Father Pursues His Sailing Dream

Hermann’s pursuit of sailing turns an imagined adventure into a family undertaking—and then into a story of physical failure, filial rescue, and a secret kept between father and son. He begins with no sailing experience but with an appetite powerful enough to reshape the family’s weekends, purchases, and plans. The JoMaHe Sailing Yacht gives the dream a name and a place on the water; the practical demands of sailing repeatedly expose the distance between Hermann’s command of theory and his capacity on a moving boat.

The dream takes hold

Hermann had traveled little: a visit to Weimar with a friend was about the extent of his excursions abroad. The family’s one shared holiday, in Sweden, was remembered less as a successful trip than for his accidentally driving into a busy pedestrian zone in Stockholm and then disappearing into a bookshop. The contrast makes his later longing for open water striking. The dream is not the next stage of an experienced traveler’s life, but a sudden, expansive desire in someone whose world has been largely local.

The change starts with a small pamphlet about the historical whaling of the North Frisians. Hermann’s interest spreads into historical shipbuilding, then a flood of novels, illustrated books, and theoretical works on seafaring. Reading Ich kaufe ein Segelboot, he appears to be seized by an idea. Although his heavy body remains sunk in his armchair, his gaze fixes on the swaying linden trees, and the narrator observes that his eyes seem to grow bluer as he immerses himself in maritime thought. At lunch he lectures about sailing; the family’s Sundays shift from walks in the woods to visits to the harbor.

There, Hermann applies the same diagnostic attention he brings to people to the boats. He identifies Flying Dutchmen, Folkeboats, catamarans, and different classes of dinghy, while the narrator takes pleasure in the adventurous sound of sailing terms such as tacking, gybing, and heaving to. The technical vocabulary marks how quickly the dream becomes a subject of study, but it also lets the child share in its excitement before either of them has much experience on the water.

From declaration to boat ownership

The longing breaks into the open one evening when the narrator’s second-oldest brother summons him to the living room. The narrator’s mother kneels on the carpet holding Hermann’s hands; his face is red, his hands tremble, and he has just drained a glass of water. He declares that he wants a sailboat and wants to sail. His excitement rises into a succession of images—setting sail, hoisting the spinnaker, weighing anchor, taking the helm, and leaving the harbor behind. Even as he smiles at his own intensity, his trembling hands reveal that this is more than a playful performance.

The narrator’s mother answers that they can buy one. Hermann falls silent, then agrees with grave finality, nodding repeatedly with pressed, pale lips and tears in his eyes. The family sits close around him as the decision takes shape. The narrator later observes that the sensible first step would have been to test the wish against reality: Hermann had never sailed and had only once traveled with his son on an excursion steamer to Helgoland. Instead, the family follows the route Hermann has chosen, allowing the dream to become a commitment before practical experience can measure it.

He joins the Schleswiger Schlei-Segel-Club and rents a coveted berth as soon as an opportunity arises, despite having neither been out on the water nor acquired a boat. He buys a white pair of trousers, blue shoes, and a white V-neck sweater bearing an anchor emblem, then proudly displays his club card beside the empty berth. At home, he spends the weekend in his sailing clothes, practicing knots with a length of rope while seated in his armchair. The gap between costume and competence is already visible, but the scene treats the clothes and the empty space in the harbor as sincere parts of the family’s new undertaking.

Study, purchase, and examination

Hermann signs himself and the narrator’s mother up for the sailing examination and quizzes her on technical matters, including the calculation of hull speed. She prefers to learn only what the test requires. They take a course; during his first practical sail, Hermann becomes seasick and feels reasonably comfortable only while sitting. The experience brings a measure of disillusionment, but it does not dislodge his ambition. His wife, by contrast, loves the course: she discovers the pleasure of the air and the new view of their town from the water. Hermann turns from her enthusiasm to quiz her about what sparkling stars predict, correcting her answer with the confidence of a lecturer.

He misses several lessons because he is more interested in buying the family’s boat. An advertisement offers a relatively inexpensive cabin dinghy called the Sepia, with standing headroom, a keel, an outboard motor, and simple handling. What persuades him most are its advertised qualities: it cannot capsize and cannot sink. Only five boats of this type exist. Before either Hermann or the narrator’s mother has earned a sailing certificate, the boat is delivered from Cologne on a trailer by its builder. Hermann stands upright, knees straight, to greet it, while club members have never heard of a Sepia.

