intended for experienced older teenagers and 20 year olds. It was not really the sort of boat one generally learns to sail in; especially as it has both a spinnaker and trapeze. All Greg said in relation to that was that I was no ordinary student.
In actual fact Greg had got me sailing fairly easily. By the end of the first day I was trapezing confidently; for those of you who don't know trapezing is hanging out from the side of the boat suspended only by a wire or rope coming down from the masthead and attached to a hook on a special nappy like belt that you wear. I was also setting the spinnaker and controlling it from the trapeze.
On this Monday it was forecast to be over 35 degrees by midday; a typical Australian Christmas Eve. So rather than play tennis, we'd thought we'd have another sail. This was only my fourth time on the boat. Still, I more or less knew what was going on, where the wind was coming from, how the sails should be set and even what I was doing. However, I was about to discover a whole different side to sailing.
We'd been out for a while when Greg pointed to the South where a big black cloud was forming and seemingly racing toward us and suggested that we'd better head for the beach. We'd really only just started out for home when the first gusts from the storm front hit us. It was much stronger than anything we'd been sailing in before. Greg saw the gust racing across the water toward us and called for me to ease the jib so we wouldn't get blown over. I was still trying to flick it out of the cleat when the gust hit. Even though Greg fully dumped the main, the gust was strong enough to capsize us from the pressure on the jib alone.
Fortunately Greg had briefed me on what to do if we capsized while I was out on trapeze; so I threw myself out the back of the boat to land in the water behind the mainsail without damaging myself or the boat. By the time I'd recovered my composure, Greg was already on the centreboard having climbed straight over there as the boat capsized.
Greg called out for me to quickly come around and help him get it up. I couldn't help myself-
"I know you're keen on getting it up whenever you can, but shouldn't we get the boat back to the beach first."
Concentrating on the work of looking after the boat, it took a minute for my words to sink in. Then a smile broke across his face, followed by a giggle. I think he was just about to say something back when the combination of his loss of concentration and the rocking of a passing wave caused him to lose his balance and fall in the water.
As Greg explained later, one of the issues with the 29er is that after it capsizes it rapidly turns itself around so that the top of the mast is facing toward the wind. This means as you start to right the boat the wind gets under the sails and often blows it straight over again on the other side. This happened to us three times, even though Greg had me lie alongside the cockpit of the boat as it was on its side so that as the boat came up I was scooped up in to the cockpit and just maybe in a position to stop the roll. Trouble was, even in those instances where I was quick enough to act I wasn't heavy enough to make much difference.
For the fourth attempt Greg tried a different technique. He had me stand on the centreboard while he held on to the forestay a little less than two metres above the deck level. As I used my weight to right the boat far enough for the wind to get under the sail, Greg used the rising forestay to lift him on to the foredeck while his weight slowed the speed with which it righted. At the same time he dragged his foot in the water just enough to encourage the boat to spin around in to the wind as it came upright.
That left the boat facing in to the wind with Greg already aboard. While the cracking noise made by the madly flapping jib was deafening, and it was rocking madly from side to side, Greg was able to help me aboard and start sorting the boat out to get sailing again.
A strong outgoing tide had at least been pushing us back in the direction of the clubhouse while we were going through all this, but we still needed to get sailing or the tide would sweep up straight past the club and out to sea. With the increase in wind, my weight on the wire was more important than ever, so there was not able to be any slacking off on my part just because it had got a bit scary.
The wind against tide very quickly meant large waves were forming. As much as Greg tried to minimise the effect the boat tended to leap off the waves and into the air as we went through them. For me on trapeze, this was exciting and scary all at once. Even though the wind was vicious, now it had settled in Greg was able to keep the boat sailing in a fairly stable manner; sailing a little bit free of the wind to give him the best course back to the club and me a very fast ride even if I did get tea-bagged a couple of times.
And for those of you giggling at my use of the expression tea-bagged, get your mind out of the gutter. It describes when the boat heals to windward and the crew on trapeze is swept off the deck and left dangling in the water at the end of the trapeze wire from the masthead. That's a far more literal use of the expression than what your dirty little minds were thinking of.
When we'd left the beach it was 35 degrees and sunny. I'd dressed only in a very light pair of wetsuit pants I'd borrowed from Greg's sister; which was mainly to minimise sunburn and bruising to my legs. Up top I just had a rashie over my bikini. Apart from that I was wearing a lifevest and trapeze belt; but neither of those gave anything in the way of insulation from the cold which was now settling in to me.
Matters became worse as it started to rain so heavily I couldn't see the shore any more. I was already saturated. Now a combination of the cold rain, the cold air swept down by the storm cell and the wind chill factor meant I was soon shivering madly. I was of course saturated and the wind on my wet rashie was especially chilling, although in these conditions even the thin wetsuit pants didn't stop my legs from freezing.
As I stood out on the trapeze, I looked down the length of my body to watch my legs as they shivered enough to shake the whole boat. In the process I couldn't help but notice my nipples. Being a bit too big for me, the lifevest and trapeze belt tended to stand proud of my chest as they supported my weight on the wire, so I could quite clearly see the rashie absolutely plastered to my breasts in their soaking state.
The cold had raised the nipples to their full height. As they stuck out from the top of my breasts, they reminded me of vents of extinct volcanos from which most of the cones had been eroded away. To cap it off as I shivered both breast and nipple were vigorously wobbling like jelly shapes left on the dashboard of a car speeding along a rutted dirt road.
I was glad Greg couldn't see them since I neither wanted him distracted at the moment from his task of sailing the boat nor trying later to compete with the cold to make them even bigger. That momentary thought process brought back memories of the nipple orgasm Greg had given me. My groin warmed to the arousal that thought gave me and I held it savouring the pleasure of the experience and the diversion from all pervading sense of cold that just moments before had crowded my brain. No doubt that warmth was being drawn from deep within my body's core and even as I enjoyed it was being dissipated to the outside cold. As a strategy for long term survival it was probably a poor one. As a way of spending the next ten minutes getting back to the beach it made the most of my situation; maybe even helped me enjoy the excitement of the sailing experience over the misery of the cold.
As we roared in to the beach, Greg had me let the jib go and come in off the trapeze to bring the centreboard up. Greg then slid over the side to catch the boat. Once he had it steady he had me jump off so I could go up the beach for the trolley. As I jumped off I fell flat in the shallow water. Ironically it was much warmer fully submerged than it was standing up and it took a lot of will power from me to get up and get the trolley.
By the time I'd got back with the trolley Greg had already released the halyard on the jib and it was sliding to the deck captured by the hanks that held it to the forestay. At least that stopped the infernal cracking noise it made as it flapped. As soon as the boat was tied to the trolley and we'd got the boat a reasonable distance out of the water, Greg told me to go and get warm in the clubhouse while he dropped the sails. I meekly protested that he'd need my help but I think he recognised that in the state I was in I'd be of little use.