The family debates what to call the boat. The narrator’s second-oldest brother argues for the Nautilus, but the narrator’s mother proposes combining the first two letters of Joachim, Martin, and Hermann. The resulting name, JoMaHe, is given to the boat as it is lowered into the water by crane. A small bottle of sparkling wine is swung against its plastic hull, leaving a small dent as part of the christening. The boat thus bears the family’s initials even before the family has proved itself at sea.

Two months later, the examination puts that confidence under pressure. Hermann finishes the theory test first and discusses sailing with the examiner; he passes with no errors, while the narrator’s mother passes with four. The practical test takes place in strong winds, at force seven. The candidates wear yellow oilskins, life jackets, and red knitted caps for visibility. The examiner calls instructions from a motorboat through a megaphone as Hermann and his wife board the rocking dinghy and set sail under the partial shelter of the harbor wall.

The failed test and the rescue

Once they reach open water, the wind fills the sail and heels the boat. Hermann falls during the first maneuver, despite following the rule of keeping one hand on the boat. When he tries to rise, the boom strikes his head and knocks him down again. The dinghy then rams a pontoon, pitching him onto the floor a third time. The narrator’s mother takes control and sails the next maneuvers alone while Hermann remains prone with his eyes closed, even as she calls for his help. Asked over the megaphone where he is, she points down to the bottom of the boat.

Hermann eventually sits up and vomits into the Schlei. His wife brings the boat around into the wind and steadies it. When she asks him to hold the mainsail halyard while she adjusts the lines, a gust pulls the rope through his hands and the sail drops. In winds that have increased to force eight or nine, she climbs the mast to thread the line back through, despite the examiner’s warnings, then raises the sail, steers back, and docks competently. Hermann crawls out of the dinghy looking dazed and walks away across the grass. Of eighteen candidates, he is the only one to fail. The examiner explains that he cannot pass someone who spent most of the test lying down and who would have needed rescuing without his wife.

For weeks afterward, Hermann does not go sailing. He puts his sailing books in order on the shelf and gives the knotting rope to the dog as a toy. Eventually, under his wife’s command, he takes the family out. His preferred outings are those on windless mornings, when there is no need to set a sail: he sees the still linden leaves from bed, calls it sailing weather, and goes with his son across the glassy water under the chattering outboard motor. They sun themselves, eat their provisions, talk, and sometimes fish. If he spots someone from the Rotary Club through his binoculars, he exclaims in alarm and takes the boat into a quiet inlet to hide.

The final outing ends the sailing dream. On the Schlei, Hermann switches off the motor and lets the boat drift for more than an hour. When he cannot restart it, he opens the engine cover—a considerable technical effort for him—and stares helplessly into the mechanism. He yanks the starter cord angrily and at an awkward angle, striking his son in the face and knocking him overboard. The narrator, wearing a life jacket, floats away from the boat, confused and bleeding from the nose. Hermann tries to grab him, then jumps into the water and struggles toward him as the boat, pushed by his leap, moves farther off.

A nearby couple lifts the narrator from the water before Hermann reaches him. Hermann swims and paddles to their boat, climbs aboard soaked and breathless, then embraces his son so tightly that the boy coughs. The embrace leaves it unclear who is comforting whom. Their rescuers find the drifting JoMaHe in the reeds and tow it back. Wrapped in a blanket, Hermann asks for a cigarette when he sees the man light one; he has not smoked in four years.

Secrecy and aftermath

A crowd greets them at the Schleswiger Schlei-Segel-Club. The story quickly circulates among Schleswig’s sailors: the professor knocked his son overboard, became stranded in calm weather, and had to be rescued—all without a sailing certificate. On the way home, Hermann asks his son not to tell the family that evening. The narrator’s mother and brothers want to know why he has blood-soaked cotton plugs in his nose, but he says he walked into the mast. His lie protects his father’s request, and Hermann acknowledges it with a grateful nod.

After the accident, Hermann never again boards his Sepia, the JoMaHe. The sequence that began with a vision of leaving land ends not in mastery of the sea but in a rescue that briefly reverses the father-son roles: the son is saved by strangers while the father, having jumped after him, must also be helped aboard. Yet the remembered episode holds more than humiliation. Hermann did leap into the water, and the son’s decision to keep the mishap secret becomes a small act of loyalty. The sailing dream survives as a family story precisely where its practical pursuit fails.